#guine talks

[wiishopchanelboots]

The Books of Earthsea Illustrations from the complete illustrated edition, Illustrated by Charles Vess [X]

[shorthaltsjester]

it is quite funny to me as someone who studies philosophy and has had to have the conversations that bh and ludinus have been having many times over and often with people who like ludinus do not have any reading comprehension and truly like. the notion of “this shouldn’t exist” is almost always one that comes up regardless of whether it’s a discussion on the metaphysics of a potential God(s) or divinity, high political powers, or vehicles of systemic oppression. and what anyone who cares about people more than their ideals (even, sometimes, ideals that started out being about people but quickly come to be about the ideals themselves) realizes very quickly in a philosophical discussion about what should and shouldn’t exist is that it does not matter if what you’ve decided ‘shouldn’t’ exist does in fact already exist. like that tends to be the difference between sociopolitical philosophy that actually has teeth and substance in the world — a willingness to engage with the world as it is, not as it should be. because you can have the perfect image of a just and wonderful future world, but if you do not at every step reckon with the unjust world from which you are aiming at that future, you’re doing nothing. ideals are helpful because they aim us toward goals and hopes, but they’re nothing without a reality that grounds them.

and so people like ludinus, who in the real world would play the role of a graduate student with critical thinking skills that make every professor he comes across question how he arrived at his level of study, they don’t have Wrong ideals, there’s obviously plenty of reasons why an exandria without gods might in fact be a better place for mortals (there are also many Many reasons why it would not). but ludinus has also chosen his ideals to weigh heavier than the mortals he claims to uphold them with. i think ashton is also interesting, because i think a lot of their positions have a fun fluctuation between being ideal focused and person focused, where sometimes they’re focused on how unfair life is in a very nihilistic position, and at other times they seem quite clear about how much ideals help no one if they’re not second to the desire to help others. and i think that made their role in the convo with ludinus in 102 especially interesting and irritating (but in a narratively fulfilling way). anyway, truly so fun watching ludinus argue with the amount of fallacies and undeserved confidence of like right wing first year students in an ethics class explaining how actually the ends justify the means and thanos had the right idea actually if it means no more starvation. get a grip old man.

[heliological]

omelas writing masterpost

accepting that I will be thinking really hard about omelas approximately once per year for the rest of my life so here's a bunch of links for future me next time I go down this rabbithole

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)

Omelas, Je T’Aime, Kurt Schiller (2022)

The Ones Who Stay and Fight, N.K. Jemisin (2018)

The Ones Who Yell at Omelas, Rite Gud podcast (2022) [links a bunch of other responses]

tumblr post by shedoesnotcomprehend (2018)

After We Walked Away, Erica L. Satifka (2016)

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (2024)

and bc I always forget, the BTS music video that references it is Spring Day

@ myself read another story jfc

[snoozingbear]

ursula le guin’s afterword to the farthest shore

[nellasbookplanet]

The three tiers of queer sff:

Broke: what is worldbuilding? Made in a lab to be as blandly inoffensive as possible. Time to randomly namedrope terms like 'nonbinary' and 'ace' while doing zero work actually incorporating them into the world or characters and have someone give a speech about how valid they are. Lines like 'I'm too ace for this' while never exploring the concept of asexuality or aromanticism and still having very central romance plotlines is common. I hate it here learn how to write realistic dialogue and fully realized characters I'm begging.

Woke: more ore less typical sci-fi and fantasy but It’s Queer Now. Might include in-universe queerphobia to be struggled against or may have queer identities be fully normalized. Can be done bad or well depending on the skill of the writer. A good way to explore our contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality or to have a bit of a power fantasy with lesbian princesses and trans knights. There will probably be a bisexual love triangle.

Bespoke: what is a gender. What is monogamy. What is polyamory. What is romance. What is platonic. Time to show you the most fucked up uncategorizable relationship you’ve ever seen. There may be weird ass metaphorical sex

[agir1ukn0w]

one thing I love is when my celebrity crushes are really good friends with people the rest of the internet is obsessed with, but almost no one else knows who they are, even tho they're about ten thousand times hotter than your average tumblr sexyman

[thatlittlesentientfox]

they would be best friends

[spookygibberish]

@july-19th-club HI I just thought I'd respond to these EXTREMELY flattering tags because they were the push I needed to finally get around to listening to the Xenogenesis series. I've been meaning to check out Octavia Butler for a really long time, and after finishing those books I'm actually mad at myself for not getting around to it sooner, because like, holy shit.

Looking at the books I've enjoyed the most out of all the titles I've listened to in the last year, to picking out commonalities and trends, I came up with:

Explorations of speculative societies and cultures

Xenofiction! Inhuman perspectives, inhuman thought processes; monsters, aliens, and animals as perspective characters

Alienation. Relfect the experience of living in a society which is strange to you, persisting, finding value and beauty in a world that is ugly, complicated, and hostile

Body horror, shape-shifting, transhumanism

Surreal imagery and situations

Often violent, often sexual, (frequently both at once...). strongly visceral

Unsurprising preference for sci-fi over fantasy (it's much more prone to high concept strangeness, though on a surface level I like the trappings of fantasy more)

A LOT OF THESE ARE DOWNERS but I noticed there aren't a lot of straightforwardly bleak endings, I guess I can't resist that uncertain glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel... barring what they say about oncoming trains

Given all that it turns out Xenogenesis was baisically laser targeted to appeal to me and I'm incredibly grateful for these tags for nudging me to nudge Butler to the front of my queue.

[idlesuperstar]

The My-Eyeballs-Are-So-Happy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Bluray Watch

Episode 5: Tinker Tailor

- You don't break exactly, you just run out of stories to tell.

[rose-n-gunses]

and with that we conclude the absolute worst semester yet!

one billion apologies again for the lack of writing lately (I have not opened a document since october) even tho ik yall will tell me it's fine and all that but still i miss it and can't wait to get back into it over break

the last two months have been perhaps the most difficult ever ever ever what with the breakup and then drama with my coworker/friend/guy i like(d?) and also a nightmare class that i somehow managed to end with a 95 in when I was so convinced I was going to get my first ever B that I was dry heaving in the bathroom at work??

anyways I miss u guys and I miss hellcheer so I am going to sit in my bed right now and work on some Christmas stuff that I started last year!!!

[sirbogarde]

Tunes of Glory (1960) dir. Ronald Neame

[finalgirlguy]

the introduction to the left hand of darkness, ursula k. le guin

[l3st1b0urn3s-707]

Fun fact, gethenians have periods! Os at least something pretty similar to a period. This is shown in the short story Coming of age in Karhide (featured in The birthday of the world and other stories), where Sov, a karhidish teenager, starts to go into puberty and experiences their first kemmer.

At one point of the story Sov wakes up in a pool of blood that's formed in their bed, and I belive they spent most of the day crying and not knowing what was really happening or how to handle it. And I think that's the best (and probably only) representation of a period I've ever read. Because I'm Sov. At least half of the people who're reading this are Sov. Every menstruating person in the world has gone through the same experience. Yet I've never read of a main character on a fantasy/ scifi book being on their period apart from this story. And I think that's what makes Le Guin's stories so beutiful.

They might describe humans from a completely diferent planet, culture, and with a different anatomy. But they're still humans.

[ocheeva]

— ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇꜰᴛ ʜᴀɴᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴀʀᴋɴᴇꜱꜱ, ᴜʀꜱᴜʟᴀ ᴋ. ʟᴇ ɢᴜɪɴ

[tyrannuspitch]

mildly annoyed today and turning evil about it

[pulchrasilva]

I am clearly much more insane about ursula le guin than either I or anyone else bargained for