#unless I’m specifically discussing them within the context of the book

[frmulcahy]

So guess who just learned about The Ministry of Time a couple hours ago because I received a copy 👀

[linklethehistorian]

Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #1: Into the Pit

[Read the general disclaimer and important notes for this series of articles here.]

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

[A link to my main YouTube channel, where I narrate these articles.]

Some Into the Pit specific notes:

First of all, I will be discussing the video game version of this story to a limited degree, since, as per ‘Frights Fiction’, it would be a video game that exists in-universe in the main FNAF canon as an adaption of the fictional horror story by the same name, and thus is equally important to examine when talking about potential lore relevancy. If you don’t want spoilers, save this post and come back later after you’ve experienced the game for yourself.

Secondly, I will (mostly) be dismissing any Easter eggs throughout the game version that do not have a crucial part in the story, since Frights Fiction would largely dictate that — unless they do not conflict with the main canon and would genuinely bring something of value to the table in terms of discussion — these merely exist because the game was made within the context of all of the various in-universe fictionalized stories. In other words, most of the Easter Eggs that exist out-of-universe are still just Easter Eggs in-universe, too.

And among all of those, there are two in particular that I do want to knock out of the running for very specific reasons, but since discussing individual Easter Eggs within the game would technically be considered spoilers, it will have to be saved for the actual main analysis section of the article, instead of being thrown out here.

Lastly, apart from where I feel it relevant, I will not be doing a deep-dive into the changes between the book and the game, either, since they are both fictional media within the FNAF universe, and thus the retcons and changes mostly have no value in the discussion of the lore or canon. If someone else wants to scream about how they feel the book was done dirty because of how much they got wrong in the game or something, I absolutely encourage you to go write your own article or make your own video! There are definitely a lot of not-insignificant changes between the two, so I can understand if someone was bothered by that. This post just isn’t about that.

…And I believe that will do it for the disclaimers and notes section. If you haven’t left already and you’re worried about spoilers for anything, this is your final warning to click off the post and come back later. 

…We good? Alright, let’s dive into the main bulk of the article, then.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I mean, I liked it. Because I wanted to go into it without any preconceived notions about the story, I had been waiting until after I finished playing the video game adaption to read this, and I’m glad that I did, it’s just… getting used to the formatting of the books was a bit…unusual, for me.

I had seen the comic version of Fetch prior to all of this, but I’d never read the actual story, so there was a lot I really didn’t know to expect with the Fazbear Frights books, in those regards? For example, the constant use of ‘said’ is definitely not to my particular writing style tastes, and there were several times when I thought denoting who the speaker was wasn’t necessary at all, but, thankfully, when you’re consuming it in the form of an audiobook (which I did), you can usually tune that sort of thing out and not notice it as much as you would if the words were staring you in the face all the time.

As for the story itself, yeah, I’d say I enjoyed it! Oswald, on the whole, is a very likable kid with sympathetic plights, his mom is cool, and his father seems like a good and surprisingly not one-dimensional character, for as little time as he’s actually present in the book; throughout the story, we get a pretty good feel for who his family is and how much they care for each other, in spite of the fact that the slow death of the town they live in has left them struggling, and some of the choices that were made in the aftermath were not exactly the best. 

One thing I particularly appreciate is that no character feels out of place or unnecessary in the book version of the story, which, as I’ll get into in the next subsection, I unfortunately can’t really say about the game.

I admittedly do feel that having Oswald immediately find his father again with minimal trouble once he got back to the ballpit was a…bit of an anticlimactic thing to have happen, when I believe it had only been a day since he was kidnapped in the first place; however, I know that this opinion was partially influenced by the fact that the game adaption was my first foray into the story, and, in reality, the book actually makes phenomenally more sense for its choice and raises far less difficult-to-answer questions, so it probably just comes down to a matter of personal preference, in the end, in regards to this — especially when the two are so wildly different in so many other ways, as well. 

I think, overall, I do like the book version the most, in terms of the story, but I appreciate more what new things the game brought to the table in terms of lore relevance (which I’ll discuss in the ‘lore relevancy’ section, obviously).

They’re both good in their own ways.

The Game: 

I don’t have a lot to add here in terms of the characters or their personalities, since, for as many differences as the two renditions may have, a lot of this particular aspect of the story is the same. 

The only character that I’d say somehow feels both slightly more irrelevant and slightly also too relevant in the game version is Dylan Cooper, the bully at Oswald’s school. This may just be me, but the reason that I say this is because they make quite a very big deal about the fact that Dylan finds Oswald at the dump on the second to last day of the game. Not only that, but during this scene, they have Dylan laugh and act very suspiciously, in an oddly menacing way — so much so that I thought for a moment that they were going to have him get directly involved with the main plot in some manner, which he really didn’t.  I think it would’ve been better to just keep his role exactly the same as it was in the book, rather than adding more to him and playing it up in a way that lead one to think that something bigger was going to happen.

Furthermore, the lack of inclusion of any mention of Oswald’s best friend, Ben, removes some of the feeling behind why Oswald is so frustrated with his life situation and his Dad, which I think is a bit of a shame after reading the book.

On the plus side of characters and their development, though, the added ability to pick up the Dad’s items and view little stories about Oswald and his family is a really nice touch that I appreciated, and Oswald thinking in one of them about how much his Mom losing her husband would devastate her was absolutely heartbreaking. 

As for some of the other changes the game made, I have very mixed feelings; although I did think it was cool to have the search for Oswald’s Dad extend for a few days and give us a longer glimpse into the past in doing so, it also raises many more questions in terms of a) why there were several additional kids that Oswald had to rescue, b) whether the kids in the Party Room at the beginning of the game were even dead in that version, because it was never properly addressed like it was in the book and thus left room for doubt, and c) the actions of Spring Bonnie (or the Yellow Thing™️, as it is called in the original story) throughout, which I could also get into, but I feel might warrant an entire mini-article itself. (If you’re interested in that, maybe drop me a comment or an ask and I’ll cover it sometime.) 

Also, all the random Easter eggs are super cool, but I feel like anyone who somehow thinks the books and the games based on them are actual 1:1 events that happened, and not just in-universe books and games, are going to use tons of these to go wild with theories about retcons and all sorts of stuff that is just…clearly not the case, so…meh. I’m divided.

As for gameplay, it’s good! It’s the first FNAF game to have different difficulty settings at the start (except UCN), which is awesome, though I feel like quite honestly, it’s the easiest game of them all, as well. I have no difficulty whatsoever beating it on Frightening mode (the normal mode), and can barely tell the difference from Creepy (easy mode), which…I haven’t played the other modes yet, so I can’t comment on those completely, but I suspect I could easily beat the hardest one with minimal issue, to be honest.

Now, whether that’s a good thing or not is probably going to vary by personal opinion, but…I don’t know, for me, despite being an easy mode lover in most games, not having any level of tension while playing this game somehow just…made it feel very much not like FNAF for me, and not necessarily in the most positive of ways.

That isn’t to say I didn’t like the game, but, it did take a little bit of the essence of FNAF away, and…I feel like in horror games, you should not be able to feel like there is never any real tension involved while playing. Again, this is just personal opinion, but, that’s my stance, at least.

But! I think we all know that’s not really what you’re here to have me go on about, is it? You all want to hear about lore relevancy, so…let’s just get on with that.

Lore Relevancy

In what is an extremely ironic turn of events, despite this story — out of all of the four I’d listened to at the time of writing this, at least — having the most blatant connection to the game’s canon lore, I honestly think that this will probably be one of the books that I have the least to say about in terms of breaking that down and going over it, mostly because I feel that it being so heavily tied to a specific part of the canon we know a lot about from the games just….really makes it blatantly clear which parts we definitely can’t trust.

So, most importantly, I guess let’s start with some examples of the one advantage Into the Pit has over nearly every other book in the series that I’m aware of thus far: the things it tells us that we can know aren’t true.

The Lies and Half-truths

Funnily enough, the thing we know we can absolutely discard the most is any of the details of the murders that happened in 1985 — at least, in the way Into the Pit presents them.

In the book (and perhaps the game? The image isn’t clear enough to be sure), there are six victims — not to mention the game adding a whole potential four other children whom Spring Bonnie tried and failed to kill thanks to Oswald — but we know for a fact that, while William had six victims total when we’re including Charlie Emily, there were only the five at most who died inside the restaurant during that year. So can we trust the number of victims? No.

Can we trust the method they died in, then…? Also no; in both the book and its game adaption, we are painted a scene of families and kids running and screaming in terror from a monster that was mass nabbing and killing kids, but we know for a fact, from multiple canon games both old and new, that William lured the children into the back before killing them covertly, and was never actually seen doing it except in costume via cameras. Furthermore, this must have happened one by one and not all at once, contrary to what Into the Pit purports, as the order in which they died is brought up several times in the more recent canon games as being in some way worthy of mentioning — which it most definitely would not if their deaths only varied by a matter of seconds or minutes at best.

So what can we trust in and rely on about the MCI (Missing Children’s Incident) murders? Well, honestly, just that it takes place in 1985. That’s literally it. That’s all that’s definitely relevant to the canon of the main games from this story in any way, when it comes to the MCI itself.

Now, that’s not to say there’s nothing else in the story that’s of note at all, though; there’s actually a lot that I think is worth paying attention to and speculating on, it’s just that very little of it actually has to do with the crime that was committed, as most of that is, unsurprisingly, heavily played up, exaggerated, and sensationalized; after all, that’s the entire in-universe purpose of these books and games existing — to discredit and make light of the real events by turning bits and pieces of them into spooky fictional stories.

Before we get into what I think is of value, though, let’s just rule out two more things from the game version of Into the Pit that I think we need to firmly take off the table — namely, the toy airplane from the FNAF movie which is on a table in the room where Oswald’s Dad is being held captive, and the photo taken from the Silver Eyes trilogy of Henry beside a fully mascot-costumed William, which was placed in the shadows on the wall in the same area.

These are literally both just Easter Eggs referencing alternate universe stories with no relevancy to the lore, and I want to make that very clear before we begin to move forward.

How do I know this for certain? It’s very easy, actually.

With the airplane, there is literally no way that this has any implications on the lore, because Garret — the one whom the plane belonged to — was not one of William’s victims within the canon of the main games; he was William’s son, who died tragically from an accident that occurred during one of Michael’s pranks, and became the catalyst for everything that William did in FNAF in the first place.

And as for the photo, we already have a brand-new picture of William and Henry that is acknowledged and picked up by Oswald in-game, not to mention crucially recognized by Spring Bonnie himself and absolutely required for the true ending. And in this photo — both in black and white within the in-game and out-of-game trophies achieved when picking it up, and in color in the unused data — the two look entirely different from how that alternate universe portrays them, with Henry maintaining his design from the official Encyclopedia, and William possessing a (as far as I am aware) mostly new and unique design of his own. I apologize to anyone who actually likes the Silver Eyes trilogy’s designs for them, but seriously, there is just no reason to assume that we should trust something that is barely visible and placed on a random wall in shadows, over something that actually has plot relevance to the game itself and is required to get the true ending.

If William and Henry are being given a canon design for the main universe, it’s absolutely the new photo that we were shown, not some other old one tossed in as an Easter Egg.

Oh, and lastly, but definitely still very importantly, in the game version of Into the Pit, there’s also some implication that Oswald’s dad may very well have been the Freddy Bully, one of Michael’s friends, who participated in the prank that led to Garret’s death. Considering Oswald’s Dad’s unwillingness to talk about what happened in regards to Freddy’s in the book, and the fact that Help Wanted 2 strongly implies Cassie’s father is Bonnie Bully, this makes it very likely that we are now being given information in some form about Michael’s various former cohorts when he was a teenager, and how William seems to hold a grudge against all of them in some shape or form, and they frequently met bad fates. 

Obviously, the events of the story couldn’t have played out as they did in the main canon, because of the numerous impossible discrepancies we’ve already discussed, but it does make me wonder if Oswald’s dad really did in some way meet a terrible fate or have a brush with William in some context, at some point in his life.

It’s a very interesting thing that I have seen the more recent FNAF games delving into, and it is something that I am very intrigued by.

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

So, we’ve talked about the lies, but what about the story do I think does have relevance to the lore of the main canon? What do I think the story is trying — or could be trying — to tell us?

Let’s begin.

The things I KNOW are True

Well, first of all, as I said before, that the MCI takes place in 1985. Within the FNAF fandom, dates of various important events are constantly being discussed and speculated upon to death, even when the answer seems blatantly obvious, so I absolutely believe that this was Scott stepping in and waving a hand in front of everyone’s face again in order to fully confirm that this was the year these victims died.

Secondly, and perhaps most excitingly for me personally, the plot-relevant photograph used to get the true ending has finally given us canon designs for the main game universe version of William and Henry, after ten years of them not technically having any fully confirmed physical appearances. It may not seem like much on the surface, but this really is a monumental milestone in FNAF, and I absolutely think it should be celebrated.

Both of those things are pretty on-the-nose, though. I don’t think anyone really needs convincing of those facts, and, if they do, me pointing out the obvious again probably isn’t going to be the big thing that convinces them, so…moving on, let’s see what else we can glean from or make note of in the story that we haven’t already discussed in a previous part of the post.

Well, we can definitely infer, looking at it from the perspective of Frights Fiction, that the IPs referenced in the books which are familiar to us must also exist within the main FNAF universe, since these stories are in-universe tales being made for and marketed to the people of that world. It’s not really a big or ground-breaking detail, but I do think it’s a pretty cool little side note to consider for those of us interested in the greater world-building of FNAF.

We can certainly confirm, if nothing else, that some of the posters and drawings shown in the game version of Into the Pit were real, since they were in some of the canon main games, too, but I think there might also be more to the value of the games��� visuals; obviously, this can’t be said with absolute certainty, and I encourage someone to correct me if I’m wrong on this particular subject, but I think we can reasonably come to the conclusion that the MCI took place in a building that likely looked a lot, if not exactly, like the 1985 version of the building we get to visit in the game version of Into the Pit, back in its heyday. I don’t usually want to put things I’m not 100% certain of in this section, but I think that it matches up pretty well enough with what we know of the place to say that this is a decently accurate depiction — probably, anyway, unless there’s something I’m forgetting about.

Furthermore, this story seems to provide just the tiniest bit more evidence that Foxy had already been temporarily retired in 1985 in preparation of making the failed Toy Foxy that became Mangle, for anyone who was still unclear if the Mangle toy in the FNAF 4 minigames’ Afton house was perhaps meant to be an allusion to the concept of Mangle existing long before 1987, since it’s mentioned in the Into the Pit game (I can’t recall if it was the same in the book) that he wasn’t in use and would be gone for awhile. Although I don’t think Mangle necessarily existed in animatronic form for very long prior to the murders in 1985, and to my knowledge it’s quite possible to choose to just interpret that the 1983 toy we see is just a concept version of it as such, there’s still no reason in particular to doubt that what Into the Pit shows us in regards to this is true, either, as it doesn’t conflict with any known information and rather stands in support of FNAF 4.

The way that Spring Bonnie goes unnoticed by everyone but Oswald in the story is….also interesting; I definitely feel that the intended “cause” of this that the book is playing off of is an illusion disc, and that, from an out-of-universe perspective, this is Scott once again drawing us back to this concept to remind us that it exists, especially since it seems highly likely based on FNAF 4 and UCN that the Nightmare Animatronics were, in fact, the FNAF 1 animatronics effected by illusion discs. (If you’re interested, I recommend checking out GiBi’s long FNAF video here.)

Having the privilege of having listened to a few stories already at the time of writing this, I can say that this is something that is present in at least one other story so far, too, even within the very same book. Just something to note, I suppose.

And then, lastly, we have the general…theme of wills and wishes that seems to keep popping up in most Fazbear Frights stories I’ve read.

I know it’s explicitly stated on the back of this volume that the theme of every main story in Into the Pit delves into exactly that — getting what you wish for, but maybe not in the way you actually imagined it being — but having read as much as I have at the point of re-writing this, I can absolutely say that it runs much deeper than just the one volume. 

The concept of someone’s will being able to shape reality to some extent is such an underlying, intrinsic part of FNAF that it isn’t just Into the Pit or even the Fazbear Frights books as a whole that it permeates — it’s at least the Silver Eyes trilogy, too, with Henry’s pain and sorrow — and even later his anger — over Charlie’s death having the power to essentially bring her back to life in the form of a living doll, through his own tears.  I’m not 100% clear yet on what it is that’s trying to be said here, but I know that something is being said, and I know that it’s important. I do have some theories on what that could be, but I’ll get to those another time. Just…bear that in mind for now.

For now, all that matters is that you understand that it is there. In this story, Oswald wished for something more interesting to happen, and oh boy, did it happen. The inclusion of it in this story may be a little subtle comparatively to some others, but it’s there; it’s supposed to be there.

I know that in his analyses of this volume, GiBi later states that he feels the stated “theme” of it was just tacked on at the last minute to tie these stories together, but believe me, it’s not. There’s an entire story at the beginning of the very next volume that proves that it’s not.

You just have to trust me on this for now. Keep it in mind. It’s important. It’s so important.

And, on one other but similar note, this particular entire book — including Into the Pit, To Be Beautiful, and Count the Ways — for reasons you’ll see going forward as we review each story, definitely also have a theme going on of “Feeling unlovable, unwanted, and like life is meaningless in its current state”…. This will come up eventually in a future post. I promise. Just bear it in mind for now. 

The things I FEEL are True

Okay, now that we’ve talked about the absolute certainties, let’s get a little bit more into the still solid but nonetheless speculative, and the personal interpretations.

There aren’t many things I want to cover in this section today, because, as I’ve said, a lot of the things that Into the Pit talks about are very easily better slotted into the more definitive category, but, there are a few things that I do want to bring up, and some of them are still very important and meaningful — at least to me.

So, without further ado, here are some things that truly seem like they might have some connection to a canon event or phenomenon and could be useful information to take away regarding it:

Starting off with something I don’t personally subscribe to, but I do feel I would be remiss not to mention, for those who believe in the concept that Gregory is an advanced robot of Garret a la the Silver Eyes trilogy, this story does have some evidence maybe towards that idea?

In one of the Bad Endings in Into the Pit’s game adaption, Oswald appears to have been turned into an animatronic, yet still seems to retain his child form? Now, I’m not sure if that was just creative liberty or perhaps just symbolic of how Oswald thinks of himself, as one of the later Fazbear Frights stories also has a similarly described scene in which that is the case, and the boy is actually revealed to be fully transformed and trapped inside of a Freddy animatronic despite it, but either way, I think it’s certainly food for thought and is worth noting.

Again, I don’t personally subscribe to this theory at this time, but not subscribing to something isn’t a good reason to hide that evidence towards it may indeed arguably exist.

And now, saving the most in-depth and (to me) most interesting for last, I…kind of want to talk a little bit about potential parallels here. After listening to several stories by now, something that’s kind of stood out to me is the idea that a lot of these books could actually have something important to say about — or, even when not exactly about, at least possess a strong and important connection to — one of the Aftons or the Emilys.

Obviously, this is going to rely a lot on personal interpretation, and I know there are going to be a lot of people who disagree with me on this, but…to me, I think Into the Pit — and actually its entire book as a whole, minus the Stitchwraith — is actually sharing insight about Michael, and his relationship with his family and with himself.

I know there are plenty of people who probably think that if anyone’s a parallel to Oswald, it’s Garret, and if anyone’s a parallel to To Be Beautiful’s Sarah, it’s Elizabeth, but I couldn’t disagree more; there’s actually very little alike between these characters at all from how we know them in the game’s canon.

I’ll get into explaining my thoughts on To Be Beautiful later when the time comes to discuss that story, but as far as Oswald and game canon Garret, they only really have three common threads, and even then, that’s only if we dig super deep into things: he’s scared of a golden animatronic, he (in the case of Garret, thinks that he) saw something at the Pizzeria that was terrifying, and he has a bully that sometimes bothers him.

One of these connections, too, is also extremely surface-level: while we could at least make the argument that Garret likely thinking he saw a person being eaten by an animatronic when they were being put into a plush mascot costume and growing to fear Fredbear from it has at least some vague similarity to Oswald seeing the Yellow Thing™️ murdering kids and then fearing it, Oswald’s bully is less of an active tormentor in his life (especially in the book, which is the original version of the story), and more just a general, constant annoyance when he goes to school who has no real connection to the rest of his plight — unlike Michael, who is intrinsically connected to the plight that Garret had and what happened to him, and who was a very, very prominent presence in his life. It’s also important to note that, not only are bullies a common issue to come up for children, but in the FNAF series, so are the animatronics doing scary things and killing people, and the main antagonist in the series is famously a golden one, so it’s really not like this is some big smoking gun.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the parallels between Michael and Oswald in the actual main bulk of the plot itself, rather than random attributes: 

While on the whole, Oswald does clearly love and care about his family, he and one particular family member frequently get into arguments and get on each other’s nerves because they are around each other constantly. They consistently misunderstand each other’s intentions at times, in ways that are quite detrimental to their view of each other, and this culminates one night into him deciding to play a cruel prank on that person and scare him, only for that prank to go horribly wrong, resulting in a golden animatronic taking that family member away from him (and, I might add, also a sustained head injury by said family member).

This is already literally the plot of FNAF 4, according to both it and multiple other games, and that’s not even taking into account the more controversial stance I personally take that the main night sections of FNAF 4 are actually William testing out his illusion disc technology on Michael by attaching illusion discs to his FNAF 1 style animatronics and setting them loose in the home a la The Twisted Ones (as supported by UCN), which we can connect again to Into the Pit and Oswald, as Oswald is, after his prank which ultimately took his family member from him, henceforth tormented by a version of Spring Bonnie that is extremely reminiscent of the nightmare animatronics, and has to set out on a journey throughout the rest of his story to right his wrong in whatever way he can, just as Michael dedicates the rest of his life to helping his lost brother and sister and the other lost spirits (which the game adaption of the book connects to further, by having Oswald save several children throughout many nights). It is also interesting to note that the game version choosing to make Oswald’s father one of Michael’s teenage friends also adds yet another connection to Michael and the incident that I suggest Oswald’s story parallels.

Also, Oswald has the exact toys in his room that Michael has in FNAF 4, if we are indeed to assume, as I do, that Michael is the protagonist of FNAF 4.

And not only that, I would also like to draw attention to one specific line Michael canonically wrote in the Security Logbook, when asked to list his favorite characters from movies, books, and television who showed bravery in the face of extreme obstacles, and talk about how he can relate their heroic journeys to his current experiences, he answers, “Clara, from The Immortal and the Restless, because everything about this place is crazy, and nobody seems to notice except me.” This is a direct parallel to how Oswald is stated to feel about his Dad and his current situation numerous times throughout the book, as he is told by everyone around him that everything is normal and no, there is no giant Yellow Rabbit around and his Dad isn’t missing; that is his Dad right there, even as he sees clearly that it is not.

A few people, including Gibi and…also myself, have noticed that a lot of Into the Pit’s dialogue — in the book version especially -- seems to be able to have a double meaning that could be interpreted as a metaphor about child abuse, or abuse in general, and how people can often appear one way in public, but end up entirely another as soon as they are alone with their victim, and no one else can see the monster they really are behind closed doors. 

While I won’t delve into the specifics of that (you can check out Gibi’s video if you’re interested), I do want to speak on how that could symbolism of duality could also pertain to Michael and the life he had with his father. As I’ll get into in a bit (and talk about even further in a future article), Michael out of all of the Afton children did not have the best childhood to begin with, and while I want to make it very clear for reasons pertaining to my personal beliefs that I am not implying that child abuse ever necessarily happened at William’s hand prior to the Bite of ‘83, I do strongly believe that it happened afterward in some shape or form for Michael (which FNAF 4, Sister Location, AND Help Wanted all strongly support in their own ways), and I think that Into the Pit could, in its own way, be seen to be referencing it.

Just…hear me out here. Spring Bonnie taking over Oswald’s Dad’s life after kidnapping him cannot be a coincidence. I mean, just think about it. Sure, maybe Michael and his Dad had their disagreements and troubles prior to the Bite, but it wasn’t until after the Bite of ‘83 that Michael came to see his Dad in a whole new light, because that incident changed his Dad. It made him into something different. Something so twisted by grief and so mangled by resentment for what Michael did that he slowly but surely turned into a monster — a monster that he often became in public only when he was wearing the Spring Bonnie suit, yet a monster that no one else recognized as such. All they saw was William, the loving, grieving father and owner of Fredbear’s who only wanted to make children happy — not the killer who kidnapped and murdered children as Michael would one day find him out to be, and not the man who in one way or another tortured his teenage son for his foolish mistakes at home, as though he wasn’t already being tortured enough by the memory.

In the fictional books, Spring Bonnie may have been pretending to be Oswald’s Dad, but in the real canon FNAF universe, Spring Bonnie was Michael’s Dad, and whether Michael knew it or not for the longest time, he represented everything that was wrong and dark in William.

Okay, so…let’s say it is possible to interpret this as being an intentional parallel to the incident of the Bite of ‘83 and Michael, as I purport; what, then, could the story be trying to tell us about him? What is it trying to get people thinking about that we don’t already know?

Well, firstly, as I said, I believe that every story in this particular Frights book has a strong connection and relevancy to Michael, so I think that the blatant parallel to his situation existing in the opening tale was placed there on purpose to get your attention and get you thinking about all of it, but I do feel it’s also trying to say something about the incident, as well — about part of Michael’s motivation for escalating his pranking towards his brother to the point of the incident which accidentally caused Garret’s death, and a potential glimpse into his general state of mind at the time.

In the book, Oswald had been growing increasingly frustrated with his home situation in general — feeling bored, entirely ignored and abandoned and displaced, and that his father had essentially chosen their entire town and Oswald’s grandma over Oswald himself — when his now-long distance best friend contacted him to coincidentally tell him by contrast how well his own life was going. This led to Oswald and his father getting into a fight in the car on the way to Jeff’s pizza about how much the boy’s life sucked and implying how little he felt his Dad cared about him and his well-being by comparison to everyone else, and once Oswald had been dropped off, this argument was the final straw in making him decide that he was finally going to actually act out in order to force his father to finally, truly acknowledge, put effort in, and show care for him, by hiding in the ballpit and making his dad worry about where he was.

By figuring out the obvious parallels between Michael and Oswald, I feel that we can get a fairly clear and easy picture of what it would say about Michael:

Even if for something of opposite reasons, William and Oswald’s father both would have been very busy with their jobs — with Oswald’s Dad doing it because of their family’s financial troubles, and William doing it because…well, he was a co-owner and crucial worker and performer at a highly successful, award-winning, up-and-coming restaurant and that sort of job is just naturally demanding. 

Combine this with the fact that it’s very clear based on the main games’ canonical lore that Michael was the least favored child of the Aftons in at least Williams’ eyes (no, the Silver Eyes’ lore does not count, as that is an alternate universe story, and, as I will later get into in the post about To Be Beautiful, Elizabeth being ‘unloved’ and/or borderline abused was very clearly not something that carries over from that universe into the games’ lore), and that the (accurately translated) UCN cutscenes very clearly imply that both Michael and Garret were equally suffering in their own ways, yet failed to recognize or turned a blind eye to each other’s pain and took out their frustration on each other in their own ways, and it becomes very clear that Michael’s feelings about his own Dad and his brother were likely the very same that Oswald felt about his Dad and the people around him.

From Oswald’s perspective, his Dad cared more about the town and the inconvenience his grandma would face at having to travel to the next town to visit if they moved than he cared about Oswald and how their current lifestyle was causing him to suffer.

From Michael’s perspective, his Dad cared more about his business (and the town by proxy, as they were the ones bringing in his success) and paying attention to and doting on his other two children than he cared about Michael and how forgotten and sidelined he felt as the oldest sibling.

And just like Oswald had a friend, Ben, from whom he heard about Ben’s ‘better’ life and parents, and whom he complained to about his own, Michael very clearly also had several friends to tell him about their potentially ‘better’ lives and more attentive parents, and whom he likely told about his troubles and how his younger siblings stole the spotlight from him, with Garret being the ‘worst’ culprit of them all, as not only did he prank him back and they got on each other’s nerves from time to time, but he was also William’s ‘favorite’ Afton child.

Putting two and two together, then, it’s fairly clear that the conclusion we come to is, while the two boys did prank each other and annoy each other already, each turning a blind eye to the other’s suffering, it was Michael’s feelings of being the unloved and forgotten child of the family that caused him to start acting out further, believing — like Oswald — that the only way to make his Dad remember he existed was by being a troublemaker (an “any attention is good attention” mindset) until William was finally forced to take notice of him.

That is what, at least according to my own understanding of the novel, I personally believe Into the Pit is trying to say, at least on a deeper level beyond the surface level non-conflicting information, like the year the MCI took place.

Taking it a step further with the William = Oswald’s Dad parallel, we could even say that in a way, Oswald’s Dad preferring in the book to refuse to acknowledge that their dead town was a lost cause and pack up and move on with his family is also a quite interesting and fitting metaphor for William’s later refusal to accept Garret’s death and move forward by focusing on the family and the children that he still had left…

It’s…an interesting thing to think about — how, like with Oswald’s Dad, perhaps if William had just accepted the loss of his son and turned to the family that he still had left, like accepting the dead town and taking the family that Oswald’s Dad had left away, perhaps William might have never done the things that he did; perhaps they might have lived a very happy life, all things considered — although, obviously each would have to grieve what was done. 

Perhaps Michael might have found understanding and not have had to die the horrific death that he did just to feel that he had made up for his mistakes; perhaps Elizabeth would not have to have met her tragic end through her father’s own desperate desire to bring back a child that was already gone, and his failure to look after those that still remained. And, if you believe that Mrs. Afton died, perhaps he would still be with Mrs. Afton to this day, and, she would be alive and happy — or, at least, semi-happy with the family that she had created with him.

However, all that aside, I believe I myself have said all that I wanted to say on the story by now, so I will just leave you with all of these thoughts to ponder on your own time.

Thank you for reading, take care until next time, and I love you all. 💞

[monochromayhem]

“Classism taking a new form” is one means of discussing it, but there’s the added sideshow of classist rhetoric in here that English has rules and is structured a particular way, and to break that is somehow a cardinal sin. It’s grade-school behavior that is the result of economic disparity that keeps people who wanna go to college but can’t from learning that folklore bends and blends our diction.

It’s a natural consequence of capitalism quashing the ability for us to seek meaning in information and dancing with us towards analytical illiteracy. Even if words are old, why not bring them back? After all, language is fluid and shifting and goes along with trends just like the rest of our social culture. To enforce strict rules on what is and isn’t allowed to be used because the spellings are different or their terms from antiquity is to erase our history.

Use the words you want to use as long as they are not meant in harm. For obvious reasons, some antiquated terms should STAY antiquated unless those who qualify to reclaim them choose to do so. But for words that are actually just not used or have a meaning that’s a little off from what you’re used to— you’re well within your right to use or not use those!

For example, we wear a “jess”. Those who know about falconry know that a jess is basically a leash that holds the falcon to its trainer, always around the legs. Likewise, our jess is around our left ankle. It’s also a callback to Necropolis, a short story about an indentured girl who is chemically “jessed” to her employer in exchange for sending money to her family.

With these contexts, it’s then understood that I wear a jess as a tether and that I’m doing it as an act of service, specifically as a religious gesture. A jess is therefore in this context neither a falconry term or a book term— it’s a religious term that I made to describe a type of religious habit.

Words are fluid.

I think my biggest pet peeve is the alternate spellings of things like vampire and demon, etc. Sorry but vampyre and daemon just feels annoying to read as someone who knows two languages where those would technically be accurate but sound like shit when reading with English in mind it just don't work.

--

[spanishskulduggery]

Hi! I'm very curious about something regarding the Spanish language. I'm currently studying A2 Spanish but I had this question and my teacher did not seem too willing to discuss it. Here it goes:

I know that Spanish has, something my Spanish teacher says, linguistic gender. I was wondering how do the people who don't align themselves with the gender binary (masculine and feminine) speak/write in it? I have read this article about Spanish speaking people from US adding "x" Or "@" and people from Argentina using "e" to make the words gender neutral.

Thank you so much for responding, whenever you get to it. Also love your blog. ❤

Short answer, in general speaking terms people are tending towards the -e now because the other two are very hard to actually speak, and because Spanish-speakers feel the -e is more authentic

What you're most likely to see in Spanish is masculine plural as the default, or in written things you might see todos y todas or like un/una alumno/a "a student", or like se busca empleado/a "employees wanted" / "looking for an employee"

If it's something official or academic you typically include both [todas y todas] or you go masculine plural [todos] unless it's specifically feminine plural

-

Related, linguistic gender applies to all things, not just people. Why is la mesa "table" feminine, but el libro "book" masculine? Just linguistic gender. I can tell you that most loanwords (that aren't people) in Spanish are masculine, and that there are certain words that come from Greek are masculine, and that -ista words are unisex most of the time... And I can tell you there are some words like testigo or modelo that are unisex and don't change for gender. Aside from that, speaking about nouns and grammatical gender... those particular things are harder to parse for regular people, but if you go into the field of linguistics you can explore that more deeply. Some of it is source language (i.e. "it came from Latin this way") or things like that. And in general when talking about nouns it's unimportant and not considered sexist, that's just how it is.

There is such a thing where it gets a little too far the other way and people will say "history? what about herstory" which is a nice thought but the etymology has nothing to do with gender there

When it comes to people - and when it comes to gendered attitudes - that's where it gets more confusing and more complicated.

I believe there was an experiment where people had French and Spanish speakers [I believe it was Spanish] try to identify how a "fork" would sound. French people gave it a more feminine voice because "fork" is feminine in French, while Spanish speakers gave it a more masculine voice because it's masculine in Spanish.

Whether we like it or not, certain gendered things do influence our thoughts and feelings and reactions. A similar thing in English exists where the old joke was something like "There was a car accident; a boy is rushed to the ER and the surgeon but the father was killed. When they got to the ER the doctor said 'I can't operate on him, he's my son!'" and it's like "well who could the doctor be?" ...and the doctor is his mother. We associate "doctor" as masculine and "nurse" as feminine.

There's a gender bias in our language thought patterns, even though the language changes. And that does exist in Spanish too, to different extents.

There are certain cultural and gendered stereotypes or connotations attached to certain words, many tend to be more despective or pejorative when it's women.

For example - and I know this has changed in many places or it isn't as prevalent - el jinete "horseman/rider", while the female form is la amazona "horsewoman/rider". Because la jinete or la jineta was sometimes "promiscuous woman".

There were also debates about things like la presidente vs. la presidenta or what the female version of juez should be, whether it should be la juez or la jueza

Most languages with gendered language have varying degrees of this, and all languages I'm aware of have gendered stereotypes related to professions or cultural attitudes in some way, and not just for women, and not all in the same way with some of them being very culturally based

-

The longer answer involves a bit of history, and I'll be honest, some of it is contested or considered a little controversial in Spanish-speaking countries particularly in the conservative parts (which honestly should come as no surprise)

The first symbol that I know of that came about was the X

First piece of contested history: As far as I know, it was the trans/queer and drag communities in Latin America who started the trend of X. When there were signs or bulletins that had the gendered endings - specifically masculine plural as the default plural - people would write a big X through the O. This was a way of being inclusive and also a very smash the patriarchy move.

Some people attribute this to women's rights activists which may also be true, but a good portion of the things I read from people say it was the trans/queer/drag communities in Latin America doing this.

I've also read it originated in Brazil with Portuguese; still Latin America, but not a Spanish-speaking country.

Where it's most contested is that some people will say that this trend started in the Hispanic communities of the United States. And - not without reason - people are upset that this is perceived as a very gringo movement.

That's why Latinx is considered a very American-Hispanic experience

-

The arroba (@) is relatively new. I remember seeing it in the 2000s. I don't know if it existed earlier for gender inclusivity.

People used it because it looks like a combination of O and A, so it was meant to be cut down on saying things like todos y todas or niños y niñas in informal written speech

I remember quite a few (informal) emails starting like hola tod@s or muy buenas a tod@s or things like that

I think of it more as convenience especially in the information age where you never knew who you were talking to and it's easier than including both words, especially when masculine plural might be clumsy or insensitive

Still, it's practically impossible to use the @ in spoken Spanish, so it's better for writing casually. You also likely won't be allowed to use the @ in anything academic, but in chatrooms, blogs, or forums it's an option

-

I love the E ending. And the gender neutral form in singular is elle... so it's él "he", ella "she", and elle "they (singular)"

The -e ending is I think became more common within the past 10 years though it might have existed longer than that. These sorts of changes tend to come from the queer or trans communities and tend to be more insular before becoming more of an outside thing that then the general population finds out about

It came about because there are some adjectives in Spanish that end in -e that are unisex. It's not an A, it's not an O, but it's something grammatically neutral for Spanish

It's not as awkward as X, and E exists very firmly in Spanish so it's not perceived as some outside (typically gringo) influence

The good news is, it's pretty widespread on the internet. Not so much in person (yet), but especially in Spain and Argentina at least from what I've seen, particularly in the queer communities and online culture.

The only issues with it are that for non-native speakers, you have to get used to any spelling changes. Like amigo and amiga, but to use the E ending you have to add a U... so it's amigue.

That's because there are certain words where you have to do spelling changes to preserve the sound; gue has a hard G sound like -go does [like guerra]... but ge has the equivalent of an English H sound [gelatina for example]. Another one is cómico/a "funny" which would go to cómique. Again, because co has a hard C/K sound, while ce is a soft sound more like an S or in some contexts TH/Z sound; like centro is a soft sound, while cola is a hard sound

Unless you make it to the preterite forms where you come across like pagué, alcancé, practiqué with those types of endings... or subjunctive forms, pague, alcance, practique ... Basically you'd have to be exposed to those spelling rules or you'd be really confused if you were a total beginner.

It all makes sense when you speak it, but spelling might be harder before you learn those rules

The other drawback is that the E endings are sometimes not applicable. Like in damas y caballeros "ladies and gentlemen" there's not really a gender neutral variation on that, it's all binary there. And while la caballero "female knight" does exist, you'd never see a male variation on dama; the closest I've ever seen is calling a guy a damisela en apuros "damsel in distress" in some contexts where the man needs rescuing, and it's feminine una/la damisela, and it's very tongue-in-cheek

There are also some contexts like jefe vs jefa where I guess you would say jefe for "boss" if you were going the neutral route, but it's a bit weird because it's also the masculine option.

I can't speak for how people might feel about those if they're non-binary or agender because every so often you kind of get forced into the binary whether you like it or not

I totally support the E, I just recognize there are some limitations there and it's quirks of the Spanish language itself

Important Note: Just to reiterate, E endings are the ones most Spanish-speakers prefer because it's easiest to speak and doesn't have the American connotation that X does in some circles

-

Where it gets very "Facebook comment section" is that you'll see many Latin Americans traditionalists and conservatives claim that "this is just the gringos colonizing our language" and "grammatical gender doesn't matter in Spanish". They'll say that the "gender movement" is an American feminist movement and that it's a gringo thing and doesn't reflect actual Latin Americans or Spanish-speakers

Which on the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of undue influence on other languages because of colonization, and American influence and meddling in Latin American politics is a big important issue

But as far as I'm aware of the X (and especially the E) were created by Latin Americans

The other issue I personally have is that any time this conversation comes up, someone will say something like somos latinOs and claim that masculine plural is gender neutral

To that I say, first of all, "masculine plural" is inherently gendered. Additionally, there is a gender neutral in Spanish but it's lo or ello and it's only used with "it" so it sounds very unfriendly to use on an actual person... and in plural it looks like masculine plural and everything applies like masculine plural

Second, the reason masculine plural is default is because of machismo. It's more important that we don't possibly misgender a man, so it has to be masculine plural. It's changed in some places, but growing up when I was learning Spanish, if it was 99 women and 1 man you still had to put masculine plural

I'm not opposed to there being a default, and I understand why it's easier to use masculine plural, but some people get very upset at the idea of inclusive language

...

In general, my biggest issues with these comments come when people act like non-binary/queer/trans people don't exist in Spanish-speaking countries, like English invented them somehow. So it's nice to see linguistic self-determination and seeing native speakers using the E endings.

[uovoc]

Murderbot privacy

“SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to talk about its feelings” made me do a double take because I was like, SecUnit, who’s listening to you right now? Since when has it cared about privacy? Because while MB is a secretive fucker, it sure doesn’t extend that courtesy to others. And what I could figure out so far to explain this apparent hypocrisy is some more-or-less coherent stuff.

Summary:

MB conflates personal, private, and secret because these categories could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. This meant that the development of MB’s sense of personal identity was limited to its internal self. As a result, MB has a good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s emotions and internal state. However, its lack of bodily autonomy and background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

2200 words below the cut. I think about Murderbot a normal amount

Terminology

For clarity, the terms personal, private, secret, and privacy will be defined basically by their Merriam-Webster definitions. Personal will be used to mean relating to an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs. Secret is defined as kept from knowledge or view; hidden. Private will be used to mean 1) intended for or restricted to the use of particular person, group, or class. Privacy will be defined as the quality or state of being apart from company or observation; freedom from unauthorized intrusion. These are not comprehensive definitions, but for clarity’s sake they’re the ones I will use here.

The connotations that they carry in this analysis are:

Things that are secret are actively concealed. If something is secret, people are not aware of its existence. Secrets carry the implication of potential harm if divulged.

Privacy and things that are private are generally kept as such by social norms rather than active enforcement. The existence of things that are private may be known, but the details are limited to a restricted (trusted) audience. For instance, to quote Beatrice-Otter, “the contents of my underwear drawer are private, but not secret.” If you’re at someone’s house, you could technically go look in someone’s underwear drawer – it’s not like they can stop you – but out of the mutually agreed-upon respect for privacy and definition of what qualifies as private, you don’t. Things kept private tend to be done so for personal-emotional reasons rather than practical reasons.

These are limited definitions and not mutually exclusive. For instance, privacy can be enforced by gates and barriers like secrets are. These definitions aren’t meant to be comprehensive, but just to establish the meanings and connotations that I’m working with.

Privacy in the CR versus Preservation

Murderbot’s approach to privacy reflects the attitudes of the Corporation Rim. Preservation regards privacy more like a personal right and establishes it through primarily through societal norms, while the Corporation Rim treats privacy more like a personal privilege which individuals are responsible for securing and maintaining. In Preservation, freedom from observation is the default, and surveillance is the exception. To MBs annoyance, unless a space is singled out for security reasons (cargo spaces and high-traffic zones on the station), it’s generally left unsurveilled (residential areas, pedestrian corridors, most of the planet that we see in NE). Preservation also has cultural expectations of certain types of spaces being private. MB doesn’t share these expectations, as it notes in NE when it admits that its eavesdropping habit is “a little incriminating with the whole listening to private conversations in secured spaces and personal dwellings thing.” The specificity of “secured spaces and personal dwellings” makes this sound like something someone else said to MB that it’s now repeating, especially since it doesn’t agree that what others consider private conversations or private spaces are inherently off-limits to observation.

Unlike Preservation, MB sees privacy as a privilege rather than an inherent right, because it’s more used to the attitude of the CR surveillance state. In the labor installations that MB was deployed on, everything people did was observed by SecSystem at all times. If you wanted privacy, you had to pay for it, as MB notes in ES when it’s complaining about the lack of cameras in the fancy hotel that it books when it arrives. Even then, you might not get what you pay for, and MB take steps to secure PresAux’s own camera network that they later set up. In the CR, privacy is closer in meeting to secrecy, something that must be actively enforced and secured against intrusion. Corporate entities in the CR are motivated to erode personal privacy for profit in the form of datamining and workforce control. Privacy is thus a personal responsibility, since the surrounding environment is one that seeks to undermine it. This is the attitude towards privacy that MB is working with, and part of why it feels entitled to constant surveillance of its humans. In contrast, privacy in Preservation is a right maintained by the collective expectations and policies of the larger community. Station Security doesn’t exactly approve of MB setting up its own surveillance network, but nor does it do regular drone removal sweeps. MB expects privacy to be actively secured, and sees Preservation’s easily breached systems as the equivalent of leaving your valuables out on the lawn. If you don’t want to be surveilled, don’t go around being surveillable.

Surveillance exemptions

Instances where MB appears to respect the notion of privacy are sex/bodily functions, proprietary data, and feelings talks. However, out of these 3 categories, feelings are the topic where MB’s motivations align most closely with the human understanding of privacy. MB’s aversion to sex is more of an ick factor thing, since it repeatedly states that it finds human bodily functions to be disgusting. (I think touch aversion is also part of the sex-repulsed thing, but touch aversion aligns more with ick factor and also with lack of bodily autonomy, discussed below.)

Proprietary data is another topic on which MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding “private” as being restricted to a particular group: it doesn’t tell the Mensah parents about Amena’s creepy date, and it removes the audio when it shows Indah the video of Mensah complaining about another councilmember. In both of these cases, there’s the potential for harm if the information is divulged: Amena would get scolded and possibly grounded by her parents, and Mensah’s relationships with the Council and Senior Indah would be damaged by her lack of professionalism. In a business context, proprietary data is information kept within a company because it would give your competitors an advantage, or because your competitors could use it to put you at a disadvantage – pretty much the same results, in the game of capitalism. Although both of these examples deal with personal-emotional information, the concept of proprietary data is closer to secrecy in its potential for harm and complete concealment of the information’s existence.

The third type of situation where MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding privacy is people talking about their feelings. After Arada gets back from the Barish-Estranza negotiations, MB pointedly does not watch her and Overse make up because of the high likelihood that “they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see).” Sex falls under the ick factor, but there’s a number of reasons the fandom collective braincell has pointed out for MB not wanting to watch people talk about their feelings:

MB exercising the privilege of not having to care about human feelings, as a formerly enslaved person subjected to human whims.

Secondhand embarrassment because MB would never talk about its feelings.

Related to the above, MB reflexively recoiling out of empathy because if it was in their position, it wouldn’t want someone listening in on its feelings.

Actually, now that I think of it, MB doesn’t go into great detail on why it doesn’t like watching humans talk about their feelings, unlike how it explicitly expresses its disgust for anything involving human fluids. Which is why I’ve got the suspicion that when it comes to feelings, MB does have a strong instinctive understanding of what it means for something to be private and, as a result, gets uncomfortable observing a moment that is not meant for others to see. MB has an easier time understanding how privacy applies to feelings rather than acts because unlike its body, its feelings are strongly tied to its concept of what is personal.

MB’s internal and external self

To paraphrase this one MDZS meta, MB’s body is not its own. MB’s sense of what is personal to it, or its sense of unique identity, applies more its internal self than its external self because of its former nonperson status in the CR. This informs what MB considers to be inherently private. While in the CR, its appearance and configuration were decided by the company. To be fair, humans don’t get to choose our original bodies either, but our bodies and the modifications we make to them tell a story of our personal background. The history inscribed in MB’s body, down to the logos etched on its structure, is that of a mass-produced piece of corporate equipment. MB does not have a particular attachment to its external appearance (“standard human”) because its appearance reflects the company’s choices rather than its own. (This changes after it gains the freedom to choose its own clothes and gets tabletop surgery from ART, discussed at the end.) Although MB’s configuration is what makes it a SecUnit, and being a SecUnit is an essential part of its identity, it’s not an identity that’s unique to MB.

For most of its life, MB’s actions have also been extensions of the company. Its actions have either been dictated by its clients and governor module, or it has had to pretend to be controlled by those things, which means making decisions which could conceivably have been issued with the governor module’s approval. MB is also used to selling its body, since it’s expected to literally sacrifice pieces of itself to keep its clients safe (an expectation it continues to hold). MB has been ship-of-Theseus’d to hell and back. The lack of both bodily autonomy and bodily safety due to its nonperson status in the CR means that MB considered its body to be neither private (restricted to the use of only one person) nor entirely personal (pertaining to its unique character).

As a consequence, MB doesn’t consider its external self to have the right to privacy. Although it doesn’t like being looked at, it’s reaction is to hide rather than ask people to stop. (This is also because MB isn’t used to exercising its personal preferences regarding other people’s actions, but that’s a different angle.) It doesn’t like it when Mensah walks into the security ready room, or when its humans and ART’s crew are watching it come out of involuntary shutdown on the deck, but it doesn’t tell them to stop. In general, MB doesn’t like being looked at because if it’s falling apart, it’s in a vulnerable state, and if it’s not falling apart, then being paid attention to used to carry the threat of abuse/incoming orders/being clocked as a rogue. These reasons are more about safety than privacy.

However, MB specifically doesn’t like people looking at its face are because its face shows its emotions, and its emotions are a reflection of its internal state and, by extension, its internal self. MB considers its thoughts and emotions to have the right to privacy because they are the aspects of itself that it has been able to control, and thus has been able to make personal. When Gurathin reveals its name, it grates out, “That was private.” On one level, Murderbot’s name is an honest expression of what it thinks it is and all the associated self-loathing and guilt. MB does NOT want humans to know its name because then they know how it feels about a topic truly important to it. On another level, its name reveals its self-deprecating humor, something a ruthless killing machine is not supposed to have.

Everything that MB considers personal, it has also needed to keep secret, because in the CR, it’s not supposed to be a person the first place. Conversely, the only reason it’s been able to have personal opinions and emotions is because it has been able to keep these things secret. Anything MB would have wanted to be private – restricted to a trusted audience – would have also needed to be secret because of the pervasive surveillance present in the CR, the nonperson status of constructs, and the fact that it had no trusted audience with which it could share private information.

Conclusions

MB conflates the categories of personal, private, and secret because these concepts could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. Anything in one category had to be able to fit into the others, which limited the development of MB’s sense of personal identity to its internal self. Although MB has good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s internal state, MB’s lack of bodily autonomy and its background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

Now that MB’s in a safer place (kidnappings by giant asshole research transports aside), it’s beginning to separate out those concepts a bit and allow things to be personal and private but not secret (its desire to be with ART, its affection towards Mensah). It’s also starting to allow things that are neither secret nor private to be personal (expressing preferences in its hairstyle, clothing, and aversion to physical touch), which can also be considered MB reclaiming its external self/body.

[star-maiden]

Help! These D*** Cards Don’t make sense!

What To Do When a Tarot Reading Seems Like Nonsense

⭐️ First of all, we need to get a few things clear. Tarot won’t always make sense. You will make mistakes. Sometimes, you won’t get any messages at all no matter how hard you try. If this sounds similar to your experience with the cards, don’t feel bad. It doesn’t mean you’re a “bad” reader. As soon as you get more comfortable with the idea of being wrong, you’ll find that your confidence (and subsequently your readings) will improve a lot! Got that? Great! Let’s move on to the topic at hand.

Confused by your tarot cards? Don’t get discouraged.

⭐️ I’m just going to tell you plainly. There isn’t a single tarot reader in the world who hasn’t been completely baffled with their cards at some point. This is natural and a completely normal part of the learning process. What’s more, Tarot is one of those things that you never really stop learning more about. There is always room for growth, and for finding deeper meanings within the stories each card tells. So if you’re hoping to be a “Tarot Master” with omnipotent vision and 100% accurate readings about everything, then I’m afraid I must be the bearer of bad news: There’s no such thing. We’ll all be wrong or confused sometimes, and that’s ok.

Even so, there are a few things to consider if you find yourself bamboozled by your cards more often than not.

Reasons why your tarot cards don’t make sense, and what to do about it.

1. You’re cards haven’t been shuffled properly.

⭐️ This is a common culprit for readings that aren’t making much sense. If you don’t shuffle your cards enough, either straight out of the plastic wrapping or after too many readings, you won’t get any clear messages. This is especially true if you’ve been doing a lot of readings, and just quickly shuffling your pulled cards back into the deck afterwards. If you notice that you are getting a lot of cards from previous readings, and they aren’t making much sense, it might be time for a good shuffle.

What to do: If your deck is new, you’ll want to spend several days shuffling and getting to know the cards. This will mix up the cards enough for you to actually get messages, and help you become more familiar with the imagery of the deck (which will improve your intuitive readings).

⭐️ If you deck isn’t new, it’s likely that you just haven’t shuffled well enough in between readings. It happens. Just give them a good shuffle, and you’ll be set.

2. You don’t know the card meanings well enough.

⭐️ Wait! Don’t get upset yet! I’m not saying that you have to memorize the traditional meaning of every card, and use only that definition as the “be all, end all” of card interpretations. Far from it! That would be super boring. I’m also not saying that you can’t use the guidebook (you totally can). In fact, if you use your guidebooks, you’ll be able to learn the subtle nuances that each deck author attributes to the card meanings. It’s pretty neat stuff!

⭐️ However, a basic understanding of your cards and their key meanings will help you read accurately with consistency. A big part of intuitive reading is being able to recognize the symbolism within the cards. If you know a keyword for each card, you can use them as a starting point for your interpretations.

⭐️ For example: Let’s say you have the 4 of cups. Traditionally, it shows a moody figure, staring off into the distance, with spilled cups before them. Above the figure is often some sort of offering that they can’t see. If you know that a keyword for the 4 of cups is apathy, you could use the symbolism in the card to read it as “having lost interest in a situation”. The figure feels apathy for the situation he’s in, and is not interested in what is being offered. That’s an example of the traditional, symbolic meaning of the tarot in action. Ready to take this a step further? Once you know the traditional meaning, you can combine it with other cards, as well as the details of the situation, to “springboard” into other interpretations.

⭐️ Example 2: Maybe you know that “apathy”, the traditional meaning of the 4 of cups, doesn’t completely fit. In this imaginary reading, the client is asking you about an argument they had with their partner. They are hurt and upset, and have asked you if it’s worth it to stay in the relationship. Clearly, they are not feeling apathetic toward the situation! In this case, we would go beyond “apathy” or “loss of interest”. What is the energy of this card? Combining the imagery with the traditional meaning, we can generate other meanings. Stagnancy, miscommunication and an inability to see another perspective are all alternative, non-traditional interpretations. In this situation, I might tell this client that there is some confusion between them and their partner. Neither one has a clear understanding of how the other feels. Therefore, it might be a good idea to discuss the current situation with each other once they have both had time to calm down. The surrounding cards will usually help you fine tune your interpretation.

What do to: There’s no way around this one. Study the cards. In particular, the imagery of your deck will be very useful to become familiar with. Read your guidebook, read other tarot books and blogs, journal about your readings. If books are not your thing, there are countless YouTube videos and podcasts that cover tarot these days. My favorite tarot podcast is Tarot bytes by Theresa Reed. Pace yourself. You don’t have to learn everything in a week. Most importantly, read, read, read with your deck. The more you read, the more you will begin to understand how your deck communicates and how your intuition picks up on this subtle energy.

3. You are too emotionally invested in the outcome of the reading.

⭐️ This mostly happens if you are reading for yourself, but it can also happen when reading for close friends or family. Sometimes, if we are hyper focused on a particular outcome or in a state of reaction, it’s easy to project our own personal feelings onto the cards. This skews the interpretation. Its not a bad thing to read for yourself, your family or your friends. However, it’s a good idea to keep this point in mind.

What to do: If you are nervous, upset or in any way unable to remain objective about the outcome, it’s probably best to not do the reading. You can try again later when things are calmer.

4. You’ve ignored the focus question.

⭐️ This happens when a reader fails to take into account the “focus” or theme of the reading. For example, if a client asks you about work, and The Lovers card comes up, you should not tell them that they will meet their soulmate soon. This has nothing to do with what they were asking about. You’re more likely to encounter this problem when reading for others, but it can happen when reading for yourself.

What to do: An easy answer, stay on script. Keep the original question in the forefront of your mind during the entire reading. Like our example above, if you are reading about work, don’t start interpreting anything about romance. The cards are nuanced and varied enough to have multiple meanings. Instead, if The Lovers card appears in a work related reading, consider how the energy of the card might show up within the context of the reading. Instead of a “soulmate”, you might say that this client needs to find a harmony and balance between their home and work life. This is just one of many possible ways to interpret this card within the context of a work-related reading.

5. You’ve asked a question that is too specific OR that the tarot cannot answer.

⭐️ This can happen with both self-readings and readings for other people. Tarot is a powerful tool of self reflection and insightful divination, but it is not omnipotent. Further more, tarot readers themselves are not mind readers. We have to have context and understanding in order to see the connections clearly enough to interpret them with accuracy. With tarot, the more context we have about a situation, the better a reading will be. So for vague questions like “what will happen next Tuesday?”, a reader would need to supplement the reading with their intuitive abilities. It can be done, but the chance of misinterpretation is much higher if a reader is unsure how to weave the tarot and clair senses together.

⭐️ Some types of questions are ill-suited to tarot. Generally speaking, these would be questions that limit the ability of the seeker to act. “Will I pass my exam?” would not be a good question because it leaves no room for change or growth. A reader might struggle to interpret this correctly unless they are very experienced.

⭐️ Another type of question that you might see a lot are third party questions. For example: “Is person A having an affair with person B?” This type of question that doesn’t directly involve the seeker in any way is not useful with tarot. Most likely, you won’t get a clear answer or any useful information. Tarot is not a tool to be used to spy on others. In fact, it’s quite disrespectful to use the cards in this way.

What to do: A lot of this boils down to personal preference and reading style, but a good rule of thumb is to ask open ended questions. In this sense, questions that begin with “how” or “what” will be better than questions that start with “is”. Remember, tarot does not deal in absolutes. It reflects energy of situations and projected futures, and energy can change. Nothing is 100% certain with tarot.

[serpentstole]

Can I ask what's wrong with Michael W Ford's books? I never read them but I've seen often people recommending them, so I'm curious. Thank you and have a nice day.

Thanks for the question! Sorry if this gets a little long, TL;DR is at the bottom but I've broken down some more specific examples in point form.

I'll preface this by saying that if people get something worthwhile from Michael W Ford's books, that's their business and I'm happy for them. However, there's a few things about his writing and him as a person that I don't really love and struggle to get behind. Most of the specific textual examples I give are from the Bible of the Adversary specifically, as it's one of his more famous books and the only one I personally have had the mental fortitude to page through so far.

- I'm immediately leery of anyone who's often described as a "visionary" or "luminary" on websites selling or listing their books, especially when I've gotten the feeling that it's just that his books are accessible and plentiful. Even among fans of authors like E. A. "Become A Living God" Koetting, the general opinion seems to be that his books lack a lot of consistency and are a bit poorly written. Can confirm for the Bible of the Adversary, at least. There's some parts of that thing that could have used a once-over by an editor.

- I try very hard not to use what happened to the Greater Church of Lucifer/GCoL against him. Another member of the community that I do still (loosely, infrequently) interact with was also involved, and while I sincerely wish they'd both more deeply researched the man they were signing up to run a very public and scrutinized church with, I think his turning into a scam artist who publicly converted to Christianity was enough punishment there. Likewise, I'm a bit uncomfortable with his past involvement with the Order of Nine Angels/ONA/O9A given the fact that they're a pack of murder advocating nazis, but apparently he left when he discovered that fact, so I try to give him the benefit of the doubt that he truly did distance himself from them immediately upon learning of their beliefs, as I don't know when these things became more widely known. However, both of these fumbles alongside how he presents himself and his books just don't sit well with me, as the most generous interpretation is that he was twice-misled in some pretty dangerous and harmful ways by those that are damaging to the public perception of Luciferianism, but still likes to be some figurehead of the Luciferian community. People make mistakes, and people can be misled, and people can learn from past experiences, but his track record is a bit upsetting for a supposed authority.

- His work includes pieces and ideas from occultists or practices that I tend to avoid in my own practice and study, such as Thelema and Crowley's writing as a whole, inspiration taken from the Temple of Set/Setian magic, Qlipoth (because it wouldn't be a Luciferian grimoire without pilfered Jewish mysticism), and forms of Gnosticism that embrace the idea of God as an evil demiurge (which i explained my discomfort with in my previous post). I'm also not a huge fan of his "all magic comes from within" approach (and find it hard to reconcile with his frequent use of Luciferian deities/spirits and demons), nor that he'll talk about Cain's role in "Luciferian grimoires" without actually naming any... though given how similar a piece of Lilith themed artwork he's done looks to Andrew Chumbley's illustration, I assume he means the sort of books the Cultus Sabbati was writing. I wish I still had the Ford version saved or could remember which of his books it's from, the side by side comparison is painful but without it I risk looking like I'm making things up.

- Heavy, heavy use of Lilith, which I don't love for reasons I outlined before. She mostly seems to appear whenever spooky lustful sex magick is being discussed, which is great, that's great.

- He also uses the Wiccan wheel of the year sprinkled in among his more Luciferian focused holy days, which is just really funny to me. Why are we celebrating Beltane, Michael? Why are we celebrating Imbolg? (Page 69)

- He likes to use a lot of "black magic" and "vampyre magic" stuff which tends to feel very sensationalized and over the top to me. I've seen discussions of vampiric magic I found very interesting, but so far his hasn't been one of them.

- He sometimes seems to conflate Lucifer with Samael which I really truly dislike, though it's admittedly not the most baffling or out of left field take I've seen.

- Ford at times seems to either willfully misrepresent or misunderstand information he's passing along. For example, in the Bible of the Adversary he says that Cain's name comes from "...root ‘Kanah’ which means to possess. This by itself presents the antinomian nature of his essence, while instead of sacrificing his most bountiful items to the Lord, he kept them for himself." As I understand it, discussion surrounding Cain's name possibly coming from the Hebrew word קנה (kana) lean more into it being the word for to get or to obtain, referencing Eve's declaration after his conception that she'd gotten a man from the Lord. I'm all for alternate interpretations, but it feels like needless edgy-fying to fit the narrative he's trying to present. (Quote from Page 58)

- He'll say some absolutely bonkers shit like "Abel in some Luciferian Lore is considered a lower pre-form of Cain, thus the sacrifice was not literal" with zero citations or references. Like sir what the fuck does that mean, what Lore, please give us the lore please. (Footnote, Page 59)

- His interpretation of the Watchers and the Book of Enoch is so insultingly bad that I won't even relay it here, but if I see one more person claim that an angel, demon, or spirit they want to distance from Christianity or Judaism is actually a Babylonian god I'm going to go feral.

- As I've hinted at above, it feels like he'll just cherry pick and regurgitate for no real purpose. A few spirits from other texts like the Lesser Key and the Grimoire Verum get mentioned for... mostly the set of names, it seems like, he just kind of lists them out of context.

TL;DR, Michael W Ford feels (to me at least) like someone who has picked out the more appealing and edgy occult trivia and magic he could find from a wide range of sources, recontextualized the parts that didn't appeal to him until they fit his aesthetic and purposes, and presented them as a workable entry point to the Luciferian religion and its potential magical systems that is all flash no substance... and then could barely polish the flash. I don't like that he's many people's first exposure to the concept of theistic Luciferianism, and I don't like how authoritatively he presents his jumbled works as what the religion is truly about when it's so broad a label. Again, if there is something that someone finds useful within his books I am very happy for them, but I have struggled to find anything I could point to that make them worth the read... even for me to investigate further keep critiquing.

I honestly do not know why so people recommend them, unless it's just that they're easy to buy, reasonably inexpensive, and specifically have the Luciferian label on them. If that's truly the case, those people are being lazy and uncritical in a way that doesn't speak well to their apparent Luciferian ideals.

[emptymanuscript]

Believing Contextual Reality

One of the channels I subscribe to on YouTube is Jill Bearup’s That’s Fighting Talk! which is lots of fun, interesting, and I recommend it. She analyzes fights in movies and talks about how you convey and misconvey the movie’s goals through the fights.

Over lunch today I’m watching her video on the combat in Wonder Woman 1984. And she had this great quote:

Everyone has their own level of reality bending they’re prepared to accept. But there comes a point where people just stop being interested in something because, even if it's not on a conscious level, some part of their brain just doesn't believe it. If you don't have a language for talking about fights then you maybe can't explain why something isn't working for you. But if your brain doesn't believe what's happening it's just not going to be enticing. If it feels fake or it feels pointless then it just becomes boring. While a huge part of the "feeling it" is the setup and the emotional beats, another big part of it is making it feel like it could be real in the context of the world that you're in. If Diana can fly, great, but if Diana can't fly yet, she shouldn't land like she's gently stepping off a podium. She shouldn't swing like she's not supporting all of her weight on one arm. She shouldn't flip a truck end over end even if it is possible for her jump above it in a mighty leap.

Remove the specifics from this quote and this is a deep truth about storytelling and how nearly every aspect of story works.

For the most part, audiences don’t have a full and sophisticated language for discussing story issues of any kind. Even the things they think they know are often based in partial understandings of what is going on. There is no end of people who will lecture you about cliché that don’t have the foggiest idea of what makes one use of the event a cliché and another not.

That doesn’t mean they don’t recognize problems. It doesn’t mean that problems won’t disturb them to the point that they’ll disengage with the story. All they don’t have is a way to tell YOU why it isn’t working. They just know it doesn’t. And they have to go into full mental acrobatics to try and explain why, at which point they’ll often mess it up and convince themselves of something entirely untrue.

This is WHY so many experienced novelists and writing teachers insist you should always listen to someone tell you there is a problem with your work but never listen to anyone’s solutions. Spotting there is a problem is something everyone can do. While explaining what the problem that has been recognized is, is a complex skill that’s difficult even for other experienced writers.

But a lot of it does just come down to a contextual verisimilitude. The audience expects a story to work in a certain way and has a limit for variation. While there are general guides, everyone has their own individual threshold. So you kind of have to point and shoot and accept that you’ll miss people. You just have to convince ENOUGH. That’s all you can do. And most of doing that is just making sure the logic of the story works. If you set a rule, you must stick to it. If you alter a rule, you must spend time adjusting the Audience’s expectations. Because if you don’t, even if it isn’t right away, they do start to disengage and reject that reality.

The second the audience starts doing that, you’re living on borrowed time. The life of your work will be exactly as long as it takes for the audience to stop giving you a chance to fix it. The more they love the story, the more time they’ll give you but that’s a dangerous hook to hang your hat on.

So: the important question: HOW do you keep that consistency? How do you prevent people from disengaging.

Make it clear to yourself that you are assuming reality

Unless you actively write down a rule for your story, force it to conform to reality as you understand it.

If you are aware that you deviate significantly from the norm in terms of how you view the world and reality, acknowledge those differences and add them to the list below.

Write it down

Even though I’m terrible at this, I’m telling you, this is the solution. EVERY place you intend to deviate from exact replication of how you expect the real world you personally live in to work, write it down. Those are the real rules and laws you have to watch out for. They’re the physics of the context of your writing. And there are more than you think at first

If you’re writing in a specific genre, your genre WILL have contextual rules. They ALL do. Even if it is as basic as: in Fantasy, Magic works OR in Romance, there is a happily ever after. These are rules that define differences from boundless reality, define reader expectations, and define the boundaries you MUST work within if you want someone to pick up your stories and read them because of the genre.

KISS

Keep It Super Simple. No, I mean it. Keep It Simple, Stupid. If you have overlapping rules, see if you can reduce them to a single, all encompassing rule. If you have duplicate rules, toss them. The less rules you have on your written down list, the better. That doesn’t mean cheat. Magic exists doesn’t cover that I can sacrifice my life so you’ll live. Yes it uses magic but that isn’t an intrinsic expectation of magic existing. This list exists for you to use in writing your story FOR YOUR AUDIENCE. The list exists to help you tell them what is going on. The more you have to tell them, the more they’ll tune out. How much did you want to stop reading this? Consider this post as what your reader has to go through for every point on your list. You can only get away with so much and you can only make it so complicated. Keep It STUPID Simple.

For every item on your list, you must plan at least three events that SHOW (no telling for you with this one - though you can also tell in addition elsewhere) the rule in operation. You must show that this is truth in the context of your story. For things like the happily ever ending, what you’re looking at is events that prove that such a thing is possible, even if it isn’t happening at that exact moment. it’s a way to prove sub aspects of the truth.

Iteration is great. Feel free to expand on the basics in more interesting ways. Audiences love watching simple concepts grow out into more meaningful, important, and complex arrangements.

Contradiction is forbidden except under very special circumstances.

No, seriously, don’t. A contradiction is setting yourself up for failure.

Even accidental contradiction, must be weeded out and destroyed. These are the rules of your universe. Invalidating them is teaching the audience that the rule doesn’t exist.

Ok, yes, there is a special circumstance. Which you should avoid unless you absolutely can’t avoid it. If there are conflicting rules set in tension, such as “There is Magic,” “People who love can’t do magic,” “Romances get happily ever afters,” then, and only then, can you do your best to be clever about contradicting one rule in service to another. Such as maybe the sorcerer learns to take out their hearts at every dawn so they can go be a sorcerer every day but at night they put their heart back in as the sun goes to bed so they can live every night happily ever after with their true love. That Way, they are truly fulfilled in all walks of their life and they live truly happily ever after. But understand, if you do something like that, it’s going to be one of the main threads of your story because it won’t actually work well any other way. So you better be darn sure that you NEED that contradiction.

CONTRADICTION IS FORBIDDEN!

I know I just did that up above but I’m serious. Especially about the accidental contradiction. That’s going to be a part of your editing. You’ll need to weed through your work looking for all the places where you have accidentally proven something that contradicts a point on your list. That list is building instructions from the divine. Follow it religiously. Drive the contradictions out.

(Optional) Ask

Just straight up ask people if they’ll buy what you’re selling. Do you read romance? Would you believe a fantasy story where love made it so you couldn’t cast magic? Would you be willing to try a book about a sorcerer who tried to keep magic and win their true love? Would you believe me if I said they DO live happily ever after?

[lligkv]

almost calculated to rivet the reader

I was recommended the book The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by another editor at the publishing house I work for, who was impressed at the thought of an algorithm that could predict whether a book would be a bestseller with 72 percent accuracy.

As someone who reads “literary” novels, has a disdain for tech evangelists bordering on the visceral, and regards the development of data-driven publishing with mistrust, I expected to be annoyed by the book. But it’s ultimately not quite as offensive to those sensibilities as it might seem. Rather than a “code” to help people write novels that’ll sell, or an algorithm of some kind that might drive book acquisitions in years to come, The Bestseller Code is about exploring why bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code or Fifty Shades of Gray appeal the way they do. And it offers support, through text mining (the process by which one discovers and extracts particular textual features from a book) and machine learning (the way one might process those features by feeding them into a machine that goes on to make predictions about, say, whether a given manuscript will achieve bestseller status or not), for research that was already done by folks like the scholar Christopher Booker, who read hundreds of books over decades, the old-fashioned way, and identified seven main plots for fictional narratives that authors Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers find are corroborated by their own data.

Granted, there’s a bit of Jennifer Weiner-type “the commercial lit popular authors write keeps getting badmouthed by critics and the Literary Establishment!” stuff in the book. There’s also one baffling moment where Archer and Jockers make a claim that “the range of existential experience was much greater in bestsellers,” and defend that claim by talking about particular verbs that appear more often in bestselling novels than in non-bestsellers: “bestselling characters ‘need’ and ‘want’ twice as often as non-bestsellers, and bestselling characters ‘miss’ and ‘love’ about 1.5 times more often than non-bestsellers.” Verbs and isolated actions do not existential experiences make! But at root, Archer and Jockers’s research is the product of curiosity about what makes mainstream bestsellers sell the way they do, and whether readers have figured something out that acquisitions editors at big houses may not have yet.

As it turns out, there’s a degree of technical sophistication in Fifty Shades of Grey or The Da Vinci Code in the way these books follow a plot arc that manages to perfectly satisfy a commercial-fiction reader’s desire to be thrilled by dramatic stories and the fantasies they play upon. Specifically, for these books, it’s the “rebirth” plot, in which a character experiences change, renewal, and transformation. Which doesn’t sound revolutionary. But if you look closely at the plot structure, and the sequence of emotional beats in both novels, you see a rollercoaster shape that’s almost calculated to rivet the reader: these peaks of high, low, a high-high, a mild low, another smaller high, a low, and a final high (unless, like Fifty Shades, you need another low to set the reader up for the sequel). Authors and readers alike seem to have stumbled on such perfect, sophisticated structures. The writers happen upon them, rather than consciously being educated in them or consciously crafting them as more literary writers often do; readers seem to hunt them out by instinct: the books that best follow one of the seven plot structures are the ones that rise to the top.

There’s also one moment in The Bestseller Code that’s genuinely affecting, in the context of a discussion of Maria Susanna Cummins’s novel The Lamplighter, which in its time was scorned by Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Joyce. As Archer and Jockers put it, bestsellers and commercial novels are set in emotional terrains, more so than public ones. That is, they’re about their characters as they feel and act, within a world that’s taken as a given, rather than what novels classified as “literary” are often about—characters having to navigate a sociopolitical world that is itself a subject for the author’s comment, or an author’s self-aware exercise of and experimentation with language. And these novels “work for huge numbers of readers not because of what they say to us but what they do to us.” As such, these novels “need no shaming”: they just exist on a separate plane from the literary ones.

In the end, I didn’t mind getting this dispatch from that plane. I make occasional trips to other such planes: sometimes I’m in the mood for, say, Joe Abercrombie’s brand of fantasy, and I’ve read all the Harry Dresden novels; I also love some books that are the literary equivalents of summer blockbusters, like the Expanse series. But I know I won’t descend to the bestseller plane very often—and I do consider it a descent. To my mind, craft and thrill alone don’t give novels the most merit. I don’t read just to be entertained or to be moved, which is what bestsellers offer. I read in order to be made to think, in precisely the ways those literary, public-terrain, sociopolitical novels make me think. And I value them because they linger. They don’t just do things to me, work on me, crash over me like a wave and then recede; they speak to me, just as Archer and Jockers say, and what they say to me lives inside me for years to come.

What’s more, I already suffer enough with the tendency to “identify” with the characters in books I read without venturing into ones that indulge or depend upon that instinct as bestsellers do.

Finally, while Archer and Jockers’s algorithm does a fine job anatomizing bestsellers in a way that speaks to the merit they do have and the function they do serve, I don’t know that I’d trust its recommendations even if I were a passionate reader of bestsellers, considering the book the algorithm picked as the absolute best representation of what it considers a bestseller is Dave Eggers’s The Circle.

Which does reinforce that what an algorithm can’t understand is context. What keeps The Circle from being a bestseller, to my mind, is that the conceit—a woman who goes to work for a tech firm and is schooled in the particular inhumanities she needs to adopt in order to succeed in that increasingly human environment—is not the most engaging. The story may be too close to a specific reality, as opposed to the everyday worlds (e.g., in John Grisham, Jodie Picoult, or Danielle Steel) or the heightened settings (e.g., in The Da Vinci Code or Fifty Shades) in which bestsellers are best set. Perhaps the world in which The Circle takes place is so specific, and its concerns so urgent, that it doesn’t even need to be fictionalized to be of most interest; it seems that representation of Big Tech in memoir, like Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, does better in the marketplace. And finally, Eggers himself is more a literary than a commercial author, something buyers of commercial fiction might be mindful of and trust less than one of the established names in the bestseller market. And he represents a different, past era in even literary fiction. We’re not in the age of the “Brooklyn Books of Wonder” anymore—the humorous triumph over adversity, the twee search for meaning and for love that characterized books of a certain time in the early 2000s. Really, all Eggers’s attempts to succeed beyond that trend—Zeitoun, What Is the What, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King—seem to me to have been tepidly received. The culture has moved on from his particular moment, and it moves in vogues an algorithm can’t always track.

I’ll also say that, seeing how Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, another book I reread recently, did so well in its day, and how it holds the fuck up—the plot and writing remain absorbing, and the atmosphere as seductive and pleasurable as ever; and that it gets namechecked so often in trends like dark academia suggest teens are exercising their beautiful prerogative to learn all the wrong lessons from that book to this day—I’ll say it’s a safe bet you can write a literary bestseller too, if you wanted to.

*

Anyway. Perhaps you’re reading this piece hoping to learn how to write a bestseller yourself. If so, here’s the skinny:

Keep your primary focus on two or three themes. And keep those themes basic. Archer and Jockers list ones like “kids and school”; “family time”; “money”; “crime scenes”; “domestic life”; “love”; “courtrooms and legal matters”; “maternal roles”; “modern technology”; “government and intelligence.”

Make sure your book has a central conflict—and make sure your protagonist is an active agent in that conflict and in her life generally, knowing what she needs and going for it, acting and speaking with a degree of assurance. Characters in bestselling novels grab, think, ask, tell, like see, hear, smile, reach, and do. Characters in lower-selling literary novels, on the other hand, murmur, protest, hesitate, wait, halt, drop, demand, interrupt, shout, fling, whirl, thrust, and seem.

Shape your story to fit one of the seven archetypal plotlines the authors identify:

A gradual move from difficult times to happy times

The reverse, a move from happy times to more difficult ones

A coming-of-age story or rags-to-riches plot

A “rebirth” plot in which a character experiences change, renewal, and transformation

A “voyage and return” plot in which a character is plunged into a whole new world, experiences a dark turn, and finally returns to some sort of normalcy

Another “voyage and return” plot in which the character herself voyages into the new world, fights monsters, suffers, and finally completes some sort of quest

A story in which your protagonist overcomes a villain or some threat to the culture that must be eliminated so she can change her fortunes back to the good

And make sure you time the emotional beats of your story to follow the curve of your plotline. For instance, The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades both follow the “rebirth” plot, and the respective authors ensure the arcs of the romances in both books match the curve of the plotline too, keeping the reader hooked in a way that’s, ultimately, structural.

Be sure to pepper your plot with scenes in which characters are intimate in casual ways. Much is made in The Bestseller Code of the intimacy reflected in a tactic John Grisham uses in a couple of his novels, which is to have his protagonist go over to a love interest’s house with wine and Chinese to just hang out and let her in on how he’s feeling.

Sex that doesn’t drive the plot forward doesn’t go over well. Avoid it. Even in romance novels (as opposed perhaps to erotica), sex is usually in service of the storyline.

Seek for a balance between features in your prose that speak to the more literary, refined style that often comes from institutions of education and letters, and the more journalistic, conversational, everyday style of writing one might intuitively associate with commercial fiction (shorter sentences, snappier prose, with more conversational and casual writing, more words like “okay” or “ugh”). These aren’t especially rigorous categories, I’m aware. Just use your best guess; you’ll probably be fine.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

comet, moon, pluto, aquila, protostar

Thank You vm

Comet- What are you currently frustrated about?

lmaooo oh you know at any given time i’m weaving this rich tapestry of continual frustrations lol.....i’d say i’m in an Upswing Period of [simmering frustration levels closer to the surface] lately too lol like earlier in the week i pushed through a day or two there more casually but then it was like ah jeez here comes the malaise. more specifically today, even just before sitting down to answer this, i emerged from the bathroom to find there was a “dog has pooped inside despite having been outside within the last 10 min” shituation, which was wonderful.....annoyed from Waking by “smh at not being able to adjust my nocturnality, still frustrated about the near success of last friday being thwarted by the dead of night hammering debacle,” & regular Antagonizing Audio issues, aka being stressed by both the [loud, alarming] type sound & the [gross textural misophonia hell] type.....earlier i was like “where is the dish sponge” (still don’t know) & went to get a new, packaged one which had been in a drawer, but that one was gone too, good that there’s no pressing need to wash dishes rn i guess.....still struggling with the “well i guess i’m trying to put myself out there Socially” attempt to find relevant public discords, being generally overwhelmed as actually talking to randos in a group is A Lot & in theory it’s like well you meet someone Specific you’d enjoy talking to & branch off from there but unfortunately you can’t just skip to that step, also i do not genuinely Expect to get to that step either way, also i am not easily finding servers in the 1st place b/c it’s like, well i talk about Interests but what am i interested in? who knows. don’t do art “seriously” enough to rly wanna discuss it much, thought abt Language Learning but one i found wants you to have a verified account lmao like, no thanks. in theory i enjoy Socializing some but in practice it is sure a trial & i have not said anything to anyone anywhere yet, just a “well, not sure what else i could do here situation,” in theory take up an In Person hobby / group to make it all easier but that’s not happening. which, i was also Frustrated remembering oh right i spent a year as measured by my personal age in 1 location, both Pandemic & other [society] problems, & speaking of Interests & Hobbies not having them, i was also >:| over something having kicked in my Math Sensibilities (aka that i like math) & wondering like, would i have enjoyed getting more into math / some particular application, who knows, same but also even more so re: other things i get the sense i’m quite Into, like learning languages & ~performing arts~, which, i at least took math / math related classes into college level courses, which is not true for those other things (took a Language Class: never, took a theatre / drama class: for 1/4 of the schoolyear in 7th grade, & prior to that, just did a scene or two of a play in english class 4th grade, & the approx decade extracurricular of ballet, which is related but of course a different thing. anyhow, annoyed that i Simply Do Not Know & hardly see opportunities to find out on the horizon, although who knows.....which is related to being frustrated about [Society] some more like, thinking about “boy how different would it be if people were guaranteed the right to Essentials For Life like housing, food, medical care, both electricity & the internet Now A Days...” like, agonizing What If there, it is all so unnecessary that It Is Like This......just now someone made an unnecessary Post lmfao thank you xkit.......oh right, i was Frustrated, with an emphasis In Aro / Ace, about Media & Life, what else is new & then, you know, musings on The Theoretical Future & One’s Personal Past that would become even more of a like, audioscape: therapy session topic, these are frustrating things. and all of this answer has been stuff i remember getting Frustrated about in the past 24 hours. Also!!! that last night i was like, i want to play scrabble, so i looked up an online game but the Computer settings are a nightmare like, as far as i could tell the Difficulty settings were mostly attuned to Average Word Length but it was like, yeah you’re playing against this opponent given this effective total familiarity with the most obscure / archaic shit in the scrabble dictionary, not even simply the like, q words / two letter words ppl might happen to know specifically for the purposes of scrabble. there was also no “new game” button?? just had to refresh the page? smh. oh lmfao! also! you Know i was frustrated thinking about Billions, the series / interest that antagonizes you, jokes on you when you hone in on the Quant where it’s like, is he just meant to be the guy who sucks, plus he’s got depression....suppose they do at least handle him w/some sympathy / nonzero Care for this Char acter, but smh at sighing about [bracing yourself for anything promising (cough riawin) to spiral into disaster one way or another, whether it turns into a joke or plot device or just something introduced / built up / demolished for ambient drama/conflict].....what else is new. the periodic cycles of Billions Thoughts lol. was just frustrated at a video’s Editing Cadence basically lmfao. i also find it grating when the word “the jab” is used in tweets re: vaccination, which i just saw, presumably in the same sort of way where i automatically dislike the phrase To Be Fair or referring to food/eating with “fill / filling” or any variants lmfao, or earnest use of the description “hearty”......some words i hate the sound of no matter what, some i hate to hear used in a particular phrase / context......need to simply stop doing things in the middle of answering this b/c it will inevitably involve Frustrations lmfaooo. oh also i was annoyed to wake up to a clear sky. where’s that overcast atmosphere

Moon- Are you currently reading any books? If so, what book(s)?

i am not, but i’ve been considering it! just inconvenient b/c a) i gotta like, choose what book/s to read, & b) i have to read via laptop, which is kind of a pain, & c) like with everything, i always tend to basically read stuff all at once, but i’m also a slow reader lmao, so it’s like, okay, i’m probably basically devoting days on end to Reading Through whatever.....

Pluto- If you could meet anyone, alive or dead, who would you meet?

another classic Fascinating Answer of “i dunno” lol, i’ve never really had a go to answer for this or anything that’s particularly leapt out.....plus re: how i tend to feel nervous with on the spot socializing, the concept of like “if you could have dinner with someone” is too much lmfao like, a waste of time, i’d simply Be Nervous my way completely through it. the only way i could think of things is like, here i go giving someone an interview, i guess, and whomst tf would i feel Prepared to talk to lmfao. relevant to interests it’s like well of course you could ask w. roland things the in depth secret jared questions, or Any questions about quant n billions, but then it’s also like, well, there’s the questions I already have an answer for lol & either you have the same answer or i have a mini monologue, not like i don’t speak in mini monologues all the time if i have something to say at all, and my Questions go like that too lmfao, a disaster already trying to ask people about pertinent Information......never able to think of things re: people who have died, i suppose there’s fun answers re: like, getting lost / unknown Historical Info......when it comes to meeting people i don’t really consider it much in advance b/c i am nervous about everything & aware that any interacting is a Challenge lmfao. whenever these things actually happen, it’s hardly always a disaster, but i’m just improvising in the end. also, i could meet people i actually know but have never met, i.e. you, who i talk to but we are Virtual & Pandemic’d & etc & so on. but i suppose that’s kind of a given lol

Aquila- Do you prefer to read books or watch movies?

i think movies are less Involved for me, like, even if it takes me 3x their runtime (or longer) to watch any videos thanks to getting distracted & stuff, still quicker than i read a book, & unless i’m watching something for the first time and/or really wanting to properly pay attention, i can do other things while putting a movie on, whereas if i’m reading that’s the One Thing i can be doing. but overall i’m like “media, what media” whichever format lol like. haven’t consumed things, don’t often think of specific works i want/plan to consume, don’t often get around to it, etc. classique.....

Protostar- Give a random fact about yourself.

speaking of classic, me struggling to recall 101 info about myself or answer not that out there Questions, but when it’s like “alright hater what are you disgruntled about now” it’s like, Deep Inhale lmfao, but [are you okay? Is Anyone].jpeg on that one as well, we are out here......uh i’m sure i’ve said it before but i’m around 5′11″? maybe 6 ft tall but that might be overdoing it. sort of Average Tall but i am always literally looking down on people lmao.....and bumping my head into a low hanging light fixture around here.....

[purgatoryandme]

Hey! I can't seem to find the post you made with all the books references in Illuminate Me and the reason behind it? Is it deleted?

I know that there is an incomplete one floating around in my reply tag, and it should be in the Illuminate Me tag, but tumblr’s search features are so bad that I went back to the original word doc of the complete list, so prepare for that particular storm lol.  Quoted/Referenced Reading List (In Order of Appearance) Shakespeare: Macbeth I opened on a Macbeth quote (‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lighting, or in rain’) because I wanted to start with something immediately relatable. Most readers were introduced to more ‘dramatic’ plays through Macbeth. Beyond that, they were introduced to the concept of pathetic fallacy, which I think plays nicely with Tony as a character (a man who is CONSTANTLY imparting emotion onto inanimate objects…and then actually giving them their own emotions) and with one of the core problems in IM, which is deciding the emotions of others for them. I was hoping to get the ‘feel’ of that without having to lean too far into the actual concept. 

Bonus: I picked this quote in particular because of the importance of threes in Tony’s life (his core group of friends, iterations of the reactor, number of times reborn, his bot children VS his AI children, the number of lovers or almost lovers he has in the fic, etc). Milton: Paradise Lost ‘What is dark within me, illuminate!’ is a modernization of the original Milton quote ‘what is dark within me, illumine’ for readability. I actually feel a bit bad about changing this considering how many people think this is the original quote now. This wound up being a central (and title) quote somewhat by accident. I’m fond of it because of how much I liked a different one that I had originally wanted for Tony’s thoughts of the reactor: ‘yet from those flames, no light, but rather darkness visible’. I had originally wanted to start off on a sadder note, one that showed how much Tony hated losing his humanity, and so the flames of Hell and their physics-bending concept seemed thematically appropriate. I had always intended to eventually invert the imagery – instead of Extremis being (to Tony) flames capable of extinguishing light, the reactor would become a water-like blue light that couldn’t be choked or recreated by any of the shadows that pursued Tony in his life. I picked Milton SPECIFICALLY for the imagery of light and shadows. 

But, man, listen. Darkness visible is a great concept, but it’s also tired. It has, as you’ve noted, been discussed to death. So as I was reading ‘Milton’s darkness visible and Aeneid 7’ to refamiliarize myself with some of the broader themes attached to that particular piece of imagery, I wound up thinking about how to invert the darkness itself instead of the overall concept. The flames of Hell extinguish light instead of having to exist away from it. It is a bad that cannot be penetrated by good. 

Instead of chasing away shadows, which would be implied by shining a light ON them, the request Tony makes here is to actually invert the darkness - to have it illuminate in and of itself. It’s becoming something better instead of being removed or forgotten. On the flip side of that, the darkness within isn’t growing as light weakens, but rather under its own force. Two forces equal in nature and origin in a person. It’s a different take on lighting than the one most critics hammer home. Long ramble is long, but this was the basis for using that quote. It grew from there to have many different meanings, however the core has always remained. All in all I’m pleased with it.

EM Forster: A Room with a View Very forgiving even in its satirical takes on human nature. A lot of passages are very therapy-quotable in their urging to accept the inevitability of causing some harm in life. It plays on a lot of the same concepts with light being obvious metaphor for good and evil that Paradise Lost does, but softens them into more realistic shades of human existence. Isaac Asimov: Foundation Continuing on with themes of rigid morality vs the flexibility and romanticism of humanity, we have Asimov, master of machines and the three rules of robotics! There are lots of quotable epigrams in this beast. The quote pulled from this has two readings depending on what you assume of the man who has said it. If you see him as manipulative, there’s an insidious underpinning of killing off your own morals. If you see him as a kind man, then you could read it as foregoing morals in place of empathy. Tony’s therapist loves a very specific brand of double speak that lets Tony work through the conversation purely through interpretation. Tolstoy: Anna Karenina Tolstoy’s prose is lengthy...so so lengthy, but Anna Karenina is worth the read as long as you relate to at least one of its major characters. Frankly, I think you can choose to read a single character’s plot arc and leave it at that. It’s mostly a novel that is interesting, not because of its plot, but because of its study of relationship dynamics. Tolstoy was really invested in picking apart the idea of what makes a ‘family’ and, beyond that, what makes a class. It’s refreshing to see so much of the critique occurring within the lived experience of the characters instead of through a narrator or outside punishing moral forces. Baudelaire: Windows and Benediction I cannot recommend enough reading multiple translations of Baudelaire poems (fleursdumal.org has a wonderful array available). Benediction is a personal favourite. I love me some malevolence wrapped up in religion. Dante: The Divine Comedy There’s a lot of bleak humor in Dante if you look for it. Several interpretations insist of making each piece excessively grim dark, but faithful translations tend to have a hint of humor in them. It works well for engraving War Machine’s spine - a benediction and a mockery of human limitations. I try to pick quotes that not only fit the scene, but would still fit into the context of the grander themes from whence they came...unless I hate the author. Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot “I am sick of shadows” vs “I am half-sick of shadows”. Tony’s expressing more frustration here with being alone and his passive involvement in that loneliness. Another quote I feel vaguely bad about changing, haha. The Lady of Shallot is a very nice classical piece that I’m sad isn’t taught in schools alongside Hamlet. There are some nice Ophelia parallels here. I wanted a feminine influence on Tony’s loneliness and one that is somewhat youthful despite his age. Yeats: Vacillation I fucking hate Yeats as a person. That said, the man can write. The man can REALLY write. His pieces are almost always layered to the point of absurdity and he’s perfect to swiping quotes with multiple meanings. Definitely Tony’s kind of author. Goethe: Faust Speaks for itself and in the author’s notes on its reference.  Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamasov IMO a book that deserves all the acclaim of Anna Karenina and then some. Very VERY Russian in its ethical debates of, as always, religious morality vs free will. Also dips into familial struggles and patricide, because it wouldn’t be a Russian classic if it didn’t contain some deeply buried bitter resentment towards paternalism. I’m going off-script here, but this is a fucking excellent book. I don’t really have words for how much I enjoy how Dostoyevsky explores the concepts that he does. Shakespeare: Julius Ceasar Shakespeare: Twelfth Night Twelfth Night deserves more credit for its development and maintenance of an enigma. Twelfth Night has charisma in spades both because of and in spite of the exceedingly petty actions of some of its characters. It is also a refreshingly simple take on love for the sake of it. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Stephen King: Lisey’s Story I consider Lisey’s Story to be the best of King’s work. The man has his obvious writing ticks and his even more obvious issues as an author. Lisey’s Story contains many of them, but navigates them far better than any of his other work. The monster here is all in the mind and is too vast to truly see or understand. It’s perfectly representative of a creeping sense of inescapable horror. It was fun to flip it on its head with a reference here – Tony isn’t terrified of dying, but he is terrified of his inescapable enjoyment of Bucky’s company. Maria’s family saying is inspired by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Armitage: The Death of King Arthur A genuinely fantastic classic tale of heroism, filled with all the drama, tragedy, and sacrifice that you’d expect with strongly feminine undertones. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. TS Eliot: The Wasteland Excellent piece of poetry with many layered meanings and dual interpretations. I can’t really articulate my thoughts on The Wasteland, but I reference an essay at the end of this list that does that for me. Oedipus Rex Rupert Brooke: Safety Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversation about, you got it, being ‘safe’ with his therapist. His poetry is about WWI and is, largely, idealistic. Safety is…not quite an exception to that. His other poetry contains a certain sense of honour and duty, whereas safety, maintaining a seemingly light tone, has nothing of the sort. It is safety in the soul – something untouchable by the horrors of war or death. It treats that as a ‘house’, which leant itself to the article Tony send Bucky. Armine Wodehouse: Before Ginchy Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversations with his therapist. This is also WWI poetry, though far darker than Brooke’s work. It discusses the parts of the heart and soul soldiers lose. It is an extremely good piece AND references Dante’s Inferno. I had to work it in somewhere even if I didn’t want to directly quote it. Meyer and Brysac: Tournament of Shadows Referenced several times over in discussion of war, the great game, and British military history. Beautifully self-aware account of Britain’s insistence on rewriting history after the fact and the tiny hilariously embarrassing moving pieces that shaped what is often considered the heyday of espionage. Murakami: Kafka on the Shore I love Murakami’s response to questions about understanding the novel as a whole. There are no solutions, only riddles presented, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes place. It’s a great lens through which to view the book and individual passages taken out of it. Reminds me of The Wasteland having to be read in totality before you can begin picking it apart, after which each individual piece can be read of its own. Kafka on the Shore, with its musings on the uncertainty of fate and redemption, was the perfect book to outline Tony’s horrifying realization, which he is desperately suppressing, that he might be coming to accept Bucky’s feelings. This quote in particular, while I would’ve used it anyway, is also a great callback to the first chapter and its storms. Chapter 29 is a turning point. Beyond it there are some intentional quote contrasts that are probably more easter eggs than they are anything else. Yeats: A Dialogue of Self and Soul Great contrast with Vacillation. Some parts of self and soul are used in that poem and thematically they are connected and contrasted - self and heart vs self and soul. The symbolism and imagery in Vacillation is really on point and layered, but Self and Soul is peak Yeats for its reversal of the typical ‘the soul is pure and bluntly honest and the body is tainted and bad’ in Christian works. Also Self and Soul’s broader context is scrumptious considering the debate poems history of relying on divine forgiveness and lack thereof instead of on forgiveness of the self. 

It was fun to give this poem a double meaning in IM as both hugely ominous and ultimately pointing to the later forgiveness Tony receives from himself through the divine (if the soul stone can be called that) in the heavens (space!). There’s also another fun twist to ‘who can distinguish darkness from the soul’ in its contrast with ‘what is dark within me, illuminate’. To take that a step further, Vacillation was the beginning of the path of forgiveness for Bucky (understanding Tony’s heart…somewhat literally as he slowly gets closer and closer to the reactor itself), while Self and Soul is a final step (re: Bucky being presented the final hurdle of Tony deciding to move forward alone). Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha Hesse is wonderfully blunt at times. I gotta admit I love German takes on spiritual self-discovery because they always seem to tend towards much more straightforward answers than other countries. Hesse’s relationship with Buddhism in literature vs his lived experience is also really intriguing. Anyway, Siddhartha, in its humanizing of Gods, is wonderful contrast to the consistent imagery of the untouchable and unknowable forces of good and evil in previously quoted works. It has stopped bringing humanity to the divine and has started placing the divine within humanity. Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey One of the ultimate poetic epics. Now that we are nearing the end, I’m going overtime with making the grander themes of this whole piece hit home. A lot of IM was built on a foundation of poetic epics, of heroism, and a bit of Greek tragedy. The Odyssey embodies all of those things beautifully. It also suited Thor too well to pass up. Yeats: An Irish Airman Forsees His Death Ah, Yeats. Very blatant foreshadowing here that is keeping with the foreshadowing from Self and Soul. Fate has, up till this point, been a bit of a question. It has been ‘when will it come to me’ and ‘how will I avoid or overcome it’. Now fate is a set point. It is knowable and present. ‘I know I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above’. This goes for the true onset of Infinity War and for Tony’s feelings towards Bucky – when he had no one, he allowed Bucky in after essentially promising himself he wouldn’t. If that’s not an accidental admittance of love, nothing is. Henley: Invictus Absolutely fantastic poem. Continuing with the heavy fate themes coming into this climax. Now that Tony knows his fate, truly knows it, he is choosing to take it on directly. Agamemnon (Anne Carson’s Traslation if you prefer a more modern language approach, Lattimore is you prefer a classic) Agamemnon is forgotten all too often in the world of poetic epics and it’s a damn shame. I cannot say enough good things about it. I always wanted to use lines from Agamemnon in a Tony fic because the Cassandra parallels were too perfect to resist. The chorus in this play was also a perfect narrative device for interacting with something of a hive mind. Yeats: The Wanderings of Oisin Another poetic epic. Nice contrast with The Odyssey, The Death of King Arthur, and Agamemnon. Here the dialogue is between an aged hero and a saint looking into the hero’s past. It has the kind of reflective and aged mood necessary for this stage of the story, but is actually a poem I sortof hate. The line ‘And a softness came from the starlight, and filled me full to the bone’ is absolutely gorgeous, though. Some final inspiration pieces:

The Penelopiad 

The Iliad 

House of Leaves (for surrealism in the final chapters) 

Dante at Verona (used in an author’s note as an intentional jab at the dull uninspired nature of the this particular take on Dante. Repurposed quote, essentially) 

a broke machine just blowin’ steam by themikeymonster (great character study of Bucky) 

Frank Kermode’s essay “Eliot and the Shudder” (inspiration behind Tony’s entire interaction with literature)

[ionfusionpunk]

Sith, Grey Jedi, and Jedi: What They Teach Us about the Force pt2

Second, the Jedi:

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force.

Now, there is a secondary version of the Jedi Code taught to the crechelings as a sort of introduction to Jedi beliefs, and I’ll go over that later, but here it is:

Emotion, yet peace.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Passion, yet serenity.

Chaos, yet harmony.

Death, yet the Force.

I’m sure we all have opinions about the Jedi Code by this point. We’ve seen the movies, we’ve read the books, we’ve read the fanfiction - we have opinions. A lot of people disagree with the Code for various reasons - but what I think they are forgetting is that the Jedi Code as it stands was presented after the last Reformation and has been around for thousands of years. They’re forgetting that the Code as we see it applied is based in the long-entrenched traditions of the current Jedi Order, specifically as seen on Coruscant, and which has been unknowingly affected by the growing Darkness of the Sith they believe to be extinct. I disagree with how the Code is interpreted, not necessarily with the Code itself. 

But we’re here to examine the Code and what it can tell us about the Jedi’s beliefs of the Force. 

Previously, I compared the Force with Moksha (Nirvana, Sunyata - whatever you wanna call it at this point). It is the End and the Beginning, the energy from which all things spring and to which all shall return - that connects all things, living and not. It is at this point where I want to mention another piece of Eastern Philosophy: the Atman. Within the sacred text of the Bhagavad Gita, the atman is defined as the universal immortal spark of divinity - in other words, the bit of God (or Krishna, or Vashti, etc.) that lives within us. It is the atman that eventually moves on to enlightenment or is thrust back into a mortal shell upon reincarnation. Everyone contains a portion of divinity and will never lose that nor will it otherwise change; basically, God dwells in us, and we are already immortal since upon our death we will either have achieved enlightenment or be reincarnated to try again. In context, the atman is the Force flowing through all things. 

With this in mind, we also understand the Force to be energy. However, how can this be? If Moksha is indeed static, is peace, then energy it cannot be because energy logically cannot be static (don’t you dare talk to me about static electricity; that has everything to do with the exchange of charges and not an unmoving state). Well, maybe not. Based on everything we have extrapolated of the Force so far, the Force itself is not alive and changes only based on how Force-sensitives act upon it (I’m pretty sure that’s cannon Force theory somewhere…); that is why there is both Light and Darkness to the Force as I discussed in Pt 1. We’ve already gone over what it means to be Sith - what being ‘Dark’ might stem from. My question, then, is why the Jedi are ‘Light’? What makes them ‘good’? Well, I’m glad I asked. 

I made a point to state that the Siths’ beliefs really diverge from the Jedis’ when it comes to how they view the Force itself - i.e. that the Sith regard it only as a tool to be used. I did not state whether this was right or wrong, and, again, that’s not why I’m here. But if the Sith regard the Force as a tool, then what is the Force to a Jedi?

Your immediate answer will most likely be: Why, Ion, the Force is an ally!

But is it? Is it really? Let’s take a look at the Code and break it down to see. 

“There is no emotion, there is peace.” Okay, so far nothing about the Force, but we know enough about the original canon of the Jedi to infer that the Jedi rely on the Force to find this peace. We know that the Jedi release their emotions into the Force to center themselves. Meditation is a common concept in Eastern Philosophy and so is self-mastery. In fact, I have a quote from a translation of the Bhagavad Gita that says, “[The Saint] attains Peace, into whom desires flow as rivers into the ocean which though brimming with water remains ever the same; not he whom desire carries away." (I won’t give a page number unless someone asks because my translation was a bit difficult to find). In other words, and in context, Jedi pour their emotions into the Force to obtain peace because the Force is steady and does not change. In essence, it’s an exchange between the Jedi and the Force: the Jedi give their emotions, and the Force gives them peace.

“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.” This line is actually really fascinating because the Jedi Code is the only officially-acknowledged Code to mention knowledge in any direct capacity. Interestingly enough, there’s a line that comes immediately before in the quote I gave in the last paragraph: "The saint is awake when the world sleeps, and he ignores that for which the world lives.” This is a metaphor for enlightenment - that the Jedi seek knowledge (enlightenment) and shrug off worldly cares and concerns to do so. This is directly in line with the concept of prakriti, which is materiality or attachments. Yet another quote that emphasizes the idea of prakriti comes a chapter later in the Bhagavad Gita, "Therefore do thy duty perfectly, without care for the results, for he who does his duty disinterestedly attains the Supreme." This sort of mixes the idea of prakriti with the idea of dharma - one’s duty, destiny, or ethical path/calling. In this quote, Krishna is speaking to Arjuna, the warrior-prince protagonist of the text. Arjuna is being counseled to not question authority or the way things are because that is how one achieves peace. This is very much the opposite of what Jesus teaches throughout the Bible: that we should question because that’s how we can grow. However, in line with Eastern philosophy, we don’t want to grow. Even to desire Moksha is to have desire, to be slave to prakriti, so enlightenment is something that must be sought passively. It’s essentially self-fulfilling: once you can both seek enlightenment and be passive, unmoving, then you have obtained the state of Moksha itself. The Jedi embody this, and we see it in their teachings: they are not supposed to question the Force, only follow where it guides them. They seek to draw closer to the Force by emulating it. But what about this line about knowledge? Well, if knowledge is truly just a metaphor for enlightenment, then the Jedi learn to reach enlightenment by learning from the Force itself. 

“There is no passion, there is serenity.” For this, we should probably define the words ‘passion’ and ‘serenity’, because the Code is not just repeating its first tenet. ‘Passion’ in this context is being used as “an intense desire or enthusiasm for something”. In other words, an acute or profound drive. ‘Serenity’ is not peace but instead a state of being calm or untroubled. In contrast to “There is no emotion, there is peace”, this third tenet of the Jedi Code rolls in on the tails of the previous tenet; Jedi are not to want, to be subject to prakriti - even to desire enlightenment, or to be one with the Force, at all. Instead they are to be passive, to defend instead of attack, to fulfill their dharma to serve the beings of the galaxy without forming attachments, while keeping themselves separate. They are, ironically as Christian doctrine teaches, to be in the world but not of the world. The Jedi, it can be assumed, attain this by putting into practice the previous two tenets - by giving their drive to the Force so that it may give them peace and by learning from the Force how to obtain that passive stability. 

“There is no chaos, there is harmony.” This is very much like its fellows; it gives us a deeper peek into the Jedis’ idea of the Force, though. Chaos to them is to have discord one with another, to have conflict - anarchy, essentially. To be in harmony is to have your goals aligned with the Will of the Force and with each other. This… is sort of where our previous interpretation of the nature of the Force comes into question. Until now we have assumed the Force to be non-sentient, neutral, and unchanging, simply another term for or form of enlightenment. While ‘neutral’ and ‘unchanging’ are not challenged here, the idea of the Force being non-sentient is. We can actually turn once more to the Bhagavad Gita for an answer. In chapter four Krishna says, "... I Myself do no action, and am changeless" echoing the previous establishment of the concept of Moksha/Nirvana. Krishna is perfect, is enlightened, and he is the realization of what we must strive to become. Krishna himself is changeless, just as the Force, but he has his own will, his own ability to act as long as it is in accordance with his nature. All of this leads to the conclusion that the Jedi, in fact, view the Force not as simply a passive energy but indeed an entity - a deity. In the Force, there is no chaos because the Jedi are to give any emotion that might cause chaos to the Force. They are to find peace, to learn from their deity, in order to obtain harmony both within themselves and with those around them. Their dharma is to help others find this harmony, and the Jedi in turn impart their knowledge to those willing. This echoes yet another concept within the Bhagavad Gita: that the prophets that preach of Krishna are Krishna himself, avatars of the deity himself. In this manner, the Jedi are supposed to be extensions of the Force to teach all those it connects.

“There is no death, there is the Force.” This I have already spoken almost exhaustively on (see Pt 1), but it seems there is yet more to say. In the Bhagavad Gita, there are several quotes which touch on this subject - specifically that of the atman bringing us full-circle from the first tenet of the Code (a fact I will address in a minute). The first which should be addressed is simply to put us all on the same page: "For death is as sure for that which is born”. This is very similar to the idea that “We are all born to die” - everything with a beginning must have an ending; all that comes from the Force must return to it. The second passage relates more directly to the atman. 

"The [Atman], which pervades all that we see, is imperishable. Nothing can destroy the [Atman]…. It was born; It will never die, nor once having been, can It cease to be. Unborn, Eternal, Ever-enduring, yet Most Ancient, the [Atman] dies not when the body is dead."

Again, it may be simpler to decipher this in context. Remember that, for the purpose of this argument, the atman is that bit of the Force that connects all of us but, most importantly, connects us back to the Force. Once more put into context, the previous quote simply enforces that all that comes from the Force will return to the Force. (Here I could spark the debate of what this might mean for the philosophy of the sanctity of life, a philosophy the Jedi rigorously adhere to, but it is here that we must also acknowledge the presence of morals in the decision the Jedi make to defend all life. Beyond that, their goal is to live in harmony; in order to obtain harmony, it is their duty to defend against the chaos.) This final tenet of the Jedi Code reinforces the idea of the atman; it is eternal, it cannot be destroyed, and once alive in the Force, you are alive in the Force forever (on a mild side-note, note that this is also very similar to the idea of being ‘alive in Christ’.) 

Something that the Jedi Code is that the Sith Code is not is comprehensive. Where the Sith Code builds each tenet upon the foundation of the last, every facet of the Jedi Code is needed to understand the rest. A Jedi must have peace in order to understand what the Force is trying to teach them; they must be at peace in order to bridle their passions; they must be at peace in order to promote harmony; and they must be at peace in order to accept that their end has come. But while they can act on faith and find peace in some things, they must have the knowledge that the Force will grant them peace; they must know the dangers of desire; they must know chaos from harmony - the idea of the Yoga, which can be interpreted as union or descrimination or discernment; conceptually, union makes more sense - as in, the union of the atman with the brahman, the divine spark with the ground of all being. This is the Jedis’ dharma, to understand the ways in which the Force connects us, connects with us, flows through us. Contextually, however, discriminiation or discernment make more sense, because in order to understand that union, we must be able to discriminate/discern the truth from the lies - Maya, the illusion that comes from the five senses (a.k.a. reality), from Purusa, which is nothingness/Nirvana/Moksha. The Jedi must also know when their time has come - when it’s time for them to let go of mortality to join once more with the Force. But the Jedi must be harmony in all things: they must be in harmony with the Force in order to find peace and to learn; they must be in harmony with others in order to teach them; they must have harmony within themselves in order to obtain serenity; and they must understand the harmony between life and death and the necessity of each. And the Jedi must be able to accept death at all times, to value each life without forming attachment, without fearing their own end - without valuing their own lives above others, ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of one and the good of many. No tenet of the Jedi Code can stand without the others. In chapter four of the Bhagavad Gita it says, "He who is without attachment, free, his mind centered in wisdom, his actions, being done as a sacrifice, leaves no trace behind." This is the mortal goal of the Jedi. 

Now, I said when going over the Sith Code that the real place the Sith and Jedi philosophies of the Force diverge are in their interpretations of the nature of the Force; the Sith believe the Force to be a tool, and the Jedi believe the Force to be a sort of deity. Why is this distinction so important? You might argue that this explains why the Sith are ‘bad’ and the Jedi ‘good’, that the Sith abuse the abilities available to them through the Force, and it is this abuse - of an actual deity, sentient and neutral as it perhaps may be - that is the true crime. You might argue that the Force, aware of this abuse, champions then the Jedi whose dharma it is to defend against such injustice, naturally making the cause of the Jedi right. Well, I argue that as of yet that argument cannot be made. Aside from those Sith simply seeking to cause pain or gain power out of pure enjoyment, what of those who may have originally chosen to become a Sith because they believed in the Sith Code? I mentioned the Clone Troopers, soldiers created for the Republic, slaves in all but name, who’s own beliefs may closely resemble the tenets of the Sith Code simply due to circumstance and nature. The Clones, based on the template of the Mandalorian Jango Fett and having claimed Mandalore as their home planet and their template’s culture as their own, would thus consider themselves part of a nomad-warrior culture. As warriors and nomads, it is reasonable to surmise that they would put a high degree of emphasis on the importance of winning - of wanting to win, of training to win, and of using that training to control their metaphorical battlegrounds in order to turn the outcome in their favor. As Clones specifically, it is not illogical to assume that, despite their engineered loyalty to the Jedi and the Republic, they would chafe at their metaphysical bonds. And what of the slaves? The abused? The abandoned? Would they not wish to break free of their chains? Would they not wish to win against the darkness of their torments? Would they not wish to find strength against their monsters and power over their demons? They would wish for safety. 

We must not forget that there are two interpretations of the Jedi Code, however, so we have yet to understand better all there is. The second interpretation is one taught to the chrechelings and Initiates before they are chosen to be Padawan learners. This interpretation is made to be an introduction to the strict and utilitarian lives of their older counterparts as well as an introduction to the Jedi Order’s view of the Force. 

“Emotion, yet peace.” For a small child, it can be difficult to control instinctive reactions, and in order to keep them all from turning into apathetic sociopaths as they grow up, it makes sense that the kids would be taught that, despite what they may be feeling, with the aid of the Force they can still find peace. The distinction between the two interpretations is negligible if one understands the purpose behind the concept itself: that as Jedi, they must find peace through the Force. To a child, the possibility of becoming confused is too great and dangerous - Jedi are supposed to be sympathetic, compassionate, and merciful, not cold, unfeeling, and uncaring - hence the softer interpretation. 

“Ignorance, yet knowledge.” It’s alright if they don’t understand everything right now; they will continue to learn as long they wish to. More philosophically, there is still the goal of knowledge - enlightenment - the Force - no matter how far away it may seem. 

“Passion, yet serenity.” Children have a tendency to do things with zest and zeal and passion. They love and hate loudly and innocently - but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn to find a balance between the drive to be at the top of their lightsaber class and being humble about their accomplishments. 

“Chaos, yet harmony.” Have you ever seen a playroom? The toys seem to be everywhere, but nine times out of ten there is in fact a system that the children understand implicitly. To an untrained eye, politics and city blocks and even educational classes can seem to have to rhyme or reason to them, but there is an order the Initiates must learn to recognize and utilize. 

“Death, yet the Force.” Death is inevitable. To a child who doesn’t understand what death is, it is simpler to say that the Force is everywhere, flows through all things - is where they come from and where they will go. Birth and Death are simply the doorways into the physical world and back into the arms of their beloved deity.

Comparing the two interpretations side by side gives a better view into Jedi beliefs; they wouldn’t be teaching their young lies, after all. Through the second interpretation, we see that the Code is more of an ideal, a guide as much as a glimpse of the destination. An important aspect of both Buddhism and the religion of the Bhagavad Gita is self-mastery, something the Jedi famously support. We see this in their Codes: that in order to find peace, to one day pace peacefully into the Force and become one with the great energy of the universe, they must be at peace with themselves. Here we see yet another difference between Jedi and Sith: the Sith, selfish and emotionally compromised as most of them become, are not at peace with themselves. Even those Sith and Dark Side users who adhere to the Sith Code as it was perhaps originally intended would not be able to find peace because peace, to them, is static and therefore bad; they don’t wish to fade quietly into the Force but instead to leave an impact in the mortal realm, whatever that may be. This could also be where the infamous and quite-common desire of many Sith to live forever may stem from (besides their own greed and fear, of course). 

(On the note of the Sith and immortality: it would seem that their beliefs are more closely related to those of Buddhism where the Jedis’ beliefs align with those found in Hinduism. In Hinduism, the focus is on the atman and the immortality of the self/soul; the Jedi focus on their connection to the Force. Buddhism, however, does not believe that there is any immortality automatically granted to us; the Sith must obtain their own sort of immortality by whatever means.)

(Part One)

[lesbeet]

not to be a nerd but i accidentally just wrote a whole impromptu essay about editing ndjsdksksk im throwing it under a cut bc it's fucking inane and really long but honestly... i just want other people to become as passionate about editing as i am lmaooooo

i also recommend 2 books in the post so if anything at least check those out!

quality books about editing... *chef's kiss* a lot of the basic ones (including blog posts online n such) are geared towards beginners and end up repeating the same info/advice, much of it either oversimplified or misrepresented tbh. but i read one yesterday and i'm reading another one right now that really convey this passion for editing + consideration for it as its own sort of art and i just!!

it's such a weird thing to be passionate about lmao but i AM and i've spent a lot of time the past year or so consciously honing my craft (ik i mention this like 4 times a week i'm just really proud of how much i've learned and improved) and kind of like. solidifying my instincts into conscious choices i guess?

and these GOOD editing books have both a) taught me new information and/or presented familiar information through a new perspective that helped me understand something differently or in more depth, and b) validated or even just put into words certain preferences or techniques that i've developed on my own, that i don't normally see on those more basic lists i mentioned

btw the book i finished yesterday is self-editing for fiction writers: how to edit yourself into print by renni brown and dave king, and the one i'm reading currently is the artful edit: on the practice of editing yourself by susan bell.

the former was pretty sharp and straightforward. the authors demonstrated some of their points directly in the text, which was usually funny enough that i would show certain quotes to my sister without context

("Just think about how much power a single obscenity can have if it’s the only one in the whole fucking book." <- (it was)

"Frequent italics have come to signal weak writing. So you should never resort to them unless they are the only practical choice, as with the kind of self-conscious internal dialogue shown above or an occasional emphasis."

or, my favorite: "There are a few stylistic devices that are so “tacky” they should be used very sparingly, if at all. First on the list is emphasis quotes, as in the quotes around the word “tacky” in the preceding sentence. The only time you need to use them is to show you are referring to the word itself, as in the quotes around the word “tacky” in the preceding sentence. Read it again; it all makes sense.")

and like i said, i also learned some new ideas or techniques (or they articulated vague ideas i already had but struggled to put into practice), AND they mentioned some suggestions that ive literally never seen anyone else bring up (not to say no one has! just that ive never seen it, and ive seen a lot in terms of writing tips, advice, best practices, etc) that ive already sort of established in my own writing

for example they went into pretty fine detail about dialogue mechanics, more than i usually see, and in talking about the pacing and proportion of "beats" and dialogue in a given scene, they explicitly suggested that, if a character speaks more than a sentence or two and you plan on giving them some sort of dialogue tag or an action to perform as a beat, the tag or action should be placed at one of the earliest (if not the first) natural pauses in the dialogue, so as not to distance the character too far from the dialogue -- bc otherwise the reader ends up getting all of the dialogue information first, and then has to go back and retroactively insert the character, or what they're doing, or the way they look/sound while they're giving their little speech

and like this was something ive figured out on my own, mostly bc it jarred me out of something i was reading enough times (probably in fic tbh) that i started noticing it, and realized that it's something i do naturally, kind of to anchor the character to the dialogue mechanic to make sure it makes sense with the actual dialogue

so like. ok here's an example i just randomly pulled from the song of achilles (it was available on scribd so i just looked for a spot that worked to illustrate my point djsmsks)

the actual quote is written effectively, but here's a less effective version first:

“Perhaps I would, but I see no reason to kill him. He’s done nothing to me," Achilles answered coolly.

see and even with such a short snippet it's so much smoother and more vivid just by moving the dialogue tag, not adding or cutting a word:

“Perhaps I would, but I see no reason to kill him.” Achilles answered coolly. “He’s done nothing to me.”

the rhythm of it is better, and the beat that the dialogue tag creates functions as a natural dramatic pause before achilles delivers an incredibly poignant line, both within the immediate context of the scene and because we as the readers can recognize it as foreshadowing. plus, it flows smoothly because that beat was inserted where the dialogue already contained a natural pause, just bc that's how people speak. if you read both versions aloud, they both make sense, but the second version (the original used in the novel) accounts for the rhythm of dialogue, the way people tend to process information as they read, AND the greater context of the story, and as a result packs significantly more purpose, information, and effect into the same exact set of words

and THAT, folks, is the kind of editing minutia i can literally sit and hyperfocus on for hours without noticing. anyway it's a good book lmao

the one i'm reading now is a lot more about the cognitive process/es of editing, so there's less concrete and specific advice (so far, anyway) and more discussion about different mental approaches to editing, as well as tips and tools for making a firm distinction between your writer brain and your editor brain, which is something i struggle with

but there have been so many good quotes that ive highlighted! a lot of just like. reminders and things to think about, and also just lovely articulations of things id thought of or come to understand in much more vague ways.

scribd won't let me copy/paste this one bc it's a document copy and not an actual ebook, but this passage is talking about how the simple act of showing a piece of writing to someone else for the very first time can spark a sudden shift in perspective on the work, bc you'll (or at least i) frantically try to re-read it through their eyes and end up noticing a bunch of new errors -

or she talked about the perils of constant re-reading in the middle of writing a draft, which is something i struggle with a LOT, both bc i'm a perfectionist and bc i prefer editing to writing so i sit and edit when i'm procrastinating doing the actual hard work of writing lmao

it's just this side of fake deep tbh but i so rarely see editing discussed like this--as a mixture of art and science, a collaboration between instinct and technique, that really requires "both sides of the brain" to be done well.

and because of the way my own brain works, activities that require such a balanced concentration of creativity and logic really appeal to me. even though ive seen a lot of people (even professional writers) who frame it as the creative art of writing vs the logical discipline of editing. but i think that's such a misleading way of thinking about it, because writing and editing both require creativity and logic -- just different kinds! (not to mention that the line between writing and editing, while mostly clear, can get a little blurry from up close)

but like...all stories have an inner logic to them, even if the writer hasn't explicitly or consciously planned it, and even if the logic is faulty in places in the first couple of drafts. when you're sitting and daydreaming about your story, especially if you're trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between two points or scenes (or, how to write a sequence of events that presents as a logical, inevitable progression of cause and effect), the voice in your head that evaluates an idea and decides to 1) go with it, 2) scrap it, 3) tweak it until it works, or 4) hold onto it in case you want it later? that's your logic! if an idea feels wrong, or like it just doesn't work, it's probably because some part of you is detecting a conflict between some part of the idea and the overall logic of your story. every decision you make as you write is formed by and checked against your own experiential logic, and also by the internal logic of your story, which is far less developed (or at least, one would hope), and therefore more prone to the occasional laspe

but while ive seen a number of articles that discuss the logic of writing, i don't see people gushing as much about the art of editing and it's such a shame

the inner editor is so often characterized as the responsible parent to the writer's carefree child, or a relentless critic of the writer's unselfconscious, unpolished drivel

and it's like... maybe you just hate thinking critically about your work! maybe you view it that way because you're imposing external standards too fiercely onto your writing, and it's sucked the joy out of shaping and sculpting your words until they sing. maybe you prefer to conceive of your writing as divine communication, the process of which must remain unencumbered by lessons learned through experience or the vulnerability of self-reflection, until the buzzkill inner editor shows up with all those "rules" and "conventions" that only matter if you're trying to get published

and like obviously the market doesn't dictate which conventions are worth following, but the majority of widely-agreed-upon writing standards, especially those aimed at beginners, (and most especially those regarding style, as opposed to story structure) have to do with the effectiveness and efficiency of prose, and, in addition to often serving as a shorthand for distinguishing an amateur from a pro, overall help to increase poignancy and clarity, which is crucial no matter the genre or type of writing. and even if you personally believe otherwise, it's better to understand the conventions so you can break them with real purpose.

so editing shouldn't be about trying to shove your pristine artistic masterpiece into a conventional mold, it should be about using the creative instincts of your ear and your logic and experience-based understanding of writing as a craft to hone your words until you've told your story as effectively as possible

thank u for coming to my ted talk ✌️

[janiedean]

So was discussing this with a friend. S8 s*ansa talking about r+L even tho jon asked her not to. Initially we were like book!s would never, but then my friend said book!s DID in book 1 (telling ned's plan to c). Now obviously these are 2 v different situations. Book!s was a kid who had NO idea abt the larger context of things, and she wasn't aware of the political games going on. She genuinely thought she was doing the Right thing or at least what would eventually benefit her and her family 1/2

~because if c and joff are happy it will benefit the starks. So my friend said s8 stuff wasn't all that different since she genuinely believed Dany was nuts and Westeros was better off without her and that jon couldn't see it because he loved her. Plus if jon ends up on the iron throne (which is what we thought she was getting at in telling tyrion) it's again good for the starks? What do you think? If nothing it made sense in the context of show!s considering LF her mentor? 2/2

... I... respectfully disagree on just about everything. In order:

as you said, book!sansa had no fucking idea what she was doing, she was being misled by both cersei and joffrey and she thought she was saving her father, not benefit her family, which is normal given that she’s... twelve. or whatever;

now, the problem is that it’s bad writing if a character starts somewhere and arrives at the same place without nothing having fucking changed in between unless it’s a movie whose point is being depressing or specifically wants to be tragic, because like... circular writing for *long* series where people get invested in *character development* means that we get at the same situation but with changed people - for one, idk, it’s circular writing if jaime’s last line in the series is the things I do for love after he idk knights brienne or saving tyrion’s life or doing something selfless, because we went from jaime who does things for love that are bad for him and bad for everyone else involved to jaime doing things for love for good reasons, which is why among the other reasons the bells is a shit episode that doesn’t work on any level, so if sansa spills the truth about jon to tyrion exactly the way she did in got therefore causing harm and the only difference is that she knows she’s causing harm sansa hasn’t had any development outside of ‘wow she started as a sweet girl and now she’s cersei 2.0′;

on that sense, the entire point in sansa being mentored by lf in the book is that she’s not going to turn out like him or cersei which is plenty obvious because it’s been four books and she’s still kind and empathetic to everyone including people who hurt her, so that is not a legitimate writing choice imvho;

now, about sansa spilling about r+l, there is a whole other level of wrong in it, which we can further divide into the following categories: a) first of all for what THE SHOW told me, sansa basically decided dany was nuts and hated her because WHY THE FUCK NOT - there is no literal reason for show sansa to dislike dany that much when she went with jon to help, JON was the king so it was his decision to kneel, she didn’t hurt the northerners and she arrived with an army to kill the goddamned zombies, so basically by the point she spills to tyrion she seems like she’s doing that out of pettiness - honest, by 8x04 dany hadn’t... looked nuts or anything, and I’m saying it as someone who doesn’t care about dany but thinks that if S8 did one thing was making you root for her even if you previously didn’t; b) sansa swore in front of a heart tree (which is sacred to northerners) that she wouldn’t spill and then she did, which is... not that great; c) more than that, it was going against jon’s wishes because jon made overtly clear that he didn’t want the throne, that he didn’t want to act on his rights and that he knelt to dany and that he wasn’t interested in challenging her claim, so if sansa wanted him to be king she was basically ignoring what HE wanted without even consulting with him first, which is an incredibly bad breach of trust on her side that honestly, if I had been jon in the finale I’d have told her to fuck off and that I never wanted to see her again X°DD like you don’t put people on thrones when they didn’t ask you to out of disliking the legitimate ruler that your brother who was king at the moment bent the knee to because you presumably.... want the independent north which in the books is a thing that will happen because bran is 100% the next kitn, but is not a thing inherently seen as morally better or more just than any other option and which neither ned nor robb actually wanted, so.... no;

‘dany being nuts’ was a decision dnd took without even planning it well because she basically lost it without one single illegitimate reason - I mean, again considering that I don’t care for dany and I think she’s a good khaleesi but not a great ruler and that her adwd stint confirms it and that she’s not endgame ruler for the end of the books... what I see in S8 is that the poor girl goes to winterfell to help them and sansa treats her like shit and everyone treats her like shit, she has to see one of her dragons die once, jorah dies in front of her, when she tries to mingle with the others she gets treated like she doesn’t belong, then it turns out that her new boyfriend is her nephew and a threat to her claim which she has staked her entire storyline on, then almost all of her closest advisors decide to turn against her for wtf reasons when she said from the beginning that she was there to kill cersei and reclaim her rights, then she loses her second dragon and her best friend in the span of one day, then during the bells she goes berserk because they decided to give her joncon’s storyline out of nowhere and bc dnd haven’t even read the first version of the first dance with dragons, but like... honestly at that point my opinion was ‘if she goes and dracaryses the entire continent I’ll just cheer because what the fucking fuck is this they just made her sympathetic and sansa looks like a cold scheming asshole which is not the character I love’, so like... where is the truth? the truth is that dnd decided to go with that shit ending where maybe 5% was grrm’s thing (I mean the small council made of cripples bastards and broken things is a grrm thing, how they get there.... no) and dany didn’t feature in it and they didn’t know how to finish and they went with that also because they knew most fake feminist press was rallying behind the ‘sansa as queen in the north who needs no man’ bullshit storyline so what the fuck let’s just go with that, and like.... again: as someone who doesn’t gaf about dany in the books, that was just not it period

tldr: s8 sansa makes sense maybe if we take her as a separate character who has nothing to do with her book self and that dnd wrote to be cersei lite except slightly more likable, but her actions make no sense, her writing makes no sense and hasn’t since they gave her theon’s fucking sl in S5 and there is literally nothing past episode 8x02 except maybe four scenes that actually makes any shred of narrative sense as an adaptation and within the show’s context, since a lot of stuff is basically characters contradicting each other. I said what I said. /shrug

[sicut-in-caelo-et-in-terra]

I was wondering what your thoughts on Pope Francis and how he has said that same-sex civil unions are okay. I thought it was against the Bible. I'm just curious, really. I guess my big question is, does the Pope dictate what every catholic believes?

Hey friend, thank you for the ask!

So there's definitely a couple of questions here, I'll grab them one at a time.

First question: my personal thoughts on the events of this past week regarding statements alleged to Pope Francis. I think there's just a lot of confusion going around about what was actually said. Some people are saying that it was a mistranslation and that he actually said something different, some people are saying that it was not as much of a mistranslation as others claim and that this has been Francis's position since before he became pope. You are correct in understanding that Catholic teaching considers sexual acts between two members of the same sex as a sin. In my personal opinion, what frustrates me is that this keeps happening, and that whenever it happens it feels like the Church splits into two camps: The Pope Is Ruining Everything versus There Are No Problems Right Now, and unfortunately it seems as though that the split occurs directly down political party lines. Now I get that perhaps people are only coming across that way because they are trying to address the falsehoods of the people on the other side of them. But really I think that a) the Pope is in a position where he has more information than us and he has been selected for this job, and therefore he may be making these decisions based on whatever information or contexts that we who criticize him do not have; b) the Pope is a person who is going to make mistakes, and he is operating in an age where he is under a particular type of scrutiny so we should be quick to forgive; c) at the same time this has shown itself to be a consistent pattern, and while it is a complex issue with many facets very much including the secular media, however there are a lot of other elements related to how he chooses to present himself and the nature of the follow-up from the Vatican, that this keeps happening tells me that there is definitely room for us to be criticizing the leadership in a spirit of charity. But I think in criticizing the Pope or defending the Pope on social media we really really need to be aware that we are indeed in a public and secular space, and that we are coming across as very divided and very disorganized. I've seen a lot of an apparent lack of charity from both sides. There's a lot more to say and it's definitely been something that has been on my heart.

Second question: whether or not same sex civil unions are okay by Catholic teaching. So the answer to this is yes and no. What I mean by this is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a non-marital legal union, for example if two siblings or two best friends of the same gender happen to be living together and plan to do so full time, there can be tax and other benefits for having their partnership recognized (e.g. many hospitals only allow immediate family to visit, depending, and so having a legal pairing can be useful). However, the Church does not endorse same-sex sexual relationships, and it is scandalous for the Church to advocate for laws that endorse same-sex sexual relationships. Now of course there's questions as to whether or not it makes sense to have a law that says "you can have same-sex civil unions unless you're in a sexual relationship" and all this. But that's a huge long topic and this post is already so long and I haven't answered all your questions yet.

As a note here which I think is always important to make given the current climate: a sexual orientation is not a person, it is an appetite. When we discuss sexuality in this context, we are talking specifically about acts/lifestyles, not the people who participate in them. People are people and deserve human rights. This is, I believe, more along the lines of what the Holy Father was talking about. That said, marriage and sex are actually not human rights (if they were, you could make a good case for laws requiring marry or have sex with someone who is otherwise unable to procure it on their own). That's not to say that this produces many struggles for people who experience different things, but again this is for another post.

Third question: papal infallibility. This again is a very complex topic and I'm by no means an expert on ecclesiology but I'll give a basic overview of what I understand. Basically, the Catholic Church (and, as I understand it, most religions) makes objective claims. Claims about reality. Either God exists or He doesn't, and that fact isn't changed by whether or not anyone believes it. When the pope, and the Magisterium in general, teaches, they're not changing reality- they're telling us something that is already true and has always been true. With this, we also know that the infallible authority of the Magisterium (that is, the bishops of the Catholic Church, all in direct lineage by ordination to the twelve apostles, of which the Pope is the shepherd) applies to teaching. The Church makes no infallible claims about anything else. Now within the teaching of the Catholic Church there are different levels of teaching. There's dogma, which we rarely change, but that the Pope does have the authority to change, but only has done so a very small number of times throughout history. These are like basic truths about what it means to be Catholic, such as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Mary was always the Immaculate Conception, she didn't suddenly become it once the Pope proclaimed it ex cathedra. But we do trust that when the Pope speaks dogma, that he is guided by the holy spirit in doing so, and that what he says is true. The pope speaks infallibly elsewhere besides dogma, such as canonizing Saints - once someone is canonized, we know without a doubt that they are in heaven. But these things are already true, and the Pope just tells everyone that it is true. If the Pope says something that we already know to not be true, such as if he were to say that marriage can be between two men or two women, then that wouldn't become true and we wouldn't believe it. We actually have detailed guidelines on what constitutes the development of doctrine versus the corruption of doctrine. Check out St. John Henry Newman's book Grammar of Assent for more detailed info on that. (Someone please correct me if that's not the right book). The Pope / the Magisterium also has other roles, such as telling us how to practice our religion - it is objectively true that we need to keep holy the Sabbath day, however it is up to the Magisterium to determine what constitutes 'keeping holy the Sabbath day,' in this case, largely, going to Mass (and the Magisterium tells us what the Mass is and what if anything would invalidate the Mass). Also not eating meat on Fridays in lent, that's a thing for the Magisterium to decide about.

Anyway that was a lot but I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask!

[lingbooks]

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

While I know a lot of linguists who are feminists, there is some tension between feminist ideals and the anti-prescriptivist approach that linguists take towards language. Linguists, as a general rule, aim to document and examine language as it is used, without providing their own opinions on how they think language should be used. This approach to language allows linguists to show that certain forms of language, from split infinitives to singular they, are not bad or wrong or “grammatically incorrect.” However, when it comes to sexist language, it’s a lot harder to say that there’s no such thing as “bad” language use. 

Some of the questions that arise are easily answered. It is fairly easy to distinguish between using slurs and splitting infinitives, as slurs are meant to hurt or disparage people, while split infinitives only offend the sensibilities of some long dead men who desperately wished English were more like Latin. But what about less malicious language use that still has sexist undertones? What about calling ships or storms she? What about using the word guys to refer to groups that contain women?

 I thought a lot about this contradiction while reading Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell, a book that attempts to cover a wide variety of topics related to language and gender. Montell’s background in linguistics admittedly isn’t particularly extensive—she has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, but she’s primarily a journalist who only occasionally writes about linguistics. (I should probably also state that, depending on how you count my graduate work in a related field, I have the same amount of linguistics education, so I’m not going to make any judgments on who “really counts” as a linguist.) That said, Wordslut is definitely a linguistics book—and a pretty good one at that.

 Wordslut covers a broad variety of topics in sociolinguistics. Some are expected. The first chapter discusses the variety of (often derogatory) slang words used to describe women, while another chapter discusses the ways women speak to each other. Other chapters cover topics I see less frequently. One chapter, for example, looks at how women swear, while another looks at the vast array of slang words used to refer to genitalia. (I’d warn you that this book is NSFW, but if you’re reading a book entitled Wordslut at work in the first place, you’re a braver soul than I am.) One of my favorite chapters focused on how gay people speak, including both discussions of gay slang as well as examining why there’s a “gay voice” but no real “lesbian voice.” While I already was familiar with some of the topics in the chapter, I was not aware of Polari, a sort of code once used by British gay men as early as the 1500s that gave us such words as twink, camp, and fantabulous, and now I definitely want to know more about it. On a similar note, throughout the book, Montell makes sure to discuss queer, trans, and nonbinary experiences when relevant, which provides perspective that’s usually lacking in older writing about language and gender.

I did find that the quality varied from chapter to chapter—or even within the same chapter. Consider, for example, the chapter on catcalling. One section of the chapter compared catcalling behaviors with linguistic studies on compliments, breaking down precisely why catcalling is not a compliment. I thought this was a really interesting analysis, but I found the rest of the chapter fairly dull; some of it discussed facts I (and most other feminists) already know about how men dominate conversations and interrupt women, while other parts talked about the act of catcalling more generally. (A problem I found throughout the book is that Montell sometimes chose to discuss general feminist issues without really tying them back to linguistics.) While some of this unevenness is to be expected in a book with such a broad scope, one pattern emerged: I generally enjoyed the portions discussing how women speak, such as the chapter about conversational norms in groups of women or the section about the many uses of like, more than the portions discussing how women are spoken about. Perhaps this is because the former read like a celebration, while the latter was more of a rant. Montell is not happy about how our culture talks about women, and while I don’t disagree with her, I often found myself more frustrated than properly fired up.

It is worth noting that Montell is not an impartial voice throughout the book. She wants our language to become more equitable. Mostly, her ambitions are good. (And in her defense, she notes that certain approaches to making language more equitable, such as attempts in 70s to create a “women’s language” or storming a dictionary headquarters to demand the word slut be removed, are unlikely to be successful.) But in doing so, sometimes her own linguistic biases shine through. Consider, for example, an anecdote from the intro of the book, where Montell gives the following speech to a woman who critiques her use of the word y’all:

I like to see y’all as an efficient and socially conscious way to handle the English language’s lack of a second-person plural pronoun. I could have used the word you to address the two girls, but I wanted to make sure your daughter knew I was including her in the conversation. I could also have said you guys, which has become surprisingly customary in casual conversation, but to my knowledge, neither of these children identifies as male, and I try to avoid using masculine terms to address people who aren’t men, as it ultimately works to promote the sort of linguistic sexism many have been fighting for years. I mean, if neither of these girls is a guy, then surely together they aren’t guys, you know?

 It’s a nice “take down the prescriptivist” story in some ways, but while I agree that y’all is a perfectly acceptable and useful word, Montell tries to argue that she chose to use y’all not just because her geographical and linguistic background make it the natural choice for her but because it’s the best choice, thereby turning an anti-prescriptivist argument into a prescriptivist one. Later in the same speech, she dismisses the option of using the pronoun yinz because it “doesn’t roll off the tongue nicely.”  I’m more intrigued, however, by her insistence that it would be sexist to use you guys. Montell notes, “Many speakers genuinely believe guys has become gender neutral. However, scholars agree that guys is just another masculine generic in cozier clothing. There’d be no chance of you gals earning the same lexical love.”  However, she provides no real evidence that guys isn’t truly neutral to speakers who use it, only that it is less marked than gals and that only masculine terms can ever reach this level of unmarkedness. I can’t help but wonder if it’s speakers who are excluding women when using phrases like you guys or if Montell simply hears it that way due to her own linguistic background.

 Another issue I had with this book is that it heavily focuses on English. While the topics discussed throughout the book are fairly universal, only one chapter provides any non-English examples. However, given how Montell handles these non-English examples, especially those from non-Western languages, in that one chapter, that might be for the best. The chapter examines how grammatical gender affects speakers’ perceptions of natural gender, as well as the political consequences, and at points, it’s very effective. I was particularly intrigued by her discussion of French feminists’ attempts to introduce feminine terms for certain jobs in a language where words like doctor are obligatorily masculine (and l’Académie Française is trying very hard to keep them that way). A few pages later, Montell moves onto talk about more complex gender and noun class systems. She gives the now famous example of Dyirbal, where most animate nouns belong to one noun class but “women, fire, and dangerous things” belong to another. She then concludes that this demonstrates that this shows something about Dyirbal speakers’ worldviews—that they see everything as masculine unless it could “literally kill you.” It’s a compelling argument in some ways, but it’s hard to discuss Dyirbal speakers’ worldviews without remembering one thing: Dyirbal is an indigenous Australian language with a single-digit number of native speakers. Yes, it has an interesting—and perhaps problematic—approach to gender, but it’s tied to a very specific (and mostly eradicated) cultural context, and it simply isn’t problematic in the same way as l’Académie Française. 

Overall, while I had my issues with Wordslut, I had a good time reading it . It’s not a must read, but if you’re looking for a fun, modern source on gender and language, it’s certainly entertaining and informative. It’s also a book that can definitely be enjoyed by linguists and non-linguists alike; there’s not much jargon that would trip up a non-linguist, but it covers a wide enough variety of topics that linguists (at least those who don’t specialize in sociolinguistics) won’t already know everything it covers. In general, if you’re interested in linguistics and feminism, you’ll probably have a good time and learn something new.

TL;DR

Overall rating: 3.5/5 Good for linguists? Yes, unless you’re already an expert in sociolinguistics Good for non-linguists? A definitive yes, since this assumes no background in linguistics Strong points: Broad scope and a fun, modern overview of the intersection between language and gender Weak points: Very English-centric, and the author’s outrage overshadows the actual information sometimes