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writing-for-life · 2 months

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About Love As The Catalyst For Change

Okay, so while I was going through all the panels for March Mania, I also stumbled over these ones again:

And although I’ve read it all a million times and had all these feelings before, I just need to blurt them out:

Love Is What Changes Him

It’s such a central message of The Sandman, but I feel it often gets lost in a million other things. And they’re all important, but so is this one.

Because yes, Dream went with Delirium and found Destruction (and Despair found him btw), and his Destiny was Death. And that whole Desire thing… ‘nuff said. BUT… (major spoilers ahead)

Those panels above are basically the turning point in a nutshell. No, well, the turning point is actually the moment he kisses (and then kills) Orpheus, but those panels are the essence:

He set out with Delirium in hopes to find Thessaly (the pendant Nuala wears here used to be hers, and she gave it to her when she left the Dreaming and him. And I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel about him letting Nuala keep a gift of his ex, who betrays him later by protecting the woman he hurt, and then making it the item that holds the power with which Nuala can call in her boon. One could spin that very far in all sorts of different directions).

But when he comes back after killing Orpheus, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Thessaly was the usual romanticised dream that could never be real. But he finally did find love. For his son. The unconditional kind. The one that doesn’t need anything in return because it just is. And he was loved back, if for a brief moment. But it was real, not a dream. And that love stays real (that’s why it initiates the turn, 3rd act and all that).

I’m reminded again of the words of Frank McConnell in his intro to The Kindly Ones:

“And with [killing Orpheus], Dream has entered time, choice, guilt and regret—has entered the sphere of the human.”

(Side note at this point: With all of this in mind, read Dream Hunters [again], and look at all THREE main characters—that includes the onmyōji, not just the monk and the fox.)

And it would be so easy to say, “Well, love killed him then, what’s the fucking point?” Not just the love for his son, but also the love of a maiden who called in her boon (Nuala), the love of a mother for her child (Lyta), the love of a crone for no one but herself (Thessaly).

But we all know that “change or die” was never an “either or”, because it’s an “and both”. And it’s ultimately love, in all its shapes and forms, four times over, that changed him (while it was also part of the death knell, but that’s a complicated one. In any case, it also led to change: To be(come) a new, better, kinder Dream).

Yes, call me romantic or hopeless (although I think that’s the wrong word in this context, because I feel it’s the opposite), I don’t care.

Because that story is about catharsis. And that means Dream is a vessel for our feelings. And the feelings won’t be the same if we change any of this, for better, for worse. Because truthfully: That story is about me. And you. And you.

About allowing love, of whatever kind (this is very clearly not just about romantic love), to change us. And that ultimately means letting go (of control). Just like he did.

Bleurgh, I’m crying. Catharsis 🤣

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heartbeatbookclub · 3 months

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I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

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communistkenobi · 6 months

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reading this article about how climate change denialism is a way to express a hypermasculine anxiety to protect the continued western usage of fossil fuels, a “petro-masculinity” tied to the violent act of burning oil and gas as an expression of USAmerican sovereignty

#authoritarian personality name drop also hell yeah #actually this psychology section is probably gonna be cringe. this author does not define authoritarian which is very annoying #limited postcolonial analysis also. still pretty interesting #i think you can extend this to like death drive desires if you wanted to be very psychological about it #like the car is contingent upon a fuel that will cook us all to death. and westerners dont want to give that up. much to consider!#still reading so hopefully im not just repeating whats in the article #book club

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ohcorny · 6 months

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i need to post loic soulsov character analysis because if i don't i'll die. he's been plaguing my thoughts for *checks watch* like three to four days because we get SO much information about him and who he is in just this one nugget of the game and i'm spinning out of control about it.

spoilers for the most raw bits of the prelude so obviously go play the game first and then come back and read me ramble and make wild assumptions about this man and the direction of his character

so i have been obsessed with this (paraphrased because i'd have to whip through nearly the whole game again to correctly quote it) exchange between the voice and loic:

"Are you prepared for the world Ysme would create?" "Could it really be any worse than this one?"

and god. bro. bro. the absolute devastation necessary for this man to feel this way, about a woman who lied to him from the moment they met (which he clocked! very early on!), mugged him with a gun, SHOT him with that gun, and then when she became his ghost-god immediately realized she could force him to commit suicide by cop if she wanted. this woman did all of this to him, and when given the opportunity to just let her die--arguably justifiable given her goals and how she threatened him and the fact her death was entirely of her own doing--he doesn't. even though "don't let this woman die", a morally good thing on its face, is actually "let this violent, selfish woman become god with the ability to remake the world in her image, while also becoming her slave" and he knows it.

because to him, that's preferable to the world he lives in. your world has to be so bad for that to be the case.

and it is! his world is that bad. not the physical actual world, which yes, is harsh and cold and dangerous outside the mosaic, but his world, his daughter, in an incurable coma. there is a cruelty to somebody you love being incurably sick. to the selfish, hurting heart, it can be worse than if they were just dead. you can mourn somebody who's dead, and move on from your grief, but as long as they're still living, you're shackled to hope, constantly grieving. there is no moving on, there is only waiting for it to end. you might bargain, as loic does in his search for the flower to cure her, but it's still just waiting.

and when ysme comes into his life, he gives up on waiting. he has been haunting his own life until then, doing good at lamplight because it was within his power while he was there, but i don't think it was ever with dedication. it was something to pass the time as he looked for the flower. essentially selling his soul, surrendering his free will to ysme, this incredibly dangerous, selfish woman, is better than living as he has been. because he's selfish too.

what i like so much about loic is that he's presented as this very kind, soft, unassailable dad who wants to do the right thing. A Down to Earth Good Guy, to contrast with the chaos of ysme, but he's fucking selfish! while he couldn't have predicted the raw physical power of exalted ysme, he still knew she would receive the power to remake the world. and he still decided: fuck this world.

the natural assumption is that his kindness will balance out ysme, and i'm here for that narrative, but honestly. i think she's going to make him worse. the seed of selfishness is already in him, and he's indulged it by giving her power over him, and that must be in some way a relief. he's effectively surrendered responsibility for himself and his actions over to her. he can no longer be fully blamed for anything now that she has power over him.

and i think he's tired of being nice. i think he's ready to go apeshit.

.........and while that would make a good button to end this on, i have to mention: there is a non-zero chance he thinks she's hot and the idea of being a goddess' slave is hot. he's a grown ass man who we know for a fact HAS fucked, and while ysme was like "i thought you were a dead wife guy. i guess you still could be" my money is on divorced. my theory is lia was going over to her mom's house in that flashback.

like yes, all of that above is the main motivator, but i'm not ready to discount sex. loic wants to be lifestyle dommed. because what i just described about surrendering his free will is literally the appeal of being a sub: giving somebody else control, so you don't have to feel the weight of it. this is a story for adults about adults and it is on that le guin shit of linking a sexual fantasy inexorably to the world building and plot thrust, and i am ESPECIALLY here for that.

and i think that's everything i had to say about loic soulsov. i am exorcised. i'm better now.

#soulsov #soul of sovereignty #i wish i could bring this energy of analysis to my fuckin book club but i'm here writing essays about hot dads instead

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n1nthrule · 5 months

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(probably) clever fight club epiphanies that have smacked me in the face with a hammer recently:

marla is the centre of tyler. tyler is created as a version of narrator that he deems good enough to date marla as well as a projection of his desire for marla that he represses along with his other desires throughout the book/film. tyler is presented as a father/teacher figure for narrator (but chuck palahniuk cannot write convincing romance unless it's accidental so they actually have better grounds for a relationship than narrator and marla somehow). as narrator goes through the events of fight club and learns to accept his true self without the guidance of tyler, he is finally able to reassess and realise his desire for marla (which is def better portrayed in the book than the film). this also makes the scene in the book where marla tells narrator that she loves him instead of tyler and 'can tell the difference' hit 10x harder.

the modern world (1999 and also present day) advertises self-actualisation through consumerism ('self care' ect.). at the start of the book/film, narrator buys into these ideas of essentially 'buying happiness' though his materialism/consumerism when it comes to ikea catalogues (quote from the film- "I was one step from being complete"- also how these companies are constantly creating new stuff to stop you from ever actually feeling complete so you buy more stuff). however, throughout the events of the book/film, narrator's repressed anger towards this consumerist ideal of being 'complete' manifests itself into tyler, fight club and project mayhem- these are ways he tries to self- actualise and find himself without buying more Stuff.

fight club is created as a social model for men. the men in fight club are able to confront and find the courage to challenge their issues through fighting each other- this concept of being able to work through issues is not as widely accepted for men in other forms of therapy groups, such as the testicular cancer group at the start of the book/film that also asks men to confront/challenge their issues through talking and meditation. to the men in the testicular cancer group (who are already emasculated through their medical diagnosis), this form of therapy is seen as 'girly' and therefore shameful, which is why, in the book, the entire testicular cancer group disbands to join fight club. in this way, they are able to confront/challenge their issues in a way that society deems 'appropriate', and therefore in a way that they do not feel shame for doing so (this also serves to comment on the alluring nature of extremist groups such as incels to men seeking support who are unable to ask for help of out fear of ridicule).

(though probably not chuck's intention because this book was written in the 90s and separating sex from gender was not a common discussion) the motif of emasculation through the loss of physical attributes (the testicular cancer group/ project mayhem castrating people) points towards materialism in society and the unstable masculinity of the men in this book. these men are easily emasculated and are unable to understand how their inner identity is not directly related to their outward appearance, which is something tyler would fight against in my woke trans reality ("is that what a man looks like?" ect. ect. ).

#fight club #soapshipping #tyler durden #narrator fight club #fight club book #analysis #long post #hope these are good points and not just brainrot insanity #they've been marinating for a good week #obvs film fight club cannot connote narrator's inner thoughts about marla not loving him THAT well and that's why the ending's different #and i love the film ending i love the unstable handholding despite Everything she's put up with as the skyscrapers fall down #but 'tell me every little thing' is so dear to me. in my soul #love them both. different mediums need different things. and so on

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ashweather · 7 months

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Daily RPG Readings

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, Part 2

Alright, for day two we'll be going over pages 28-39, ending at the heading "Role of the Narrator." This is less than what I wanted to cover each day, but I think its warranted for this section because the next 11 pages are extremely dense, and I have a lot to say about them.

We start off strong, with "Rolls, Investigation, & the Eureka! System." First there's a quick definition of what separates an investigation roll from a non-investigation roll, which is crucial because only investigation rolls grant investigation points and thus contribute to earning a Eureka! (the player resource, not to be confused with the game system itself). I feel this distinction warrants its own section in my overview, as earning Eureka! Points and gathering information is so crucial to the system functioning properly. This distinction could probably stand to be bolded with the next few paragraphs, in my opinion.

Without having seen it in play, I'm cautiously optimistic having investigation rolls be distinct from non-investigation rolls and linking the core momentum mechanic to only investigation rolls. I can see the logic in it - the game wants to be about mystery solving and gathering information, so it rewards that kind of gameplay more heavily. On the other hand, there is a slight risk of action-heavy sequences starving PCs of resources and throwing off the pacing of a longer game. I think it will work out, but I'm very interested to see how it actually works at the table.

Next, a conveniently bolded section covers the core gameplay loop of Eureka, and is noted to be extremely vital for all players to understand. To summarize: the Narrator (GM) describes a location in detail along with any points of interest, investigators see major details without needing to roll (but may need to poke around to find hidden details), and investigation rolls are made about specific clues or points-of-interest when the PCs interact with them in a meaningful way.

That's a reductive description, but I have more to say about it than I really want to outline here (seriously I could write essays about perception and information management in RPGs). I'll stick to the basics: I really, really like that PCs explicitly don't need to roll to notice obvious information. I'm hooting and hollering that we explicitly don't need rolls to get obvious or basic information about specific points of interest. I'm jumping out of my chair and yelling the name of my favorite sports team about the game pointing out that multiple different skills may be used to learn different things about a given point of interest, depending on interpretation.

Anyway this philosophy of information reminds me of GUMSHOE except more explicit about putting the things I like into rules text. I would perhaps like a note that red herrings should be sparing, because players rarely need help coming to wild conclusions based on spotty evidence, but this is a matter of opinion.

Now we learn about the results of an investigation roll at each degree of success, including how many investigation points (abbreviated IP going forward for brevity) are earned towards a Eureka! Point. A Full Success gets a lot of information and 1 IP. A Partial Success grants less information (or a consequence) and 2 IP. A Failure grants no information, but does give a generous 3 IP. We are also told to write down Failures on the character sheet for future use. Once an investigator gains 15 IP, they gain a Eureka! Point, the Eureka systems main reward for PCs and a potent resource. Eureka! Points can be spent to gain information from a previously failed investigation roll OR they can contribute extra odds of success to a non-investigation roll.

I always think granting resources for roll failure is a good idea, because it encourages players to think of 'bad' rolls as potentially exciting paths for the narrative to take rather than as 'losing the game' Since Eureka! Points are such a potent resource, it gives players something to look forward to no matter what the outcome of a roll is. I also love the incorporation of the mystery trope where a previously mysterious clue turns out to be a key piece of information later, once the characters put it into its appropriate context or think about it more deeply. Also, writing down Failed rolls encourages players to dip their toes into note taking and gets them into the habit of ruminating over previously acquired information, which is great for a mystery game.

I think Character moments granting IP and Eureka! adding odds of success to a non-investigation roll are great utilities too, but this section is getting away from me so I'm going to leave it there for now.

Lastly, we have an Example of Play for investigation, which is always an extremely helpful tool for players to be able to see the rules in action. In the scenario, two 1930s detectives are following the trail of a gang of bank robbers and have found one of the suspect's place of employment. We start off with a failed Charm roll that grants 3 IP, demonstrating that Interpersonal skills can be used for investigation just like any other, as long as its in the service of gaining information. The Narrator describes the immediate area, and one of the PCs notes a lack of points of interest (footprints) without needing to roll. The Narrator does not highlight this until the player asks about it, which encourages players to be smart, ask questions, and poke around.

Without giving a play-by-play, we get more investigation rolls demonstrating the various degrees of success for investigation rolls and how they move the narrative along. A Eureka! Point turns the first failed Charm roll into a success, resulting in a climactic moment where hidden compartment underneath a desk is revealed. The PC pushes the desk aside, and there is a note here that even if someone might have difficulty moving this desk in the real world, it is an inappropriate time to call for a roll because failure does not have stakes and would not be interesting (I'm hooting, hollering). Finally, the scene culminates in the beginning of combat as one of the NPCs attempts to stop the investigators in their tracks!

I think the example of play given serves its utility well and shows off the strengths of the sytems. No notes (yet, I might refer back to this later).

#TTRPG #eureka #eureka: investigative urban fantasy #a.n.i.m.#book club #rpg analysis #daily reading

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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

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Love in the Big City: Part Two

Once again I find myself without an original essay already floating in my head, so shout out to @bengiyo for the discussion questions. They are a life saver!

I find the question about I maintain effective distance from a narrator when the story gets heavy, but I am not sure that that is something I know how to do. In my day to day life I often feel cut off from emotions. I process my emotions through media, where putting myself in the experiences and feelings of the characters can be used like armor as I turn to face my own. I fail time and time again to maintain effective distance from my characters, because my characters are how I maintain effective distance from myself. I suspect Mr. Young and I have that in common.

I’m glad for these essays because last week’s made me really have to think about Young, what he was like, why he was like that, how his friendship with Jaehee broke down when Young wasn’t able to be serious. Because I feel like Part Two is proof for me that my initial read was correct. But just like in Part One, where Young mentions his own problems almost off-handedly, his suicidality being a single sentence sandwiched somewhere in a paragraph. Here too, Young is rather distanced himself when he recounts his traumas.

He does not linger on the fact he spent his summer in a psychiatrist facility because his mother saw him kiss a boy. He merely bluntly gives the details, but doesn’t really mention how he felt about it. At least not until closer to the end of Part Two. His boyfriend is the same, in some regards. Beyond the dickmatization of our narrator, I think the initial draw for Young was that there was another gay with mommy issues who was willing to talk about them. I think sadness speaks to sadness and that can call people to one another. The failing here is in the difference in their courage.

Young has suppressed his sexuality as much as he could in places where he knew it might get him hurt (the military as an example). But even after suffering what he did in that psych facility, he left it with the knowledge that his mother was the one who was sick, not him. Young’s boyfriend, however, grew up in a different generation. Ben’s right, in BL we usually root for reciprocal couples to get together, and here we are watching a relationship fail. But I am not rooting for these two to be together, because that relationship was not balanced in what it gave and what it took. Young and his boyfriend stood on different ground from the beginning, both in what they wanted out of it and in how they navigate the world.

I am not someone who thinks everyone needs to be out of the closet, I think it is quite rare that we get a closeted and out couple where their need to hide their relationship does not impact their relationship (shout out to Cooking Crush yet again for defeating that trope!) Young does not seem like the kind of person used to be looked at and he’s in a younger generation. He isn’t closeted, and does not at least outwardly appear to fall victim to internalized homophobia, he wants to hold his boyfriend’s hand in public, he does not give a shit what elders think. But he is with someone that is deeply ashamed of his queerness, to the point where he tortures himself with the news. Young is right to be upset after he finds the articles on his boyfriend’s laptop, it would be horrifying to find out that’s what your boyfriend thinks of you.

But I don’t think Young mentioned, and he definitely did not reflect on the fact this has less to do with how he feels about Young and more to do with how he feels about himself. I love that this book got in to the complexities of activism. Now, I know someone did some very incredible work on the Korean history timeline, I just did not have an opportunity to finish it. So I’m not sure about the politics at play for what those students were activists for, but if I know one thing, it is that activists are never perfect. In the US, for example, racism existed within the women’s sufferage moment, homophobia existed in black liberation movements, and transphobia exists in the feminist movement and in queer communities as well.

If Young’s boyfriend and his classmates were activists together, got arrested, fought against whatever it is they fought against and the boyfriend had respect for them, it would be a massive thing to internalize to find out they are homophobic. Hell, when we met that couple at the park, the husband said he believed that queer people existed as if there was a time when he didn’t think homosexuality was real. Young’s boyfriend ranted a lot about the American Empire and the influence of Western culture on Korean society and Young made a point to emphasize religion as a part of that.

Korea has a pretty decent Christian population, and as we saw from Young’s umma that evangelical nature resulted in massive punishment for Young out of his mother’s fear of his sins. And she’d been a Christian for 25 years. I think every character we meet is really supposed to be some sort of reflection for Young, a way to show us alternate futures for Young. Jaehee is what his life could never look like because he was gay in a country that does not have gay marriage rights. But at the very least, Jaehee got serious when Young could not, and she got a serious boyfriend, and entered a serious relationship. Young and Jaehee were so similar for so long, that I do think Young would have been able to maintain a longterm relationship if he could actually emotionally commit to one.

In Part Two, Young’s boyfriend is his mirror. The anti-American imperialist that pays attention to flags versus the kid who does not even pay attention to the symbology he is wearing. The former activist versus the passive kid. The internalized homophobe and the one who rebelled against that. I said it already but Young was tortured for being queer, and the first thing his mother did when the therapy failed was to hand him fucking scripture. Young could have ended up just as disgusted and ashamed as his boyfriend, but he didn’t.

I think the author intercut Young’s relationship with his mother and his boyfriend in this part because they act as catalysts, they change Young, they show him what his weaknesses are, and the pain he will suffer when he bites his tongue…and when he doesn’t. His relationship with his boyfriend implodes when he starts saying more of the thoughts in his head, he waits for his mother to die after he cannot bring himself to ever tell her he wants an apology.

I think so much of this part is about being let down by the people around you, which I think is how Young felt when he realized Jaehee had left him at the end of Part One. We get the homophobic activists as an example, but we also spent a significant amount of time with Young talking about his boyfriend who was the first to make a move, and the first to sit and listen, and how that turned out to be an act, his boyfriend was deeply stuck in his homophobia and stopped really listening to Young early in to their relationship; Young talked quite a bit about how stubborn and strong his mother used to be. The force of her. And he spends this entire part just watching her wither away to skin and bones. He describes how long she kept up the act, that he’d help her use the restroom and then ten minutes later you couldn’t even tell she needed help.

And then he lays his head in his mother’s lap at the end, and he wants an apology. He wants an apology so badly. But he knows he will never get it, not in the way he wants. But honestly, I think his mother does apologize to him, in her own way, when she admits that she was scared. And I think the hardest truth he could ever tell his mother is that he was sorry he felt like the whole world in her hands.

#love in the big city #litbc #litbc book club #love in the big city bookclub #litbc analysis #litbc discussion

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therealamylee2 · 11 months

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“‘A few trinkets for my sister,’ she said. ‘She’s like Miss Glinda, she loves the fancy outside of things. I found a Vinkus shawl in the bazaar, red roses on a black background, with black and green fringe. I’m sending it to her, and a pair of striped stockings that Ama Clutch knitted for me.’”

“He had brought her a traditional Vinkus fringed scarf--roses on a black background--and he had tied it around her waist, and from then on it was a costume for lovemaking.”

I feel there is some literary significance here. Elphaba buys the shawl for her sister as a gesture of love and then receives the very same one later on from Fiyero (his gesture of love). A rose for a rose (Nessarose) and then a rose as in romance. Black red and green. “Green fringe.” Elphaba on the fringe, never quite “whole,” offbeat, never fully this or that, without a soul (according to her), from both worlds (without even knowing it). On the fringe of her father’s love, never fully receiving it unlike her sister, and later, on the fringe of insanity.

And the red is love, all kinds, sisterly love, passionate love, but also the red of blood--Nessarose’s death, Fiyero’s murder and his blood on Elphaba’s hands and wrists as she finds him. The murder of Dr. Dillamond, the blood she almost choked on when biting the midwife’s finger off after only being alive for a minute or two. The red rubies in Quadling country, the Wizard’s crimson hot air balloon. The “ruby” slippers, what made for her downfall. Love and destruction. Beauty and violence, political items, contention. As Elphie once said, “There was much to hate in this world, and too much to love.”

The black is her, her essence, but I don’t think in the typical, easy, “wicked” way. Her black hat. Her black crows. Her black hair that Galinda found herself spellbound by. Elphaba riding the broom for the first time in the dead of night, feeling like a night angel. Her black dresses and boots. Her murky beliefs, her slipping out of herself when part of the resistance. The way she blends into the woodwork despite being such a standout, how she’s able to do so for survival. Her staring into the night sky at the stars and thinking big thoughts whilst being exhausted by it all. Her spirit dimming, but then coming back. Her grief ultimately swallowing her, ruining her, regardless.

#can you tell i was an english major #lol #wicked #wicked the life and times of the wicked witch of the west #gregory maguire #elphie #elphaba #fiyero #nessarose #bookverse #headcanon #literary analysis #book club #book theory #wicked the musical #wicked the book

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kingedmundsroyalmurder · 9 days

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Blue Castle Book Club 2.0 - Chapter 8

Valancy goes to bed that night, having rudely (“rudely”) told Cousin Stickles that she wouldn’t do as she was told any longer. And she stays up all night remembering her life and coming to terms with how little of it is left.

Fear, John Foster tells us, is the original sin and a wretched way to live. Valancy, in her long night of reckoning, realizes that for the first time in her life she is no longer afraid. She does not fear death and, stemming from that, she does not fear the future either. All her life she has been afraid of the future, stretching out interminably before her, but now it has a termination point, and that termination is imminent. And so she is no longer afraid.

What she is, though, is resentful. Which is not an emotion she has really allowed herself to feel up until this point. She has been policed so strictly that – until now – she has self-policed her thoughts without even being told to. But now she doesn’t care what her family thinks and she doesn’t care about their rules and she is free to have feelings no matter how un-ladylike that activity might be, and none of her feelings are positive. She stays awake all night in a memory spiral that will be intimately familiar to most of us, running through everything bad that’s ever happened on an endless loop.

And boy does she have a lot of memories to choose from, none of them pleasant. During this long night, she cannot think of a single good thing that has ever happened to her. And every time something good might have happened, someone comes along and spoils it, ruining things forever.

(As an aside, I do love her clear-eyed imagining of what her obituary would be like. You can’t really say, no one particularly liked her and she didn’t have any friends or accomplishments in an obituary, so hers absolutely would have been filled with vapid platitudes. And she didn’t even begin thinking of the funeral service, which would be given by Dr. Stalling and probably include words from Uncles James and Wellington and been generally dreadful all round.)

She comes to the conclusion that, “I’ve just been a colourless nonentity,” which I am mostly pulling out because it’s nice when authors confirm for you that the pattern you’ve been tracking is something they did on purpose. But more than that, the colors in Valancy’s life, when they emerge properly, will be deeply associated with nature. Valancy has never been allowed to be in nature – she has spent her whole life stifled in the red brick house filled with dead things and pictures of dead people. For Maud, who has such a clear throughline in all her work about the power and value of being in nature, being colorless is being cut off from the natural world, which is equivalent to being spiritually dead. Valancy isn’t physically dead yet, but in a real way she’s been dead for years already.

Once again, I wish someone had introduced Maud to the idea of magical realism and let her run with it, because there is fantasy hovering just beneath so many of her stories (or just straight up in the text itself, if I understand Emily correctly) and I think she’d have done an incredible job of weaving magic and mundane together.

Valancy catalogs her many disappointments and ends on the final fact that she has never loved anyone in her entire life. Which is a marked shift from a couple chapters back, when the thing she was lamenting was that no one had ever loved her. A subtle but important distinction, and one that will carry forward through the text. Valancy is no longer beholden to the good opinion of others, and so she is now focused on what she herself hasn’t done, as opposed to what hasn’t been done for her. We start the chapter with “not even her mother loved her” and we end it with “I’ve never loved [mother]”. Valancy has gone from object to subject in her own life.

And we end with the only known instance of your 3am feelings being objectively correct. Valancy decides she is done lying and done appeasing and from now on will do nothing that she does not want to do. She quotes a poem called “The Freeman”, by poet Ellen Glasgow, published in 1897: “Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.” (Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Glasgow suffered from chronic heart problems. No clue if Maud knew that or if it’s just a weird coincidence.)

Here is the poem in full:

THE FREEMAN

“Hope is a slave, Despair is a freeman”

A vagabond between the East and West, Careless I greet the scourging and the rod; I fear no terror any man may bring, Nor any god.

The clankless chains that bound me I have rent No more a slave to hope I cringe or cry; Captives to Fate, men rear their prison walls, But free am I.

I tread where arrows press upon my path, I smile to see the danger and the dart; My breast is bared to meet the slings of hate, But not my heart.

I face the thunder and I face the rain, I lift my head, defiance far I fling— My feet are set, I face the autumn as I face the spring.

Around me, on the battle-fields of life, I see men fight and fail and crouch in prayer; Aloft I stand unfettered, for I know The freedom of despair.

Colors mentioned:

Red moon

Creamy yellow net

Wreath of red roses

Pink dress

All things that colourless Valancy either fears or doesn’t get to have.

#blue castle book club #moonlight and mistawis #do not ask me to do poetry analysis #i do not have this skill #but it doesn't take deep analysis to see why maud felt this poem spoke to valancy

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impulsivesuperrobin · 11 months

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i feel like this might be a hot take and also i haven’t been into harry potter stuff for years but

stan is a hufflepuff (this man may be scared but he’s nothing if not loyal, humble, and patient. ravenclaw is also an acceptable answer; analytical and logical)

richie is a ravenclaw (i will remind the fandom that richie tozier is academically probably the smartest of the losers till the day i die, plus he’s incredibly creative)

mike is a slytherin (he also has the potential for hufflepuff and ravenclaw, i can see him having been a hat stall. i just feel like ppl have a weird aversion to placing him into the “bad” house bc he’s the only poc in the losers but he’s resourceful and cunning so he’s a slytherin actually)

eddie is a gryffindor (brave to the bone when it really matters, fucking dances on that stupid clown with a broken arm)

bev is a slytherin (if we’re talking about resourceful and ambitious, our girl kicked and fought her way out of a shitty life TWICE)

ben is a ravenclaw (incredibly inventive, smart, and full of wit)

bill is a gryffindor (natural born leader, need i say more)

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aconstantstateofbladerunner · 1 year

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Another unforeseen frustration in my quest to find a romance novel I actually like: a huge chunk of college romances are written by people who have clearly never been to college.

#i can’t take this shit seriously #colleges don’t have clicks #no one cares of you are a virgin #no one cares how you dress #i took every single exam in pajamas #the real weirdos skateboard down the quad with a canoe oar #posers who think they are weird for liking books don’t get invited places #i’ve gotten more pressure to drink at a single one of my mom’s book club meetings #that my entire four years of college #when are you doing class work?#have you ever had to write even an undergraduate essay?#Do you know how long those take?#why are classes just called ‘english’#and not something like ‘Literature of the Great Depression’#Why is the professor asking the class if they predicted the two leads falling in love?#and not i don’t know any actual analysis!?#and why doesn’t anyone talk about their classes outside of them?#me and my friends loved discussing our lessons #both those from my department and from other majors #no talking out a project you’re having trouble with?#no struggling with the transition from high school essay writing to college level?#No stories about your favorite professors?#no gaining perspectives from a different major?#clubs? hangouts? soccer on the tennis courts at 3am?#i thought i would like these because i loved college and miss it #but these are all just high school without a bell #plus they’re mostly just bad in other ways too #i think I’m done with this genre #booklr

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thesweetnessofspring · 11 months

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Chapter 10

Very much relate to Valancy retreating to her imagination when with her boring family. The Stirlings would likely call me dull as well.

Love that Valancy left Uncle Benjamin hanging. People with bad "jokes" are the worst.

The way Valancy is able to easily assess everyone in her family until she gets to Olive. Ouch! She's been compared to her so directly there's a lot of pain in it, and she's not being dishonest with her assessments. There's still so much Valancy feels she doesn't have but Olive does. She's freer now that she's going to die, but her past is still there, reminding her of what she doesn't have.

I want to know more about Donald Jackson and why he "cooled off" on Olive. 👀

I always hated those "friends" who only wanted you to listen to them and never listened to you. Olive is the girl I learned to avoid in middle school.

I WANT MORE OF THE DINNER SCENE NOWWWWWW

#blue castle book club #the blue castle #not a lot of time/energy to give an analysis today so here are random thoughts

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a-passing-storm · 1 month

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I need to study for Comparative Government and maybe read a summary of Fight Club* but instead I am scrolling through TMA fanart and planning a concert trip for tomorrow.

*Fight Club, because while I've read Hamlet a million times and I've read a lot of other literature recently, FC is the thing that I've spent the most time analyzing and remember character names well enough in to use it on the AP Lit exam. I have been told it counts as A Work Of Literary Merit by my very conservative AP Lit teacher, so she better be right.

#like could i write a timed writing on hamlet? absolutely. would i have more fun and be more motivated to if it was fight club? yeah.#see in my opinion if i can use FC for lit I should be able to use Invisible Monsters which I am even more comfortable with and #enthusiastic about but oh well i will not push my luck. i may also read a summary of the haunting of hill house because i read that #pretty recently and it may benefit me to have more traditional lit up my sleeve. i meant to reread the great gatsby before the exam but #alas time is hard. I don’t know like i've read a good bit of lit recently but... some of it i don't remember that well and some of it i #just don't want to write an analysis for or like...i would if i had the book on hand but fight club and its themes are like...#fundamentally carved into my brain. ANYWAY i should go read that summary now and maybe some others #wish me luck on ap lit that's the only ap exam i have this year where i like NEED to get a 5 for my own sanity #cogo... i should study for like urgently but... senioritis or whatever. sorry mr [redacted].#dante dicit #ap exams

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communistkenobi · 1 year

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I’ve been reflecting a lot on the authoritarian personality recently and the further away I get from that book the more I realise it’s just like fundamentally incorrect. The scope of the research being primarily psychological in nature I think prevents it from reaching any coherent definition of fascism because fascism isn’t a primarily psychological problem lol. I think the book is strongest when Adorno is talking about antisemitism as a foundational part of fascism, and how antisemitism is like a comprehensive structuring force for people’s ideological outlooks, but the moment he or any of the researchers move away from that or try to psychologically profile their research participants it gets really messy. Their psychological discussion about family and its relationship to fascism is fairly interesting, and it was what convinced me that the nuclear family just needs to be fucking abolished completely, but I think that has more to do with the fact that the nuclear family as a social unit naturally fits with fascism because that is the social unit they want to structure society around.

idk I really like that book but it’s deeply flawed. It’s one of those things that you should read alongside people like Fanon and Cesaire, who offer a critique of, respectively, the colonial character of psychology and the colonial nature of fascism, two perspectives that are not present in the authoritarian personality at all. Like I think the best way to approach that book is to fundamentally disagree with its premise (searching for the existence of a fascist “personality” type), and then see what is left salvaging afterwards

#the authoritarian personality #book club #came across some old posts I made about the book and realised I just like don’t agree with them at all anymore #it’s a book from the 1940s so like that’s not super surprising #idk I’m conflicted. it’s like a stepping stone. the moment I took myself outside of their methodology #I stopped being so mystified about what fascism is #again. literally. I have never seen a better definition than cesaire’s - fascism as the logical endpoint of European civilisation #any analysis I’ve read of fascism that doesn’t start from that premise feels fundamentally incomplete

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opisasodomite · 4 months

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The reason I can never attend the staff book club at work or any similar group is that their “analysis” amounts to a superficial recounting of plot and character beats and going “isn’t that interesting?”

#this is also the issue with group discussions in classes too but re: facts and information #oftentimes getting the basic crux of the arguments wrong entirely #a lot of video essays and media ‘analysis’ content is like this too #have I said these words in this exact order before #probably #it’s book club day at work so it’s on the mind

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ashweather · 7 months

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Daily RPG Readings

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, Part 5

If you want to read along with me, you can get the demo copy for free on A.N.I.M.'s official site or head over to their Patreon to get a copy of the latest playtest draft for $5. I'm reading the most recent playtest draft and there are significant differences from the demo copy, just as a heads up.

For part 5, I've stopped lying to myself that I'm ever going to be able to keep up a daily schedule. Today, we'll be going over Pages 94-104, finishing chapter 1. This is a short post, but next time I'll be covering the entirety of character creation, and that's definitely going to be a lot to cover.

Today is all about Traits! Traits, features, powers, perks, whatever you want to call them, they're little mechanical bells and whistles that make a character stand out and really pop off the page. In many TTRPGs they're the most fun part of making a character, and I would argue that holds true for Eureka as well. Investigators get three to six of them initially (but usually three). Traits are sometimes purely beneficial, but especially powerful Traits usually have an attached drawback. These are one of my favorite parts of game design, so let's get granular and cover some highlights!

Bumbling Detective lets characters take after Inspector Clouseau (the book might not be able to mention copyrighted characters, but I sure can!) and be a bumbling fool who completely botches the investigation but then saves the day in the nick of time! Mechanically, the character is more likely to fail Knowledge rolls but more quickly accrues valuable Eureka! Points.

Elementary! is a trait that emulates the famous "biography-at-a-glance" of Sherlock Holmes... or, at least, the character thinks they're that good. An investigator with this this trait can have the Narrator make a hidden Social Cues roll (essentially the skill for reading people), and learn two facts about a person - but the investigator has no idea which of these facts is correct or incorrect.

Final Girl gives a small bonus to Physical Skill rolls when facing off alone against supernatural threats, and also allows the character to spend Eureka! Points to hinder a supernatural threat's rolls rather than just boosting their own. Its a very fun survivor's trait, taking after the time-honored tradition of "final girls" in horror movies. Of course, the character taking the trait need not actually be a girl.

Just One More Thing... is similar to the Bumbling Detective Trait, but for Interpersonal Skills instead of Knowledge. If you somehow didn't pick up from the name, its the Columbo Trait. You know, Columbo? You agree. Reblog.

My Glasses! gives a flat +1 bonus to all investigation rolls, but gives a possibility of the character's glasses getting knocked off in any combat encounter. As long as their glasses are off, they become pretty useless but also blind to the stresses of the situation with a +2 to all Composure rolls. A must have for the Velma Dinkley fans out there.

Not Finished Yet is for a bloodied and beaten investigator dragging their body through the dirt to see a case through. The character has double HP, but if they have less than half of that at any point in the story, they succumb to their injuries and die as soon as the story ends. This one's a personal favorite, as I'm a sucker for stories about the irrepressible human spirit.

Unpredictable is a fun one - add a +1 to all non-investigation rolls. However, all rolls are made with a 1d12 instead of a 2d6, making both Full Successes and total Failures far more likely.

#a.n.i.m.#book club #daily reading #eureka #eureka: investigative urban fantasy #rpg analysis #ttrpg

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