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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 2 months

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tuesday again 3/12/2024

beat breath of the wild and have no real interest in rot13’ing spoilers for a seven year old game. also early thoughts on the first couple hours in tears of the kingdom. so if you don’t want to see that don’t read the playing section

listening

there is a particular piece of exploring ambient music that plays in a particular cave in genshin impact's fontaine and i adored it. i kept going back to that cave to trigger the music. it reminds me very much of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who won several Oscars for early Technicolor swashbucklers-- The Sea Hawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, et al. this particular piece leans into it the most and really grabbed me bc that's what Fontaine is all about: the romanticism, the folk heroism, the seafaring swashbuckling. i wish they leaned into it a bit more across fontaine, but i haven't played since i got fired and had to give my laptop back so perhaps the last patch has more similar music?

the use of bells in this is super great and pulled my attention first, but the way it ends-- a sort of sliding violin halt, some woodwinds fluttering up, a flute twining in. i hope their composing team wins some fuckin awards this year bc all the genshin music is good but the fontaine music is really a cut above.

youtube

either you've seen enough lavish technicolor adventure movies to know what the fuck i'm on about or you haven't, i hope this makes sense for why i was so excited about hearing this particular style in such an unexpected medium. here actually listen to this

youtube

reading

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang, i think a post on here influenced me bc it promised gay genderfuckery but i put it on hold SO long ago i could not tell you when that was or what the post was. it’s not NOT gay and genderfucky. but that’s really not the point of the book. this also wasn’t the easy read i was expecting it to be. let's yoink both the photo and the pitch from macmillan:

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away. Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats. Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

this book kept me company through a particularly bad bout of insomnia and i did enjoy my time with it, i'm glad it exists in the world and i'm glad to have read it essentially in one sitting. if i owned a hard copy, i don't think i would hang on to it. it was Fine, it's simply not for me. a bit too chewy and for bigger fans of Chinese history and/or wuxia i think.

there is an extremely large cast of characters (i often found myself referring back to the dramatis personae) and quite grim in parts. sexual assault, cannibalism as revenge, a very realistic war. a lot of really terrible, really grievous things happen to bodies. the fight scenes are clear and competent and will in fact unfold in your head like a martial arts movie.

it does take quite a while to get going and unfolds more like a TV show than a political thriller movie. this is a fat fucking book. this is a twenty hour audiobook. it strongly benefits from shifting POVs over its length, Huang is particularly good at differentiating tone and what each character pays attention to for maximum effect. she's also really good at one of my favorite things, displays of political deftness where you can’t see how someone would have made any other choice. some really top tier leftist infighting

while it is gay and it is genderbending, i would not say discussions of sex and sexuality are at the forefront. this is a group that has been pushed to the margins for their gender and sexuality, but this is a book concerned with how they survive and there isn’t a lot of space for discussions that aren’t about survival. there’s no fucking on page, but this book did not advertise itself as a romance or erotica so i don’t fully understand other readers' criticisms here.

this is a very competently written book. i am not going to remember it in a month's time. i don't normally emphasize it to this degree bc i feel a little bad about going "meh" at this tale of women fighting for societal and personal freedom, something i too have done but with less gore, but there is a wide gray sea of books that are simply fine and i don't particularly love or particularly hate bc they weren't quite what i needed or what i expected at the time. so it goes.

watching

there is a revelation in Yellowstone season 3 episode 7 (picture unrelated i just like having a picture for each section) that made us (me, my bestie, my bestie’s husband) all SCREAM and have to pause it and leave the room for a moment to compose ourselves. the amount of Things per episode that happen in that show. they really fuckin use all of their forty-four minutes.

i watch so little modern prestige tv i i keep thinking about why this has its hooks in my brain so, and i think this is the same concept as homestuck and soap operas and war and peace: once you get sucked into a huge sprawling semi-nonsensical drama you are In It BayBee

playing

i didn't know lizalfos could do that. i don't like that. stop it.

somehow i had never gotten up to this platform near dueling peaks stables and was rewarded with...some arrows. but the sun rising turned the marsh all gold, and all the atmosphere shading was firing on all cylinders, and it looked real pretty. the weather in breath of the wild is fun.

i had been under the impression that the divine beasts had been slowly siphoning away ganon’s energy or something and had not realized that they were lining up shots and were the equivalent of little laser sniper dots. hearing that joyous musical cue and watching ganon get got by that tremendous beam of light was maybe the funniest moment in the game???

anyway did finally beat breath of the wild!!! did tear up at the end! im annoyed that the postgame just vworps you back immediately pre-castle but i get it from a game architecture perspective.

at the very last bit of the fight i fell off my horse who got stuck against the beast’s leg taking damage and i was SO scared it was going to kill my horse but we were ok!!! i think i overprepared for that fight. the thunderblight light ganon fight was way harder imo.

popping that map back open postgame and seeing a cheery little 43% completion in the corner was. good god. i had 105 shrines and 66/77 side quests, all but four of the shrine quests, and like 250 koroks. i guess the koroks count for way more than i thought??? or perhaps i didn’t actually discover as many named places as i thought??? i would probably have more coherent thoughts about the end of this game if i were not Extremely Depressed and wasn't able to immediately jump to tears of the kingdom. as it is, i feel sort of "huh. ok. that's checked off. next task: ganon But More"

on to tears of the kingdom: i love zelda with her little bi bob. i do NOT love link with longer hair. give him his ponytail back

i loooooove these little grotesques on the temple of time-- i was spoiled for the end of tears of the kingdom bc i watched my bestie’s husband play through the last three hours. i have just enough context to make everything more confusing. also, i was fully expecting the time skip to be like several thousands of years but it’s like a month at most???

it is So Funny to me that the lord of the mountain in the last game is an extremely rare occurrence you have to go visit at a specific place, and in this game he just wants his appy slices :) this is an excuse to talk about other rideable animals: i started a new switch profile to replay botw lo these many weeks ago, forgot to choose that one when starting totk, and don’t have any of the horses i spent the last month with :( the horses from my first playthrough several years ago are, quite frankly, not very good stats wise.

i went right to hebra to start the rito quest (where is the divine beast??? what has happened to the divine beasts???) but keep getting my shit kicked in one blow so i think i will fuck around the castle and do some more shrines. my overall impression is that this game is way more fiddly. there’s more Stuff to combine and keep track of. i wish i could premake fire and ice and bomb arrows instead of having to select them every time. that’s a lot of button presses in the middle of a fight. also my controller is succumbing to some fatal connectivity issues so this portion of the tuesdaypost may be slower for a bit. i will scrape up some money for a new controller bc this is a real loadbearing activity but it’s going to take a minute to ship to me i assume.

making

listen i deep cleaned my living/dining and bedroom today in a fit of remarkably productive anxiety, that’s about all that’s happening this week. i finished repainting some large frames, i framed one thing but don't like it, i fucked up framing another thing and i have put it back in the closet to simmer/until i remember how to measure things again

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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itsbenedict · 2 years

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if you're waiting for 'if the state of medical transition improves' then you're already trans, Lucia ❤️

please do not do this. that is not how it works.

you probably thought this was a nice thing to say, because being trans is Good and you thought you were assuaging anxieties about not being Good enough trans enough. that is not where i'm at, and it's pretty rude to call someone by a name they aren't going by. there are more relationships to gender in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

i would kind of not like to get into the specifics, because my own feelings on my own gender are like, borderline transphobic, and if interpreted as generalities would imply things that would get me in trouble.

but i guess it's not a great life strategy to bottle feelings up indefinitely in case they would make someone mad at you? so, uh, under a readmore, please only continue if, like, you don't have an emotional need to block the "transphobia cw" tag or similar. i'd tag it as such but this is not a post i want anyone finding via search.

Where to start? Uh... there's terms of art, I guess- "cis by default", "magic button trans", but they kind of miss the core of it.

When I was a teen, I was violently dysphoric. I hated my body, I hated the gross thing attached to my crotch, I hated the social expectations on me to be a Man who Provides For The Household, I hated all of it and I desperately wished I could be a girl instead.

And I did have the internet, and so obviously in desperation I googled everything to try and find out what options I had. And I found the options! I found the stuff online saying "oh, yes, we know exactly what you're going through! if you want to be a girl, you can just be one! here is some literature on gender and personal identity!"

And I read it and went "...well, this is useless." None of it solved my problems! I wasn't going to escape the social expectations of the male gender role by declaring my way out of it- even if I could think myself into it, there was no way I was going to think my conservative parents into playing along, much less pay for hormones and surgery.

And even if I could... "spend years taking pills that very very slowly transform some parts of your body and not others, become infertile, put on gobs and gobs of makeup, and then maybe if you've got the right body type, random strangers on the street will have a decent chance of thinking you're a girl until the moment you open your mouth" didn't seem like an attractive option. "Hire a voice coach and train for ages, and best-case scenario you'll maybe plausibly sound like a particularly deep-voiced cis woman with a cold" didn't cut it for me.

Because...

Like, I couldn't give less of a shit about being perceived as a particular gender by strangers! Pronouns mean nothing to me! Sure, I could put years of strenuous effort in, and eventually reach a point where strangers are momentarily confused, evaluate some conflicting signals, and more often than not conclude "yeah, it's probably safest to say 'she' about that person"- but that has zero value to me!

What I wanted was any of the actual benefits of being a girl. The ability to be cared for by someone else and not have it be a mark of shame! Looking in a mirror or opening my mouth and seeing/hearing something cute and pretty! Meeting beauty standards without going to the gym! Not having all my damn hair fall out at the age of 27 thanks to my dad's inescapable genetics! If I could have all those things, and everyone in the world still called me "he", I would not have a problem!

And of course the current state of the art in transition doesn't get me any of those things- either because it medically can't do certain things yet, or because they're social things that hormones can't touch.

Now,

it's not like these are issues other trans people haven't faced, and wanted fixed- but the currently agreed-upon slate of solutions feels really unsatisfying to me. It's all brute-force "insist very loudly that social norms change" stuff. Where bodies don't match desired social behaviors and expectations, we say "ignore bodies, change social behaviors and expectations", on the basis that bodies are hard to change but social behaviors and expectations are easy.

But... they're both very hard, and so much of the messaging is saying "no, it's not hard, only bad people think it's hard, it's actually very easy and if you're having trouble then there's something wrong with you". If it's hard for me, someone who has every self-interested reason to change those behaviors and expectations, how hard is it for people who aren't so invested? How can you trust anyone's social behavior around gender, in this kind of omnipresent climate of emotional blackmail?

I feel like so much of this zeitgeist is going to evaporate when biomedical science reaches the point where people can just, have the kind of bodies that line up with their desired set of social behaviors at will. There won't be nearly so much need to chant "trans women are women!" when it's like, yeah, obviously. Would you chant "people with glasses can see!"? Like, duh, they went to the optometrist. Why are you making a big deal out of it? Who's saying they can't?

Anyway,

I feel like by the time either transition medicine gets to the point of working well enough to give me what I want, or the impossible happens and the climate of emotional threat somehow resolves into genuinely changed norms, I'm going to be old enough that most of the relevant benefits are pointless, so I'm currently not planning to transition unless we solve biology or get uploading way sooner than expected.

(might do a vtuber thing if i can find a really good voice filter, though)

#reblog delete personal‚ a tag to keep frank quiet #i'd say something that rhymes with ''Loant Deflog'' but like #there's weirdos out there who go searching for those tags in order to reblog them #but seriously don't though

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backofthebookshelf · 4 years

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“fiction affects reality” hell yeah it does! Reading and engaging with fiction increases emapthy, reduces bias, and heightens perception of subtle expressions - that is, it makes you more likely to notice someone reacting badly to something you’ve done or said, even when that reaction doesn’t exist. (Meanwhile, in spite of literally hundreds of studies over many decades, no one’s been able to prove a persistent increase in violence as a result of violent video games - which censors honed in on in the 1980s and 90s because it was assumed that, due to the participatory nature of video games, the effects would be stronger - and I couldn’t find a single actual study addressing the idea of harm from reading fiction. (Admittedly that was a cursory Google Scholar search, and I’d be very interested to see any studies that do exist, if anyone knows of them - I’d expect that someone’s studied the effects of, say, reading racist literature in school curricula if nothing else. And if they haven’t, there’s a free thesis project for you.)

This seems backwards at first, even to me. How can something that has a powerful positive effect also have no powerful negative effect? Even meditation can do terrible harm if practiced under the wrong conditions. But here’s the thing: meditation is doing something to your actual brain in actual reality, whether good or bad. Fiction, even though you’re processing it with your actual brain, is still fiction. When we read fiction we know it’s not real; if we don’t, we don’t call it fiction but lies. And if anything we seem to be more likely to treat true stories as fiction than the other way around, because there’s a demonstrated limit to the number of people we can meaningfully perceive as real humans for any length of time. (Also, case in point, the first example I wrote into the next paragraph was a memoir, before I caught myself and changed it.)

More importantly, because fiction isn’t real, we also bring to it a level of critical thinking we don’t bring to real events: we know it may not be a perfect reflection of reality, so we compare characters in fiction to people we really know, or to other similar characters in fiction. After reading The Picture of Dorian Gray I thought about what it would be like to have to balance your own joy with the risk of going to prison, instead of just being ostracized for it. After reading a Stephen King novel, I get angry on behalf of Black people that every single Black character of his seems to die heroically to advance the hero’s narrative. I never used to think twice about the guys who stare at thirteen-year-old girls at the beach, because they’re so damn common, but after reading Lolita, I am significantly more grossed out by them (and more likely to protect girls from them).

Fiction affects reality because it’s a simulation of reality, and of social reality in particular, and human brains are extremely good at finding flaws in a simulation of social interaction, especially when we know they’re there. (That’s why conspiracy theories exist, after all - it’s the perception of deceit when there’s no actual deceit there.) Fiction lets us test out, “hey, are these other people still people?” And if the fiction is a good enough simulation of reality, the answer is yes. My brain was successfully convinced that Humbert Humbert is an actual person. My empathy has been increased. And because of the rest of my experiences, moral philosophy, and social understanding, I hate him even more.

#fiction and reality #censorship #anti anti #goddammit i had other things to do this morning

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bts-ficrecs · 4 years

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i had this ask on queue but??? i noticed for some reason my “read more” is....placed within the ask aaand i can’t take it out (like even if i delete everything and start all over again).... i’m so confused lol

so anyway, here’s my reply anon! :) ↴ ↴

this was in reference to my smutty series recs...several months ago...so y’all know the drill. idk how to keep things short. and i always take forever to reply. so here u go <3

there’s a lot of smut out there...so i’ve restricted this to only pwps. maybe i’ll do a comp for smutty fics with plot in the future.

also i’m kind of vanilla LOL so none of these should be too wild 😂 sorry if you were looking for a wild anal fisting blood play orgy adjfeajl

KEY: (*) = haven’t read yet but i’ll rec anyway cause i can

NAMJOON

.•° As The Cauldron Bubbles by @winetae

°•. Summary: What makes for a potent potion? Step one. In one room, gather two people who seemingly dislike each other. Step two. Stir in a pinch of snark and four ladles of sexual tension. Step three. Wait until everything simmers to a boil.

.•° Attitude by @fightmejeonkook

°•. Summary: Namjoon is your best friend and a quick dare quickly changes everything between you two, a kiss leading from one thing to another as pent up tension surfaces.

.•° Bitten & Knotted by @jamaisjoons (*)

°•. Summary: As different as night and day, your two lovers have many differences, after all, one is a vampire and the other is a werewolf. They have their similarities too, namely their supernaturally long life. Something you don’t share. Something they’re going to rectify tonight.

.•° Chemi-beat by @hoseokiehopie

°•. Summary: Your fun plan to seduce your boyfriend in his studio backfires when it’s broadcasted on VLIVE for the entire ARMY to see.

.•° Choke by @writingseoul

°•. Summary: You help him to relax.

.•° Feeling Good by @ethertae (*)

°•. Summary: A wonderful threesome with Kim Namjoon, and Kim Seokjin.

.•° Forbidden by @junghelioseok

°•. Summary: A dance with the devil under the pale moon.

.•° Hunger's Only Friend by @bangtanbullies

°•. Summary: Namjoon has a philosophy that while some women are prettiest with their masks of cosmetic, a slut is at her most beautiful when she is freshly fucked.

.•° His Roomate by @joondaily

°•. Summary: When your boyfriend suggested the two of you spice up your sex life, you never expected that to include time alone with his roommate. (feat. Jungkook)

.•° Peaches and Cream by @jinpire

°•. Summary: “Baby,” he says, the sheer arousal in his eyes melting most of your resistance. He shoves the laptop back onto the coffee table before grabbing your hands, his thumbs running over your knuckles. “Y/N. Give me ten minutes between your gorgeous thighs, and you’ll never want to miss out again. I swear.”

.•° Please, Santa by @floralseokjin

°•. Summary: It’s Christmas Eve and you and Namjoon are about to partake in some peculiar roleplay…

.•° Through The Phone by @imaginethisbts

°•. Summary: The sexual frustration is real when Namjoon goes on a month long business trip, halfway across the world. So when the chips are down and the tides get rough, and you can’t actually get to one another… what do you do? You go to the next best thing of course - phone sex.

.•° Under The Mistletoe by @11-ish

°•. Summary: In which you’ve met your high school lover, Namjoon in the eve of Christmas.

SEOKJIN

.•° A Saint In Her Halo by @winetae

°•. Summary: Beneath his immaculate appearance and flowery words, no one would expect such filth to spew from his lips or; Kim Seokjin is simultaneously the best and worst kind of distraction.

°•. m/n: ok, so this isn’t smut per say. Moreso sexually suggestive. But it’s good ok. So good.

.•° Charm Me by @jungblue

°•. Summary: You have a test in charms tomorrow, and you know that you’re completely screwed, but luckily your boyfriend Jin, who is an expert in the subject, offers to help—however you quickly learn that he might actually be a bit too good at them.

.•° Daydream by @dom-joonie

°•. Summary: Your literature professor has a bit of a…gift. A gift that let’s him see other peoples thoughts when he wants to. And despite the fact that he warns his class openly about this gift, one day you forget, and find yourself in a bit of pickle when Kim Seokjin reads your mind, and finds you imagining some not so school appropriate scenarios…involving him.

.•° Dr. Kim by @btsfiles

°•. Summary: He’s the hospital’s best surgeon, and you’re more than just an admirer.

.•° Green Room by @hoseokiehopie

°•. Summary: You blow your boyfriend in the green room after a concert when neither of you can hold yourselves back.

.•° Hazy by @yoonia (*)

°•. Summary: “You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into.”

.•° In the Mood by @kinktae (*)

°•. Summary: With the second world war finally over, soldiers are coming back home to their families, and famous Hollywood actor Seokjin is no different. Eager to get to babymaking with his wife but plagued by the need to re-establish himself in the film industry, Seokjin is to forced to engage in a more unconventional conception method.

.•° Pink by @tayegi

°•. Summary: “Stop undressing me with your eyes! Use your teeth.”

.•° Sehnsucht by @johobi

°•. Summary: An embarrassing run-in with your new boss is only the start of your destructive infatuation.

.•° Self-Indulgent Fantasy by @bxebxee

°•. Summary: You try your best to wrinkle Seokjin’s vest, but he’s not having it.

.•° Urs by @floralseokjin

°•. Summary: Seokjin’s been dreaming of this moment for so long…

.•° Washing Machine by @btssmutgalore

°•. Summary: Jin shows you another way to use the old washing machine.

YOONGI

.•° 1:32 AM by @mikronysus

°•. Summary: Your eyes narrowed into slits as you glared at the scene unfolding in front of you, your fingers grasping the straw of your drink as you silently seethed to yourself. You watched as the girl laughed at whatever it was your boyfriend had said, her fingers grazing his arm as she looked up at him with eyes that were clouded over in a drunken haze. Sneering at the sight, you clenched your jaw as you watched her move closer towards him.

.•° 7:30 AM by @prolixitae

°•. Summary: It isn’t often that you get to wake tangled in each other.

.•° A Lesson by @btsxyou (feat. Jungkook)

°•. Summary: Maybe it was the thought, in the back of your mind, the thought that had swirled around inside, about how Yoongi could take you from the equal you were when you were with Jungkook, and turn you into a puppet. How he knew what he was doing.

.•° A Brush of Silk by @jinpire

°•. Summary: His lips curl around your neck, whispering, “I want slow today. You good with that, baby?” “You say that like you ever want anything else, old man,” you quip back, your voice a tad breathless.

.•° Between Chocolates & Candy Canes by @yoonia

°•. Summary: This day was supposed to be the best day of your life. After a long wait filled with curiosity, excitements and a bundle of nerves, you are finally here, walking between the other members in the tour group invited to visit the magnificent and renowned Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. (feat. Jimin)

.•° Boyfriend Jeans by @bangtanboysboo

°•. Summary: Yoongi is leaving for tour and he needs his jeans.

.•° Buzz by @floralseokjin (complete series)

°•. Summary: In which you’re unsure if you’ve ever received an orgasm and when you finally pluck up the courage to use the vibrator you bought that one day on a whim, Yoongi barges through the door…

.•° Chardonnay by @btsxyou

°•. Summary: You lifted your gaze, turning your head towards him, and giving him a half smile, not too nicely, but that perfect smirk that you know would eat at him the whole night. Because he wanted you, but he couldn’t have you.

.•° Diaphanous by @yoongisbbydoll (*)

°•. Summary: Yoongi has missed you more than anything. Staying away for a long time it too much on him, but he knows it is much harder on you. Therefore, whenever he can, he brings home presents you could never have imagined.

.•° Firsts by @badbhye (*)

°•. Summary: You and Yoongi had been dating for a good six months, and you had told him from the get-go that you wanted to wait until you were ready to have sex. It wasn’t as if your virginity was something you held sacred, you just wanted to do it with someone you were comfortable with and trusted completely. And Yoongi was that.

.•° Ink by @guksthighs

°•. Summary: Yoongi needs to remind you who you belong to.

.•° Jitters by @versigny

°•. Summary: Yoongi read you like an open book, and judging from your blown-pupils and faintly parted lips, he probably definitely knew what you were thinking about.

.•° Long Distance by @miss-noo-na

°•. Summary: Yoongi misses the sound of your voice.

.•° Sticky Honey by @minlattes

°•. Summary: Yoongi’s every day life with you is a gift, you’re his favorite human.

.•° True Love Cafe by @versigny

°•. Summary: Make me fall in love with you.

.•° The Honeytrap by @jamaisjoons

°•. Summary: What can you do when your bees aren’t producing the amount of honey they should be? Ask your neighbour, the honeybee king, for help of course!

HOSEOK

.•° 100-to-1 by @mytaerminology

°•. Summary: “I have an idea” Hoseok said, way too enthusiastically for your liking.

.•° Adjustment by @yminie

°•. Summary: At Kim-Jung Chiropractics, they meet your every need, and today it’s not just your back that needs aligning.

.•° All Toy, No Mercy by @prolixitae (*)

°•. Summary: As an amateur porn couple, you’VE got roles to uphold. Said roles leave hoseok at your mercy when you conjure up a sick little theme for this week’s video. Two words: Orgasm torture.

.•° Barbarian by @httpjeon

°•. Summary: Your husband, Hoseok, comes home from a raid with the need to make you pregnant with his child.

.•° Cold Showers by @chillingtae

°•. Summary: Everyone has bad habits. Yours just happens to be long, hot showers - it’s not like it’s that bad. Long showers were a habit you couldn’t break despite the fact that Hobi told you on the daily not to use all of the hot water…Which brings you to your current situation. You decide that Hobi will just have to get over your habit, and you’ve got the perfect plan thought up of how to do just that…

.•° Gumdrops & Lollipops by @winetae (*)

°•. Summary: A visit to Jung Hoseok’s chocolate factory does not turn out the way you expected it to.

.•° Hatefuck by @njssi (*)

°•. Summary: Perhaps pissing off Hobi during dance practice wasn’t that good of an idea. Or perhaps it was the best idea you’ve had in a while.

.•° Sunlit Affair by @ubemango

°•. Summary: Twenty-five is a good look on Hoseok.

.•° Take Me by @yoonia

°•. Summary: “I don’t want you to stop.”

.•° The Last Day of Summer by @whichwaytowonderlandep

°•. Summary: 365 days in a year. Three months dedicated to a summer vacation and you wasted no time to fuck around with some guy you had met at the hostel you were staying.

.•° To the Beat of My Heart by @jeonggukingdom

°•. Summary: When you walk into the studio that Sunday afternoon, all you expect is a lonely and chill practice session but, a few hours later, your programs are shattered in thousand pieces by the unexpected presence of Jung Hoseok. And nothing could have prepared you for what he had in store for you.

.•° War Game by @yoonia

°•. Summary: “You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into"

JIMIN

.•° A Bite of The Apple by @jinpire

°•. Summary: The thought of Jimin not being able to feed from someone other than you is troubling in more than one sense– there will be times, like the past week, when you physically can’t be there for him, and what would happen in an emergency, if he somehow got hurt and needed a transfusion, if his body rejected the blood of someone else. And that’s not even considering the long term implications of that….

.•° A Matter of Pride by @jincherie

°•. Summary: You make some comments that wound Jimin’s pride and threaten his standing as Best Lover of the group so he sets out to prove you wrong the only way he knows how.

.•° Barefoot And by @dovechim

°•. Summary: I want you to fuck me until I can’t walk and I have to feel your cum drain out of me until I remember how to move.

.•° Birthday Boy by @polaritae

°•. Summary: You’re the best present Jimin could have asked for.

.•° Breaking Of The Fast by @versigny

°•. Summary: “Why don’t you want me?”

.•° Class President by @btssmutgalore

°•. Summary: Class president candidate Jimin would do anything to get your vote.

.•° Clone-a-Willy™ by @dovechim

°•. Summary: “I’ve had this plug in me all day, when do I get to feel your cock instead?”

°•. Sequel: Heightened Secrecy

.•° Euphoria by @94hixtape

°•. Summary: “Let’s have a threesome when we graduate, if… uh, we’re still single that is…”

.•° Gingerbread House by @readyplayerhobi (feat. Jungkook)

°•. Summary: Do you have a sweet tooth? Or do you prefer a bit of spice in your treats? Gingerbread House has all your needs met with our large range of confectionery that’s sure to meet everyone’s tastes. For those looking for something a little more personalised, we’re always willing to create bespoke confectionery to suit you. Give us a call or visit our store, you’re sure to find plenty to sink your teeth into!

.•° Little Monster by @floralseokjin

°•. Summary: You’ve been good friends with your roommate Jimin for a while, occasionally flirting with each other, especially when you’ve had a drink, but nothing has ever happened between the two of you…until that is, he secretly listens to you and Namjoon have sex one day…He thinks you don’t know, but he’s wrong…

.•° Lower by @parkmuse

°•. Summary: After six months you finally break the sexual tension… with phone sex.

.•° Mischievous Maintenance by @dark-muse-iris

°•. Summary: Like many adults who are trying to make the best of working in a field unrelated to their degree, you greet Mondays with the same enthusiasm as an ex with shared custody. You don’t to be there, but adult responsibilities require it and you need money. And coffee. And the salacious advances from the head maintenance technician working in your office.

.•° Nursemaid by @noona-la-la-la

°•. Summary: Jimin’s crush comes over to his house to help him out after he suffers an injury that leaves him with limited use of both hands.

.•° One More Time by taepott

°•. Summary: You can’t resist Jimin, even if he is a fuckboy.

.•° Raw by @btsjeonjazz

°•. Summary: A demon and an angel are trying to win over you. But who will succeed?

.•° Watch Me by @swoonjoon

°•. Summary: Who knew watching some camboy would turn into so much more?

TAEHYUNG

.•° Bad Decisions by @94hixtape

°•. Summary: Taehyung sighs in the curve of your neck, lips roaming the soft expanse of skin as his hands can’t seem to find a resting spot in the curves of your body. It’s one am and the silence in his dorm room is as overwhelming as it is exciting; you blame on the bottle of vodka the two of you had while studying for finals. One hour ago it seemed like a good idea. One hour later, not so much.

.•° Desideratum by @junqkook

°•. Summary: You had no idea you’d fall for a Hufflepuff, especially not the seeker with a big smile and wandering hands that you spent more time in bed with than you cared to admit.

.•° Fever by @yoonia

°•. Summary: “I wish I could hate you.”

.•° Good Girl by @suga-kookiemonster

°•. Summary: You don’t really know much about kim taehyung. What you do know is that he’s your handsome coworker and that, since you just accidentally sent him a nude, you’re good and royally fucked.

.•° Heatwave by @curly-bangtan

°•. Summary: When your town is hit with a heatwave, and the air conditioning at your shared place coincidentally malfunctions, you start to go a little crazy at your shit luck because there’s nothing you hate more than clammy pits, while Taehyung goes a little crazy thinking you’re trying to seduce him with your tiny shorts and popsicle-sucking skills.

.•° H is for Hairpulling by @polaritae

°•. Summary: You continue your work, trying your best to gently untangle his hair. For the most part, you only have to give the strands a tug and they unravel, but some knots are worse than others. A particularly large mess has you yanking at the strands. Taehyung whimpers.

.•° Of Lace and Lust by @hobidreams

°•. Summary: Friendship rule number one: Don’t imagine how amazing your best friend’s cock would feel inside you. Except that’s all you can think about after accidentally discovering Taehyung’s kink for panties. Specifically, the lacy ones you’re so fond of wearing.

.•° On The Significance Of Names by @wildernessuntothemselves

°•. Summary: Despite living in a world where romantic or sexual relationships with witches could be punishable by death, you, a witch, still feel confident enough to ask your friend Taehyung, a werewolf and prince, to allow you to relieve your intense curiosity that could’ve only sprouted from years of sexual repression, and give you the chance to feel what it’s like to pleasure a man.

.•° One Night Snap by @taesjpg

°•. Summary: [23:09] Kim Taehyung: DO NOT OPEN THE SNAP I JUST SENT TO YOU FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE DON’T

°•. Sequel: Part 2

.•° The Fanmeet by @ellieljade

°•. Summary: Taehyung is jealous over Jungkook flirting with his girlfriend and decides to teach him a lesson in front of their fans.

.•° The Name Game by @drquinzelharleen

°•. Summary: You invite some of your friends over for a small party. When a tame night in turns into a dirty one. Your friend Hoseok comes up with a fun game for you all to participate in.

.•° The Silver One by @prolixitae

°•. Summary: You didn’t mean to swipe right but now you’re sleeping with a hot jewelry salesman who makes fun of bottoms as much as you do.

.•° Voice Note by @kpopfanfictrash

°•. Summary: Taehyung: did u listen [4:16 PM]

JUNGKOOK

.•° A Sip of the Grail by @jinpire

°•. Summary: You take in his expression curiously, trying to understand this new Jungkook that’s somehow both bold and shy, before tilting your chin to the left and exposing the curve of your neck. A quick hook of your finger into the collar of your sweater unveils more of your shoulder to his gaze. “Go ahead, Jungkook,” you murmur, voice just above a whisper.

.•° All I Want for Cockmas by @junqkook

°•. Summary: You tell Santa exactly what you want for Christmas.

.•° Arm Candy by @bisougi

°•. Summary: “Yes, Mr. Jeon.”

.•° CaptainAmerica!Jungkook by @hayjeon

°•. Summary: His shield clatters to the floor as he rips off his mask and presses desperate, hard kisses to your lips, sucking the breath out of you and swallowing your mewls.

.•° Desiderium by @jeonggukingdom

°•. Summary: “We’ve been at it like rabbits, how are you still so horny?”

.•° Fast and Definitely Furious by @parkmuse

°•. Summary: “Car sex looks so much easier in the movies.”

.•° Heat Wave by @iq-biased

°•. Summary: As soon as the ice touches his glowing skin, it begins to melt instantly - the jagged edge moulding into a smooth surface that ghosts lightly over his flesh.

.•° Mastur-bait by @kookswife (*)

°•. Summary: You drunkenly touch yourself in front of your neighbour, hoping he’ll take notice. You can’t help but do a double take when he actually does.

.•° Soft Touch by @minnpd

°•. Summary: “Thank god you’re home. I need a favor.”

.•° Stay by @kpopfanfictrash

°•. Summary: You and Jungkook are fuck buddies.

.•° Take Me to Church by @illneverrecover

°•. Summary: You can always tell when something is bothering your boyfriend, despite how hard he tries to hide it - and you have creative ways to get him to talk.

.•° Tinder 2.0 by @tayegi

°•. Summary: In disbelief over your good luck, you stumble down the hall towards the session rooms. A 9.8?! You’ve only been here twice. The first time you had been matched with a 6.5 and the second time with a 7, and both men had been so sexy and talented between the sheets that you had been walking on cloud nine for weeks afterwards. But now you were with a 9.8? You could hardly imagine what that would entail.

.•° Tooth and Claw by @johobi

°•. Summary: Sympathetic to the plight of the werewolves your kind have culled to near-extinction, life as a human informant has never been one of safety. However, when you catch the eye of an alpha, your situation only grows more perilous.

°•. Sequel: Moonsent

.•° Zipper by @parkmuse

°•. Summary: Your best friend thinks it’s a good idea to watch porn together, he’s dumb.

#anon #bts fic recs #bts smut #yes i know #idk how to make small lists #so fite me #g recs #g replies

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the-cloud-walkers-hut · 3 years

Text

Finding Sense

It makes the most sense to start this off with the story of my spiritual journey. First of all, I just want to say that I don’t expect any followers. I don’t expect pins or comments; I actually haven’t had a tumblr in years so I barely remember how to manage this thing :’-)

But lately, I’ve been desperate for a space in which I could be candid about my spiritual beliefs and stay connected to them. I’m an extremely busy college student; I double major, I’m an intern, I’m an events coordinator for other clubs, I’m a mentee. There was a point when I also worked 15 hours a week at my school dining hall on top of that, and it was a lot. I felt like I barely had any time to even *think* about anything else besides the endless sea of deadlines in my wake. At the same time, I was also diagnosed with PTSD and trying to patch up my mental health with what little hours of free time I had. I was so drained, and more than anything, I really missed my spirituality.

The connection I felt to my guides at one point was something unlike anything else I’ve experienced. I looked up at the stars at night and felt something looking back- something that cared, something that rooted for me. I had no doubts, no skepticism of what lurked beyond our world. I had pure faith in my guides and in the structure of the universe I’d learned from my studies.

Let me start from the beginning now. I was born in a really weird religious dynamic; my mother was an atheist for a large portion of my life (I think she’d identify as agnostic these days), and my father was a very traditional Christian. We never went to church together, however. I have older half-siblings that I would attend church with from time-to-time, and I really tried my best to be connected to God because I was deeply afraid of the idea of nonexistence. So from around the ages of 10-20, I was an off-and-on Christian. I would attend youth group from time to time, I would try to speak tongues, I would try to pray, but I could never shake the feeling that there was an emptiness above me. There was no one listening, no one blessing me the way my relatives thought they were being blessed.

I also felt somewhat uneasy with some of the lessons my youth pastor would teach us. For example, we had one day where my pastor preached about abandoning those who were not “godly” enough. If your friends partied, smoked weed, had premarital sex, or just generally did not believe in God, it was time to distance yourself from them so that your godliness could stay intact. I hated the idea of that, of abandoning those I love just because they don’t think the same as me. My closest friends were Buddhists, amazing people with hearts of gold that my pastor would recommend me staying as far away from as possible.

And then this past year, I ended up in a group of women reading a book on female empowerment through Christian ideals. I can’t remember what it was called, and I actually don’t want to say as I’d like to keep anonymous on here for now. Anyways, I was looking at this opportunity as a way to reconnect with God whom I’d felt disdain for because of my youth pastor and because of how unresponsive I felt that He was to me.

We made it through about 10 chapters of the book and I was very rapidly losing my mind. It was a horrific book of gender roles and condemning the LGBTQ+ community. It simplified women so much that it boiled the entire gender down to “girls who want to be pretty, have a strong man, and feel like a princess”. It supported the idea that women are the support, the right-hand-man to the leader of the house, which was the man. It deeply disapproved of men who were not strong, who were not the leaders, who showed any lick of emotion. And the whole time I had to hold my tongue because everyone in the group agreed with every judgment the book made. I quickly exited that group and realized that I deeply despise organized religion. Now let me say, I don’t despise those who are in an organized religion. I think Christians are good people. I think those who participate in organized religions are good people. I respect their beliefs, though I disagree heavily. But I deeply hate the influence organized religion has over politics or social norms, I hate the God-fearing point of view, I hate tithing. I overall just hate the weaponization of organized religion and how some use their religion to pass hateful judgments. It’s not something I can be a part of, and I know that so many Christians and those of other organized religions are amazing people who are accepting, loving, and kind, but I truly believe organized religion give those who are not accepting, loving, and kind an excuse to spew harmful judgments on others.

So with that being said, I was in desperate search of something else. It was at that time that I started watching YouTubers like West Indie Ray and Sadhguru and I realized that my spirituality doesn’t need a name. I can believe what I’d like without a label; I can have a blend of philosophies that resonate with me because we are all on different spiritual journeys. That’s what I think all of us who believe in a higher power need to recognize. It is okay to be on different paths. It is okay to disagree with how others view the worlds beyond ours. What is not okay is condemning others for their way of thinking, forcefully trying to convert them to your way of life to “save them”, or disowning them for not being as godly as you.

My interest in spirituality deepened to the point where I finally sought a reading. I went to a metaphysical book and crystal store at a nearby port town, and I received my first *serious* tarot reading. I asked for guidance on how to connect with my spirituality, and the cards gave a very clear answer. All three cards that I pulled had to do with spiritual practices, which the tarot reader was surprised by herself. It’s been a while so I can’t remember the exact reading, but it gave me the tools I needed to start self-studying. The cards recommended that I study dreams, align my chakra and meditate in the moonlight. So I bought a crap ton of books from the store and started my intensive spiritual studies.

One of these books was Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss.

This book changed me.

Have you ever read or watched something that resonated with you so deeply, it just felt like a truth? You had no questions, you had no doubts in your mind that this was undeniably correct? Maybe not, but that’s exactly how I felt, and it was the first time I’d ever read spiritual literature that made sense. The idea of living many lives, each one with the intention to teach you something so that you can elevate to the next plane of spirituality made so much sense to me that I literally felt myself changing. I felt that a new stage of my life was unraveling, and I was so beyond excited to finally be connected.

I spoke to my guides, my masters, and they spoke back. They spoke back with images in the sky, sudden thoughts, dreams. It’s been a struggle to fight back my skepticism and accept these instances as true messages, but I feel that I’ve come to a place where I can now fully embrace it. I have guides watching over me, they are listening to me and they are responding. All I ever wanted was for God to show me He was listening, but I never heard from Him. I believe now that it’s because I was always calling the wrong name.

So tying this back to why this Tumblr exists. Like I said, I’m extremely busy. Regular life and responsibilities has severely hindered my ability to practice my spirituality or continue my studies, and frankly, I feel really disconnected at this point. Starting this blog will not only keep me accountable for making time for spirituality, but I think it also signifies the next turning point in my life. Skepticism does not hold me back anymore from my guides; I fully and willfully accept that I am here with a lesson to learn and that I’m being shown the way. I hope that if you come across this blog and have a similar story that this blog can help you reconnect as well :-)

***I want to finish this off by reiterating: I do not judge those who practice organized religion. I myself don’t believe in Jesus, but I would never try to prove Christians wrong for believing in Him. As I said, we are all on different paths, and if Christianity is the path that works for them, I am grateful they have that space. My tiff is with organized religion itself as a concept, and my opinion of it solely comes from my own experience. If you like organized religion, that’s great. I feel like religion can be such a toxic topic as people try to force ideologies onto you, and I want to make sure this space is never that. Believe in your journey, believe in what resonates with you, and I’ll be happy for you <3

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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I have a question about your opinion as a historian about how to deal with problematic past. I am French, not American, so not quite as aware of what is happening right now in the US regarding statues as I probably should. My question is the following: many of the politicians who promoted (admittedly white) social equality in France, worked on reforming labor laws, etc, in the 19th / 20th century were certainly not anti-colonialist. How to deal with this "mixed legacy" today? Best wishes to you!

First off, I am honoured that you would ask me this question. Disclaimer, my work in French history is largely focused on the medieval era, rather than modern France, and while I have studied and traveled in France, and read and (adequately?) speak French, I am not French myself. So this should be viewed as the perspective of a friendly and reasonably well-informed outsider, but not somebody from France themselves, and therefore subject to possible errors or otherwise inaccurate statements. But this is my perception as I see it, so hopefully it will be helpful for you.

(By the way if you’re interested, my post on the American statue controversy and the “preserving history!” argument is here. I originally wrote it in 2017, when the subject of removing racist monuments first arose, and then took another look at it in light of recent events and was like “WELP”.)

There’s actually a whole lot to say about the current crisis of public history in a French context, so let me see if I can think where to start. First, my chief impression is that nobody really associates France with its historical empire, the same way everyone still has either a positive or negative impression of the British Empire and its real-world effects. The main international image of France (one carefully cultivated by France itself) is that of the French Revolution: storming the Bastille, guillotining aristocrats, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, a secular republic overcoming old constraints of a hidebound Catholic aristocracy and reinventing itself as a Modern Nation. Of course, less than a generation after the Revolution (and this has always amused/puzzled me) France swung straight back into autocratic expansionist empire under Napoleon, and its colonialism efforts continued vigorously alongside its European counterparts throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. France has never really reckoned with its colonialist legacy either, not least because of a tendency in French public life for a) strong centralization, and b) a national identity that doesn’t really allow for a hyphen. What I mean by that is that while you can be almost anything before “American,” ie. African-American, Latino-American, Jewish-American, Muslim-American, etc, you are (at least in my experience) expected to only be “French.” There is a strong nationalistic identity primarily fueled by language, values, and lifestyle, and the French view anyone who does not take part in it very dimly. That’s why we have the law banning the burka and arguments that it “inhibits” Muslim women from visually and/or emotionally assimilating into French culture. There is a very strong pressure for centralization and conformity, and that is not flexible.

Additionally, the aforementioned French lifestyle identity involves cafe culture, smoking, and drinking alcohol -- all things that, say, a devout Muslim is unlikely to take part in. The secularism of French political culture is another factor, along with the strict bureaucracy and interventionist government system. France narrowly dodged getting swept up in the right-wing populist craze when it elected Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen (and it’s my impression that the FN still remains relatively popular) but it also has a deep-grained xenophobia. I’m sure you remember “French Spiderman,” the 22-year-old man from Mali who climbed four stories of a building in Paris to rescue a toddler in 2018. He was immediately hailed as a hero and allowed to apply for French citizenship, but critics complained about him arriving in France illegally in the first place, and it happened alongside accelerated efforts to deny asylum seekers, clear out the Calais migrant camp, and otherwise maintain a hostile environment. The terror attacks in France, such as 2015 in Paris and the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, have also stiffened public opinion against any kind of accommodation or consideration of non-French (and by implication, non-white) Frenchpeople. The Académie Française is obviously also a very strong linguistic force (arguably even more so than the English-only movement in America) that excludes people from “pure” French cultural status until they meet its criteria. There really is no French identity or civic pride without the French language, so that is also something to take into consideration.

France also has a strong anti-authority and labor rights movement that America does not have (at least the latter). When I was in France, the joke was about the “annual strike” of students and railway workers, which was happening while I was trying to study, and we saw that with the yellow jacket protests as well. Working-class France is used to making a stink when it feels that it’s being disrespected, and while I can’t comment in detail on how the racial element affects that, I know there has been tension and discontent from working-class, racial-minority neighborhoods in Paris about how they’ve been treated (and during the recent French police brutality protests, the police chief rejected any idea that the police were racist, despite similar deaths in custody of black men including another French Malian, Adama Traoré.) All of this adds up to an atmosphere in which race relations, and their impact on French history, is a very fraught subject in which discussions are likely to get heated (as discussions of race relations with Europeans and white people tend to get, but especially so). The French want to be French, and feel very strongly that everyone else in the country should be French as well, which can encompass a certain race-blindness, but not a cultural toleration. There’s French culture, the end, and there isn’t really an accommodation for hybrid or immigrant French cultures. Once again, this is again my impression and experience.

The blind spot of 19th-century French social reformers to colonialism is not unlike Cold War-era America positioning itself as the guarantor of “freedom and liberation” in the world, while horrendously oppressing its black citizens (which did come in for sustained international criticism at the time). Likewise with the American founding fathers including soaring rhetoric about the freedom and equality of all (white) men in the Constitution, while owning slaves. The efforts of (white) social reformers and political activists have refused to see black and brown people as human, and therefore worthy of meriting the same struggle for liberation, for... well, almost forever, and where those views did change, it had to come about as a process and was almost never there to start with. “Scientific” white supremacy was especially the rage in the nineteenth century, where racist and imperialist European intellectuals enjoyed a never-ending supply of “scientific” literature explaining how black, brown, and other men of color were naturally inferior to white men and they had a “duty” to civilize the helpless people of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and so on, who just couldn’t aspire to do it themselves. (This is where we get the odious “white man’s burden” phrase. How noble of them.) So the nineteenth-century social reformers were, in their minds, just doing what science told them to do; slavery abolitionists and other relief societies for black and brown people were often motivated by deeply racist “assimilationist” ideas about making these poor helpless people “fit” for white civilization, at which point racial prejudice would magically end. This might have been more “benevolent” than outright slave-owning racism, but it was no less damaging and paternalistic.

If you’re interested in reading about French colonialism and postcolonialism from a Black French perspective, I recommend Frantz Fanon (who you may have already heard of) and his 1961 magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth/ Les Damnés de la Terre. (There is also his 1952 work, Black Skin, White Masks.) Fanon was born in Martinique, served in World War II, and was part of the struggle for Algerian liberation from France. He was a highly influential and controversial postcolonial theorist, not least for his belief that decolonialization would never be achieved without violence (which, to say the least, unnerved genteel white society). I feel as if France in general needs to have a process of deep soul-searching about its relationship to race and its own imperial history (French Indochina/Vietnam being another obvious example with recent geopolitical implications), because it’s happy to let Britain take the flak for its unexamined and triumphalist imperial nostalgia. (One may remark that of course France is happy to let Britain make a fool of itself and hope that nobody notices its similar sins....) This is, however, currently unlikely to happen on a broad scale for the social and historical reasons that I discussed above, so I really applaud you for taking the initiative in starting that conversation and reaching out for resources to help you in doing it. Hopefully it will help you put the legacy of these particular social reformers in context and offer you talking points both for what they did well and where their philosophy fell short.

If there does come a point of a heightened racial conversation and reckoning in France (and there have been Black Lives Matter protests there in the last few weeks, so it’s not impossible) I would be curious to see what it looks like. It’s arguably one of the Western countries that has least dealt with its racial issues while making itself into the standard-bearer for secular Western liberalism. France has also enthusiastically joined in the EU, whereas Britain has (rather notoriously....) separated from all that, which makes Britain look provincial and isolated while France can position itself as a global leader with a more internationalist outlook. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are currently leading the effort for the $500 billion coronavirus rescue package for the EU, which gives it a sense of statesmanship and stature. It will be interesting to see how that continues to change and develop vis-a-vis race, or if it does.

Thanks so much for such an interesting question, and I hope that helped!

#history #french history #black history #history of racism #anonymous #ask

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ranaeissance · 5 years

Text

ranaeissance’s studyblr intro

hey there, venus here~ after nearly four years of lurking in the tags and appreciating the community behind other blogs, i’ve finally decided to create a studyblr! this is going to be my little introduction to the community and i hope i’ll be welcomed with open arms

about me

i go by the name venus - inspired by one of my favourite deities. on a similar note, i do love mythology.

virgo baby // infj-t // proud slytherin

fluent in english and tagalog

AEST timezone

classical musician

a dark / light academia studyblr - please do message me if you want to talk about all things da/la related!

interests

literature - reading, writing and analysing literature is one of my favourite past times and activities in school

liberal arts - especially modern history, philosophy and anthropology

learning a third language - honestly, don’t know what language i plan to commit too because i tend to pick one up and gradually drop it...oops

the dark and light academia aesthetic because it’s h o t

people watching - unashamed to say i love analysing people

webtoons / anime / historical films and tv / kpop / much much more___

academia

ATAR system

Australian Schooling System

an aspiring psychiatrist or criminologist

i want to study abroad or participate in an exchange program

interested in pursuing psychology, psychiatry, criminology, forensic science, modern history, classics/literature and /or philosophy in the distant future

why a studyblr?

to hold some accountability in my life and develop / maintain good study habits. i’ve realised that reblogging countless masterposts, study tips and studyspo will motivate and inspire me to study but, i don’t actually apply said advice to my life. so by being directly involved in the community, i hope i can be more consistent and responsible for my studying.

expected posts

study tips and advice - ironically, i do have my own study tips and advice through much trial and error

note taking tips - again, after much trial and error i’ve developed some of my own tips

notes - i have all types of notes possible! from loose leaf to goodnotes to digital to printed, i have them all

old bullet journaling spreads - i don’t bujo anymore but i’d still love to show them to everyone

writing excerpts and poetry - this is a da studyblr so it would only be fitting i have some da related content

reading and film commentary - just some thoughts on books and film i’ve come across

and many more!

inspiration

@amoureuxstudies / @mlkybujo / @journalsanctuary / @jellybujo / @intellctuals / @eintsein / @studyquill / @catstudyblr / @academiix / @hannybstudies / @intellectys / @michellenstudies / @sonderstudy / @littlewitchacademic

i know lumping you all into a little list seems insincere but, thank you all for inspiring me to start a studyblr and helping me through my academic journey~

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janiedean · 5 years

Note

Mood lightener ask, I am intrigued by book recs from you since you mentioned something about a dinosaur series a bit ago? Color me intrigued so top five books you'd recommend for people who enjoy ASoIaF?

OH GOD THANK YOU XDDD

okay so, I’m taking the dinosaurs out first because... well. hahah.

the dinosaur lords is ABSOLUTELY a thing you might wanna try out if you like asoiaf for reasons, BUT I’m warning you, the author died before finishing it (unless he wrote the last three but didn’t have publishing contract for the second part of the six-books plan but no one quite knows and no idea) so most likely you’ll never get a conclusion, warning you beforehand so that’s why I’m putting it outside the top five. BUT IF YOU LIKE ASOIAF YOU SHOULD STILL TRY IT because:

the author was a friend of grrm’s and it shows;

it’s literally asoiaf except people go around on dinosaurs;

NO, REALLY;

there’s at least a couple characters who are totally asoiaf homages (there’s a dude named jaume who’s basically jaime and loras’s lovechild I SWEAR HE IS HE’S EVEN THE HEAD OF THE LOCAL KINGSGUARD) but not in a way that makes it look like plagiarism;

admittedly it takes a bit to find its rhythm, but when it does it’s really good because the worldbuilding is amazing and like... it’s basically fictional medieval europe with dinosaurs but to a really good degree and the representation is a+++, in the sense that idk one of the main four is obv. irish romani (or what irish romani are in that universe), a few are def. catalan, the french guy is really so french you wanna die, the italian dude actually comes from the oldest university in the realm, there’s people from russia/greece and the protagonist is basically some three eastern europeans countries thrown in one character but not stereotypically, like the guy is obv. a mix of russian/polish/mongol and he’s really a good character in that sense, there’s germans too, spanish ofc, like it’s really good in that sense

DINOSAURS FIGHTING DINOSAURS WHILE THEIR KNIGHTS RIDE THEM

there’s an entire supernatural angle with ARCHANGELS WHO MIGHT BE ROBOTS which is honestly intriguing and a+ and I just wish the books hadn’t finished just before going deep into it

if you also want lgbt+ rep............. well, two out of the three supposedly straight characters are irish romani dude and the protagonist and I can 100% assure you that everyone I dragged into reading those books agreed with me that in each single scene they have together (ie: most of them) they’re gayer than Actual Gay People in these books, but other than them half of the cast is bi, the gay sex is better written than the straight sex (forreal there’s one of the few actually.... sexy m/m oral sex scenes I read in published fiction???), their sexuality is not the whole of their personality but it’s fairly stated that most of them are Really Not Straight and it’s really done well;

actually THE ENTIRE KINGSGUARD IS GUYS WHO FIGHT VERY WELL BUT LOVE ARTS AS WELL AND THEY ALL SLEEP WITH EACH OTHER EXCEPT THE TOKEN STRAIGHT FRENCH CHARACTER THAT THE JAIME AND LORAS LOVECHILD HAS A CRUSH ON and ngl I thought they would end up fucking at some point if the books went on so... XDDD anyway a+++ kingsguard >>> the one in asoiaf;

ngl at some points there’s some badly written sex scenes (the straight ones lmao I’m 99,9% sure milàn was not that straight himself) and it’s not half as complex as asoiaf and doesn’t have as many characters but it has the same scheme except with dinosaurs, archangels being robots and three people are straight and two of them are in love anyway;

so tldr I greatly recommend the dinosaur lords if you want something similar to asoiaf, don’t expect an ending, enjoy dinosaurs and a lot of nice rep for everyone. also Y’ALL HAVE TO SHIP ROB AND KARYL WITH ME BECAUSE THEY’RE RIDICULOUS.

.... wow, and you asked me the top five. lmaaaaao. anyway, given that the dinosaur lords will not be in the top five, I’ll go and advise you to read:

IAN TREGILLIS’S ALCHEMY WARS, which is not like **fantasy** but it’s alternate history where the netherlands win the colonial wars in the 16th century because they figure out how to make brass androids and they use it to basically destroy the british and drive the french to canada while they conquer the US instead of the british. it’s a trilogy, it’s completed, it’s flawless and features: FRENCH CATHOLICS VS DUTCH CALVINISTS WITH THE FRENCH WANTING TO TAKE BACK PARIS, PREDESTINATION VS FREE WILL IN THE ANDROIDS DISCOURSE, REHASH OF 16TH/17TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY DONE GREATLY, the greatest female character of genre literature since grrm (berenice GUYS BERENICE IS THE BEST GOD I LOVE HER SFM), the evil antagonist who’s a gal cersei wishes she was (like she’s terrible but she’s competent), the davos-like french general who knits in his spare time and the protagonist is the cinnamon roll-est android ever I love him sfm OH and the one time I cried because of a catholic fictional priest. guys tregillis is an a+++ top notch writer who has no time to waste with fillers and knows how to write a story even if HE HATES ME AND HE WANTS ME TO SUFFER and like... alchemy wars is really really good give it a go k?1,5. tregillis also wrote another alternate history trilogy, the milkweed tryptich, which is basically ‘the nazis create the x-men to win the war and so the british counteract by evoking ctuhulu and it goes exactly as it promises’. now: I have a love-hate rship with that one because the last book is narratively working but I hate everything it chose to be for reasons also i wanna punch the protagonist in the face, but thesuperevilgirl is totes the cersei of the situation and her brother has.... some srs jaime moments lmao he’s also my favorite ofc god klaus ily so much, and it has... some... well... ENGAGING choices lol I mean i loved book one and two and the third I did reluctantly but it could be an option? anyway ian tregillis is amazing and y’all should read him bye

the curse of chalion by lois mcmaster bujold has, as the amazing soul who recommended it to me pointed out, a protagonist that manages to be jaime and theon and partially sandor put into one. IT AMAZINGLY WORKS. the plot is kiiiinda more straightforward if you know spanish history bc the moment you figure out it’s the fantasy version of how castille and aragona united you know where it heads, but it has a lot of nice twists, also some a+ lgbt+ rep tho not as much as the dinosaur lords and the protagonist is.... really great I love him XD also ngl the fact that it ends fairly nicely is a balm so I’d try it, there’s other books in the same verse but I haven’t gotten around to read them yet

... guys stephen king’s dark tower is my fantasy favorite series EVER like ever, I love asoiaf and brienne is in my heart and she’s my true rep but nothing will top TDT for me ever for reasons and while it’s a completely different thing I still recommend it. caveat: I hate the last book with a vengeance and I think king fucked up the last two thirds real bad, but..... hey, it’s finished and the rest is 100% worth it. also jaime is totally the lovechild of the male protagonist and the other male-coprotagonist who are also my #1 ship ever in history so I’d give it a go ;) ;) ;) also while eddie’s my fave roland deschain is honestly the kind of character that you can only bow in front of like if I ever made an oc one hundredth as good as roland is in conception and execution and everything I’d feel like I accomplished everything I need in life. IT’S WORTH IT. TRY IT.

terry pratchett’s discworld: yes, it’s 41 books. yes it’s a lot. but you can read them by cycle which makes it a lot easier, they’re fun (the first three are a bit meh but the rest is all top notch I swear), they’re sarcastic and witty and delightful and it’s a++++ fantasy and I’ve been wanting to do the asoiaf au for ages sigh but anyway if you don’t want dark and grim but also want a+++ narrative, good satire about how our world sucks and a lot of fun at the expense of our pop culture (guys the book about their version of australia is a hoot and there’s a leonardo da vinci!!) GO FOR IT. IT’S AMAZING. also your life isn’t complete until you read about sam vimes and the local version of death speaking in capslock and being a cat person. also charles dance plays one of the mains in one of the tv adaptations and he was delightful xD

this is going to gain me rotten tomatoes, but....... grrm’s shared series wild cards. that he has going on with fifteen other writers including the aforementioned tregillis and milàn.yes, it’s like 28 books by now. no, it’s not perfect by all means and certain arcs are a total wtf and you don’t even have to read all of it, but especially grrm’s characters in it are obvious templates for asoiaf people (the powerful and amazing turtle is dark sam tarly and jay ackroyd is basically jaime without the incest and the extra good looks while lohengrin is brienne’s spiritual twin except for the looks), the shared worldbuilding is great, the alternate history story where buddy holly didn’t die and some of the protagonists organized a concert for him bc he was poor as hell was genius, and while a lot of the older stuff is dated and most likely was progressive for the eighties and would read a bit wonky now they always were super-inclusive, it has a bunch of nonwhite/nonstraight characters (esp. in the last books but there were also in the old ones, and the longest-standing gay dude since the eighties got a husband in the last trilogy!!! it was so ;_;), the alternate history is really good imvho and if you enjoy asoiaf you probably would like most of wild cards. if you want a reading order I made one here. xD

here you go sorry it took me one hour to answer it but IT GOT LONG XDD

#the dinosaur lords #alchemy wars #wild cards #discworld for ts #the dark tower for ts #book recs #john-childerass #ask post

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septembersung · 5 years

Text

I spent most of the last two months thinking through my educational philosophy in a concrete way - tying it all together, seeing how far we’ve come, and where I want to go over the next year. I’ve finished final revisions to method, schedule, and content, and starting in May we’re ready to launch the revisions. My oldest would be starting public school kindergarten this fall if we were going that route, so our start-early-take-it-easy trial year is nearly over, and it is such a good feeling to see all these ducks in a row (and so far ahead of the legal paperwork deadlines!)

I’ve finally gotten over the feeling that I have to prove myself, which is almost as much of a relief as being able to clearly and succinctly articulate what we’re doing here and why. Under the cut is my thinking-out-loud: a general summary and a where-we-are-now overview.

Our homeschool, now under the patronage of St. Boniface, is a Catholic, holistic, classical liberal arts education for all ages. (That means everyone’s part of school, even the baby, many subjects are taught together, and we don’t have “vacation” from learning.) Our year-round structure is divided into four terms, each named each after a concurrent feast or season: June - Aug is Pentecost Term; Sept - Nov is Michaelmas Term; Dec - Feb is Christmas Term; and we are currently in Easter Term, March - May.

My new elevator speech, hastily prepared a few days ago when I suddenly realized I was going to get grilled by extended family members during Easter Sunday get-togethers, is, “We are homeschooling in the Catholic, classical liberal arts tradition, with some Charlotte Mason influences.” Although depending on who’s asking it was wiser to say, “We’re homeschooling with a classical program.” That’s what most people, family and acquaintances alike, are looking for after all - they don’t know what a ‘Catholic classical liberal arts education’ is or who Charlotte Mason was, and more importantly, they don’t care. And most of our family, while verbally in general supportive of homeschooling, are old-school evangelicals who have a deep distrust if not outright hatred of the Church and anything tainted with even a faint resemblance of the Faith. So what they really want to know is, “how much of a weirdo are you??” Well, we’re definitely Weird (can’t help it, being tradition-minded Catholics and all,) but yes we are using a “real” curriculum, thanks for asking, and I just won’t mention the curriculum we’ve taken as a guide is named after our Blessed Mother.

Anyway. In familiar, contemporary terms, I have a kindergartener (5), a preschooler (nearly 4), a toddler (2), and an infant. But the ”kindergartener” is working anywhere from a K to a 5th grade level in various subjects, the “preschooler” from a K to 3rd level, and the toddler at a preschool level. It turns out grade level really doesn’t matter all that much.

Why do they seem so advanced? It’s a combination of being bright kids, who are learning together, and directly with mom and dad, who are given real material to work with - and all that compared against the severely lackluster contemporary federal standards we’re familiar with. Don’t get me wrong: they’re all definitely bright kids! I’m very, very proud of them. And I strongly suspect Benedict and Mary fall in the “gifted” spectrum. (As someone who was cursed with that label early on and lived with the fallout all through public school, I’ve given the issue sober reflection.) But they don’t seem to be prodigies, and I firmly believe that any reasonably bright child given a substantial, nurturing home education is going to show up on the very high end of contemporary public school rubrics; analysis of the test data certainly supports that intuition. But I digress.

With the classical foundation and structure as a given, I’ve borrowed as useful “tools” some concepts and approaches from Charlotte Mason, and use Mother of Divine Grace’s booklist, textbooks, and breakdown of the classical method as a template. With those complementary tools we’re building a tailored curriculum within our family culture.

Thus the theory. Where are we actually at now?

As a dutiful (would-be) Benedictine oblate, I build our day around the Divine Office. I say as much as I can and for the most part expect the kids to say our family morning offering, and then Tertia (9am), Sexta (12pm), and Nona (3pm). Evenings are hard for us because of Husband’s schedule so I waffle on whether to have them say Vespers or Compline, but even on the “worst” of evenings we do our own bedtime prayers. Other family devotions, including the rosary, come and go in a more or less regular rotation. Ideally we do most of our academics and some read alouds in the morning, cook and bake between 10-12, spend lots of time outdoors, have teatime with our baked goods after Nona, and then somehow muddle our way between dinner, Offices, stories, cleaning up ourselves and the house, and bedtime.

For Holy Week and Triduum we were staying with family so we focused on family time and on living our faith as best we could while not at home. In one way it’s good, because we are just a short (comparatively) drive from an FSSP church; in another way it’s difficult, because the extended family looks askance at our Catholicity.

At home again for the Octave of Easter, we’ve set aside the schedule and “academics” (such as phonics and math drills) to let our interests lead us where they will. Sort of in unschooling fashion, though I try to retain the basic structure of our ideal day, as outlined above. ((Although I have time to write this all out today because I’m sick enough to be couch-ridden so mostly it’s been “go play outside, come in when you’re hungry, no I can’t read to you I can barely talk.” But all signs point to getting back up to speed before the week is out.)) (((One reason I love the year round four term cycle is we can have relaxed days and sick days like this, and “take off” for high holy days like Octaves - and there is absolutely zero worry about “losing time” or “falling behind.” But I digress, again.)))

Before/at the start of each term I make a core book list, which encompasses chapter books, reference/encyclopedia-style books, workbooks, and similar. We add to it as we go, and occasionally drop a book or quit early to save for later. Frequently I start the next term’s list early so as not to lose track of great books we just don’t have room for at the moment, so I’m in the middle of Pentecost Term’s list right now.) Some books carry over from term to term, or even year to year (e.g. Book of Virtues.)

Rather than daily lesson plans, our goals are now in whole books, sections of, and skills to master, and I record what we actually do each day instead of what I’d like to do. At least that’s the record keeping method I’m switching to beginning May 1st. I’m filling in my lesson plan book with subject headings. Then in each box I’ll write down what we actually did for that subject on that day. I will also keep going with my notebook (or more realistically speaking, the typed file) where I write everything out in more comprehensive detail.

My list of “subjects” looks like this; I’ve included the sub-headings in parentheses:

memorization (poems, songs, prayers)

music (playing and listening, )

penmanship (MODG handwriting books, tracing books, free writing/drawing/coloring in many mediums on many surfaces)

literature (read alouds)

nonfiction (read alouds)

reading (phonics, readers)

math (Abeka K drills, MODG PK math, general practice)

social studies (history, geography)

life skills (cooking, chores, etc)

foreign language (spanish, latin, asl)

science (observation, journaling, scrapbooking, reading, experiments)

handcrafts (drop spindles, little looms, pre-sewing skills)

religion (catechism, prayer, Scripture, etc)

astronomy (constellations, telescope use, solar system, history of, etc)

art (appreciation, making)

husbandry (growing things) ((and someday we’ll be able to raise animals))

The beauty of this division is it’s easier to keep track of all we’re really accomplishing. So many books and practices work for more than one thing; e.g., learning a traditional hymn (bonus if it’s actually part of the Office!) goes in Latin, music, Religion, and memorization. Now I can make quick notes of things we’ve done and easily see what we’re accomplishing and what might be getting put on the back burner.

Booklist for Easter term (so far):

Literature (excluding picture books*): Farmer Boy Little House on the Prairie Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of the Odyssey The Boxcar Children #2: Surprise Island The Boxcar Children #3: The Yellow House Mystery Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (#1) The Amelia Bedelia Treasury (vols. 1 & 2) The King of the Golden City: An Allegory for Children A Child’s Book of Myths (audiobook, physical copy for illustrations)

*Picture books are not listed individually because we use the MODG lists, PK - 1st, with additions, comprehensively. We’ve about exhausted the PK and K lists and are beginning to move into the 1st grade list. We read these picture books at will throughout the year, sometimes more frequently and sometimes less.

“Spine” books, Nonfiction, anthologies, reference, hands-on, etc: Discovering Our World: A Course in Science for the Middle Grades (1937), units 1 & 2 St Joseph First Communion Catechism Little Angel Catholic Readers, Book A Book of Virtues Grimm’s Fairy Tales The Harp and the Laurel Wreath Abridged & Illustrated Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Nature in America Cathedrals and Churches of Europe DK Eyewitness: Plants Sister Wendy’s The Story of Painting (paired with the DVD) Pioneer Farm Cooking by Gunderson (a cookbook) The Story of Great Inventions by Elmer Ellsworth Burns (1910) Bach picture book biography for children Mozart picture book biography for children

The tl;dr of the complexity of the issue has been how to make education a normal, daily thing, that’s truly comprehensive, in a family setting with a variety of ages and abilities and interests - without “doing school” in a way that makes it a drag for the kids (because who likes being regimented that way?? nobody!) but without being so loosey-goosey that I have no idea where we are or should be. This breakdown and method, which we’ve been half-doing for a while and are now going to give a long good try for the next twelve months, is as close to perfect as I can get it at this stage in our lives.

This post started out as a booklist and turned into a manifesto... and I’m not even surprised. Or bothered. Viva la homeschooling!

#my homeschooling tag

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pfenniged · 5 years

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Can you explain why Anne Elliot is your favourite Austen heroine?

Surely! (This literally took like, two and half hours of writing and editing. What is my life).

Background:

So, essentially, to get into this analysis, I have to preface this with Persuasion being written in 1817, near the end of Austen’s life and published six months after her death. Really, if you compare the type of satirical protagonists she was writing at the beginning of her career (see Northanger Abbey, which convinced my entire English Literature 2 class in university that Austen was insipid despite being prefaced as a gothic parody), to later, Pride and Prejudice, to Persuasion, I think it really traces the development of Austen as a writer (Austen referred to her in one of her letters as “a heroine who is almost too good for me.”)

Not to say she didn’t have more ‘mature’ protagonists early on; Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility is really my second favourite protagonist from Austen’s works, and she is essentially the one person in the Dashwood household who keeps everything together; without her, the entire operation would fall apart. It’s the reason why she’s the ‘sense’ in the aforementioned title.

But where Anne Elliot differs I think, is that Elinor, despite being the ‘older’ sister, is never really seen as being devoid of prospects in regards to her future and marriage, despite the family falling on hard times. Anne, on the other hand, is actually a marked difference from Austen’s usual protagonists. Whereas her other protagonists are usually concerned with climbing the social ladder of society (or essentially, scorning the playing of this game in society, but still knowing it’s expected of her anyway (See Lizzie Bennet), Anne is from a noble family that due to her father Sir Walter Elliot’s vanity and selfishness, is on its descent down on the social ladder, a caricature of the old, outdated, titled class in a world of new British industry.

Sir Walter Scott, and the Changing Ideal of The Gentlemen in Society:

This is another place where Jane Austen differs in her characterisation and brings up an important contrast that is lacking in her other work to an extent in terms of her other main heroines: while the other heroines are more concerned with upward mobility through marriage because that is what society has expected of them, Anne Elliot’s father (who’s will dominates her own), is concerned with DOWNWARD mobility. The idea that he will be seen as ‘lesser than’ for allowing his daughter to marry someone she loves.

The difference is, is where you have CHOICE to an extent in a burgeoning middle class family, even if you were marrying for money, you have that upward mobility. You have opportunities. When your family is so focused on maintaining the facade of an untouchable deity, you are literally frozen into that mold, even if you want to be a part of that changing world and changing model of what should be considered an ‘ideal’ match, or a modern pairing.

While unadvantageous matches are dismissed in other Austen works, it is often due to the person having some fault of character (I.E: Philanderer, drunkard, etc.) that’s obviously not going to change anytime soon, and what someone is, to an extent, able to control. People are able to control whether they cheat on someone or not; people are able to control showing up and embarrassing themselves at social functions if they have an inkling of self-awareness. And these matches are usually rejected outright because of the family’s concern for the daughter’s feelings (See Lizzie and Mr. Collins, for example, even though it would be an advantageous match (-INSERT LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH QUOTE HERE-)

But the sad thing in Anne’s case, I think, is that it shows the dying breed of noblewomen, who, once they get ‘older,’ have nowhere to go but down socially if they don’t become a ‘spinster’ or completely devoted to their family household and name. These older, more distinguished families during 1817, were slowly and surely becoming more and more obsolete, and I think it’s VERY astute of Austen to recognise that. Men could now make their fortune at sea- they COULD be “new money.” More and more, these noble people who didn’t work and didn’t have a profession besides being a member of the landed gentry, were becoming more and more dated in the movement of England towards mechanisation and the new Victorian age of industry.

‘Captain Wentworth is the prototype of the ‘new gentleman.’ Maintaining the good manners, consideration, and sensitivity of the older type, Wentworth adds the qualities of gallantry, independence, and bravery that come with being a well- respected Naval officer.

Like Admiral Croft, who allows his wife to drive the carriage alongside him and to help him steer, Captain Wentworth will defer to Anne throughout their marriage. Austen envisions this kind of equal partnership as the ideal marriage.’

Meanwhile Sir Walter does not present this same sort of guidance for the females in his life. He is so self-involved that he fails to make good decisions for the family as a whole; his other two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, share his vanity and self-importance. While Anne is seen as a direct parallel with her good-natured (dead) mother, she still has to deal with these outdated morals, before coming her true self. She still has to learn to support her own views, even if they are contrary to those in a position of power in her life, and essentially, dominate her day-to-day dealings and her actual character of how she defines herself.

Becoming One’s Self: Learning Self-Assurance and The Positives of ‘Negative’ Qualities:

The one thing I do love about Anne is that she doesn’t have a ‘weakness of character,’ contrary to Wentworth’s bitter words which are clearly directed at her when they first meet again after so long. That’s one thing I usually see (predominantly male) commentators say Anne’s fault is as a female protagonist is as simple as a reading of the title; namely, that she’s too easily persuaded.

However, that’s an overtly simplistic view. Often people directly correlate an individual being persuaded as simply being ‘weak-willed.’ Anne Elliot is anything but. She constantly rebels against the vanity of her father and the stupidity of her sisters, at the same time being aware of the social structure in which they must operate. She is the individual at the beginning of the novel who is dealing directly with money; and while this was at the time often seen as a ‘man’s’ role, it is Anne taking control of getting their family back into good stead and out of debt after her dippy father gets them into debt and remains completely useless throughout the entire procedure except to complain about who they might let the house out to, simply because they ARE ‘new money.’ She IS open to new roles in society, and new conventions.

This leads directly to the biggest criticism levelled against her at the beginning of the novel: that after being dismissed by Anne, Captain Wentworth basically publicly declares (because #bitteraf) that ‘any woman he marries will have a strong character and independent mind.’

The funny thing is, Anne already has these. She never lacked them. ‘What ‘persuasion’ truly refers to is whether it is better to be firm in one’s convictions or to be open to the suggestions of others.

‘The conclusion implies that what might be considered Anne’s flaw, her ability to be persuaded by others, is not really a flaw at all. It is left to the reader to agree or disagree with this. ‘

Anne is not stupid in that she is convinced or persuaded by any Joe Schmow who comes along; she considers the opinions of those she respects. She ultimately comes to the right decision in marrying Wentworth later in life, but it’s understandable how a nineteen year old would doubt this decision when advised by those adults around her. It is now that she is older, in considering other people’s opinions, that she is more likely able to come to her decision herself, rather than letting other people’s opinions overweigh her own.

‘Anne is feminine in this way while possessing none of what Austen clearly sees as the negative characteristics of her gender; Anne is neither catty, flighty, nor hysterical. On the contrary, she is level-headed in difficult situations and constant in her affections. Such qualities make her the desirable sister to marry; she is the first choice of Charles Musgrove, Captain Wentworth, and Mr. Elliot.’

Ageism: Austen’s Hinting at an Age-Old Philosophy against the Modern Woman:

At twenty-seven, Anne is literally considered a woman ‘far past her bloom of youth.’ She is constantly surrounded by younger women, both demonstrating interest in her father and in Wentworth. While ageism wasn’t clearly developed as a recognised societal practice in the 19th century, I think it demonstrates, when Jane wrote this so close to her death, and having never married herself, the pressures on women in society even later in life. This is seen more bluntly in the character of Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, but I think the fact that people constantly remind Anne of something she cannot control could arguably draw parallels to social status and how birth status cannot be controlled, by a more modern reading of the piece. Women cannot control ageing, any more than a man can control being born into a lower class. But while men could continue to marry for upward mobility or money (up to ridiculous ages and with ridiculously younger wives), women don’t have that luxury once they are ‘past their prime,’ even if they also have the avenue of upward mobility through marriage (see Charlotte Lucas again).

Lost Love, aka THEY TOTALLY MIGHT HAVE BONED BUT PROBABLY NOT:

“There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.”

The best thing about Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot’s love story is that we already knew they WERE in love; as opposed to all her other stories, which involve individuals arguably falling INTO love rather than HAVING been in love (Looking’ at you, Mansfield Park), Wentworth x Anne Elliot was a THING. They were a hot and HEAVY thing.

I essentially have nothing to add here except that makes their entire story 10000000x more painful when they clearly still have feelings for one another and have to run in the same social circles.

That is all.

Separate Spheres: AKA LETS ALL HELP EACH OTHER MMKAY AND BE EQUAL PARTNERS IN LOVEEEE:

Lastly, Austen also considers the idea of ‘separate spheres.’

‘The idea of separate spheres was a nineteenth-century doctrine that there are two domains of life: the public and the domestic. Traditionally, the male would be in charge of the public domain (finances, legal matters, etc.) while the female would be in charge of the private domain (running the house, ordering the servants, etc.).

This novel questions the idea of separate spheres by introducing the Crofts. Presented as an example of a happy, ideal marriage, Admiral and Mrs. Croft share the spheres of their life. Mrs. Croft joins her husband on his ships at sea, and Admiral Croft is happy to help his wife in the chores around the home. They have such a partnership that they even share the task of driving a carriage. Austen, in this novel, challenges the prevailing notion of separate spheres.’

As mentioned before, from the beginning of the novel, as a noblewoman, Anne is already crossing the line of separate spheres by undertaking financial and legal matters since her father is essentially too much of a pussy to do so (this antiquated ideal of gentlemanly qualities). She has already made a discreet step into the public domain by her actions, without ever really truly making a bold statement.

By the insertion of the Crofts within the narrative, it really foreshadows how this sort of relationship can work as equals, and how such an amalgamation of the spheres should not be looked down upon. It’s a subtly progressive message that none of the other books really deal with (besides perhaps a tad in Sense and Sensibility with Elinor), and I love her all the more for it. ♥

#I love how this slowly degraded into meme language and then I gave up #help me #it's 2:30 in the morning #Jane Austen #theory #literature #literature theory #Anne elliot #writing #reading #regency period #future reference #personal #answers #Persuasion #captain fredrick wentworth

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thespacebetweenworlds · 5 years

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idk if you’ll care about this but your thing about the whole “fiction is just fiction” and “fiction doesn’t affect reality” argument is actually not true at all because let’s just say for example: having lgbt, poc, disability rep in books or media isn’t all that important because it doesn’t affect reality.... when it does? it makes a HUGE impact on people. but yes I see where you’re coming from and as a person who hates incest with a passion, I don’t think u guys deserve these threats AT ALL.

Thank you for not thinking I should die a violent death. And thank you for this ask! I love being asked things. And to respond to your point, that fiction does affect reality, with the example of how representation is pretty awesome: that’s a freaking good point you have there, that I agree with - partially.

This Essay is titled: Fiction and Reality and How the everloving Fuck do they interact and what by nathan wesninski’s underpants does that have to do with fandom discourse?

So, beyond the read more you’ll have a compilation of my thoughts on it (that didn’t take several hours to write and edit). I’ll talk about:

1. Definition Of Fiction, Definition Of Reality

2. (How) Does Fiction Affect Reality?

3. Representation In Fiction

4. Who Judges Fanfic?

5. ”this content is problematic,” says you. ”please don’t mention power dynamics,” replies I

6. Censorship

7. A Brief History Of Why Fanfic Is Awesome

8. Links to stuff that might interest you

I’m just gonna. Quickly do that part in radioactive with the deep breath.

To start this, I want to clarify that in the response I made to transneiljosten’s post, I never explicitly said “fiction doesn’t affect reality” or “fiction is just fiction.”

What I did say is this: “Incest in fiction is just that: incest in fiction. It’s. not. real.” And: “I believe everyone should be allowed to write/create what they want - as long as it doesn’t hurt people in real life.”

But yes, the phrases “fiction is just fiction” and “fiction is not reality” have been used often when discussing freedom to write fanfic and when defending content another might call immoral. Not many people have elaborated beyond that, and to be fair - it’s a super big fucking field of study with so many subjective ways to look at it that it’s difficult to put into words.

But I’m gonna go and explain what people mean with those two phrases anyway.

Disclaimer: Remember how I called this a super big fucking field of study? I am no linguist and I have not studied literature. All my knowledge comes from years in fandom and internet research of the topics I personally found interesting. I may be wrong about things I say here, and I am always learning, so feel free to message me. I try my best to discuss controversial topics thoughtfully, respectfully, considerately and carefully, but I am only human and do not know everything. You are welcome to join the discussion.

1. Definition Of Fiction, Definition Of Reality

Going to https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ to properly look this up:

Reality: The state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

Fiction: Literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.

So I say I don’t study literature (I really don’t) but just a few weeks ago I was in a lecture on the absolute basics of literature science, where I learned this dope sentence:

Die Wirklichkeit in der Kunst ist nur eine auf die außerkünstlerische Wirklichkeit verweisende Wirklichkeit.

Which is German, yes I know. Basically we have the starting point that literature is art, so it’s: "the reality in art is only a reality that refers to the reality outside of art" or, in other words, fiction is only ever fiction and not reality, no matter how close they may seem to be.

In summary, what we can say for sure: Fiction does not equal Reality. They are not the same. Fiction exists because Reality exists.

2. (How) Does Fiction Affect Reality?

Reality affects fiction. But does Fiction affect Reality?

Allow me to quote tumblr user shinelikethunder, who put it very nicely:

“Fiction affects people. And people affect reality.”

Tumblr user muchymozzarella made an important addition (and the blog is really pretty) so to read the post, klick on this link: https://muchymozzarella.tumblr.com/post/167137950299/fiction-is-not-responsible-for-reality

If you read the above post, further reading that might interest you are texts by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer on Free Will. But that wouldn’t be fandom anymore, so like, find philosophy books in your local library and talk to you friends about it.

3. Representation In Fiction

But let’s come back to your question, dear anon: “... the whole “fiction is just fiction” and “fiction doesn’t affect reality” argument is actually not true at all because let’s just say for example: having lgbt, poc, disability rep in books or media isn’t all that important because it doesn’t affect reality.... when it does? it makes a HUGE impact on people.”

You have a great point. Representation in books matters. (If you rec me some nice wlw books I’ll love you forever, there are not enough.)

I am, however, gonna quote my friend of mine, who says it better than I ever could:

“There is a difference between media affecting behaviour and representation in media. Like, violent video games don't actually make you violent. Watching gay cinema isn't going to turn you to the lgbt side unless there was already a disposition there.

People read and write immorality constantly, and even when it's shone in a good light it's usually expected that we as human beings know right from wrong, know fiction from reality. Humanity has explored the happy shiny purity of the universe and the horrific grittiness since... Well probably forever, for a variety of reasons. And in recent years the way we consume media has intensified drastically. Our consumption is interactive, our interaction is globally influenced and sometimes that is good, but we've also given ourselves the right to witch-hunt without a lot of information, or because things don't go as you planned. Real people are always more important than fictional people.

Stand up for representation. Stand up for good representation. But if you're smart enough to understand morality in reality, that isn't going to suddenly go away if you read some incest fics... And hey if you do suddenly want to kiss your brother, that's something for you to deal with and it isn't fan fiction's fault.”

Representation in books matters. Why does it matter? Because the real world is so much more diverse than popular media might make you think. Fight against the patriarchy, not against random people on the internet.

4. Who Judges Fanfic?

Fanfic is written by fans. It’s also written for fans, but more than that, it’s written by fans. I’m not gonna say only teenage girls write fanfiction, because that’s not true. Fans write fanfiction. And everyone can be a fan.

Ozhawkauthor said:

“You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.

Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.”

So why are “antis” suddenly here, declaring this ship and those characters off limits and to be hated on?

Specifically, what the fuck are fans that attack or judge other fans on?

To quote shinelikethunder (again): “Fiction needn’t be educational and fiction doesn’t always have clear-cut endorsements of who’s in the right. But the discussion that happens around fiction can include both.”

But to answer the question above: Who Judges Fanfic? Not. You.

5. ”this content is problematic,” says you. ”please don’t mention power dynamics,” replies I

Hypothetical situation:

I write a fanfic. My protagonist is Riko Moriyama, who is, in canon, a sadistic asshole that is so morally black that his own brother, Ichirou, who is also morally black, kills him in the end. It doesn’t matter what I write, or who I ship him with, in this hypothetical situation.

You appear, you read the fic or you don’t read the fic. You say: “This content is problematic.”

I quiver. I know you don’t like Riko Moriyama. I know you don’t approve of my shipping choice. “Please don’t mention power dynamics,” I reply.

“This relationship is toxic,” you say. “There are unhealthy power dynamics at play.”

And like, fuck, I know? I wrote it.

Obviously. Obviously I could reply with that ancient, age old phrase “Don’t Like Don’t Read.”

But I already made a similar post about that.

6. Censorship

I’m writing this post to fight against censorship in fandom. (The day I am typing this up on was the day I went to a demonstration against articles 11 and 17, earlier 13, in the copyright reform in the EU, and to protest for a free internet.)

Censorship.

What does that even mean? The Oxford English Dictionary says:

Censorship: The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

Here’s the wikipedia article.

In my opinion, every person, regardless of whether or not they call themselves “anti” who tells someone else that their fanfic is disgusting and wrong and should be deleted, based on subjective ideas of moral, is trying to enforce censorship. So don’t. Don’t do that.

“But,” you might say. “Riko is not a good person.”

And you know what? You’re absolutely right. He’s not. Neither is any of the Foxes.

And this is why none of the antis make sense. In one post, they condemn Roland - a perfectly normal minor character, and in the next post they call Andrew Minyard their soft angel child. Y’all. Not to hate on Andrew Minyard, but he literally drugged Neil? Even though he’s so big on consent, he drugged Neil?

So by saying this and that are problematic and should not be written and the people who do write it should be blocked, you’re kinda hypocritical. Because the All For The Game trilogy is one fucked up piece of media by itself.

And have you ever read a book?

Most books have characters that aren’t completely morally white or morally black, events that aren’t always sunshine, butterflies and rainbows.

And you know what else? That’s a good thing. Because the world isn’t like that either. And more often than not literature addresses topics critically.

Remember The Hunger Games? Exactly.

7. A Brief History Of Why Fanfic Is Awesome

In the beginnings of fanfic and fandom as we know it, slash was illegal in the USA. Fanfiction.net was made in like 1998, and during the first few years when fanfic got more attention with the rise of the internet, restrictions were made.

Much like tumblr in december 2018, except worse, fanfiction.net purged explicit content. Livejournal, the journaling platform where lots of fandom stuff happened before tumblr, is known for strikethrough, a big, unannounced deletion of fannish content. Because of those purges and restrictions, ao3 was originally made. I’m not trying to paint ao3 as the heroes that saved fandom, well I kinda am, and they are doing great things so that fanfiction can exist and remain accessible.

I think fiction is not just fiction. But fiction is just fiction in the sense that it doesn’t have any direct influence on the real world. We are all allowed to write whatever we want.

Disclaimer: We are all allowed to write whatever we want, except when we call for violence towards others in real life. Further disclaimer: Calling for violence towards others is illegal. Hate speech is illegal. Violent threats are illegal. Promotion of self-harm is illegal. Death threats are illegal.

To come back to fandom: Shipping or not shipping something has nothing to do with morals. Hating on people who ship “unhealthy power dynamics/problematic ships” does not give you the moral high ground. It makes you an asshole. For the love of Riko’s stinky socks, use the blocking feature.

My friend iknowwhoyouaredamianos said: “Hating people irl, lashing out against them, that's the real cruelty. That's so much worse than writing about something fictional.”

If you hate on real people, there is no trigger warning. You can’t don’t-like-don’t-read hate. It will affect that person’s life negatively, whether you intend to do so or not. Don’t be assholes, dears.

Thank you to my friend, and to iknowwhoyouaredamianos for letting me quote you and joining the discussion; and to foxsoulcourt for so many reasons.

Who knew that writing over 2000 words on fandom would be fun?

Dear anon, I hope I answered your question.

I’m gonna conclude this post with the Three Laws of Fandom:

I. Don’t Like; Don’t Read.

II. Your Kink Is Not My Kink.

III. Ship And Let Ship.

8. Links To Stuff That Might Be Of Interest

If you read all of the above and still feel like you don’t understand, have this awesome post by destinationtoast: How to not like fictional things (and not be a dick about it)

Podcasts on fandom culture by fansplaining:

Episode 84: Purity Culture

Episode 85: Age and Fandom

Episode 86: The Money Question

Episode 87: What we discourse about when we discourse about the discourse

Fandom positivity posts I reblogged (because y’all need it):

short post on staying positive in fandom

when discourse gets too stressful

important advice especially for those of you younger than 15 (but also older)

Tumblr user freedom-of-fanfic is writing lots of essays on lots of fandom things, here are some those more or less directly relate to this:

On criticising: Free to write whatever, free to criticise whatever?

A post on Fiction & Reality that answers a question very similar to the one I answered,

and Why fanworks are such a convenient social scrapegoat (kinda a socioeconomical discussion of USA-centric fandom)

There is also a very extensive FAQ by freedom-of-fanfic, with lots of very important writings on fandom culture on tumblr.

Unrelated, but if you’re interested in more of fandom, fanfic, and statistics of both:

http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats

Interesting stuff on Fanlore: Purity Culture in Fandom, AO3 & Censorship, The Advantages of Fan Fiction as an Art Form.

An article on the free speech debate in fandom

Dreamwidth’s Diversity Statement, and Ao3’s Diversity Statement

A cool (and unrelated) thing: Femslash can save the world if we let it

Happy reading, and I hope you learned something.

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everydayanth · 5 years

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WE NEED MORE OF THESE CONVERSATIONS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY!!

Science and Academia’s obsession with linear thought, progressivism, and being right has all but ground us to a halt in discovery. ANY convictions stop us from pursuing curiosity of potential, because we fear the criticism of our peers or the loss of funding of our research, we forget that our realities are as fragile, changing and altering with each added detail.

In the same way, religion often has pre-written short-cut answers that eliminate the need for curiosity and discovery of self-driven philosophy. Often, these answers are not complete, they are metaphorical or anecdotal, and we do not deconstruct them for ourselves in fear of the criticism of our peers or the loss of assurance of our faith.

These two worlds, in my mind, were never dichotomous, because for everything science understands the how and the what and the where and the when of, religion may attest to why and the potential who. The idea that these explanations cannot exist in tandem is directly correlated to the use of religion, or any institution for that matter, to control and organize a population by belief.

Religion is essentially organized agreed upon philosophy, while science is... organized agreed upon philosophy. Science simply requires deductive argument that can create a clear repeatable theory, while religion is more open to inductive and abductive reasoning, similar to the the patterns of pseudoscience or the repeated stories of comparative mythology.

The biggest problem I have had as a scientist returning home to conservative religion has been the burden of proof. It’s easy to say that you cannot prove or disprove that a god or creator exists, it’s Schrödinger’s cat, always in the potential for reality, never in the certain. But many religions teach or project themselves as certain, and their practitioners try to fulfill the burden of proof with fallacies and arguments that simply don’t work, rather than accepting this very simple reality that:

If we could prove there is a god, then your beliefs would no longer be a faith, but a fact.

The purpose of faith is to believe in something greater, and there is a bit of research that shows positive results of that ideology - prayer and meditation help us focus on our goals or recenter our understanding of reality, worship gatherings can potentially help us feel part of something larger, that we matter, that we are able to be vulnerable, and many people find hope and strength through a faith when their lives feel out of control.

The danger is when we depend on something other than ourselves, when we blame or disregard consequence as a bigger plan, when we dismiss science because we think that we have a better understanding and that our fallacious argument is infallible. We create a dichotomy, while there is also research that shows this dependence on religious philosophy can actually increase mental health issues and substance abuse. And in academia, we do the same. We create a cult of expectations and constructions and limited funding and obligatory system conformation in much the same way.

Both science and religion seek to understand the world by organizing human thought into comprehensible pieces, one does this for an advancement of knowledge, the other for the advancement of self. Both are valid, all truths are potential, and we desperately need to revitalize our value of the grey in the world. We don’t have to believe in anything, but we do have to acknowledge that our inability to disprove a religious entity also means that it is a potential truth in the world and doesn’t exist as a dichotomy to science.

We all exist in a world of potential, and when we exist inside that chaos willingly, when we accept change and things we don’t know, rather than focusing so heavily on what we might surely know, I think we find much more peace than trying to organize all those greys into blacks and whites.

Science can feel so certain. It can feel like a sturdy foundation of fact, it’s all built on theories and ideas that sure, have been proven again and again to be true, but all it really takes to deconstruct is remembering that a single change in a premise or conclusion of deductive reasoning brings the entire foundation to dust. We need to respect that reality, rather than grow defensive and encouraging this ridiculous duality that doesn’t exist.

I grew up in a conservative religious family, half Catholic, half Protestant, wholly critical and filled with guilt. When I studied Anthropology, my mom was angry and confused, I was confused. But when I studied comparative mythology, world literature and philosophy, I was less confused because there was grounding in similarity. I don’t know what I believe and I don’t really think anyone needs to fully know, I think that is the dangerous conviction in science and religion, that’s what they share, that’s what creates the dichotomy - a certainty of truth that can never really be certain (as far as we know anyway).

Freshman year of college, I was asked by a friend, newly arrived to West Michigan from the heart of Africa, if I went to church or believed in a god. I said yes, but felt sick about it, because I didn’t know what was true, but reading the world’s religious texts felt like I had some strings of familiarity, some pattern that humans kept following that had to mean something to pervade so long. I felt sick because in anthropology religion had seemed so... foreign to my peers, an oddity to study, a thing to dissect and understand paternally.

But he and I had been just talking about poverty and the odd similarities in our upbringings that had us facing the same issues despite being from a poor American ghetto and a middle-class African household. So I felt I was making an ally in the world and that saying no would be a lie. But saying yes felt too vulnerable. And maybe it shouldn’t, maybe our answers should always carry that small weight of I don’t entirely know.

Anyway, confirming a friendly perspective, I assume, he leaned in to ask me quietly why so many Americans did not go to church, if there was a word for that religion. We talked about what Atheism was as a concept and his response has become that weight that has kept me in the middle for many years of anthropology’s microscopic personal questions, whenever I just wanted the easy answer to religion to be a confident no like my peers, it kept me wondering why I wanted that, or what that meant about the study of culture, or a slew of other questions. He said:

They must be very prosperous or very hopeless to live in a world where they don’t need a god to believe in.

And that was the truth. I had once needed a god to believe in, and when that need had faded with recovery and the new hopes I found at University, I had no need for a false certainty, but I could respect its requirement in those who were still living such chaotic lives. It can be a very tempting anchor.

Religion and science are both only as dangerous as their practitioner’s conviction of truth. That is the thing that binds us together, the middle of the extremes, that truth-weight, that potential for falsity, however slightly perceived, is always present.

This is the reality we share: we are uncertain in all things, but we try to build structure together to make the world better anyway.

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bakechochin · 5 years

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The Book Ramblings of January 2019

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Wise Blood - Flannery O’Connor I haven’t read much American literature, but far be it from me to state that the sole reason for this is my position as a staunch Englishman. In truth, I genuinely just don’t have much of an interest for the great American texts; the enforced reading of such literature during GCSEs and A-Level taught me that even the American texts with the best prose were not on the most interesting of subject matters, concerned with social progress or supposedly deserving of merit because of relevant historical context, as opposed to actually just being, well, enjoyable. Yes, I am obviously over-simplifying to a ludicrous extent, but these were the thoughts that I had way back in the halcyon days of school, and subsequently these are the thoughts that I’ve carried with me since, simply because I haven’t been arsed to actively try to challenge them. However, my infatuation with the grotesque was bound to bring me to the realms of American literature at some point, and so asking my American friend to procure me a copy of this book with a decent cover, I started on this Southern Gothic classic. I love the idea of transposing the gothic genre to a setting different than one would conjure up from the word ‘gothic’, and the fictional deep South town of Taulkinham does a bloody good job at capturing what I want; there’s madness and isolation and a sense of oddity in the air, and the town is populated by a gallery of fantastic and memorable grotesques. The fantastic and evocative prose, almost comical at points, belies how fucking odd the story’s events are, and breathes life into this setting in a similar way to Hammett’s Red Harvest; this is perhaps one of my favourite techniques in literature, simply because I’ve never thought of envisioning America in this fantastical way. The story is rather fragmented, with many of its major scenes basically being some of O’Connor’s short stories stitched together (and the Frankensteined nature of the story does result in a few chapters having noticeably different writing styles to the rest, or some characters’ decisions that would develop into these slotted-in short stories seeming odd and poorly explained). With this awareness, I remain unconvinced with critics’ dogmatic statements along the lines of ‘O’Connor evokes an individual voice/style, unburdened by the rules or conventions of story writing’; if she had that in mind, as a deliberate means of creating a fragmentary narrative in the name of the genre or in reflection of the characters or what have you, she came up with that shit after she started writing. It is a view that I could subscribe to, on account of the fact that this is not a stereotypical narrative. Characters don’t do much or evolve much, with the decisions made by the characters seemingly motivated more by manic episodes than actual rational thought; Hazel, for instance, is depicted as basically coming up with the teachings and philosophies of his Church without Christ as he goes along, repeating his new discoveries to himself and to anyone who will listen as soon as he formulates them, and it is this improvisational drifting (motivated by his own warped thinking) that defines his story’s progression. What separates gothic stories set in recognisably recent times to gothic stories set in the distant histories of castles and deep dark woods, is the changed understanding of madness, and I’ve talked about this a lot in my rambles on Le Fanu but I’ll delve into this book’s treatment of it. In the words of Bakhtin, ‘in Romantic grotesque, … madness acquires a somber, tragic aspect of individual isolation’, but before the advancement of scientific knowledge as to what actually constituted ‘madness’, it often took the form of histrionics and melodrama. This is all fine and dandy when you’re writing a story about tormented murderers hearing hearts beating under the floorboards, or masked men with skeletal faces scuttling around opera houses, but when you’ve got to transpose this madness to a recent-ish society, with said madness being expressed or brought out via recognisable themes such as religion, you’ve got to tone it down a bit. As such, Hazel and Enoch are manic, not mad, and this is excellently conveyed through their individual speech styles and the ways that other characters interact or interpret the two; my favourite example of this is Enoch running down his day’s activities to himself as a strict and sacrosanct ritual of undeniable importance, swiftly followed by the reveal of the actions’ trivial nature (and his co-workers negative opinions of him as a result). WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YES

The Crock of Gold - James Stephens Trying to ascertain the seriousness of this text boggles my brain. Let it first be said that I rather like this book, despite the shoddy John Murray publication that I have it in; I was prompted to purchase it on account of its place in the great ‘Irish comic tradition’, basically expecting something along the lines of The Unfortunate Fursey, but I instead was greeted with a much more thoughtful and interesting read that I advise everyone to pick up at some point, with the caveat that you have to be in a very specific mindset to read it. It’s a funny story, but it is quietly funny; the humour comes from little quirks in the writing, in the speech and actions of its characters, in the ultimate charm of the story. The dialogue is deliberately circumlocutive and often rather meaningless, pondering incessantly on philosophical matters big and small, and ofttimes the narrative itself reflects these rambling trains of thought, most notably a long aimless pilgrimage wherein the Philosopher stumbles across snippets of other peoples’ lives, experiencing quibbles and learning folk wisdom and ruminating on the head and heart. The book’s world is charming, all made up of storybook character archetypes and Irish folklore (described matter-of-factly and easily accepted as truth); ofttimes, the information that we are given is ultimately unimportant and has no bearing on the overall story, and this is a statement that can, truthfully, be applied to much of the text, but it is all the same delicately written and rather pleasant. The book does perhaps toe the line on this point with its rambling philosophical paragraphs from the Gods, with its grand allegories and metaphysical nonsense getting a tad wanky and mind-numbing, but it’s not the most egregious thing in the world. In any case, the philosophising of the Philosopher is entertaining enough to make up for the rather more dense philosophising of the Gods, being much more like the aforementioned circumlocution, going off on unrelating tangents and eventually bringing the rambling back around to the initial point that catalysed said rambling. I bring this up not only as a point of comparison, but because it ties in nicely with the commonly-utilised storytelling method of basically going off on a tangent, following one person off on their quest before jumping back to where the narrative left off to see how things are doing then. This can perhaps be attributed to this book’s lack of urgency or real danger, and thus lack of a need for hastiness and rapid jumping from one person’s story to another. This extends even to the final resolution of the humans’ storyline, which basically amounts to one sentence saying that what they set out to do was done and dusted; there isn’t even a scene to show everyone happy again, because it is simply implied that things will go back to the jolly equilibrium. Hell, when the book incorporates wistful or thoughtful or even flat-out sad tales, no resolution is offered for them. The story just goes on, and we are presumably meant to just assume that all will end up alright in the end, or at the very least, all will just end, and then it’s not worth worrying about any more. Reading what I thought would just be another fucking The Unfortunate Fursey type of fantasy book has really evoked some unexpected feelings in me. So that’s nice. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YES, IF YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT MOOD

Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift I’ll level, I went into this book expecting a low-brow adventure story about little dudes and fucking massive units. It is, in fact, a tad more complex than this. This book is a lot of things; it can be read as a storybook adventure novel, but it is also a satirical piece, both of Swift’s society in general and of the travel writings form, and it is this satire that I am not too fond of. But we’ll get to that. The main technique utilised in this novel (yeah I’m just going to call it a novel for simplicity's sake) is optical conceit, and the idea of viewing familiar things from different perspectives or in different ways, presenting them in a new light as ridiculous or laughable and perhaps to make us reevaluate the workings of society so farcically presented. This technique is noticeable mainly in the first and second travels, coincidentally the two travels that are most widely known, and this optical conceit is a concept that I like a lot more in theory than in practise. The first travel takes us to Lilliput, the island of the small blokes, and here the small size of the people links in with their small-mindedness and melodramatic quibbling over minor matters, but in the second travel to Brobdingnag, land of the big dudes, the size of the folk is seemingly unrelated from the satire. With the possible exception of the pompous Prince, none of the natives have any sort of comical largesse or egotism that might have related to the satire. And then when I had this in my mind, I began scrabbling around to try and find some other snippets of how the native people tie in with the satire, to little to no avail. The Lilliputians put great faith in long and formal written legislations and diatribes (related in full in Gulliver’s account), suggestive of shrewd ink-nosed clerks hiding behind their papers, and much of the Brobdingnagian report is one long rambling philosophical back-and-forth between Gulliver and the Prince, suggesting these large people have large mouths and loud opinions, but the satire, in my opinion, is a) tenuous and b) not what I’d consider engaging reading. And that’s not even considering the specific basis of the satire: contemporary politics! This book is striking an interesting balance between being entertaining in its own right, and ostensibly being entertaining because of its significance as satire, that every character or event in the story is comically reflecting some real-life event in English politics. To this, I have to compare it to Calvino’s story Invisible Cities, and it’s varying depictions of Venice through different disguises; it doesn’t matter how you tart up your source material, or how colourful your new layer of paint is, because if I’m not interested in the original source material then I probably won’t give too much of a toss about how it is newly presented. And contemporary English politics really could not appeal to me less, even if Swift does dress them up as Lilliputian acrobatic displays or thinly veiled warring kingdom allegories. That’s not to say that there is nothing funny to be found in this text; the details in the stories that are not intended to serve any satirical purpose, and instead merely to emphasise the differences between worlds, are always great fun. My favourites are the Lilliputian’s alien descriptions of the gigantic contents of Gulliver’s pockets, and two great instances of humungous monstrosities in Brobdingnag, namely the huge lice on the giant beggars and the scene of a Brobdingnagian mother breastfeeding; the sheer revulsion that Gulliver has to this spectacle is fucking hysterical. The travel to Laputa has got a good grasp on linking the fun content with the satirical aspect (not only is the flying island a great pisstake of science-minded learned folk, but is also like something out of a fucking Lem story), but the overall story is generally rather boring and without much in the way of obstacle or threat. The Land of the Houyhnhnms doesn’t really have the optical conceit, being more of an abstract switcharoo of horses and people, with not much relationship between the two races and a lot of obvious satire about man’s bestial nature. There are occasions of overt physical comedy, again tied in with these changes in size; Gulliver is in one story dousing great fires with his almighty piss stream, and in another being dressed up like a doll or dunked in a bowl of cream by a mendacious dwarf (or rather, a dwarf by Brobdingnagian standards). I am fully in accord with the former sort of comedy, not only because such imagery of dousing fires with a slash puts me in mind of Gargantua and Pantagruel, but because it reflects this book’s fun indulgence in crude toilet humour. Crude toilet humour is fun to begin with, but Swift uses scatalogical humour to demean the noble form of travel writings, taking a moment from seriously discussing the learned folk and their cultures and customs to describe his shitting habits. The latter sort of comedy, however, that serves to emasculate Gulliver by having him toyed with by giant folk or entrapped by tiny folk, only highlights to me the lack of character that Gulliver has, beyond being our narrator. I’m sure that critics will argue for his supposed egotism or pomposity or whatnot, but such details in the text are thin on the ground, and if Gulliver is not characterised as being a dick, why should the reader find it entertaining or cathartic when he gets his shit handed to him? These problems perhaps originate with Swift’s worries of the character of Gulliver being a reflection of himself; he is willing to put the character through light slapstick shenanigans, but he hasn’t got the balls to go too far lest it tarnish his own reputation. Apparently in one early publication of this text, Gulliver partakes in the custom of eating shit with the ape people, but oh no no, Swift couldn’t possibly have something that funny in the story in case anyone thought that he himself might truly be a coprophagous ninny! There is a strange bequeathment of snooty scholarly worth unto this book, considering that it does have talking horses and ape men who shit everywhere, as illustrated by the study done around this book (handily referenced in the editor’s annotations). Let me briefly give some examples. This book uses a lot of nonsense ‘little language’ for its place names and whatnot, and as you can tell by the fact that I’ve taken every opportunity to use the word ‘Brobdingnagian’ in this ramble, I’m rather fond of it all. However, amidst all the daft place names (all bizarre anagrams of existing places), the editor makes sure to highlight some as being ‘obvious, and therefore uncharacteristic’, as though there is a scholarly level of obfuscation or stupidity to adhere to in order to be respectable. This sense of superiority continues to the demeaning of one particularly transparent and obvious satirical paragraph, which is described as being ‘artistically weaker’ than the rest of the text; not that I’m defending the aforementioned insulted paragraph, because it isn’t that good, but the implication that the text deserves artistic merit because of the obfuscation of its satire rubs me up the wrong way a bit. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: PROBABLY NOT

The Nightwatches of Bonaventura - Bonaventura The new introduction to this text, written by the uppity translator Gerald Gillespie, is rather dogmatic in its excessive insistences of all of the things that this text is, or takes inspiration from. As much as I like to portray myself as a learned man and top-quality dude, I’m not so invested in contextualising this book’s composition that I’m willing to engross myself in Napoleonic war history or the works of Kant. What I am interested in, however, is the Romantic grotesque, for whilst Bakhtin’s infatuation with Rabelais’ grotesque completes eclipses any appreciation he might have of any writer who deviates from Rabelais, Bakhtin manages to spare a brief word of praise for this text amidst all the wanking over Rabelais, so I was intrigued enough to get myself a copy. This a book densely populated with great grotesque imagery and content, and as such it is a book that probably warrants re-reading with a certain subject in mind so as to allow for further unpacking, but within the framework of the grotesque, Bakhtin was right to say that this book basically epitomises the Romantic grotesque, because it’s all here in amazing detail. The story is a rambling introspective on dark topics, either prompted by the morbid and corrupt sights of the world around our narrator or plucked from the memories of our narrator’s own dark past. Said narrator, Kruezgang, brilliantly speaks on such subjects with amazing and colourful prose, with literary allusions and warped rumination galore. The other characters in the watches seem more like marionettes or shadow puppets, necessary to tell separate stories or fill a hole where there should be an aspect of Kruezgang’s past, but their purpose as such is fascinating enough and so excellently done that it doesn’t warrant criticism. The world is grim and grotesque, but depicted out as a joke via Kruezgang’s own view of it, described with poetical allegories and bitterly laughing at awful events by portraying them as black comedy farces. This book’s infatuation and idolisation of the mad and the strange and the grim is something fantastic, it really is. Now, having prefaced this ramble with such positivity, I can delve into a truth that looms over this text like a storm cloud; it is so incredibly fucking dense that I could not imagine rereading this book for any reason other than literary analysis. There is so much content, rich bloody content, in this book that it is easy to equate the feeling of numbness in one’s mind with an overload of such fantastic stuff, from the prose to the ideas to the fascinating storytelling, but this process of thought precludes the very important contributing factor to said mind-numbness, which is that the book seemingly just rambles about nothing at all! Am I to assume that such rich prose in the name of maddening circumlocutive (is that a word?) nothingness actually does have a purpose, and my mind just slides over it because it can’t comprehend the information, or perhaps just can’t contain so much information? Am I an uncomprehending fool for glossing over chunks of text, or am I just inadequately prepared to cram so much prose into my bonce at any one time? Such thoughts bounced around in my head as I was reading, and the only conclusion that I could come to was that I would be hard-pressed to recommend this book to anyone, for what if they encountered the same problems, and asked me to elucidate on such matters, when I have no answers to give them? Wouldn’t I look a fool then! But I digress. The introduction snootily says that to break down the narrative’s events chronologically would only ‘contravene the spirit… of the work’, which I believe insofar as a fragmented narrative obviously reflects the fragmented mind of the narrator (real in-depth analysis going on here), but that doesn’t mean that I won’t say that the narrative isn’t all over the shop, generally rather confusing, and interspersed with fragments of other stories of seeming tangential relation to Kruezgang’s storyline, all described with Bonaventura's same grandiose verbosity but often nowhere near as interesting as Kruezgang. Sure, I could have read into the exact (and no doubt important) purpose(s) of these segments, but a) just reading this book and revelling in its dark prose is an enriching enough experience without having to learn all the context clues that contributed to such nonsense being formulated, and b) most of the research writing about this book by Gillespie is just trying to figure out who Bonaventura is, a mystery to which I honestly could not give any semblance of a fuck about. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: NO, UNLESS YOU WANT TO READ IT FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

Shit I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Shakespeare and Co. by Stanley Wells (absolutely amazing, incredibly informative, would absolutely recommend if it’s your thing), and City of Sin by Catharine Arnold (generally fun and informative, Arnold’s voice can get annoying at times, overall would recommend just for the chapters about sex in the medieval/early modern period and the chapter on Victorian pornography).

#book reviews #book ramblings #book rambles #wise blood #flannery o'connor #the crock of gold #james stephens #gulliver's travels #jonathan swift #the nightwatches of bonaventura #bonaventura #golly didnt i look a fool when i mistook bonaventure the italian philosopher with bonaventura the german writer in one of me seminars #what an absolute goof!#that one's gonna sting for a while!#honestly all that bonaventura has done for me is give me a shit load of german authors and playwrights that i now need to read up on #if anyone's got any english translations of tieck's comedies then please gimme a shout #sorry all these tags are about bonaventura #it's the one i finished most recently so it's on my mind

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mystarsforanempire · 6 years

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meta: GODHOOD & ITS EFFECTS

mmm, u can reblog this if u wanna, but @ other gods & divine figures, you don’t necessarily have to Buy Into this concept, this is just what i run with on this blog and with any other figures i write that have ascended to godhood (e.g. like, hades and other greek figures)

i’m gonna try to lay stuff out in simple language that focuses on the sensation of belief and what effect it actually has on those who are Believed In in a literary sense. this bears some similarity to neil gaiman’s + terry pratchett’s concepts of belief in literature but i play with some earthier concepts that are much more based in the telepathic energy + the connection that fosters

this builds on the foundation of my concept of magic within the marvel universe, but to summarize that concept: magic exists throughout the universe, running in rivers across star systems and following, for example, ley lines upon earth while branching outward, kind of like groundwater but in three dimensions. magic is worked by drawing magic into the body (into dedicated “veins”), then running it out along previously laid-out “paths” (spells or rituals) or by utilising a higher telepathic ability to coax the magic into transforming into something else.

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- the word “god” is used to refer to BEACONS OF BELIEF, but the beacon may not be a god. faerie, demon, angel and other spirits affected by the ebbs and flows of belief (vague or not) could be transplanted into this consideration, but on a lesser scale. based on my own philosophy i would argue that a “spirit” is something that comes into form/being as a result of belief rather than ascending to godhood post-belief but honestly, that’s flexible

- this is really long and i’m trying to lay stuff out in relatively plain language for both my own understanding when i read back but also so people can Get Me, but totally feel free to shoot me questions about this because it’s like philosophy in that it’s vaguely scientific sounding bullshit, but can also seem simple to one person and really complex to another from the same angle!

strap urself in and hold onto ur tits, it’s time for ABSTRACT DISCUSSION OF BELIEF AS A MANIFESTATION OF TELEPATHIC ENERGY THAT CAN HAVE A PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT ON THOSE THAT ENTER INTO ITS COVENANT

WHERE DO GODS BEGIN?

the vast majority of gods exist before they are believed in. that is to say, they start off as figures usually a different species to those they are then worshiped by (although this is not always the case), and then, through a natural process of ingratiation, which becomes demonisation and/or idealisation, which becomes worship.

not all beings can become gods, and very specific yet often incalcuable specifications must be met. the difference between non-god and god can occur within the space of seconds, and the elevation comes suddenly and impermeably: it is difficult to reverse.

one ascends to godhood by starting off as a figure of renown and high consideration: for some reason, the peoples that look up to them consider themselves separate. this might start off as a separation of class (either with firm boundaries, such as a huge difference in social class, or something like extremely remarkable appearance/personality), then becomes something which is GIVEN AND TAKEN between the god-to-be and their worshipers.

a god of beauty begins as a figure of renown, to be looked upon with desire and delight: there comes a tipping point where the admirers become worshipers, and the god-to-be allows and welcomes the worship. a goddess of fertility may begin as a mother, but might then render advice or assistance (with magic or otherwise), and then become a figure to be admired... then worshiped. a figure of fire may be feared, even demonized, but then comes the tipping point: this god may be worshiped simply to appease.

make no mistake: when one enters GODHOOD, a covenant is made. the very spirit of that god becomes imbued with power (if they did not have it before) over their sphere of specialty, although these powers can be unreliable and patchy in places, depending on the extent to which different elements of the figure are worshiped. in the matter of apollo, for example, different devotees would examine him differently across the dozens of states in what we refer to as “ancient greece”, and subsequently that would have an effect on how absolute his power would be over particular subjects, perhaps even changing based on his closeness (telepathically, not geographically) to specific groups of devotees.

does this all sound vague??? does it all sound complicated? GOOD. no one sets out to be a god, not at first. and when it comes, it comes all at once.

WHAT POWER COMPELS THE GODS?

BASICALLY, it’s telepathic energy. if magic runs in natural rivers throughout the universe, being worked into grooves when spells are used, the channel of telepathic power that runs between god and believer is a groove in its own right. just as the telepathic command of a sorcerer affects the magic to change and become something else, this telepathic energy will affect the very being of the god.

this does not mean a god is controlled by their worshipers. the very nature of belief is flimsy and yet stark and block-like in the psyches of believers: belief is tended to subtle change from one worshiper to another, meaning that when many thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or billions believe in a god, they will be different to how they would be if few people believed in them.

a million believers may believe in some key elements, but others may be subject to change, meaning that the god figure will become blurred at the edges, will have hazy elements where something might be simultaneously true and not true. at the zenith of worship, a god’s memories (and vision of the future, which ill get onto in a minute) will be subject to what its worshipers believe of them, including their base personality, their powers & specialist knowledge & their connections to others.

this state of being, from the belief alone, is confusing and frenetic for some gods, peaceful and calm for others. it depends entirely on what others expect of them.

WHAT OF SACRIFICE & RITUAL?

energy becomes energy becomes energy: it is a fact of the universe that energy cannot be conjured from nowhere... but it can be conjured from magic. magic, in fact, is a universal lubricant that will serve to allow ONE THING to become another. what does this mean when it comes to ritual?

well, a sacrifice made up for a god is an offer of 2 things: telepathic energy (which in big enough quantities will undoubtedly affect, for example, the power at a god’s disposal and even their latent energy, such as their lifespan) and a GIFT, whether that gift exists in manifestable object/energy (e.g. offering a morsel of food, a sacrifice of meat + life energy, offering a pretty gem) or whether it is representative (e.g. offering a god your artistic thoughts, your dreams, your anger)

so like, this defo applies to loki and the other norse gods of my canon where i envision them as like, feral things at the zenith of belief in them. and that feralness is coming from the fact that you have a lot of people who are full to the brim with energy believing in them (and thus affecting them with similar energy), but also the nature of the sacrifices themselves.

at the very high point of their worship, loki, thor and the other gods had continuously full mouths. full of blood, of half-cooked flesh, of wine; their minds would be full to the brim with prayers and wishes, askances and considerations. it is a deeply chaotic thing, and the minds of gods must become wider and ever full of other things.

even if a god keeps up a concentration, settling upon their own lives rather than on the lives of their worshipers, that energy is constant upon them: it is difficult and sometimes painful for a god to turn down a sacrifice or an offer of worship, and it comes with its own psychological costs.

DESTINY & BELIEF

Magic flows like a river through everything - this includes time itself. although not everything is set in stone, the gods exist along a frame where some parts of the future are destined, are foretold, will inevitably occur.

some of these things are just natural aspects of destiny, but others are more centred to gods in that...

if all your worshipers know the story of the way you are killed, the way you will be killed, the way you were killed, that is probably how you will die. that telepathic energy affects magic, which will affect time itself, and thus destiny. what is destiny but foreknowledge?

and here’s the tricky part. i know that i said before “individuals become gods” and that that’s a kind of ephemeral process, difficult to imagine, except... magic knows what time doesn’t. if you are going to become a god in the future, retroactively you ARE a god now, and you were always a god, and you will always be a god, even when the only person still believing in you is yourself. fun, huh?

so that complex bit of mental gymnastics aside, i want to talk about a concept that’s very central to my portrayal of loki, and that’s FUTURE PAINS. so, imagine it: loki’s like, the equivalent of eight years old, and during a lull in the evening’s activities, when the sun is setting and the magic is flowing a certain way, he lets out a sound of pain, and clasps at his mouth. there is no wound there, and yet he knows that there is a wound, that there will be a wound, that there always was a wound. if he really concentrates, he feels the scars between his lower and upper lips, and if he really concentrates, he can feel the needle that will make them, that is making them, that will have made them.

because of the stream of belief that follows a god in every direction, the scars and the main events they’ll undergo are kind of accessible from all angles, regardless of where they are in the course of their own life: this means that a god will almost always know, on some level (likely deep in their unconscious mind) how they will die. think of it as an eternal sensation of déja vu that you effectively train yourself to ignore, simply to stop yourself going entirely mad.

WHEN IS A GOD NO LONGER A GOD?

when they die.

(and even then, it’s flexible.)

#t; okay to reblog #meta #listen this is dense af #BUT I PROMISE IT'S INTERESTING ONCE YOU START THINKING ABOUT IT #t; headcanon #c; superior self | loki #t; meta #LISTEN TALK 2 ME ABOUT THIS 'CAUSE I HAVE A LOT OF.... considerations

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inesbuterminerva · 3 years

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A woman in the men's room: when will the art world recognise the real artist behind Duchamp's Fountain?

“Evidence suggests the famous urinal Fountain, attributed to Marcel Duchamp, was actually created by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Why haven’t we heard of her, asks Siri Hustvedt

Paintings, novels and philosophy made by men feel more elevated somehow, more serious, while works by women feel flimsier and more emotional. Masculinity has a purifying effect, femininity a polluting one. The chain of associations that infect our thought dates back to the Greeks in the west: male, mind-intellect, high, hard, spirit, culture as opposed to female, body, emotion, soft, low, flesh, nature. The chains are hierarchical, man on top and woman on bottom. They are often subliminal, and they are emotionally charged. Ironically, these enduring associations become all the more important when the artwork in question is a urinal – a pee pot for men.

The story goes like this: Marcel Duchamp, brilliant inventor of the “ready-made” and “anti-retinal art”, submitted Fountain, a urinal signed R Mutt, to the American Society of Independent Artists in 1917. The piece was rejected. Duchamp, a member of the board, resigned. Alfred Stieglitz photographed it. The thing vanished, but conceptual art was born. In 2004 it was voted the most influential modern artwork of all time.

But what if the person behind the urinal was not Duchamp, but the German-born poet and artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927)? She appears in my most recent novel, Memories of the Future, as an insurrectionist inspiration for my narrator. One reviewer of the novel described the baroness as “a marginal figure in art history who was a raucous ‘proto-punk’ poet from whom Duchamp allegedly stole the concept for his urinal”. It is true that she was part of the Dada movement, published in the Little Review with Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes, TS Eliot, Mina Loy and James Joyce and has been marginalised in art history, but the case made in my book, derived from scholarly sources enumerated in the acknowledgements, is not that Duchamp “allegedly stole the concept for his urinal” from Von Freytag-Loringhoven, but rather that she was the one who found the object, inscribed it with the name R Mutt, and that this “seminal” artwork rightly belongs to her.

In the novel, I quote a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne. I took the translation directly from Irene Gammel’s excellent biography of Von Freytag-Loringhoven, Baroness Elsa: “One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.” I got it wrong. Glyn Thompson, an art scholar and indefatigable champion of the baroness as the brain behind the urinal, pointed out to me that Duchamp wrote “avait envoyé” not “m’a envoyé” – “sent in”, not “sent me”. R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time. In 1935 André Breton attributed the urinal to Duchamp, but it wasn’t until 1950, long after the baroness had died and four years after Stieglitz’s death, that Duchamp began to take credit for the piece and authorise replicas.

Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph, so his story cannot be true. Von Freytag-Loringhoven loved dogs. She paraded her mutts on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village. She collected pipes and spouts and drains. She relished scatological jokes and made frequent references to plumbing in her poems: “Iron – my soul – cast iron!” “Marcel Dushit”. She poked fun at William Carlos Williams by calling him WC. She created God, a plumbing trap as artwork, once attributed to Morton Schamberg, now to both of them. Gammel notes in her book that R Mutt sounds like Armut, the word for poverty in German, and when the name is reversed it reads Mutter – mother. The baroness’s devout mother died of uterine cancer. She was convinced her mother died because her tyrannical father failed to treat his venereal disease. (The uterine character of the upside-down urinal has long been noted.) And the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.

All this and more appears in Gammel’s biography. All this and more reappears in my novel. All the evidence has been painstakingly reiterated in numerous articles and, as part of the Edinburgh festival fringe, Glyn Thompson and Julian Spalding, a former director of Glasgow Museums, mounted the 2015 exhibition A Lady’s Not a Gent’s, which presented the factual and circumstantial evidence for reattribution of the urinal to Von Freytag-Loringhoven.

The museums, including the Tate, have not budged. The standard Fountain narrative with Duchamp as hero goes on. I am convinced that if the urinal had been attributed to the baroness from the beginning, it would never have soared into the stratosphere as a work of consummate genius. Women are rarely granted such status, but the present reputation of Fountain, one that was hardly instantaneous but grew slowly over the course of many decades, has made the truth embarrassing, not to speak of the money involved and the urgent need to rewrite history. The evidence is there. They can’t or won’t see it. Why?

Expectation is the better part of perception, most of it unconscious. Past experience determines how we confront the world in the present. Prejudgment and stereotyping are part of cognition, but those preordained ideas – authority is masculine, for example – are cultural. Most people know about implicit bias. The media are full of it. Take the implicit association test to see if you are a racist or sexist. But as Perry Hinton put it: “The implicit stereotypical associations picked up by an individual do not reflect a cognitive bias but the associations prevalent in their culture – evidence of ‘culture in mind’.” We need “gut feelings”, but we also devise post hoc explanations for them: “Certainly, Freytag-Loringhoven had created broadly similar scatological works but nothing that held the thinking expressed in Duchamp’s piece.” I lifted this sentence from an online article at Phaidon.com called The Fascinating Tale of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. I quote it in the novel. The writer does not explain what he means by “thinking” or why works by the baroness lack thought.

To open oneself to any work – a sculpture, a book of literature or philosophy – is to acknowledge the authority behind it. When the spectator or reader is a man and the artist or thinker is a woman, this simple act of recognition can give rise to bad feelings of emasculation, what I call “the yuck factor” – the unpleasant sensation of being dragged down into fleshy feminine muck. But because the feelings are automatic, they may never be identified and can easily be explained away: she couldn’t think. She was a wild woman who wore tin cans for a bra. She turned her body into Dada. In 1913, she picked a rusted ring off the street, a found object, and named it Enduring Ornament, a year before Duchamp’s first readymade, Bottle Rack, but she wasn’t thinking. She couldn’t have influenced him. She was emotional, out of control – crazy. Duchamp, on the other hand, was dry, witty, a chess-playing genius of pure conceptual mind, a hero of high culture.

The baroness called herself “art aggressive.” She celebrated and elevated bodily machinery, rejoiced in verbal hijinks, and pitied Duchamp for devolving into “cheap, bluff, giggle frivolity”. She played with the outrage, contempt and disgust she incited. She wrote: “You forget, madame – that we are the masters – go by our rules.” She broke the rules. The evidence is there. She sent in the urinal. It’s time to rewrite the story.

Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £18.99. Buy it for £16.71 at guardianbookshop.com.

This article was amended on 1 April 2019 to replace the main image, which due to a captioning error wrongly claimed to show Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

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Interessant artikel over het beroemde werk van marcel duchamp, en of dit werk wel echt van hem is.

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