#esp in text

[ottosbigtop]

I think we as a society should bring back brotps. I think we should be weirder about characters being friends the same way people are weird about ships. Make those two characters who interacted once or twice besties. Make it difficult for them to get rid of each other even if they want to. Go nuts

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[arcanegifs]

me, after seeing emo vi in her s2 teaser

[toytle]

merry halbarry to those who celebrate, santa got me their gay little sits + footsie playing activities this year ❤️💚

[spookyjarchivist]

i understand where you’re coming from, but you’re misunderstanding me a bit, this isn’t actually an in-universe perspective, this is a literary perspective, i was analyzing this from a thematic and narrative standpoint, in which case yes they do in fact age like humans bc that’s part of tolkien’s themes and narratives about war, regardless of the theoretical science

however, you do bring up an interesting point on that in-universe note and i think that’s an interesting path to pursue for fandom purposes

the thing is… they’re still human?

hobbits are stated in canon to be humans, they are simply an evolutionary offshoot of men, so it’s reasonable to assume from an in-universe perspective that they age the same and we have no in-canon evidence that they are magical in anyway despite rampant fanon (that i love, no shame)

tolkien was not a historian or archaeologist, he was philologist, and it shows bc there are major inaccuracies in his work about a lot of things historically, even if you include the fantasy aspect

the shire is an idealized (tho imperfect) representation of home, comfort, and plenty, and the hobbits are (to an extent) stand-ins for the everyman, while yes this is more literary in nature, what it DOES mean in-universe is that he either directly states or implies that all the necessary things for a happy healthy life are things the shire has in abundance, we have proof in canon and/or extended canon for easy access to food, shelter, and healthcare AND they all get regular sun and are implied to have some form of regular exercise whether through work or walking holidays or gardening of some sort, plus a vibrant community they regularly interact with, all of which are key characteristics of areas on our real earth where people DO regularly live to around and past 100 (there are about seven well known areas, iirc i think okinawa is one?), in fact when you read descriptions of those hotspots? they sound alarmingly like the shire (the one in europe and the one in south america especially), like basically everything that’s not a culturally exclusive or geographical thing sounds like a description of the shire

aside from the long-life hotspots, scientists have also have recently estimated that the longest a human could theoretically live in absolute perfect conditions with no health problems like illness or hereditary diseases and the like is about 150, which is over when bilbo sailed into the west at 131 and he is canonically the longest lived hobbit, considering hobbits are in about as ideal a setting as you can get (bilbo even more so by living in rivendell at the end with literally the best healer in middle earth) then i think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that they work the same on an in-universe level to us, particularly since tolkien wasn’t an expert on any of this and was just pulling anything that wasn’t linguistics-based or straight from the works he studied mostly out of his ass

while i do have a soft spot for “hobbits age slower than humans so 33 for them is our physical 18” i rlly dont think that’s how it is bc they get to about the same age as humans before death by old age, i also really dont think we appreciate enough a few things about what this means narratively and thematically

tolkien really said no child soldiers, no 20-something year old soldiers, they’re not really adults yet, they barely know anything of the world we’re sending them to die for it and that’s not okay, not when there are other options

he also addresses this with the hobbits specifically, frodo and bilbo are 50 when they go on their journeys, FIFTY, and we can see that they handle them differently than the others. while bilbo changes afterwards, it’s not in a coming of age like we would see if 50 really was the equivalent of ~27, he just accepts a part of himself he’s been suppressing for years, for him it’s accepting that getting older and being an adult doesn’t restrict you from the excitement and opportunities of youth. similarly frodo doesn’t change much either outside of his ptsd, all of his change is trauma, not maturity

now sam and merry are both past the age of majority, but they still grow into themselves in a way bilbo and frodo do not, they mature

but pippin, sweet beautiful pippin grows the most out of all of them. he’s the most childish, always running after his cousins and you can tell he’s not even 30, this is HIS coming of age story, before this journey he’s known nothing of true responsibilities, but by the end he’s ready for when he eventually has to take over as thain of the shire

and i think that this is a really beautiful way of saying something that has started to get really popular in the last few years

instead of being terrified of that big 30, we should be excited for it, we should embrace it wholeheartedly, because it’s the time when we’ve finally started ironing out the last of the kinks in being an adult, we’re growing into our responsibilities and and we can start learning how to cultivate that balance of responsibility and excitement and FUN that makes life living instead of surviving

[numbuh424]

The unstoppable, mighty hurricane and the immovable, cold, hard truth.

[toonaviv]

jumpscare grip

[bernard-the-rabbit]

Il me semble que je vais fusiller une fleur.

[hannibard]

(X)

[monkesupreme]

Maybe i SHOULD draft out my ‘Clark is a SuperPlant’ propaganda post

[metanarrates]

Hello. Sorry if this a stupid question u can ignore if u want.

How can someone get better at media analysis? Besides obviously reading a lot.

Im asking this bc im in a point where im aware of my own lack of tools to analyze stories, but i don't know where to get them or how to get better in general. How did you learn to analyze media? There's any specific book, essay, author, etc that you recommend? Somewhere to start?

I'm asking you because you are genuinely the person who has the best takes on this site. Thank you for you work!

it sounds like a cop-out answer but it's always felt like a skill I acquired mostly thru reading a ton, and by paying a lot of attention in high school literature classes. because of that I can't promise that I'm necessarily equipped to be a good teacher or that i know good resources. HOWEVER! let me run some potential advice to you based on the shit i get a lot of mileage out of

first off, a lot of literary analysis is about pattern recognition! not just pattern recognition in-text, but out-of-text as well. how does this work relate to its genre? real-world history? does it have parallels between real-life situations? that kind of thing.

which is a big concept to just describe off the bat, so let me break it down further!

in literature, there is the concept of something called literary devices - they are some of the basic building blocks in how a story is delivered mechanically and via subtext. have you ever heard of a motif? that is a literary device. it's a pattern established in the text in order to further the storytelling! and here is a list of a ton of common literary devices - I'd recommend reading the article. it breaks down a lot of commonly used ones in prose and poetry and explains their usage.

personally, I don't find all the literary devices I've learned about in school to be the most useful to my analytical hobbies online. motifs, themes, and metaphors are useful and dissecting them can bring a lot to the table, but a lot of other devices are mostly like fun bonus trivia for me to notice when reading. however, memorizing those terms and trying to notice them in the things you read does have a distinct benefit - it encourages you to start noticing patterns, and to start thinking of the mechanical way a story is built. sure, thinking about how the prose is constructed might not help you understand the story much more, but it does make you start thinking about how things like prose contribute to the greater feeling of a piece, or how the formatting of a piece contributes to its overall narrative. you'll start developing this habit of picking out little things about a text, which is useful.

other forms of in-text pattern recognition can be about things like characterization! how does a character react to a certain situation? is it consistent with how they usually behave? what might that tell you about how they think? do they have tells that show when they're not being trustworthy? does their viewpoint always match what is happening on screen? what ideas do they have about how the world works? how are they influenced by other people in their lives? by social contexts that might exist? by situations that have affected them? (on that note, how do situations affect other situations?)

another one is just straight-up noticing themes in a work. is there a certain idea that keeps getting brought up? what is the work trying to say about that idea? if it's being brought up often, it's probably worth paying attention to!

that goes for any pattern, actually. if you notice something, it's worth thinking about why it might be there. try considering things like potential subtext, or what a technique might be trying to convey to a reader. even if you can't explain why every element of a text is there, you'll often gain something by trying to think about why something exists in a story.

^ sometimes the answer to that question is not always "because it's intentional" or even "because it was a good choice for the storytelling." authors frequently make choices that suck shit (I am a known complainer about choices that suck shit.) that's also worth thinking about. english classes won't encourage this line of thinking, because they're trying to get you to approach texts with intentional thought instead of writing them off. I appreciate that goal, genuinely, but I do think it hampers people's enthusiasm for analysis if they're not also being encouraged to analyze why they think something doesn't work well in a story. sometimes something sucks and it makes new students mad if they're not allowed to talk about it sucking! I'll get into that later - knowing how and why something doesn't work is also a valuable skill. being an informed and analytical hater will get you far in life.

so that's in-work literary analysis. id also recommend annotating your pages/pdfs or keeping a notebook if you want to close-read a work. keeping track of your thoughts while reading even if they're not "clever" or whatever encourages you to pay attention to a text and to draw patterns. it's very useful!

now, for out-of-work literary analysis! it's worth synthesizing something within its context. what social settings did this work come from? was it commenting on something in real life? is it responding to some aspects of history or current events? how does it relate to its genre? does it deviate from genre trends, commentate on them, or overall conform to its genre? where did the literary techniques it's using come from - does it have any big stylistic influences? is it referencing any other texts?

and if you don't know the answer to a bunch of these questions and want to know, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! look up historical events and social movements if you're reading a work from a place or time you're not familiar with. if you don't know much about a genre, look into what are considered common genre elements! see if you can find anyone talking about artistic movements, or read the texts that a work might be referencing! all of these things will give you a far more holistic view of a work.

as for your own personal reaction to & understanding of a work... so I've given the advice before that it's good to think about your own personal reactions to a story, and what you enjoy or dislike about it. while this is true that a lot of this is a baseline jumping-off point on how I personally conduct analysis, it's incomplete advice. you should not just be thinking about what you enjoy or dislike - you should also be thinking about why it works or doesn't work for you. if you've gotten a better grasp on story mechanics by practicing the types of pattern recognition i recognized above, you can start digging into how those storytelling techniques have affected you. did you enjoy this part of a story? what made it work well? what techniques built tension, or delivered well on conflict? what about if you thought it sucked? what aspects of storytelling might have failed?

sometimes the answer to this is highly subjective and personal. I'm slightly romance-averse because I am aromantic, so a lot of romance plots will simply bore me or actively annoy me. I try not to let that personal taste factor too much into serious critiques, though of course I will talk about why I find something boring and lament it wasn't done better lol. we're only human. just be aware of those personal taste quirks and factor them into analysis because it will help you be a bit more objective lol

but if it's not fully influenced by personal taste, you should get in the habit of building little theses about why a story affected you in a certain way. for example, "I felt bored and tired at this point in a plot, which may be due to poor pacing & handling of conflict." or "I felt excited at this point in the plot, because established tensions continued to get more complex and captured my interest." or "I liked this plot point because it iterated on an established theme in a way that brought interesting angles to how the story handled the theme." again, it's just a good way to think about how and why storytelling functions.

uh let's see what else. analysis is a collaborative activity! you can learn a lot from seeing how other people analyze! if you enjoy something a lot, try looking into scholarly articles on it, or youtube videos, or essays online! develop opinions also about how THOSE articles and essays etc conduct analysis, and why you might think those analyses are correct or incorrect! sometimes analyses suck shit and developing a counterargument will help you think harder about the topic in question! think about audience reactions and how those are created by the text! talk to friends! send asks to meta blogs you really like maybe sometimes

find angles of analysis that interest and excite you! if you're interested in feminist lenses on a work, or racial lenses, or philosophical lenses, look into how people conduct those sort of analyses on other works. (eg. search feminist analysis of hamlet, or something similar so you can learn how that style of analysis generally functions) and then try applying those lenses to the story you're looking at. a lot of analysts have a toolkit of lenses they tend to cycle through when approaching a new text - it might not be a bad idea to acquire a few favored lenses of your own.

also, most of my advice is literary advice, since you can broadly apply many skills you learn in literary analysis to any other form of storytelling, but if you're looking at another medium, like a game or cartoon, maybe look up some stuff about things like ludonarrative storytelling or visual storytelling! familiarizing yourself with the specific techniques common to a certain medium will only help you get better at understanding what you're seeing.

above all else, approach everything with intellectual curiosity and sincerity. even if you're sincerely curious about why something sucks, letting yourself gain information and potentially learning something new or being humbled in the process will help you grow. it's okay to not have all the answers, or to just be flat-out wrong sometimes. continuing to practice is a valuable intellectual pursuit even if it can mean feeling a tad stupid sometimes. don't be scared to ask questions. get comfortable sometimes with the fact that the answer you'll arrive at after a lot of thought and effort will be "I don't fully know." sometimes you don't know and that can be valuable in its own right!

thank you for the ask, and I hope you find this helpful!

[helmip]

original Godzilla always looked like an otter to me :)

(text on the upper left reads "kaiju" and the bottom text reads "Gojira")

[wanghedi]

(their meet cute. in a sense)

九重紫 (2024) - Episode 1

[xxplastic-cubexx]

if i said i picked up this issue for anything but drunk erik i fear i'd be lying

(Wolverine (2020) #3)

[iwatcheditbegin]

I miss when liking Taylor meant you were a loser with no friends. That was our brand

[thethespacecoyote]

contemplating what exactly it was about ford that made bill feel important now