The plain fact is that whatever Homer or Aeschylus might have had to say about the Persians or Asia, it simply is not a reflection of a ‘West’ or of ‘Europe’ as a civilizational entity, in a recognizably modern sense, and no modern discourse can be traced back to that origin, because the civilizational map and geographical imagination of Antiquity were fundamentally different from those that came to be fabricated in post-Renaissance Europe.

[...] It is also simply the case that the kind of essentializing procedure which Said associates exclusively with ‘the West’ is by no means a trait of the European alone; any number of Muslims routinely draw epistemological and ontological distinctions between East and West, the Islamicate and Christendom, and when Ayatollah Khomeini did it he hardly did so from an Orientalist position. And of course, it is common practice among many circles in India to posit Hindu spirituality against Western materialism, not to speak of Muslim barbarity. Nor is it possible to read the Mahabharata or the dharmshastras without being struck by the severity with which the dasyus and the shudras and the women are constantly being made into the dangerous, inferiorized Others. This is no mere polemical matter, either. What I am suggesting is that there have historically been all sorts of processes – connected with class and gender, ethnicity and religion, xenophobia and bigotry – which have unfortunately been at work in all human societies, both European and non-European. What gave European forms of these prejudices their special force in history, with devastating consequences for the actual lives of countless millions and expressed ideologically in full-blown Eurocentric racisms, was not some transhistorical process of ontological obsession and falsity – some gathering of unique force in domains of discourse – but, quite specifically, the power of colonial capitalism, which then gave rise to other sorts of powers. Within the realm of discourse over the past two hundred years, though, the relationship between the Brahminical and the Islamic high textualities, the Orientalist knowledges of these textualities, and their modern reproductions in Western as well as non-Western countries have produced such a wilderness of mirrors that we need the most incisive of operations, the most delicate of dialectics, to disaggregate these densities.

Aijaz Ahmed, In Theory: Nations, Literatures, Classes

when you're the only person who keeps living through the time loop, the people around you cease to be people and become mere characters. your treatment of them doesn't matter because they're not real and they won't remember. the only way to give anything meaning is to end the loop; their actions don't affect the loop and therefore are meaningless. you're the only one who has the ability to change the future, so anything you do in service of that goal is justified.

but. kim dojka looks at yoo joonghyuk and says no, actually, these characters are people. whether they remember or not is beside the point because they are real right now. and you don't give your life meaning by achieving some accomplishment that retroactively makes everything that came before worth it - you give your life meaning in the living of it.

Assignments Update!

Hey Doodlers! Exciting news- we're nearly finished with assignments!

After a lot of hard work on our end and patience from you, we're finally nearing the end of assignments. Which is so exciting!! We'll 100% be finished by the end of the day today, and will be sending them out tomorrow, January 5th, since it's getting pretty late for us and we want to be alert to make sure sending goes smoothly.

Thank you all for your kindness in dealing with the delays, we deeply appreciate it. We'll post when assignments start sending, and then post again when they're all sent out. We hope you're all as stoked as we are- go Doodlers!

I'm reading Possession by A.S Byatt right now, and I saw in one of your posts that you've read it!! I'm not close to finishing it and i haven't opened it since december, I really really want to love it, and part of me does but it's just very slow. Please tell me how wonderful it is to motivate me to continue, everyone who has read it seems to really like it!!

honestly most of my reasons for loving it as much as i do (aside from the fact that it really is just an astonishing book) are very personal ones so i don't know how much help those will be, but one thing i can say about it--and that i'm still captivated by--is how intense of a love letter it is inside and out--literally, and figuratively: it's not just a book about books or a book about reading and writing and study but also about the very intense hinterland that lies beyond and within those things and what kind of a resonance this holds--it's a book whose love language is language, by which i don't mean "words of affirmation" language, i mean the very texture and nature and depth of language itself and the act of engaging with it as intimately as writers, readers, and critics do (it's also got a very healthy dose of the Gothic which i love).

it is a slow read at the start, but thinking back on it i'm also not so sure how much of this is exceptional and how much is down to us being used to having narratives that move rather quickly through their own set-up because Posession absolutely does not do that. i do think its slowness, though, genuinely fits the book perfectly: most of the book revolves around academic detective work in an attempt to untangle this large, unexpected mystery but the act of research itself is slow (especially pre-internet)--even so there isn't a single chapter or a page that i think is extraneous to the story as a whole--whatever the characters are doing or experiencing, we're experiencing in tandem with them--the pace at which this narrative builds is also the pace at which the protagonists are moving through it, trying to uncover it or simply living it: they, and us as readers, are heading towards the same place, at the same time--to me (and maybe it's paradoxical, i don't know) this slowness is part of what makes it so immersive: each detail, each dead end, each archival trip, each story within the story, demands your attention in such a way that you're pulled in deeper as you attend to it all--you're part of this investigation, too.

if, as i said, your love language is language, is the historic, emotional resonance of storytelling (or you just love sardonic and pointed jabs at academia bc Byatt excels at this), then i definitely believe its worth seeing it through, purely for the immersion alone. but at the same time, i also want to say that i do think there's a time for certain books and you shouldn't put unnecessary pressure on yourself if that pressure is coming solely from seeing other people love it and feeling compelled to "catch up". but if there is a part of you that does love it then you are free to take your time with it and progress through at whatever steady pace feels best until you get a feel for it. but please don't feel as though it's something you HAVE to do either 💗

Heartstopper Season 3: Will Nick ever get his sweatshirts back?

Extremely confidence boosting to me that every time I've read my poetry out loud in public at least one person has come up to me afterwards to say they like it. More confidence boosting than people telling me I'm good at anything else which usually just feels very awkward because poetry is something I don't feel I can self evaluate at all because I know how easy it is for something to accidentally come out cliched/overwrought.

/

Posted this one a little while ago, but does an abandoned fic even know time...? (Answer: clearly not.)

The premise of the fic is a what-if? canon-divergence idea where both Gandalf and Aragorn die in Moria, leaving the Fellowship to struggle on without either of their leaders.

And unfortunately, I did not leave any notes for my future-self when I started working on it originally, so every time I've tried to go back to it since my initial burst of work has run into the roadblock of my having no (middle-)earthly idea what was meant to HAPPEN?

I still don't know, but here's the immediate aftermath at least, while the Fellowship tries to pull themselves together in Lórien and figure out how to go on with the Quest without Aragorn or Gandalf there to guide them. We make it as far as the Anduin...

And there we leave them, to sink or swim as chance wills.

@goodintentionswipfest

the results of that "is fanfic a book" poll have shown me one thing and its that this site never graduated past that absolutely insufferable phase in 2013 where everyone acted like every book is the single most sacred thing on earth

Sick of getting called homophobic for not enjoying or shipping byler. Sorry but will stans are right for not shipping him with a guy who said his life started the day he disappeared. There is no enjoyement here aside from supporting it to piss off actual homophobes. The ship itself sucks ass.

you're so funny for sending this to me like am i supposed to agree that it sucks😭😭 but yeah i know what you mean like are people not allowed to dislike a ship anymore as long as you're not being weird it's literally fine it's A STRANGER THINGS SHIP

-

Quill, as I am currently reading all of acod, I am willing to give you the descriptions of every character as I encounter them if you would like! Of course, I understand if you don’t want me to, and you are perfectly fine if you want to collect them yourself. I just wanted to help with your quest to make art.

-⚙️

That's very kind of you to offer! I won't ask you to make note of every character, as there are a lot of characters and some of them aren't even around for that long, but I may take you up on a few!

Fortunately, the wiki has physical descriptions for Kihrin, Teraeth, and Janel (even if there is some additional knowledge I'd appreciate...), but is lacking when it comes to Thurvishar and Senera. So if you're able to make note of those two that'd be wonderful--but if you can't, no worries!

There's of course more people I'd love a refresher on, but if I start listing too many you'll figure out who the important people are instead of watching them come into the role :)

I didn't commit a lot of physical descriptors to memory when the characters were introduced because I had no clue which ones (aside from Kihrin) would end up being important, so I just ignored all of them </3

Really, really random but because i see you are talking about books i need help with books... so i can't choose between Night Sky With Exit Wounds and young mungo, which one should i buy first???

hello!! i have read both and im going to say young mungo xx i will always say young mungo tbh it is one of my favourite books like. full stop!!

I did something no one should ever do

Im proud of you for always standing up for yourself and your friends-no matter how much shit these ppl have tried to throw at you.

I hope they're able to one day get out of this highschool hierarchy mentality, and realize that they can't bully everyone that disagrees with them or challenges their awful behavior.

The internet has given ppl this fucked up idea that the things they say or how they treat someone online will have no form of repercussions, bcus they're protected by a username. When we know for a fact they would never say the nasty things they spew online to anyone face to face.

Being mean online isn't a personality and I would recommend they try meditating or watching a tedtalk on self improvement to maybe find some inner peace.

if a lot of ppl seem to have the same negative experience with them... gurlllll I think its time they stop projecting on to others and hold themselves accountable!

Anyway, im proud of you and I hope these ppl find a way to calm their fragile egos at the fact you want nothing to do with them!!!!

Also, they can go fuck themselves! :)

I got this last night, and I didn’t have the energy to read it all, because i was like.. 2 am and I was exhausted, but I saw the very top of it, and I knew it was a good message, and even the first little bit just made my whole night. I can’t thank you enough for sending this, because it really made me melt, and feel so much better. It makes me happy to know that there are people out there who think that maybe I didn’t fuck it all up entirely, and it makes me feel like maybe I’m not so lost on some of the worse days. It genuinely means so, so much more than I can say. Words don’t hold it. Thank you so much. Much love, anon <3