#literature rambles

[pollyanna-ish]

I would like to mention to Lord of the flies readers (or readers of any books tbh) that there is no such thing as being 'evil' without a reason. I'm mainly talking about Jack and the kids who were on his side during the whole book's timeline. Yes, I know, their actions shouldn't be forgiven, but the book literally talks about how every human acts when they have power, no matter how 'civilised' they are. Everybody wants power, and hell, even Ralph isn't a saint either (Simon is though, since he fits in the Christ Archetype of characters, but that's not the point of this post). Everybody is morally grey, even in other stories, as there isn't such thing as a 'good' and 'bad'. Even in fairytales the 'good' characters do bad things. It depends on which point of view you're viewing. Even your worst enemy is the main character in their own story, and that's the beauty in people in general.

Anyways, back on the topic of LOTF, I hate when people just view Jack as just 'pure evil' because he wants power, since Ralph wasn't any better either (well...technically he was tbh cuz he didn't kill anybody, unlike Jack, but still), we just viewed from the point of Ralph, since he's the protagonist of the story. Jack might've been mean at the start, but he was that way since he had even a tiny bit of power as the head choir boy. Power, no mater how much, makes people stop viewing others as equals, or even humans. Just as people at power in society, since LOTF does symbolise society in general.

Idk I just woke up and had to write this on Tumblr cuz I'm tired of people always writing about Jack and Ralph from an objective POV (which isn't wrong, don't worry), rather than a subjective POV lol.

TL;DR: LOTF would be completely different if we viewed it from another character's POV

[star-struck09]

Do you think of me as often as I think of you?

[erraticreflections]

[shisasan]

There’s nothing like books waiting to ruin you completely, stories that tear you apart only to leave you more whole than before.

[afantasyoffiction]

sorry guys nerd time!!!

honeys’s lovely tags asked who rosaline is and BOY do i have feelings abt this lol

rosaline is the primary reason a large body of shakespeare fans/readers/experts perceive the play at large as satirical, rather than genuine. there’s lots of reasons for this interpretation - the age of both romeo and juliet, the speed with which they get engaged, typical ideas which shakespeare has been known to play on….but rosaline is the most important one

when we first meet romeo, his character is introduced as a hopeless, love sick man who is genuinely so caught up in his unrequited feelings his parents are worried for his health. benvolio and mercutio make fun of him, and convince him to come to a party with them (the very capulet ball where he meets juliet for the first time…) . and who is romeo so obsessed with at this point?

not juliet. they’ve never even met by this point. rather, a woman called rosaline who has sworn herself to chastity as a nun. this is all we know about her - as romeo and most of the audience forgets about her entirely the moment juliet enters

that’s right. romeo genuinely said ‘forswear it sight, for i ne’er saw beauty til this night’ literally ABT AN HOUR after he said Rosaline was the most beautiful woman in the world and he’d never love again….

are we seeing the problem? this ties in with the common theme of young love being blind, but personally i’ve always found the play to be pushing into satire because romeo is just tooooooooo insane abt two girls within a short space of time

anyways there’s some rlly cool adaptations out there abt rosaline but i’ve always wanted to create one one day that centred around both girls. i AM aware they’re cousins in the original so i would just….change that

i also wanted it to be canon compliant. which means juliet has to die (mostly so i can kill romeo lol). how do i then give the lesbians a happy ending? VAMPIRES

anyways this is a very long post for an abandoned wip but…if u got this far, let me know which shakespeare retelling you would like to read or write one day :))))))

Let’s do “bee”

Seems accurate to my branding

thanks for the ask! this one took me a while to find. its from a (mostly abandoned lol) wip about Romeo and Juliet, or rather, Juliet and Rosaline. the concept: sapphic romance plus vampires equals the solution to shakespeare's most famous tragedy...

One gentle morning, they’d lain in a heap on the forest floor, grass in their hair and leaves on their clothes and eyes wide as they watched bees float lazily overhead. The scent of summer was humid, like a physical presence in the air, a blanket holding them down. In the heat, Rosaline hadn’t wanted to move. She didn’t want to roll over to meet Juliet’s eyes, or get up to return to town. Instead, her hand reached out of its own accord, tangling in Juliet’s own.

[flowersforfrancis]

I dread the end of winter.

[ramblingmindofrayyan]

Sometimes it’s really lonely being me.

[doctorforks]

beast dazai is considered a tragic character for all the obvious reasons: carried the weight of the memories of his other selves and using that knowledge to save oda from his fate even if it meant dying/killing himself in the end. This sympathetic narrative allows you to ignore the utter selfishness and immaturity of beast dazai and how he runs away from grief and pain, and I mean this in the best way possible.

The real tragedy of beast is that unlike all the other dazais, beast dazai never got the chance to meet and know oda, thence allowing him a new perspective to grow. In The day I picked up Dazai , dazai shows personal growth by the end of the novel, hence why he respects oda a lot. He is treated as a human being who still doesn't know much, and that brings comfort to someone deemed a demon prodigy. In side b of the same novel, beast dazai makes an effort to not know or bond with oda; yes this is because he wanted to ensure his survival by steering him away from the port mafia, but that event is what fundamentally changed dazai- gave him a better understanding of his own humanity.

Despite having all that knowledge of his other selves, of how each universe's timeline will play out, beast dazai didn't seem to grasp that it is grief that allowed the other dazai to grow and be a better person. He didn't understand that in the end, it is the time he (the other dazai) spent with oda that made living worthwhile, not his life. His state of living, the state of perfection in beast dazai's eyes, will still cause him more suffering than the act of losing a good friend.

Because if he had only wanted him to live, then he wouldn't have been so shocked when oda refused to indulge in a friendly conversation, not when he clearly went out of his way to antagonize himself in oda's eyes in tdipud. It's because the realization hit him: he wanted his time with oda to not be cut short.

Having memories of another oda is clearly not enough, he needed his own intimate friendship with his own oda. But with this elaborate plan and his reaction to being rejected, it's clear that beast dazai was trying to avoid pain. He could not accept the grief and pain of loss that he's seen and felt in his other selves, ignoring what came after: growth and satisfaction of ever having oda in their lives at all.

Pain is inherently human and by ignoring and rejecting it, beast dazai rejects his own humanity. Or runs away from it, because it catches up to him regardless. He still ignores it throughout the rest of the story, especially in other characters.

Beast dazai, as we all know, eventually takes his own life. While there is a reason as to why he did it, but it was still part of his plan from the beginning. Meaning, he knew this near fruitless pursuit would still have him unable to handle grief. It's an inherently selfish goal with an inherently selfish way out under the guise of "leaving the rest in atsushi and akutagawa's hands"

(Note: I do not mean in any way that suicide is selfish, but rather the narrative and character of dazai in beast alludes to this. Both concepts can co-exist in a fictional setting)

Despite seemingly helping other characters, beast dazai also trampled on both akutagawa and atsushi's self worth. This made them easier to manipulate for his grand plan, but ignores the damage he's done to them and other characters after his death.

For akutagawa it is the loss of his sister and convincing him of his monstrosity due to Dazai's meddling. For atsushi, someone he conditioned into severe fear and dependency on him, was left alone watching the person he cared so much for fall from the building. And yes, he left him in mori's care afterwards, but dazai should know more than anyone the damage the death of a loved one has, unless it doesn't apply to him.

In the epilogue, mori openly mourns dazai's death along with atsushi. Due to being free of his rigid responsibility as the pm boss, he had the liberty of finally being the caretaker he's always wanted to be but at the cost of the person he considered his son (in comparing dazai to atsushi, who he then calls his son + all the other stances where mori treated dazai like a son etc)

The thing that beast dazai, or dazai in general, tends to not fully understand or accept, is that he is also loved, and his death will cause others pain as well. I am by no means saying he should've thought of others before dying, but it is the lives of others that dazai from the main manga also cherishes after oda's death. Beast dazai made it his entire life goal to essentially protect oda, realize its not the only thing he's wanted from him and gave his raison d'etre a flimsy excuse of meaning in life. It's inherently selfish.

Selfishness is a common theme in bsd, and beast dazai fits right in. Atsushi's selfish desire to save people to give himself a justification to be alive, Sigma's inherently selfish nature of self preservation and identity and so on.

I've probably ranted for much longer than anticipated, but the point is: beast dazai's purpose is a selfish desire to escape pain and loss when it's crucial to the human experience. Dazai in the main manga seems to grasp this much better than beast dazai, it's something the latter is "missing", refusing to grow out of his selfishness and it makes his character more of a cautionary tale.

[cursed-dagger]

we have but one life.

why would you read "classical literature" and "philosophy" and "actual books published by world renowned authors" when you can read dramione smut written by a redbull fuelled college student at 3 in the morning

[mifink]

henry jekyll 🤝 victor frankenstein

fucking around and finding out

[pollyanna-ish]

The hate Holden Caulfield gets from people reading The Catcher In The Rye is highkey hurting me since I relate to him deeply (DON'T WORRY, EVERYONE CAN HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS ON HIM). Yes, I'm not a good person, but neither am I a bad person, and I feel like he's the first character I've ever related to deeply, especially as an angsty teenager who watches everyone around me grow up, while I'm still immature as ever. I understand all the hate he gets, he's not exactly a 'good' person, but he's very realistic to how teenagers feel, especially those who feel alone in the world, or even act more 'superior' (key word: act).

I'm genuinely tired of seeing people on TikTok literally DEMONIZING Holden. Literally saw a TikTok calling him a "narcissist" (which, fact nr 1, It is not okay to demonise mental illnesses either, especially NPD, since media keeps portraying narcissism as something RLLY bad, when at the end of the day, people with NPD are still people, and we shouldn't shun them down, even if they're 'evil', even if they're 'good'), and everyone in the comments was like people who relate to Holden/want to be friends with Holden are red flags, just because he's apparently a misogynist??? (I mean, it's TikTok, people turn past the meaning with a blind eye), but like, Holden isn't only 'mean' to women, he's literally mean to anyone, no matter the age, gender, height, whatever, they're all 'stupid' in his eyes.

Idk I'm just rambling rn since the book brought me comfort (strangely enough) as someone who is too blinded by nostalgia to want to become an adult, and just, idk. People can still hate Holden, but please try to understand the book and character first, since it has such a beautiful message. And basically, not just for The Catcher In The Rye or other books, but irl too, try to understand people and their points of view before forming a strong opinion on them. Nobody is perfect. We're like salads, we have toppings you like, and toppings you don't like, and everyone has different opinions on the toppings, which is alright!

This is Pollyanna-ish, signing out!

[sunnythanalan]

One of the best

I have been thinking about Erenville a lot and how the narrative allows us to really get to know him through the quiet moments. Through action rather than spoken words.

His mother calls him a fussy little bunbun, which is funny to begin with as we know him so far to be a taciturn and practical man. But while we travel with him we discover that he has suffered abandonment all throughout his life; first by his mother leaving him in care of others as she traveled herself, then by sending him away on his own travels, then further upon his return when there is a literal screen between them. The symbolism here is unmistakable. 

Then, as we progress, it becomes quite clear that Erenville suspects that there’s something wrong with his mother. Instantly he’s on the defensive, citing that her whimsy and overwhelming personality always overshadow his own wishes, and that he struggles to understand her, also to trust her. His quiet stoicism isn’t that funny anymore. 

In an ironic twist we discover that she has left him one last time, to the land of Living Memory. Even if it was never her intention to leave him in such a way, it must be hard to overcome that sense of continuous abandonment - and this time he has to say goodbye forever. That he draws away from everyone else to grieve and come to terms with this in solitude speaks volumes. It really indicates that he dealt with difficult emotions alone a lot while growing up, and in such a way he never learned how to rely on others. In the end, when finally pressed to the breaking point, Erenville lashes out in anger as the tools he made for himself fails him in processing all of his grief and fear alone. He has to find the courage to trust his mother with his emotions and that just as she's leaving him one last time.

Wuk Lamat is always right there in your face going through her emotions and leaning upon others for support, on the other side is Erenville, who draws back with his pain. We learn to know him just as deeply as Wuk Lamat, but through everything that isn’t said, rather than what is said. In fear of sounding effusive, even their appearance symbolises this: they're golden dawn and darkening dusk. Two sides of the same coin.

Honestly, personally to me, Erenville is one of the best written characters in this story so far. I love him deeply. I cried so hard for him.

PS. His love for his mother becomes so clear in the love he pours into the fauna that she mentored him in. While working as a gleaner, he's probably as close to her as he can be when she's physically not there. In the moments we see him care for animals his entire countenance changes, he becomes soft and caring, even exuberant and joyful.

[star-struck09]

I wish I could tell you half the things I think about.

[tarufai]

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

some gitm sona doodles (because we wanted to practice drawing them and because we need to cope)

gitm is of course by @venomous-qwille (feel free to ignore this sorry!)

closeups under the cut:

[cosmomatic]

when i read a book that's called a classic for a reason