jamesmflintt - Tumblr blog

[jamesmflintt]

Requested because it is a beautiful moment in the Tolkien story, and because Faramir got such short shrift in the otherwise terrific Lord Of the Rings trilogy of films, here’s Faramir of Gondor and Éowyn of Rohan in the garden of The Houses of Healing at the moment the eagle brings news of the downfall of Sauron. In triptych fashion, we see echoes of their previous lives: Faramir as a Ranger in Ithilien on the left side, bow bent, and, on the right, Éowyn dons her male warrior disguise beneath the Dimholt before riding to brave deeds and sacrifice on the Pelennor Fields.

— Michael Kaluta

[jamesmflintt]

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

[jamesmflintt]

i think one thing that bridgerton s2 does well is establish why kate and anthony gravitate to each other. so many romance stories flop because they cant convince you what the deal is but bridgerton is like well they are both eldest siblings they are both patronizing and overbearing they are both control freak know it alls. put them in a jar lock them in a room. haha

[jamesmflintt]

One of my favorite things about Pride and Prejudice is the Bennet family’s complete cluelessness about Darcy and Elizabeth. Like, if this were a tv show about the Bennets, Darcy and Elizabeth are like, the D storyline. The whole family is trying to get Jane and Bingley together, the regiment is stationed in Meryton, Mr. Collins is taking the house, Lydia and Wickham are obviously the climax, these people have a lot going on. And then, once the regiment has left and Jane and Lydia and Mr. Collins are married and everything seems resolved: plot twist! They’ve got random nobility at the door in the middle of the night telling the know-it-all sister who has been home on and off through the year not to marry the rando rich guy they all hate simply because they’re family and loyal to each other damnit and he called the know-it-all sister ugly once. 

And then, of course, they all find out Lizzy and Darcy are actually very in love and literally all of the good things that have happened to them this year are a direct consequence of Darcy loving Lizzy lolol. 

[jamesmflintt]

everyone like 'oh YA sci-fi like Hunger Games where the protagonist is special" is SO wrong that's other YA sci-fi which tried to copy thg and failed. Katniss is only important because she loves her sister. The regime doesn't fall because of uniqueness or skill or some inherent difference or ability. Sure she can shoot but that's not important. the regime falls because a girl loves her sister. Don't you get it.

[jamesmflintt]

ppl are always writing characters doing dumb shit like roasting a fresh-caught rabbit over an open flame instead of making a stew with that thing. great now you’re letting all the fat drip down into the fire as it cooks, wasting calories and flavor as well as causing the flame to flare up = inconsistent heat source,… when you could be maximizing the nutritional value of small game by making a soup or stew. Come on

[jamesmflintt]

the peeta mellark girls were right. at the end of the day love is about who will follow you to your ruined home and plant a garden there

[jamesmflintt]

PAUL MESCAL & ANDREW SCOTT | photog. Jason Hetherington for Flaunt

[jamesmflintt]

Lord of the Rings was published in the fifties, and largely written in the forties. Tolkien’s opinions on society and morality and technology are at some points genuinely more conservative than what I’m comfortable with. And yet, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that Tolkien actually deconstructs most of the clichéd fantasy tropes he supposedly originates. Some examples.

The long-lost heir is not the hero, he’s a side character who deliberately uses himself as a decoy.

The real hero actually fails in his quest, his goodness and determination and willpower utterly fail in the face of evil, and the world is saved by a series seemingly unrelated good deeds.

The central conflict is not between destroying the world and preserving it. An age of the world will come to an end, and many great and beautiful things will perish, whether the heroes win or lose. The past may have been glorious, but preserving it is impossible, and returning to it is impossible, time has passed and the world has moved on. The king returns, but the elves are gone and magic fades from the very substance of Middle Earth. The goal is not to preserve the status quo, the goal is the chance to rebuild something on the ruins.

Killing the main villain seems to instantly solve the problem, eradicate all enemies and fix the world, except it doesn’t, not wholly, since the scouring of the Shire still has to happen.

Also, the hero gets no real reward, and what he gets, he cannot really enjoy. He is hurt by his ordeal, and never fully recovers.

There is a team of heroes, a classic adventuring party, except the Fellowship is together for less one sixth of the series. The Fellowship is intact from the Council of Elrond to Gandalf’s death, four chapters. The remaining eight are together until Boromir’s death, an additional six chapters. This is nothing compared to LOTR’s length of sixty-one chapters, if I count correctly.

Tolkien is not classic high fantasy. If you actually think about it, there is very little magic. The hobbits’ stealth is not magical, most elven wonders are not unambigously magical, wizards are extremely rare, and even Gandalf hardly uses magic if you compare him to the average DnD wizard. Most magic is indistinguishable from craft, there is no clear difference between a magic armor and a very good armor, between magic bread and very good bread, between magical healing and competent first-aid plus a few kind words.

TLDR: Stop praising recent fantasy for deconstructing Tolkien if they’re “deconstructing” something Tolkien has never actually constructed.

[jamesmflintt]

Peeta was always endgame no matter how you slice it. Obviously there's the narrative choice, already gone into that, but from a character perspective too.

I mean there's the whole 'gale winds are loud, devastating, and quick to pass' and 'pita (bread) is considered the cornerstone that helped create humanity' thing, there's war vs peace, wrath vs mercy, self vs many, etc etc.

One of them brings destruction (gale is defined by what he kills, be it rabbits or sisters, and the systems he wants to bring down) and the other, creation (peeta is defined by the things he makes - speeches, bread, art).

One of them will end the world, the other will rebuild it from the ashes. Obviously Gale is needed - you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs after all- but he was never a sustainable, long term option.

WHICH THEN BRINGS ME BACK OH SO NICELY to how love IS a central theme of the series, because there HAS to be a 'so after'.

[jamesmflintt]

king under the mountain 🗻

so many of you liked the wip sketch of this i posted a while back so i am finally here with the full piece!! i will be posting two more different color schemes versions in another post so be sure to check them out too!

[jamesmflintt]

Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes find that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.

Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.

It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games in the pursuit of vengeance, but later stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.

So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games, and he sees the ghost of his own past. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He's up against the version of himself that he once wished to be, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.

[jamesmflintt]

pride & prejudice (2005)

joe wright director's commentary

2/x

[jamesmflintt]

suzanne collins is such a genius... the cultural phenomena of her series leading to the hanging tree house remixes, mockingjay being milked for two (bad) movies, the capitol-inspired makeup palettes, the halloween costumes, the explosion of the market for dystopia, the butchering of her characters and removal of disabilities, disfiguration, and racial tension + representation to sell more tickets, the extra gale scenes to fuel discourse, and the audience showing up to cinemas to watch what was pretty honestly marketed to them (the jacob vs edwardification of the symbolic love story and also to watch children fight to the death) it's just so ridiculously ironic i would say you can't write this shit, but she did write about it... in The Hunger Games published 2008

[jamesmflintt]

ALSO thinking about how tolkien spent his whole life studying the textual remnants of old stories and their translation and the nature of how those stories are passed on, and then wrote his own stories based on those stories that themselves explore the nature of what it is to be stories, complete with internal textual transmission and oral tradition and examination of what it is to be remembered, and then after his death those stories now have their own textual history, full of manuscript errors and revisions and missing pieces and retellings. like the uncertainty inherent in storytelling, and particularly the uncertainty in the act of recording them that he condensed into the internal narrative of the text ended up refracted back out onto the stories he wrote themselves

[jamesmflintt]

crucial aspect of jb is that it is infinitely more embarrassing for brienne to be so into jaime. jaime is obviously obsessed with her but being obsessed with brienne is respectable he’s both insufferable and evil when she meets him. she knew already that he had three kids with his twin sister and then over the time knowing him saw him almost exclusively in incredibly humiliating situations and she’s still 💕💕💕 over him. girl get up !!!

[jamesmflintt]

can’t trust anyone who criticises the mamma mia movie. like wtf are you even criticising. the plot?? the characterisation?? my brother in christ they put meryl streep, colin firth and amanda seyfried on an island, got them drunk and asked them to sing abba songs in the campest way possible that’s LITERALLY. IT. by this point you have to just assume that you’re the problem.