#actually one of the most complex in literary history

[nerdyfangirlmel]

It’s the way that Annabeth looked at Luke when they were telling percy the plan like he hangs the stars in the sky. The way little siblings (especially with big age gaps) do. Like he is her own personal Greek hero because at SOME POINT HE WAS. And it’s the way that book readers know she will continue to look at him that way in at least a little bit despite knowing what he’s become. Because (a reminder) he was the first person to show her that love isn’t earned.

[darlingofdots]

What is a romance novel, really?

So far, the response to this post has mostly shown me that a lot of people don't actually know what a romance novel is, and that's okay! I don't expect everyone to know! However, for my own peace of mind, I am going to do my best to explain what we mean when we talk about romance novels, where the genre comes from, and why you should not dismiss the pastel cartoon covers that are taking over the display tables at your nearest chain bookshop. Two disclaimers up front: I've been reading romance novels since I was a teenager, and have dedicated the majority of my academic career to them. I'm currently working on my PhD and have presented/published several papers about the genre; I know what I'm talking about! Secondly, all genres are fake. They're made up. But we use these terms and definitions in order to describe what we see and that's a very important part of science, including literary studies!

The most widely used definition of "romance novel" to this day is from Pamela Regis' 2003 A Natural History of the Romance Novel, in which she states that "A romance novel is a work of prose fiction that tells the story of the courtship and betrothal of one or more [protagonists]."* People also refer to the Romance Writers of America's "a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending" and another term you will see a lot is "Happily Ever After/Happy For Now," which posits that the protagonists must be in a committed and happy relationship at the end of the novel in order to count as a romance novel. That's it. That's what a romance novel is.

Of course it's a bit more complex than that; Regis also posited the Eight Essential Elements which describe the progression of the love plot over the course of the book, and there's a similar breakdown from Gwen Hayes in Romancing the Beat that is intended more as writing advice, but both of these are really useful for breaking down how this narrative structure works. My personal favourite part of the Eight Elements is that the romance opens with a definition of the society in which the protagonists exist, which is flawed in a way that oppresses them, and then the protagonists either overcome or fix it in a way that enables them to achieve their HEA. A lot of social commentary can happen this way!

It can also be a bit difficult to pin down what exactly counts as a "central love story" because who decides? A lot of stories have romance arcs in them, including dudebro action movies and noir mystery novels, but you would never argue that the romance is the central plot. A lot of romance novels have external plots like solving a mystery or saving the bakery. A useful question to ask in this case is whether the external plot exists for its own sake or to facilitate the romance: when Lydia runs off with Wickham in Pride & Prejudice, it's so that Lizzie can find out how much Darcy contributed to saving her family from scandal and realise her own feelings for him. The alien abduction in Ice Planet Barbarians happens specifically so the abducted human women can meet and fall in love with the hunky aliens. There are definitely grey areas here! Romance scholars argue about this all the time!

I have a suspicion that a lot of people who responded to the post I linked above are not actually romance readers, which is fine, but it really shows the lack of understanding of what a romance novel is. I have a secondary suspicion that the way we have been talking about books has contributed to this miscategorisation in a lot of people's minds, because especially with queer books we will often specifically point out that this fantasy book is f/f! This dystopian novel has a gay love story! This puts an emphasis on the romance elements that are present in a book when a lot of the time, the romance arc is just flavouring for the adventure/uprising/heist and we are pointing it out only because its queerness makes it stand out against other non-queer titles. It makes sense why we do this, but there is SUCH a difference between "a sci-fi book with an f/f romance arc" and "an f/f sci-fi romance." I could talk for hours about how the romance genre has evolved alongside and often in the same way as fanfiction and how there are codes and tropes that come up again and again that are immediately recognisable to romance readers, even down to phrases and cover design, and how romance is an incredibly versatile and diverse genre that functions in a very specific way because of that evolutionary process. The same way that dedicated fantasy readers can trace the genealogy of a given text's influences ("this writer definitely plays a lot of DnD which has its roots in the popularity of Tolkien, but they're deliberately subverting these tropes to critique the gender essentialism"), romance readers are often very aware of the building blocks and components of their books. These building blocks (that's what tropes are, lego pieces you put together to create a story!) often show up in other genres as well, especially as part of romantic arcs, but that doesn't make every book that features Only One Bed a romance novel, you know?

Romance is an incredibly versatile and diverse genre and I really highly recommend exploring it for yourself if you haven't. I personally read mostly Regency/Victorian historicals and I've been branching out into specifically f/f contemporaries, and there are so many authors who are using the romance framework to tell beautiful, hard-hitting stories about love and family while grappling with issues of discrimination, disability, mental health, capitalism, you name it. The genre has a very specific image in a lot of people's minds which makes them resistant to it and it's not entirely unjustified, but there is so much more to it than Bridgerton and repackaged Star Wars fanfiction!**

*the original text said "heroines" but Regis later revised this. There is a very good reason for the focus on the heroine in the first couple waves of romance scholarship, but that's a different post!

**neither of these are a bad thing and part of that genealogy that I mentioned earlier.

[alpaca-clouds]

Is There Actually A Media Literacy Crisis?

Something I am thinking about a lot is that supposed "media literacy crisis" that people talk about a lot online. Some people say it is real, some people say it isn't.

Of course I am in the strange condition of not being American and this discussion focusing mostly on America. Talking to some of my bald eagle loving friends, I know that most Americans get way less media analysis taught in schools than us Germans. Like, I kid you not: All I did in German and English and history class between 7th and 13th grade was analyse texts and pictures. NOTHING ELSE. And how that was very dependent on the teacher in terms of how much media literacy I actually learned would be a topic for another day. But I know that a lot of my US friends did some analysis, yes, but comparatively little.

I will openly say one thing: Despite being pushed through so much literary analysis in school, I probably learned more about media analysis thanks to the internet than I ever learned in school. Because while we did it a lot. Well, it was basically the quality of content that the Japanese schools have when it comes to learning English. Do they start in primary school? Yes. Do they then absolutely fail on building on the vocabulary and all? Absolutely.

In history class we did a lot of analysis of historical propaganda. But do you think we ever spoke about framing? Just as a very accute example.

I would however not quite argue that we have a media literacy crisis really. More... Well, I would say we have four other problems that are seperate from one another - but that will contribute to it appearing as if people are media illeterate.

People do generally not think about or inform themselves how the media they consume is created. They are not really aware of what goes into the production of a piece of media, that has more complex behind-the-scenes scenarios than a book. Movies, TV shows and games are the most notable example here. As such, folks are often not quite able to see how the influence of several different people working on a project can be felt - let alone be able to analyse how that might have influenced the end product.

A lot of the most widely marketed media is very much created by coorporations to extract money. While some of the people involved might have had something to say, the studio producing it just wanted to make something that they can sell, which often results in some watering down of more complex themes. Through this people have kinda forgotten to even expect themes in their media. (Yes, this is very much about the MCU and most of AAA gaming.)

Because half of the discussion of any piece of media now takes place in the arena of the culture war, people often just reduce themes - if they are there - to very superficial culture war readings. And this happens on both sides of the isle. While the on the right we have idiots going "they hate white men", because a movie does not have a white male protagonist, the other side will go "this is sexist" because in a show of mostly female characters, a female character died.

People just do not have the time currently to actually sit with a piece of media and everyone in the industry knows it. A lot of media is created to be "second screen content", aka, something that you watch on your TV while you are in home office and working on that stupid powerpoint. And of course you cannot really interact with that media the same, you would, if you watched it on a first screen basis, right?

And of course, then there is the fandom side of things. Because yes, the entire proshipping and antishipping thing is also very much a media literacy problem, that mostly originates with, well... How should I say?

It originates with the same stuff like the rightwing leftwing culture war: From people not touch grass. From people not being aware that the folks that scream so loud online are actually a minority. And most people who will ever engage with a given piece of media will just never write something on tumblr, reddit or twitter about this piece of media. They will just consume it... and move on.

[st-just]

I think that the people moralizing their career paths were born from callout posts, honestly. Like there's a lot of information available online, including all of your pet career atrocities, from pharmacists to doctors to firefighters. And a lot of people bring these topics to light using social media, sometimes as a discussion point, sometimes as a bullet point in their callout (remember Mardoll). So I think that's where the need to be morally pure in all aspects of their lives comes from (cont

Cont) (also not defending mardoll just using xir as an example). But it's like, there is no such thing as a morally pure career. Some are worse than others, and if your job is to shoot people or build bombs I suggest you stop, but. I'm gonna judge the guy who says that there are no problems in his dairy farm and there never has been than the non-LEO park ranger who says "yeah the NPS has a really shitty history." I think that acknowledging this is the first step to making positive change.

re:

So I think that's a bit of it, but honestly I was mostly thinking of e.g. reporters, visual artists, basically every particular type of academic in the humanities, literary authors/poets.

Which like if I had to draw a connection here is that the remuneration for that kind of word is kind of ass and (not unrelated) the competition for one of the few slots where you even can do it for any kind of living wage is absolutely vicious. And both cause and affect of those dynamics is that being an ~artist~ or a ~journalist~ is prestigious entirely out of proportion to how much you actually make doing it, and as the money and competition gets worse the prestige gets more and more important to the (most annoying online minority of) the people whose identity is entirely tied up in doing that work. Hence 'if you don't have a BA can you really be trusted not to kill and eat the first guy who cuts you off on the highway?'/'if you don't have a portfolio on artstation do you even have a soul?'

(Related are nurses, schoolteachers, etc, where the money is better but the working conditions are so, so much worse that there's pretty much always a shortage of people willing and able to do it for what's offered, leading to what ime feels like mild industry-wide martyr complexes. Which are much messier because those jobs basically necessarily involve being in positions of immense power over some very vulnerable and dis empowered people).

[sad-boys-book-club]

"&" Ampersand - A Literary Companion: Eve & Paradise Lost

Hey everyone!

Let’s continue feeding my unhealthy obsession with Bastille by diving into the literary companion I created for “&”. Today, we’re talking about the second track: Eve & Paradise Lost. (Now that the album is out, I can finally follow the tracklist properly!)

In case you missed it, here’s my post about Intros & Narrators.

Before we jump into the book picks for this song, I want to apologize for the delay in writing this. I’ve had some family stuff going on, moved houses and also wanted to make sure I had read both books before recommending them.

Actually, I plan to take some time to go over the whole list of stories I’ve picked—I want to read them all thoroughly so I know exactly what I’m recommending to you all (some of them, I've already read, but I want to revisit them as well).

Now, let’s talk about the song. I find it fascinating to see a male songwriter like Dan taking on a woman’s perspective for a project that explores different stories. The official statement about the song stood out to me: “This song is about the burdens of loving women cruelly made to feel blame and shame from the dawn of time.” It’s clear Dan’s an artist who engages with feminist writings, and that’s something I truly appreciate—especially given how rare it is in the music industry, particularly for someone who presents as a straight, white male.

Cat Bohannon — Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

The title character from the song. Probably the most cited figure from the Bible. A staple in paintings and literature for the past two thousand years. The first sinner. Eve remains a pillar of the Western collective imagination, her meaning changing a lot throughout the decades. From the representation of female sexual desire, scapegoating her for condemning the entire human race to death by eating the forbidden fruit (can you tell I went to Catholic school?), to being seen as the first example of female rage in the face of oppression. She embodies the complexities of womanhood—temptation, sin, and defiance—all wrapped into a single character.

Cat Bohannon’s book couldn’t be further from this. With a PhD from Columbia in the evolution of narrative, Bohannon explores why, in an age when we often see medical and science knowledge as some sort of truth, we still somehow have a very male-centric view of the human body.

By reexamining all the different potential Eves we have in the history of human evolution—that’s how she chooses to call all the ‘hypothetical female ancestors’ in our shared Homo sapiens lineage—, Bohannon urges us to reconsider and reshape our understanding of how our knowledge of the human body has often ignored half the world’s population.

As someone who enjoys reading non-fiction books (happy to share a few of my all-time favorites in the comments to whoever is interested), I found this book a really insightful, at times infuriating, eye-opening view into how sad it is that, for much of documented history, women have been seen as just men with breasts and wombs bolted on. The author is especially conscious of how sex (influenced by chromosomes, physiology, and hormones) and gender (how we identify, behave in our environment, and interact with one another) are not the same thing. She often adds notes to point out how science ignoring the female body and all its narratives has even worse consequences for trans and nonbinary folks, which I found really well-done and necessary in today’s age.

I picked this book as a companion to the song mainly because of the “rolled your eyes at pain you'll never comprehend” line, but I think it is a solid read on its own. I certainly learned a lot about my own body during the 15 hours I listened to the audiobook.

John Milton — Paradise Lost

So, Paradise Lost—the epic poem that pops up on pretty much every English Lit syllabus. Quick and snappy plot summary before we dive in: It’s a 12-part epic that covers Satan’s dramatic fall from Heaven, the creation of Adam and Eve, their blissful (but short-lived) days in Eden, the infamous temptation, and their ultimate eviction from paradise. Along the way, there’s a war in Heaven (didn’t exactly keep me on the edge of my seat), plus some deep philosophical chats between Raphael and Adam about creation, God, and, well, everything. It’s basically theological fanfiction (I mean it in the most neutral way possible).

Milton, being the good Puritan he was, used these stories to dig into free will, predestination, and conscience. It’s hard not to see Satan as a rebel leader and God as the authority figure, especially when you remember Milton was writing during the English Civil War. 

The poem was widely known but highly controversial and criticized during Milton’s lifetime, however, during the Romantic period, poets like Shelley and Byron “reclaimed” Milton’s Satan as a tragic antihero figure.

Anyway, I had to dig out my old uni notes (and hit up some audiobooks) to brush up on Eve’s role in this whole mess. And let me tell you, there’s a lot to unpack. Mainly because: a) as is often the case with old poetry, there’s a lot to read between the lines; b) classics come with a million different interpretations, and c) there are a few different versions, depending on the edition you read, so it’s easy to get lost in the variations of text, footnotes, and commentaries. (And also d) I won’t lie, it’s a slow, heavy read. At times, I had to resort to the audiobook just to get through some of the passages!)

Here’s what stood out this time around: Eve’s role is seriously hard to pin down, as Milton's relation to gender politics has been scrutinized since, well, pretty much since it was published in the 17th century. (Yeah, I had to pull out good old Google Scholar, watch some lectures on YouTube, and, of course, dive into Muses: An Ampersand Podcast—thanks, Dan and, mostly, Emma.)

What I really enjoyed was reading some modern articles that analyze Eve’s character through the lens of feminism which ties into the song’s exploration of blame and shame—no Wild World pun intended.

First of all, when Eve is introduced to Adam in Paradise Lost, Milton has her momentarily distracted by her own reflection in a pool of water, a subtle but significant parallel to the myth of Narcissus (hint hint). It’s an early indication of how susceptible to being misled she will be later on. But it also plays into this idea that her curiosity and desire—whether for knowledge or just, you know, herself—are somehow “dangerous.”

Now, Eve gets the blame for the Fall because she’s tempted by Satan to snack on the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Sure, she’s tricked, but let’s not pretend it’s all the serpent’s fault—once the idea is planted, it’s Eve who talks herself (and Adam) into it. That shows some sense of agency on her part, right? She wasn’t just a passive, helpless victim; she wanted to prove herself, to be tested, and she took action.

Milton is giving her a bit of credit for having a mind of her own, even if it’s wrapped up in this narrative of downfall. Eve’s curiosity and independence—qualities we might admire today—become her so-called "fatal flaws" here. So, yes, the story punishes female agency, but it’s undeniably there. And in a world where women were (and still are) often written as powerless, it’s refreshing to see Eve at least take some control, even if the outcome is a bit... unfortunate.

Now, let’s be real, this whole negative portrayal of Eve isn’t shocking. Milton was writing in a time where misogyny was baked into pretty much everything (which, sadly, isn’t all that different from now). Eve’s agency and sexuality are framed as the ultimate cautionary tale: women’s sexuality and agency are seen as inherently dangerous and something that inevitably leads to moral fallings.

But despite it all, towards the later part of Paradise Lost, Eve does get a kind of redemption arc. I came across one scholar who referred to the concept of felix culpa, a phrase in Catholic tradition meaning "happy fault" or "blessed fall." Eve might be responsible for humanity’s downfall, but her actions also set the stage for the coming of Christ, making her "mistake" a necessary part of the larger divine plan. It’s a bit of a paradox—how can something so disastrous lead to something so positive?—but the idea is that certain misfortunes can eventually lead to greater good.

Milton leans into this in Book 12, where Adam says:

"O goodness infinite, Goodness immense! That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Than that which creation first brought forth, Light out of Darkness!"

So, in a roundabout way, Eve’s fall isn’t all doom and gloom—she’s the necessary catalyst that sets God's plan into motion. In fact, scholars have started to reframe Eve’s role in Paradise Lost as something more empowering than it initially appears. Traditionally, Eve’s been seen as the ultimate cautionary tale, blamed for humanity’s fall and cast as a symbol of female weakness and danger. But if you look closely, there’s something subversive in the way she’s actually the mover of the entire plot.

Eve isn’t just sitting around passively following orders—she actively makes the decision to eat the fruit, which, yes, brings about the fall, but it’s also what triggers the eventual coming of Christ and the possibility of redemption. Without her action, we’d all be hanging out in Eden, stuck in a static, sheltered existence. In a way, this is Eve taking control of her fate, making a choice, even if it’s framed as "wrong."

Plus, while Milton definitely punishes Eve, her agency is undeniable. Adam is kind of an afterthought in the whole thing—Eve is the one who steps outside the box, embraces curiosity, and disrupts the status quo. To modern feminist readers, that kind of defiance (even if it’s punished) reflects the strength of a woman asserting her independence. Raphael even calls her "the mother of humankind," acknowledging her dual role. She is both chaos and creation—a symbol of disruption but also the source of life. So, in a way, Eve’s choice is what makes humanity... well, human.

I like how in the song, there’s also a sense of Eve having an agency and a mind of her own. The chorus highlights Eve’s struggle with the idea of being “made for” Adam—“When they say I was made for you... made from you”—and the frustration of biting her tongue, which relates to how her love for Adam intertwines with her need for independence.

That’s it for this post! I’ll be back soon with more book picks for the next track. Let me know if you’ve read these or if you have any thoughts!

Feel free to share your thoughts and any other book suggestions as well!

With love,

Cat

[adarkrainbow]

A class on fairy tales (1)

As you might know (since I have been telling it for quite some times), I had a class at university which was about fairy tales, their history and evolution. But from a literary point of view - I am doing literary studies at university, it was a class of “Literature and Human sciences”, and this year’s topic was fairy tales, or rather “contes” as we call them in France. It was twelve seances, and I decided, why not share the things I learned and noted down here? (The titles of the different parts of this post are actually from me. The original notes are just a non-stop stream, so I broke them down for an easier read)

I) Book lists

The class relied on a main corpus which consisted of the various fairytales we studied - texts published up to the “first modernity” and through which the literary genre of the fairytale established itself. In chronological order they were: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, Lo cunto de li cunti by Giambattista Basile, Le Piacevoli Notti by Giovan Francesco Straparola, the various fairytales of Charles Perrault, the fairytales of Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, and finally the Kinder-und Hausmärchen of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. There is also a minor mention for the fables of Faerno, not because they played an important historical role like the others, but due to them being used in comparison to Perrault’s fairytales ; there is also a mention of the fairytales of Leprince de Beaumont if I remember well. 

After giving us this main corpus, we were given a second bibliography containing the most famous and the most noteworthy theorical tools when it came to fairytales - the key books that served to theorize the genre itself. The teacher who did this class deliberatly gave us a “mixed list”, with works that went in completely opposite directions when it came to fairytale, to better undersant the various differences among “fairytale critics” - said differences making all the vitality of the genre of the fairytale, and of the thoughts on fairytales. Fairytales are a very complex matter. 

For example, to list the English-written works we were given, you find, in chronological order: Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment ; Jack David Zipes’ Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion ; Robert Bly’s Iron John: A Book about Men ; Marie-Louise von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales ; Lewis C. Seifert, Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France (1670-1715) ; and Cristina Bacchilega’s Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. If you know the French language, there are two books here: Jacques Barchilon’s Le conte merveilleux français de 1690 à 1790 ; and Jean-Michel Adam and Ute Heidmann’s Textualité et intertextualité des contes. We were also given quite a few German works, such as Märchenforschung und Tiefenpsychologie by Wilhelm Laiblin, Nachwort zu Deutsche Volksmärchen von arm und reich, by Waltraud Woeller ; or Märchen, Träume, Schicksale by Otto Graf Wittgenstein. And of course, the bibliography did not forget the most famous theory-tools for fairytales: Vladimir Propp’s Morfologija skazki + Poetika, Vremennik Otdela Slovesnykh Iskusstv ; as well as the famous Classification of Aarne Anti, Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther (the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification, aka the ATU). 

By compiling these works together, one will be able to identify the two main “families” that are rivals, if not enemies, in the world of the fairytale criticism. Today it is considered that, roughly, if we simplify things, there are two families of scholars who work and study the fairy tales. One family take back the thesis and the theories of folklorists - they follow the path of those who, starting in the 19th century, put forward the hypothesis that a “folklore” existed, that is to say a “poetry of the people”, an oral and popular literature. On the other side, you have those that consider that fairytales are inscribed in the history of literature, and that like other objects of literature (be it oral or written), they have intertextual relationships with other texts and other forms of stories. So they hold that fairytales are not “pure, spontaneous emanations”. (And given this is a literary class, given by a literary teacher, to literary students, the teacher did admit their bias for the “literary family” and this was the main focus of the class).

Which notably led us to a third bibliography, this time collecting works that massively changed or influenced the fairytale critics - but this time books that exclusively focused on the works of Perrault and Grimm, and here again we find the same divide folklore VS textuality and intertextuality. It is Marc Soriano’s Les contes de Perrault: culture savante et traditions populaires, it is Ernest Tonnelat’s Les Contes des frères Grimm: étude sur la composition et le style du recueil des Kinder-und-Hausmärchen ; it is Jérémie Benoit’s Les Origines mythologiques des contes de Grimm ; it is Wilhelm Solms’ Die Moral von Grimms Märchen ; it is Dominqiue Leborgne-Peyrache’s Vies et métamorphoses des contes de Grimm ; it is Jens E. Sennewald’ Das Buch, das wir sind: zur Poetik der Kinder und-Hausmärchen ; it is Heinz Rölleke’s Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm: eine Einführung. No English book this time, sorry.

II) The Germans were French, and the French Italians

The actual main topic of this class was to consider the “fairytale” in relationship to the notions of “intertextuality” and “rewrites”. Most notably there was an opening at the very end towards modern rewrites of fairytales, such as Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, “Le petit chaperon vert” (Little Green Riding Hood) or “La princesse qui n’aimait pas les princes” (The princess who didn’t like princes). But the main subject of the class was to see how the “main corpus” of classic fairytales, the Perrault, the Grimm, the Basile and Straparola fairytales, were actually entirely created out of rewrites. Each text was rewriting, or taking back, or answering previous texts - the history of fairytales is one of constant rewrite and intertextuality. 

For example, if we take the most major example, the fairytales of the brothers Grimm. What are the sources of the brothers? We could believe, like most people, that they merely collected their tale. This is what they called, especially in the last edition of their book: they claimed to have collected their tales in regions of Germany. It was the intention of the authors, it was their project, and since it was the will and desire of the author, it must be put first. When somebody does a critical edition of a text, one of the main concerns is to find the way the author intended their text to pass on to posterity. So yes, the brothers Grimm claimed that their tales came from the German countryside, and were manifestations of the German folklore. 

But... in truth, if we look at the first editions of their book, if we look at the preface of their first editions, we discover very different indications, indications which were checked and studied by several critics, such as Ernest Tomelas. In truth, one of their biggest sources was... Charles Perrault. While today the concept of the “tales of the little peasant house, told by the fireside” is the most prevalent one, in their first edition the brothers Grimm explained that their sources for these tales were not actually old peasant women, far from it: they were ladies, of a certain social standing, they were young women, born of exiled French families (because they were Protestants, and thus after the revocation of the édit de Nantes in France which allowed a peaceful coexistance of Catholics and Protestants, they had to flee to a country more welcoming of their religion, aka Germany). They were young women of the upper society, girls of the nobility, they were educated, they were quite scholarly - in fact, they worked as tutors/teachers and governess/nursemaids for German children. For children of the German nobility to be exact. And these young French women kept alive the memory of the French literature of the previous century - which included the fairytales of Perrault.

So, through these women born of the French emigration, one of the main sources of the Grimm turns out to be Perrault. And in a similar way, Perrault’s fairytales actually have roots and intertextuality with older tales, Italian fairytales. And from these Italian fairytales we can come back to roots into Antiquity itself - we are talking Apuleius, and Virgil before him, and Homer before him, this whole classical, Latin-Greek literature. This entire genealogy has been forgotten for a long time due to the enormous surge, the enormous hype, the enormous fascination for the study of folklore at the end of the 19th century and throughout all of the 20th. 

We talk of “types of fairytales”, if we talk of Vladimir Propp, if we talk of Aarne Thompson, we are speaking of the “morphology of fairytales”, a name which comes from the Russian theorician that is Propp. Most people place the beginning of the “structuralism” movement in the 70s, because it is in 1970 that the works of Propp became well-known in France, but again there is a big discrepancy between what people think and what actually is. It is true that starting with the 70s there was a massive wave, during which Germans, Italians and English scholars worked on Propp’s books, but Propp had written his studies much earlier than that, at the beginning of the 20th century. The first edition of his Morphology of fairytales was released in 1928. While it was reprinted and rewriten several times in Russia, it would have to wait for roughly fifty years before actually reaching Western Europe, where it would become the fundamental block of the “structuralist grammar”. This is quite interesting because... when France (and Western Europe as a whole) adopted structuralism, when they started to read fairytales under a morphological and structuralist angle, they had the feeling and belief, they were convinced that they were doing a “modern” criticism of fairytales, a “new” criticism. But in truth... they were just repeating old theories and conceptions, snatched away from the original socio-historical context in which Propp had created them - aka the Soviet Union and a communist regime. People often forget too quickly that contextualizing the texts isn’t only good for the studied works, we must also contextualize the works of critics and the analysis of scholars. Criticism has its own history, and so unlike the common belief, Propp’s Morphology of fairytales isn’t a text of structuralist theoricians from the 70s. It was a text of the Soviet Union, during the Interwar Period. 

So the two main questions of this class are. 1) We will do a double exploration to understand the intertextual relationships between fairytales. And 2) We will wonder about the definition of a “fairytale” (or rather of a “conte” as it is called in French) - if the fairytale is indeed a literary genre, then it must have a definition, key elements. And from this poetical point of view, other questions come forward: how does one analyze a fairytale? What does a fairytale mean?

III) Feuding families

Before going further, we will pause to return to a subject talked about above: the great debate among scholars and critics that lasted for decades now, forming the two branches of the fairytale study. One is the “folklorist” branch, the one that most people actually know without realizing it. When one works on fairytale, one does folklorism without knowing it, because we got used to the idea that fairytale are oral products, popular products, that are present everywhere on Earth, we are used to the concept of the universality of motives and structures of fairytales. In the “folklorist” school of thought, there is an universalism, and not only are fairytales present everywhere, but one can identify a common core for them. It can be a categorization of characters, it can be narrative functions, it can be roles in a story, but there is always a structure or a core. As a result, the work of critics who follow this branch is to collect the greatest number of “versions” of a same tale they can find, and compare them to find the smallest common denominator. From this, they will create or reconstruct the “core fairytale”, the “type” or the “source” from which the various variations come from.

Before jumping onto the other family, we will take a brief time to look at the history of the “folklorist branch” of the critic. (Though, to summarize the main differences, the other family of critics basically claims that we do not actually know the origin of these stories, but what we know are rather the texts of these stories, the written archives or the oral records). 

So the first family here (that is called “folklorist” for the sake of simplicity, but it is not an official or true appelation) had been extremely influenced by the works of a famous and talented scholar of the early 20th century: Aarne Antti, a scholar of Elsinki who collected a large number of fairytales and produced out of them a classification, a typology based on this theory that there is an “original fairytale type” that existed at the beginning, and from which variants appeared. His work was then continued by two other scholars: Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther. This continuation gave birth to the “Aarne-Thompson” classification, a classification and bibliography of folkloric fairytales from around the world, which is very often used in journals and articles studying fairytales. Through them, the idea of “types” of fairytales and “variants” imposed itself in people’s minds, where each tale corresponds to a numbered category, depending on the subjects treated and the ways the story unfolds (for example an entire category of tale collects the “animal-husbands”. This classification imposed itself on the Western way of thinking at the end of the first third of the 20th century.

The next step in the history of this type of fairytale study was Vladimir Propp. With his Morphology of fairytales, we find the same theory, the same principle of classification: one must collect the fairytales from all around the world, and compare them to find the common denominator. Propp thought Aarne-Thompson’s work was interesting, but he did complain about the way their criteria mixed heterogenous elements, or how the duo doubled criterias that could be unified into one. Propp noted that, by the Aarne-Thompson system, a same tale could have two different numbers - he concluded that one shouldn’t classify tales by their subject or motif. He claimed that dividing the fairytales by “types” was actually impossible, that this whole theory was more of a fiction than an actual reality. So, he proposed an alternate way of doing things, by not relying on the motifs of fairytales: Propp rather relied on their structure. Propp doesn’t deny the existence of fairytales, he doesn’t put in question the categorization of fairytales, or the universality of fairytales, on all that he joins Aarne-Thompson. But what he does is change the typology, basing it on “functions”: for him, the constituve parts of fairytales are “functions”, which exist in limited numbers and follow each other per determined orders (even if they are not all “activated”). He identified 31 functions, that can be grouped into three groups forming the canonical schema of the fairytale according to Propp. These three groups are an initial situation with seven functions, followed by a first sequence going from the misdeed (a bad action, a misfortune, a lack) to its reparation, and finally there is a second sequence which goes from the return of the hero to its reward. From these seven “preparatory functions”, forming the initial situation, Propp identified seven character profiles, defined by their functions in the narrative and not by their unique characteristics. These seven profiles are the Aggressor (the villain), the Donor (or provider), the Auxiliary (or adjuvant), the Princess, the Princess’ Father, the Mandator, the Hero, and the False Hero. This system will be taken back and turned into a system by Greimas, with the notion of “actants”: Greimas will create three divisions, between the subject and the object, between the giver and the gifted, and between the adjuvant and the opposant.

With his work, Vladimir Propp had identified the “structure of the tale”, according to his own work, hence the name of the movement that Propp inspired: structuralism. A structure and a morphology - but Propp did mention in his texts that said morphology could only be applied to fairytales taken from the folklore (that is to say, fairytales collected through oral means), and did not work at all for literary fairytales (such as those of Perrault). And indeed, while this method of study is interesting for folkloric fairytales, it becomes disappointing with literary fairytales - and it works even less for novels. Because, trying to find the smallest denominator between works is actually the opposite of literary criticism, where what is interesting is the difference between various authors. It is interesting to note what is common, indeed, but it is even more interesting to note the singularities and differences. Anyway, the apparition of the structuralist study of fairytales caused a true schism among the field of literary critics, between those that believe all tales must be treated on a same way, with the same tools (such as those of Propp), and those that are not satisfied with this “universalisation” that places everything on the same level. 

This second branch is the second family we will be talking about: those that are more interested by the singularity of each tale, than by their common denominators and shared structures. This second branch of analysis is mostly illustrated today by the works of Ute Heidmann, a German/Swiss researcher who published alongside Jean Michel Adam (a specialist of linguistic, stylistic and speech-analysis) a fundamental work in French: Textualité et intertextualité des contes: Perrault, Apulée, La Fontaine, Lhéritier... (Textuality and intertextuality of fairytales). A lot of this class was inspired by Heidmann and Adam’s work, which was released in 2010. Now, this book is actually surrounded by various articles posted before and after, and Ute Heidmann also directed a collective about the intertextuality of the brothers Grimm fairytales. Heidmann did not invent on her own the theories of textuality and intertextuality - she relies on older researches, such as those of the Ernest Tonnelat, who in 1912 published a study of the brothers Grimm fairytales focusing on the first edition of their book and its preface. This was where the Grimm named the sources of their fairytales: girls of the upper class, not at all small peasants, descendants of the protestant (huguenots) noblemen of France who fled to Germany. Tonnelat managed to reconstruct, through these sources, the various element that the Grimm took from Perrault’s fairytales. This work actually weakened the folklorist school of thought, because for the “folklorist critics”, when a similarity is noted between two fairytales, it is a proof of “an universal fairytale type”, an original fairytale that must be reconstructed. But what Tonnelat and other “intertextuality critics” pushed forward was rather the idea that “If the story of the Grimm is similar but not identical to the one of Perrault, it is because they heard a modified version of Perrault’s tale, a version modified either by the Grimms or by the woman that told them the tale, who tried to make the story more or less horrible depending on the situation”. This all fragilized the idea of an “original, source-fairytale”, and encouraged other researchers to dig this way.

For example, the case was taken up by Heinz Rölleke, in 1985: he systematized the study of the sources of the Grimm, especially the sources that tied them to the fairytales of Perrault. Now, all the works of this branch of critics does not try to deny or reject the existence of fairytales all over the world. And it does not forget that all over the world, human people are similar and have the same preoccupations (life, love, death, war, peace). So, of course, there is an universality of the themes, of the motives, of the intentions of the texts. Because they are human texts, so there is an universality of human fiction. But there is here the rejection of a topic, a theory, a question that can actually become VERY dangerous. (For example, in post World War II Germany, all researches about fairytales were forbidden, because during their reign the Nazis had turned the fairytales the Grimm into an abject ideological tool). This other family, vein, branch of critics, rather focuses on the specificity of each writing style, of each rewrite of a fairytale, but also on the various receptions and interpretations of fairytales depending on the context of their writing and the context of their reading. So the idea behind this “intertextuality study” is to study the fairytales like the rest of literature, be it oral or written, and to analyze them with the same philological tools used by history studies, by sociology study, by speech analysis and narrative analysis - all of that to understand what were the conditions of creation, of publication, of reading and spreading of these tales, and how they impacted culture.

[eresia-catara]

girlartemisia can I be completely honest with you for a second there. I am BAFFLED at how much you, among others like girlcavalcanti know about guido. where do you get all this info? what are the sources? you have the knowledge of 30 scholars in a trenchcoat. also the "guido has red hair" thing is so elaborate, and yet you say it's NOT YOUR FIELD? miss girl. you. you know more than my father who is an art history teacher. they should give you a degree "ad honorem" for how much you know. they should make you guido scholar. official historian!! I can't hide how envious i am of your knowledge! when I grow up i want to be as smart and cultured as you girlartemisia

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

I am not deeply moved and have become a puddle of happy feelings rn haha what are you talking about ahsjdhskf

I do not deserve this T^T I genuinely don't know what to say to these kind words,,, thank you a lot??? I mean, I post stuff on tumblr simply because I like sharing these thoughts, the fact that they actually have a positive impact on an actual person is like- I am not good with expressing feelings but it's truly one of the most touching things anyone could've told me!! 💞💕💓💕

And I know it sounds like a cheap sentence everyone uses but. really, rest assured that if you are passionate and mostly curious about things, about anything, there is nothing your mind cannot achieve. It's not about the smarts mostly (that can only eventually be a predisposition to complex thinking, however Elon Musk does exist so) but about how much you are willing to wander with the mind and simply fuck around with things. Be creative. One thing society makes you believe is that being cultured = being "smart" and that it is thus only for the privileged few, but it's not true, culture is curiosity that is indulged. The only privilege involved here is not reaching the age of 15 being braindead because of this society (but even in that case, one can always change). My posts about guido? Yes they come from different books and papers that I read, but on top of that? unorthodox hypotheses and Thots that instead of discarding I like to explore (reason why I cannot claim attendability on my takes because a specialist would probably correct so many things and I do NOT have a degree, but they are interesting nonetheless! And have at times come in handy to me in unrelated topics lol)! What I mean is: these literary analyses are a fusion of academic papers AND personal thoughts that try to be compatible with them but also depend on the creativity of the mind.

That being said, I would LOVE to be a guido scholar!!! one day 👁️ And since you're not the first who's curious about sources on guido I will, eventually, make a post with all my books and papers :p

[intermundia]

heyy i was wondering if you have an opinion on the role the jedi order plays in the republic? on a political level I mean :D

so, my thoughts on the jedi order are largely shaped by george lucas, and that means my answer to this question may not be as politically nuanced as you may hope (aka the political things i write about in my fanfics are genre-bent reinterpretations of the core lore of the saga). the nature of the jedi's participation in politics is pretty simple, in the way that myths are simple.

it would probably be easier for me to share and explain some of my notes i took while reading the sw prequels archives and comment of them. i transcribed a lot of the book in the process of trying to understand it, so the following are quotes from george unless otherwise noted. this is the book i mean:

oh sw archives my beloved. anyway.

first, and most importantly, the jedi are not a real political organization that exists in the world, but rather their design is to further george's narrative. he is not writing a political thriller, but rather an emotional and philosophical one. they're more like symbols for moral quandaries than a real organization.

the jedi are space wizards, and also the most moral agents possible. this is not realism, but rather they are agents in a spiritual morality play, where they are an explicitly defined white-hat good guys, who are in combat with black-hat selfish bad guys. he's telling a mythic story, so you have to reframe the jedi out of history and into myth.

he wants to tell a story about how it is not enough to rule by fear. fear is not a sufficient mechanism to keep society civil. you need something else, something 'supernatural' in his words in order to encourage mutual flourishing, some way to overcome our tribal limitations and fears and live in a unified and diverse world.

the jedi are his idea of how to show that force of compassion in a narrative, the idea of people with power motivated by the right reasons, working for the good of everyone. the jedi are the embodiment of the archetype of the true public servant, the ones we want to have ruling over us. this is not a class of people that actually exist in reality, but also nobody here has space magic either.

so his design is that the jedi order are warrior-monks who keep the peace, ambassadors more than cops, the most moral people in the galaxy, because they are monks.

they've chosen to serve, and been given both duty and oversight from the galactic senate. they do not create the world order, but they do their best to encourage peace and civilization whenever and wherever they can. there aren't that many of them, but they are extremely powerful people, who are by narrative design the most moral people in the galaxy (just.. not anakin at the end there).

ultimately, they exist to be trapped into a bind, the morality of always doing the right thing vs the morality of always seeking the best outcome. there is no clean answer to that, it's a perennial tension in the history of philosophy, so the jedi are emblematic of that, you know? in the end, they're literary figures more than real world political ones, and exist so that we can interrogate our own values.

i realize this is a take that might be unpopular with segments of the fanbase who really enjoy analyzing star wars through the lens of realpolitik and making it gritty and adult and complex. my answer is that star wars is heartbreakingly simple. they're an embodiment of our better natures, locked in a fight against our worst. the politics stuff is all pretty superficial storytelling on top of that.

[m34gs]

You asked me this a long while ago, so now I am returning the favour: What are your favourite parts of our Sort of Saw Franchise AU?

Aw, thank you for the ask friend! I'm so very excited to answer!!!!!! There's so much I love about this au, and I definitely have parts that I consistently think about and rotate in my mind. Here's my list:

The way our fics fit together:

I absolutely love the way we are writing this AU. Your fics centered on Yuu being absolutely oblivious to their friends all being murderers, and then my fics focusing on the murder itself; it's a really fun contrast. I love how we are pairing the fics by dorm, and I am so excited for what you plan to write now that you've made your way through each dorm interacting with Yuu! (I also cannot wait to also write all my dorm murder fics, and then get started on some of the other things we have planned for this!) I just find the way our fics fit together, especially when I can pull in references and tie my fic directly into yours, so satisfying. It makes me so happy. Like a perfect baton hand-off in a relay.

I get to write the murders!

I get to focus on writing complex and creative and symbolic murders unabashedly for this au, and I love it! I've been watching Saw for years; since I was a teen! I have analyzed and reviewed every single trap in the movies between mouthfuls of popcorn and/or brownies while sitting on the couch with my childhood bestie. I have thought through which ones would be actually escapable and what to do in each situation. Now, I get to view it through a different lens and imagine characters creating traps rather than just escaping them. It's like giving me free reign to design the deadliest escape rooms ever 👀👀💜💜 As much as I have talked about the amount of actual research and planning that goes into my companion fics for yours, I do love the process of coming up with an idea for a trap and working it into a narrative. Also, I play the Saw End theme from the various movies on repeat while I write the trap part, which makes me so happy because that music fucking slaps!

I get to mirror the way Saw is filmed with how I write:

Basically, what I mean when I say this, is the reveals for traps, for reasons behind trapping victims, as well as the history and traps the housewardens went through themselves. Flashbacks. Dramatic reveals. Victims starting off in a trap not knowing what is going on and immediately having the sympathy of the audience only to have that stripped away as theirsins are laid bare; and to have that same sympathy added to the ones running your trap when it's revealed what they went through. I live for it. It's such a fun way to play with characters and development. And, I love using techniques to contrast or parallel the current victims with the housewarden trapping them. It's so fun! I love playing in the literary sandbox like this!!!

Exploring the trauma of being a Trap survivor:

I am excited to be delving more and more into the Housewardens' backstories with the traps and John! It's about that sweet, sweet character development! Mwahahahahaha!

Sending and Receiving asks on the AU:

Anytime I send you a Saw AU ask and get your response I am thrilled. Anytime I see an ask related to Saw AU in my inbox I am over the moon. I love talking about it so much! It's just so fun and there's so many wonderful pieces to consider. Also, it gives me a lot of fuel and inspiration on how to write the scenes I want in my companion fics! It's just so fun!

Most of all, my absolute favourite part of this AU is that we created it together and continue to work on it and talk about it together! I just love having this series that we've created; it's so special to me. Special place in my heart!!

Thanks again for the ask, friend!

[highpriestofptah]

General Huy Headcanons

Some Prince of Egypt head canons for my favourite sillyguy magical man informed by historical and literary accounts of Ancient Egyptian culture, the Tanakh, and apocrypha.

Huy's name is for the girls—and the boys. It’s unisex!

Hui or Huy was an ancient Egyptian name, frequently a nickname for Amenhotep. Famous bearers include: Huy, priestess during the Eighteenth dynasty, mother-in-law of Thutmose III; Huy, High Priest of Ptah during the reign of Ramesses II; Huy, viceroy of Kush during the reign of Ramesses II. [source]

Huy was actually a high priest of Ptah.

Huy was a High Priest of Ptah during the reign of Ramesses II. Huy is known from two shabtis (now in the Louvre) dedicated at an Apis burial in the Serapeum of Saqqara. The Apis burials are dated to years 16 and 30.[1] Huy may have served as High priest of Ptah from approximately year 2 to year 20 of the reign of Ramesses II. Huy was succeeded by Pahemnetjer. In pop culture, One of the advisors to Pharaoh in The Prince of Egypt (1998) is named Huy. [source]

Huy is based on the actual Egyptian magician in the Book of Exodus/Shmot who is named Jambres.

Jannes and Jambres, two legendary Egyptian sorcerers whose names appear in various sources as the adversaries of Moses. Jewish tradition seems to identify them with the sorcerers mentioned in Exodus 7:11... The names also appear in pagan Greek and Roman literature. Both Pliny (Natural History, 30:11) and Apuleius (Apologia, 90) mention the name of Jannes only, the former including him in a list of Jewish sorcerers the first of whom is Moses, while the latter names him immediately after Moses in a list of famous magicians. Both Jannes and Jambres… are mentioned and discussed in detail by Numenius, the neo-Pythagorean philosopher (quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:8; cf. Origines, Contra Celsum, 4:51). They are described as Egyptian priests who excelled in wizardry at the period of the "expulsion" of the Jews from Egypt and as having been considered by the Egyptians capable of rescuing their country from the disasters brought upon it by Musaeus (Moses). [source]

Huy was full-time as opposed to part-time since he was the high priest.

With the exception of the high priest, most priests worked only part-time.  The priesthood was divided into "hours" and served only one month out of every four. The rest of the time, they lived their normal lives in society, often working as mid-level bureaucrats. [source]

He lived in the temple complex.

During their religious service, priests lived within the complex of the temples of their deity. [source]

His beard is an accessory! He shaves completely every 3 days, but he can still wear hair as a fashion choice. Slay!

Oddly, though, they also retained a fascination for facial hair, or at least the appearance of having some. The Egyptians took shorn hair and sheep's wool and fashioned them into wigs and fake beards — which, even more oddly, were sometimes worn by Egyptian queens as well as kings [source: Dunn]. The fake beards had various shapes, to indicate the dignity and social position of their wearer. Ordinary citizens wore small fake beards about 2 inches (5 centimeters) long, while kings wore their phony whiskers to extravagant lengths and had them trimmed to be square at the end. [source]

His shoes were woven and made of papyrus.

Footwear was the same for both sexes. It consisted of coiled sewn sandals of leatherwork, or for the priestly class, papyrus. Since Egyptians were usually barefoot, sandals were worn on special occasions or at times when their feet might get hurt. [source]

Huy has his own apocryphon that was said to have been written by one of Pharaoh’s officials. Surviving fragments of this apocryphon tells of the adventures of him and his brother. He survives all the plagues, runs away with the Hebrews during the red sea adventure, and converts to Judaism. He has a sad backstory because he has to bury his mother and brother.

Jannes names Jambres as his successor and entrusts him with a secret document. He warns him not to accompany the Egyptian army when it marches against the Hebrews… The Egyptian army is drowned in the Red Sea while pursuing the Hebrews, but Jambres stayed away. Jannes's condition worsens and the family returns to their estate. [source]

All info in block quotes belongs to each respective linked source. A proper references page is on the way.

[petruchio]

the albatross by taylor swift always makes me think of katniss and thg. probably the bird symbolism or something. thoughts?

ok short digression before i get into the thg part of this ask but i honestly get so annoyed at that song bc i think ts is trying to sound literary and interesting and reference the rime of the ancient mariner but the albatross metaphor doesn't work for me bc 1) it doesn't work with what the albatross represents in that poem and 2) i think she could've committed way harder to referencing the poem if that's what she wanted to do (and could have made a really cool song) (but she didn't) (her wordsworth references were better on folklore -- i still do believe she read lyrical ballads and got inspired by a lot of the imagery in those poems but the wordsworth stuff in lyrical ballads is mostly made up of shorter poems and the imagery lent itself well to songs. but rime of the ancient mariner is ... a much more complex (?) poem) (i guess complex isn't exactly the right word, bc of course short pieces can be endlessly complex, but it's just a lot longer and has a lot more going on in it than most of the shorter wordsworth poems in that collection. and i don't think taylor really, like, got it.)

basically it annoys me for the same reason tolerate it annoys me. like it's bad literary analysis. the albatross isn't "here to destroy" in the poem -- it just doesn't work with the metaphor she's trying to write in that song. imo there's no good reason to try to reference coleridge if you're just going to string together a bunch of mixed metaphors that don't make any sense. she tries to make this reference to like, shooting the messenger but that is not why he shoots the albatross... like what is she talking about?? if you're going to reference a metaphor with a long storied history in poetry then i think you should actually make an effort to understand the reference you're making

the most annoying thing is that i actually think there COULD be a really cool song referencing the poem and the albatross and referring to herself as the bird. like "you killed me, but it ruined your life, i'll hang around your neck forever and you'll never be able to go anywhere without telling the story of what you did to me" THAT WOULD BE COOL. UGH. i hate that song so i kind of refuse to listen to it bc i just get annoyed. the shakespeare reference also pisses me off for making no sense. "a rose by any other name is a scandal" what the actual CRAP is she talking about. its so annoying

ANYWAY you did actually ask me about thg so i will say, disregarding all of my english major beefs with that song, i actually think it works really well with tbosas bc it gives me majorrrrr lucy gray vibes.

like: "a rose by any other name is a scandal" is very snow giving the rose to lucy gray to me, and then the "one less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen" line really goes well with the tbosas ending. and then i think the bridge would be kind of, lucy gray's warning to snow about the events of thg: "and when the sky rains fire on you and you're persona non grata, i'll tell you i've been there too, and that none of it matters" -- and then i think the final reference to the albatross would work as a katniss reference, like the outro is lucy gray haunting him and saying here she is (she being the mockingjay (albatross) and she's here, she's finishing what i started.) so for me it is in my tbosas playlist (except it's not bc i hate the song)

ALSOOOOO just to connect it to what i was saying earlier but of course rime of the ancient mariner is the first poem in lyrical ballads. and you know what other poem appears in lyrical ballads? well that would be... LUCY GRAY. i rest my case 😎

[theweeklydiscourse]

“But Alina never wanted power, all she wanted was a simple life.”

Ladies and Gentlemen… I present to you the most idiotic and shameful rebuttal to criticism of the Grisha Trilogy/Shadow and Bone ending! Bare witness to the worst counter-argument in YA literary history and watch on as history is made!

This particular argument never ceases to make me unreasonably angry. This rebuttal, Is used often in response to the common complaint that Alina Starkov’s ending in Ruin and Rising was both sexist and dissatisfying conclusion to her character arc. The notion that the Grisha trilogy ending was flaming garbage is one that even people outside of the fandom are aware of. So, I can only imagine that the people making this argument feel rebellious for deviating from the common opinion that the ending was terrible.

There are a few reasons why the statement above is an insufferable response to criticism of the trilogy. Firstly, it is an extremely shallow statement that reveals a surface-level reading of the messages and themes in the text. It is wholly uncritical of the narrative inconsistencies present in the text and chooses to comment on the ending in a way that is devoid of context and refuse to delve any deeper into the actual meaning of the text.

Secondly, when the R&R book came out, whether people could articulate it or not, they knew that something was wrong. Even if they didn’t know the literary terminology to describe the problems in Alina’s arc, they could still understand that the ending was a cop out and didn’t deliver satisfaction to the readers. This response to those criticisms seems to suggest that these critics were simply “reading the text wrong” and that they just didn’t get the TRUE complexity and value of the series. It’s an argument preferred by people with limited literary understanding to gain a false sense of superiority for the most BASIC, SHALLOW AND SURFACE LEVEL interpretations of the trilogy.

Lastly, it demonstrates a lack of understanding regarding the logical narrative progression of Alina’s character arc. To argue that Alina never wanted power and that is why her powers being stripped away is a suitable is one that ignores a key fact about Alina herself: she IS her powers. Alina’s powers were not a holy sword or weapon that was forced upon her but were an intrinsic and long repressed aspect of her identity. For Alina to reject her powers is to reject her full self. This idea is fairly consistent up until the third book when it is called into doubt by Baghra’s nonsensical warnings and criticism.

Sometimes the writing is just bad and sometimes that is something a lot of readers will recognize.

[gunshou]

You need to understand that not everything is specifically about you. I was likely bullied more in school for being fat than you were for your nose specifically because youre Jewish. Unless you live in some other country than I do that really hates jews.

Idk what your problem is but being made fun of for your nose a couple of times does not mean the whole world is out to get you. Like I said. I'm over 30 and I had never even heard of this stuff until recently. And it's all over some stupid ass video game or fictional book. And I don't even like Harry Potter books because it's boring as fuck I can't even make it through the movies without cringing a quarter the way through and getting bored.

BUT I have played dnd and roleplay tabletop games for most of my life and not once have I heard anything about goblins being some Jewish hate type thing. Even if they started out as that the thing is that no one fucking knows or cares about it anymore. No one besides people looking for problems has ever made a connection between goblins and jews.

That's the problem here.

It's people looking for problems when there isn't even any. Especially with other mythological beings where jews had zero influence on their appearance or behavior. Which is what the submission was about BTW.

Everytime I hear something or other about Jewish people or big noses it's always about some work of fiction that either has no correlation to jews or people who just want a reason to hate something and feel morally rightious about it go and look for any reason they can to say its whatever *bad thing*.

And ofc YOU as a jew might know about it and the people who did bully you probably looked specifically for something to hurt you for and not because they were taught it. But MOST people don't give two rat asses about it and are TIRED of hearing people with nothing better to do, complaining about some fictional character have a big nose so it's apparently nazi propaganda. It's fucking stupid. It's tiring and I'm sick of having people (in general) telling me I can't enjoy shit because of some dumb fucking reason that no one even knows or cares about anyway, and most certainly don't care even if they DID know about it, because most people have enough brain cells to understand that they can still enjoy things like goblins without supporting their past (or even present) meanings.

And if say that I made something specifically like that (I wouldn't) but didn't say it's about hating *xyz* and a bunch of people loved it. People would still be allowed to enjoy that thing and are capable of separating it from it's hidden meaning if they ever found out. I mean that's what most of the Harry Potter Fandom did with jkr and her books. They separated the art from the artist. And anything that's bad is just coincidentally that way and doesn't actually mean those things at all.

It's not fucking impossible. Cast aside your victim complex and touch grass. You'll be a lot happier when you stop thinking every little thing is some slight against you.

Well, I'm fat too, so there you go.

It's not about me, and I'm not the one taking this personally. You can like what you like, literally no one is stopping you. But the fact that you're a grown adult who doesn't know basic world history isn't the flex you think it is. You really came into my house here to yell at me that because *you* never personally heard of something in your vast experience playing DnD then hundreds of literary analysts must be wrong. That because you never heard of something it doesn't really exist and people who do know about it are just being stupid. That your weariness at being told a fact is somehow more burdensome than actual antisemitism and so you don't want to hear it anymore. I don't think I'm the one who needs to touch grass and maybe broaden my experiences.

Absolutely people can separate art from artist and like problematic things. I do that all the time. Go enjoy your goblins and have fun! I don't know where you picked up the idea that I feel persecuted by fiction, but I didn't write the original submission - I don't even know what it said.

Go be free, gobbo. Enjoy your day! May you be unbothered and blissful.

[psalm22-6]

Source: the Bay Area Reporter, 9 November 1989

Not often do grossly over hyped pieces of theatre live up to the expectations they engender. Les Miserables, the spectacle of this decade’s dramatic spectacles, is a fabulous exception. As seamless a production as ever has been mounted, the musical works like a battalion of well-oiled clocks as it justly earns a place in stage history.

The element that most recommends Les Miserables is its respect for its source. Victor Hugo’s mammoth 1,000-plus page novel is rendered faithfully in content and tone. One might expect a work of such literary complexity and size to become somehow diminished or trivialized when adapted for the stage. Novels often do not transfer easily to visual media. With Les Miserables, the main question before writers Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg was how to convey adequately the politics, philosophy and view of humanity in Hugo’s novel.

Drama Before Technology

The creators of Les Miserables came up with the answer: practical and simple staging, executed with a precision to make NASA weep. Yet as large, expensive, and grand a set as it utilizes, Les Miserables does not favor high technology over basic dramatic tension. The tricks Les Miz pulls out of its hat are big, but, actually, they are not new. They are just done better (and with bigger budget to support them) than any previous. And for all the pyrotechnics, this is still very much an actor’s piece.

 The basic unit of the set is an almost perpetually moving turntable, built-in and flush with the stage floor. On this symbolic wheel of life revolve the fates of Hugo’s characters. [. . .] Played out against the citizen and student riots of 1832 Paris, Les Miserables is an eloquent appeal for freedom of expression, civil rights and commitment to the cause of justice.

Wringing Grandeur

There are many who shed tears over the wringing grandeur of Claude-Michel Schonberg’s score, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. The original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean Marc Natel holds up well in translation, although for the die hard Les Miz-ophile I suggest the original French cast recording. Somehow the soundtrack in its native language raises goose bumps that the Anglo version does not. However, potent though it may be, Les Miserables is not so much a tear-jerker as it is a heartstopper. The musical is constant assault on the senses, especially the ears and eyes. If it causes some to whip out the hankies, so be it. But, ultimately, that will not be Les Miserables’ lasting gift.

A Lesson in Stagecraft

Les Miz is an object lesson in efficient stagecraft. Aside from the aforementioned turntable (a device as old as the Greeks), the only major set pieces are two levered wagons which come together at the end of Act I to form a barricade for the student revolutionaries. Before this, they hinge and rotate to form a Paris backdrop, a balcony, a street scene. 

John Napier’s design is actually very mundane, refreshingly so, in fact. The set, along with David Hersey’s exquisitely designed and produced lighting, precisely establishes mood, place and tone. We are overwhelmed not by the magnitude of the set, props, costumes and effects. Rather, we are appropriately impressed with how well, and simply, they are used. There’s no denying that Les Miserables is an event. The production deserves to be, but it’s too bad people cannot discover it without first being bombarded by the soundtrack, the TV commercials, and the ubiguitous [sic] red, white and blue urchin posters. In an era of empty-headed epics such as Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Starlight Express and Chess, it’s encouraging to see a musical with a soul almost as big as its budget, and one not entirely overshadowed by it. No matter how many times the stage turns round, or how dense the onstage smoke, a beautifully sung “to love another person is to see the face of God” never loses its power to move. Les Miserables Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St. Tues-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sat matinees, 2 p.m.; Sun matinees, 3 p.m. $16-$50 243-9001

[mask131]

So as am I randomly listening love-letters videos about The Stormlight Archives, and The Wheel of Time, and other massive, enormous, expansive fantasy series - it leads me to think of the immense love those dense, bible-sized fantasy series get.

And it kind of amuses me because... I am a student of literature. Being French, I have a special focus on French literature, and I don’t know if this was a French specificity only or if a similar event happened in other countries - but in France we had an era during the Renaissance that was all about the “river-novels”. The best-sellers and the enormous literary successes of the time were actually long and vast stories told through several big volumes released over long period of times, with one main story yes, but also tons of side-stories that kept inter-crossing and interfering with the main ones, and random political, geographical and social lessons regularly thrown into the books to expand the world the main story took place in (as most were “historical novel” taking place in a distant and not-well known past, like the “barbarian kingdoms” after the fall of Rome). These were the “river-novels” (roman fleuve in France), because their stories just kept flowing and flowing, and you had to navigate through all that.

It was THE main literary fashion and model of a certain era. It was right before French literature discovered/invented things such as short stories, fairytales and other simpler narratives - which then sparked a second fashion that rejected “river novels” in favour of short novels and simple stories. The “river-novel” fashion had a brief revival at the time of the “One Hundred and One Nights”, which kind of re-shaped the genre by adding to it the brand new fairytale angle, and it created a real craze - but by a century later or so, the “river novels” which has been heralded at the time of their writing as the peak of French literature were now mocked for being over-bloated, extravagant, undigestible, overtly complex and flowery mazes of poor literature - and this led to them falling into obscurity for quite some times.

They are only being reconsidered today due to a more in-depths study of Renaissance French literature - but my point is that it is fascinating to see how the mass worship of enormous and gigantic epic fantasy series spanning over lots of big books and creating an extremely rich and dense world filled with convoluted plots... is actually eerily similar to the same obsession and fashion that had developed itself around those “river-novels” in Renaissance France. It is so fascinating to see history repeat itself.

(If you want more info on river-novels, you can go search for info about  L’Astrée, by Honoré d’Urfé, the most famous roman-fleuve of French literature, or “Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus” by the Scudéry siblings, considered the longest French novel to have ever been published)

[thereviewstudio]

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling

Image taken from Sunlit Pages

Rating: 5 / 5

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is an excellent continuation of J.K. Rowling's magical world and an all-time personal favourite of mine. The novel manages to capture the essence of pure adventure and wonder that made the first book so successful. This instalment within the series took me on an exhilarating journey filled with danger, mystery, and character growth.

One of the standout aspects of this book is Rowling's ability to expand on the universe she created in the first story. I delved deeper into the mythology and history of the wizarding world, learning about the Chamber of Secrets and the legend of the Heir of Slytherin. This world-building is both intricate and rich, adding multiple layers of complexity to the story and making it even more immersive. Rowling's vivid descriptions of locations like the Burrow, Diagon Alley, and the Hogwarts Castle made me feel as though I was actually there, experiencing the magic alongside the Golden Trio.

The characters continue to shine through in this book. Harry, Ron, and Hermione's friendship deepened as they face new challenges. It is heartwarming to see their unwavering loyalty, and their support is one of the driving forces behind the series. As well as this, new characters such as Gilderoy Lockhart and Dobby the House-elf bring intrigue and humour to the story.

The plot of "Chamber of Secrets" is tightly woven with a compelling mystery at its core. The question of who, or most likely what is responsible for the attacks on Muggle-born students kept me engaged and guessing until the very end. Rowling's ability to craft intricate plots with unexpected twists is on full display.

Furthermore, this book explores important themes like the danger of believing stereotypes and prejudice. The notion of "Muggle-borne" being impure is reminiscent of real-world discrimination, and it serves as a powerful allegory for the consequences of intolerance and hatred.

It is worth mentioning, however, that I did find the pacing slower in the middle of the book when compared to the high-adrenaline moments of the beginning and end. Nevertheless, the slower pace did allow for needed character development and the exploration of essential themes.

To conclude, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is a literary gem that successfully builds upon the foundation laid in the first novel, offering a deeper dive into the characters, magical world, and thrilling mystery. While it may have a few minor pacing issues, its themes of bravery, friendship, and the battle against prejudice make it a timeless and thought-provoking read. This installment solidifies the series as a classic in the world of literature.