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Posting incredibly local memes

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Bro, we are cooked. The knight that dogs the prince's shadow like a dark and silent wraith just knelt to press his forehead to the prince's hand. Yeah, now he's uttering a prayer whose recipient is ostensibly God but in reality is the deified version of the prince that exists only in his mind. Aaand the prince just caressed his cheek to preemptively grant him absolution. I gotta... I gotta get out of here.

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in my work of fanfiction i am going to hold the villain responsible for their actions by making them have sex with the person they tried to kill, which will effectively address all the relevant moral issues by being hot.

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The inner law of the beloved person appeared more and more clearly in his picture: the noble head shaped by the mind; the beautiful controlled mouth, tightened and ennobled by the service to the mind; the slightly sad eyes; the haggard shoulders animated with the fight for spirituality; the long neck; the delicate, distinguished hands. Not since his departure from the cloister had he seen his friend so clearly, possessed his image so completely within him.

Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse

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In 2023 we (me from a sideblog) had an encounter where you were considering rereading Dragonlance and I said it's the most bigoted media I've ever encountered. Soon I concluded that nope, that would be Tolkien; thought to say that to you but ended up not doing until today, I am reading The Wretched of Middle-Earth right now and am very much solidifying in that (oh and yeah, not so long ago I have finally properly read the original DL books, and am reading some of the later ones bit by bit too). It is very interesting to see how in some things Dragonlance contrasts Tolkien and is in fact better, and in other it directly takes the problematic elements from him in complete agreement. I think they actually tried to partially deconstruct some, but have not done anywhere remotely enough. And they have introduced their own bigotry, USAmerican and Mormon. I'm planning an essay on DL politics, dissecting all this and more.

Forgot in my ask that Dragonlance is DnD-based and built off Forgotten Realms (..forgotten by me as well ig lol) — I am not familiar with those (but I plan to at least play BG I and II to familiarize myself with it at least to some extent for my essay). Yeah, some of those contrasts and non-contrasts with Tolkien are originally Forgotten Realms, not Dragonlance, and Dragonlance carries those over, and then it also does have its own. Also Margaret Weis is an extremely devout LotR fan (don't know how to better say, it's about her having said that she read LotR and decided she'll never read a different fantasy novel, this is all that she needs), so DL certainly does have its own relationship with Tolkien, not just through FR.

Yeah a lot of fantasy just wholesale adopts some unfortunate things from Tolkien and even as they try to do away with certain stereotypes and/or racial assumptions and such like they often fail to actually deconstruct the entire worldbuilding in a meaningful way. It's like you win some you lose some.

Charles Mills' essay is a great read regardless though, I definitely recommend it to everyone. Your DL politics analysis sounds pretty cool too.

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Dracula and Jonathan’s Tango - from The Polish National Opera production of ‘Dracula’.

With Choreography by Krzysztof Pastor and Music by Wojciech Kilar.

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I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

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Serenus Zeitblom confirmed as Little German Boy, film at 11

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you must always think about a mentor figure exploiting the power imbalance with their mentee. and you must sexualise it as well. otherwise a gazillion hungry angels are going to hell

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Nelson

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Lord of Himring

The figure he was cutting against the grey stone of the surroundings was striking. His cloak was the same shade of red she was now getting used to, and looked voluminous and heavy with furs, covering his entire right side from shoulder to the sole of his boots, almost touching the ground. Plate armor he wore was mirror-bright and carried intricate designs, that her eyes could not distinguish from such a distance. His hair was laying atop his shoulders in waves, unbound and shockingly red, almost matching the color of the cloak in lowlights, yet streaked with grey in a way she never saw on an elf before. The copper circlet on his brow seemed to almost disappear in it as well, adding bright shine when it caught the light just right. His face was half hidden behind his hair, and Amina would later find it hard to remember his features, except for the intensity of his eyes, shining brighter even than his brother's, as if there was a roaring fire trapped inside them.

Had absolutely no spoons to deal with all the details, but here is an illustration for a something else i am working on. (He isn't the main figure of that story, but he is the main figure of the painting, so i thought it fitting for the week anyways-)

Day one of @feanorianweek

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"A society that separates its lore masters from its horny posters will have its headcanons written by prudes and its erotic fanfic by fools."

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Sulla’s favorite

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"And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea"

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remember when you’re writing a gross and terrible power dynamic that you should be asking yourself constantly how you could make it worse and sexier

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sexual trauma in wagner's parsifal -> thoughts

the compelling thing about wagner's parsifal in connection to the theme of sexual trauma is that yes, the story is partially about the damage of individual wounding, both internal and external (klingsor suppressing his sexuality through self mutilation leading to his unableness to understand the evil of sexually wounding or mutilating others; amfortas physically depleted of strenght and unable to connect with his spirituality after the sexual wound) but it's even more concerned with the way that sexuality and a wounded sexual energy are not an individual concern but a relational and social one, sexual wounding is an interpersonal responsability and sexual healing is also. more under the cut

at the beginning of the story, the sexually wounded member of the community languishes in his pain and the community suffers and is made directionless in mourning and collective paralysis at its unableness to materially remedy the wound. what brings relief, through the character of parsifal (the 'fool holy through compassion'), is understanding the individual moral weight of violence as inherently relational. violence brought by untamed lower human nature disrupts the ability to harmonize with another being. if this is so, the way to remedy the pain of the wound is finding that inner state that would once more allow the broken contact with the other: in act 2, in a web of relations defined through cycles of violence (klingsor wounding kundry who attempts to wound parsifal), the moment of change is parsifal refusing to live out his own violent (sexual) urges on kundry because of his awareness of violence as a lowering instinct. the refusal to lower another being through the closed self involvement of violence and through the use of sexuality as a form of violence on the other, awakens an inner process that leads, through time, to a point where it's possible to come in the presence of the wound from a point purer than the original.

the refusal to lower another through repetition of one's own (sexual) pain leads at the same time to understanding the other who does wound because of his own pain and to the experience of difference and therefore compassion toward the one who is consumed by the suffering he caused. after his journey in the wilderness in act 3, parsifal is able to return to the grieving community of knights and finally relieve the suicidal amfortas from his pain by returning the lost holy spear, a sexuality humanised from the pain of human violence through the still, human, ability to extend purity to others by finding it within themselves in a dimension that goes beyond the woundedness of the self tied to the bodily form. but he is able to relieve his pain by touching him with the spear. sexualities subtly coming in contact through human touch not by violating, but by extending a helping hand.

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why do religious nuts follow me, what about my page says "yeah I totally think self love is sinful and scripture warns against it and I would totally welcome a debate about that that ends with 'the only way to truly take care of oneself is abandoning oneself and living solely for christ'"? (a real post that exists) y'all are goddamn insane.