#theres always a Pratchett quote

[shiftyfly]

[interview with fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett]

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

my creative writing prof also HATES fantasy. as in if she asks for an example of symbolism in a book, and you give something from a fantasy novel, she’ll ask for an example from a “non-commercial book” instead.

I dunno man, people can have preferences, but the second you discount the artistic merit of sci fi and fantasy I stop taking your opinion seriously. and there’s such a big culture in Canada of only valuing literary fiction, to the point where one of our biggest authors, Margaret Atwood, refused for a while to classify her books as sci fi or fantasy. she said they were “speculative fiction”, which is entirely separate and very highbrow (sarcasm).

and I could go on about how Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin wrote books every bit as intellectual (and honestly, even more so) than their literary counterparts, but I am also an enjoyer of schlock!! I think there’s artistic merit in animorphs, and in isekais where a japanese schoolgirl reincarnates into a magical spider who has to level up like it’s a video game! it’s like with everything, you can’t draw a clean line that separates ‘art’ from ‘non-art’ or even ‘lesser art’, and pretending you can do so just makes you look ignorant and goofy. in my opinion.

[tebbydear-movedblogs]

For the flower asks, borage and aster? Love u lots xxxx

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhoodooo uh. my piano teacher actually did that thing where she made me put a pencil in between my fingers so my hand would curve right ddgh

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?gosh this is so hard aaa. 

No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. - Terry Pratchett

or,, i cant explain why, and i dont know the exact quote, but theres a scene in a catherynne m valente book that goes something like

Death: You’re a lot more interesting than most of the knights that come through here. they always want me to play chess with themSeptember: I’ve only ever played chess with my mother. I don’t think it would feel right, playing it with you.Death: I cheat, anyway. When their backs are turned, I move the pieces.

or. anything from Night In The Woods

(love u too bb)

Here’s the ask list!

[gender-i-hardly-know-er]

13, 22, 34, 36 for the asks! :D

(How are you doing, btw?)

13: What are your favorite lyrics currently?

OOOOHHHHH “I will not fail so you can be comfortable, kathy. I will not lose because you can’t win.” - If I didn’t believe in you from the last five years, we r gettin angsty in this denny’s tonight bros

22: Do you tend to have strong emotions?

I have so many feelings so much all the time and I have no idea what any of them are. emotional processing??? we don’t know here and I wonder why I love logan lmao

34: What do you look for in friendships?

I already answered this one but i’ll add another- TELL ME ABOUT UR BLORBOS tell me about that one niche video game ive never heard of tell me about your favorite isopods tell me about that movie you loved as a kid tell me all the things you love and let me love them too

36: Favorite book quote(s)?

most of these are neil gaiman bc. him.

“Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”- neil gaiman, the ocean at the end of the lane

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”- neil gaiman, the ocean at the end of the lane

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”- neil gaiman and terry pratchett, good omens

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”-neil gaiman, coraline

"The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”-benjamin alire sáenz, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe

“I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.” -benjamin alire sáenz, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe

theres more, but theres a handful :]

and im doing... not great?? i love having a uterus it's so fun /s like mentally nothings awful my body just hates me rn