#boating metaphors

[zed-sabre]

i've now read vinland saga to complete the trifecta of legendary seinen series about how turbo murder revenge doesn't feel great

but poor guts is really missing out here

[scarycranegame]

guys. guys listen.

if you wanna write and/or post a fanfic but are worried that no one will like it.

do not be worried. at all.

because even if no one else is interested, YOU are. you enjoy this idea. you're passionate about this concept. you should write for YOU, not for potential critics.

and even besides that, i guarantee you that there's at least 1 other person out there who would also enjoy your fic. it's essentially statistically impossible for you to be the only person on the planet who thinks the way you do, and enjoys the themes and ideas and characters and settings that you do.

write it. post it. take pride in the fact that you created something that you value. your fic exists, and that in of itself is amazing.

antis dni, this isn't about you or the graphic threats of harm you send to real people whom you dislike. get a real hobby.

proship/comship/profiction/etc. safe!

[little-mouse-adventures]

@orangerosebush's post here, with my comment and @fowlblue's tags today got me thinking.

Artemis Senior has been teaching his son matters of business from a young age. Not only was Artemis, at 11 years old, discussing stocks with his father, but Fowl Senior had been imparting his wisdom onto his son for years by that point, discussing the ever-increasing value of gold with him before tucking him into bed. Even outside of pure monetary value, Sr. had tried to go legitimate with his business dealings, leading Artemis to have a few legal ventures of his own.

We also see very early on in the books that Artemis has been regularly using Butler as a resource for his plots: bouncing ideas off him was apparently a fairly common tactic when he was scheming.

Both Artemis Senior and Butler are interested in (or at least, not opposed to) educating Artemis on the ways of their lifestyle(s). It would be Artemis Senior who would have taught his son the value of banks and safety deposit boxes and hidden safes but it was Butler who was actively working with Artemis to rob those safety deposit boxes.

In the same vein of breaking-and-entering, TLC also gives us the fun little moment where Butler hands Artemis his own lockpicks, to get into the workings of the bomb.

With one line we learn that Artemis knows how to pick locks, but does not have his own set of lockpicks. Butler, on the other hand, has both the tools and knowledge how to use them. Partnered with a brief mention in TTP of some the specific trades of those previously employed by Artemis Senior (including such things as crime lords, insider traders, and cat burglars), we can extrapolate that Artemis Senior would generally hire someone to pick a lock for him, rather than do so himself.

It's pretty logical to conclude then that Artemis learned big-picture management from his father, and day-to-day skillsets from his bodyguard.

Essentially, Artemis Senior taught Artemis how to run a criminal empire. Butler taught Artemis how to be a criminal.

[dyedviolet]

So imagine you're Ishmael except you're sneaking aboard an unmanned vessel, and then when you're well out to sea the boat starts talking to you and basically says "hey I'm god and I could smite you on a whim." You're understandably scared so you just start reading one of the many novels you packed for the journey, but the the boat that is god starts reading over your shoulder and almost using your brain as a filter to understand human emotion. Boat-god has blorbos now, you're besties, and then you go on to the next leg of the journey and don't see boat-god again for a while. When you do, boat-god has been almost killed to death by the fish people from Portsmoth or wherever Lovecraft said they're from, so you kill the fish people and save boat-god. Boat-god's crew is here this time and when you're done tying up loose ends, and help arrives, you find out that the organization that made boat-god has been shoving a lot of god into a lot of boats and your boat-god might actually be one of the slightly less powerful ones.

That's what Murderbot's friendship with ART has been like

[intricate-ritualz]

jason: yeah i just feel like i’m expected to pick a side, ya know? but why can’t i choose both sides? why can’t there be some sort of fluidity with these things?

leo: shit, man! you’re bi? this is amazing news because as a matter of fact i–

jason: … i was talking about the greek and roman camps??

[allielleaf]

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

Quote by Jimmy Dean

[nuwildcat]

Well I thought I was going to do a one and done meta for Man Suang but it turns out that I was wrong. Let's talk about ships and metaphors team.

Water first comes into play right in the thick of our trouble. Khem has just threatened to go to Bodisorn with the documents incriminating Chat's father. He gives Chat two days to do something and then we get this delicious angsty moment:

Chat in full existential crisis thinking back on a conversation with his father where he tells Chat that it's good that he doesn't want to be a civil servant.

And then he says this: But you must remember my words. It is ill striving against the stream. You will be ruined.

Luckily for Chat he gets a proper application of cat before having to deal with more drama when the fireworks explode.

Shout out to Ruang for his stellar acting when that goes down.

But that's not the last time that we hear about a stream and when we get it again, we add boats.

I really like the way they chose to reveal information at the end of the movie, cutting between different scenes to give us the whole picture of what happens to our characters after Hong's dramatic reveal and our conflict resolution.

There are two distinct conversations that bring up the stream, one with Chat and Bodisorn and the other with Chat and Khem.

Chat and Bodisorn's conversation is threaded through from start to finish at the ending scenes of the movie. Starting with Chat trying to turn over the incriminating documents.

There's a lot to unpack in that conversation but for now let's focus on the streams/boats.

Before this conversation is resolved we get Khem saying this:

A steamboat is made for the sea. A sailboat follows the wind. And a row boat can plough through every canal and river.

Here Khem is calling himself a rowboat. The Phrai status he has chosen to keep, turning down the offer of a title and land, is no longer a symbol of his powerlessness, but instead how he plans to leverage and change his circumstances. As a dancer at Man Suang, he is going to build his own form of power instead of having it given to him.

Adorably Chat shoots him some serious heart eyes at this statement but our boy is more than just smitten, he's charmed how they both think so similarly.

BECAUSE HERE IS THE THING. The conversation with Bodisorn that we start the end of the movie with? It happened before Chat and Khem have this talk.

Which means that Chat has already said this:

My father always told me that it's ill striving against the stream. But I don't think so. Now Siam has steamboats that can strike against the stream, wave, and wind, right?

And then we cut directly to credits.

To the best of our knowledge, Chat and Khem don't discuss the warning that Chat's father gives him, which means Khem's use of the boat metaphor comes naturally.

If you're wondering where the relationship that Khem and Chat have post Man Suang stems from, I would argue that this moment, this conversation is one of the key sparks that could lead to the presumably romantic feelings we are being promised in Shine.

Two men, from completely different worlds, meeting due to circumstances and despite their differences, sharing a mindset. A core understanding, that with the right position and power, you can change the world.

Whether you are a steamboat or a row boat.

[zeb-z]

unwell about the boat named hope, sunken and in disrepair, left behind for someone else to find and hopefully sail again. they sailed on hope to escape the Feds and they kept it hidden so it wouldn’t be found by them, who would surely only destroy it. they relied on hope until it failed them but still parted on good terms and left it for someone else to find

“fairwell Hope, shall we meet again one day”

[anonymous-tals]

An interesting thing I noticed is that Gob and Buster both have unintentionally boundary crossing gestures; Gob’s hugs(as well as other things but I’m not going to list every single thing separately) and Buster’s back massages. Their actions are intended to be nice, comforting, relaxing but, to others, it comes off as over the top or weird or off putting.

I don’t really have much more to say on the subject but I just found it notable. Finding similarities between Buster and any of the siblings is always notable because of how Buster tends to be separate from the rest of the crowd. I’ll be thinking about the characters and I’ll be like, “Oh, this applies to all the siblings…Except Buster.” It’s especially notable with Gob because of how, on a surface level viewing, different Gob and Buster are. They were both on the opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to getting love from their parents. Gob got none and Buster got, like, so much(or, “so much” since it wasn’t really love; or, at least, it wasn’t healthy love). Gob was neglected while Buster was overprotected.

Lindsay and Michael try to separate themselves front the family. They want to think they’re better than it; Michael taking care of everything and putting family first and Lindsay hosting charity events. Gob and Buster want to be in the family, though. They want to be protected by their parents, loved by their parents. Gob, in as much denial as he is in, is definitely more aware of how bad their parents are than Buster is but they both go along with (or try to go along with in Gob’s case) what will get them love from their respective parent-they-want-the-approval-/-love-of. And we see that, when the attention is shifted from Buster to Annyong, Buster gets mad and upset and fights for attention and has petty rivalries just as Gob does with Michael.

I think one of the reasons Buster stays with Lucille and on her side, other than believing it’s the only way he’ll be safe from the “dangers of the world” is that it’s the only way he’ll be safe from the dangers of his parents. He is shown to recognize that his siblings don’t like their mom and he just sort of respectfully is like, “I get it but I like mom so I’m going to stay with her.” So, it’s not like he doesn’t know that his mom does bad things. I think that he sees that, for whatever reason, he got special treatment. He was treated differently. He was treated better. And, even if in some ways he may find himself dissatisfied or held back, this is the only life he knows(which is the case for all of the siblings, just in different ways) and he doesn’t want to risk losing what good things he does have. And, as I said, with Annyong, he sees him as a threat to his happiness, to his safety, and he fights against him to keep it.

And, as I said, it’s a similar thing with Gob. He was neglected his entire life and had to fight for attention in an ever-losing battle. And, if he did get attention, it wasn’t good attention. For him, though, he sees what his siblings have. His main rival is Michael, of course, but, there’s also what I feel is a bitterness he has towards Buster, which is why he is shown teasing him a lot(other than, ya know, that being typical oldest sibling stuff). It’s not shown too much, as Buster isn’t a threat to him but it is something that probably affects him. Buster is just as incompetent as he is and yet he is loved. He is cared for. Gob wants to be to their dad what Buster is to their mom. Of course, he’s going for the positions, roles and status that Michael has but Michael doesn’t necessarily like his dad. He cares for his dad but he has qualms. Gob is trying to play into things that will get his dad’s approval. He is following whatever his dad tells him to do. He wants the “love” that Buster gets. He’s willing to compromise his own happiness and wellbeing for his dad and, anything he does or feels that goes against what his dad would approve of, he pushes down and hides. Buster would rather stay with their mom than find his own independence. Gob would rather stay with their dad than find his own independence.

Their main differences come from the fact that Buster was given that love and Gob wasn’t. There’s also what was expected of them. Gob was expected to be a functional person and a business man who marries a women/sleeps with a lot of women and Buster was expected to be a well behaved little boy all his life who did whatever his mom said. For Buster, that didn’t really take him out of his comfort zone so, while it probably isn’t very fulfilling, it was at least safe. He was stuck within a warm room on a boat while Gob was drowning in the waves. Desperately trying to get his dad’s attention so he’ll let him onto his boat, he does more and more things, all of which just exhaust him and lead him closer and closer to succumbing to the rough seas. Neither situation is good. Buster was hidden away, never exposed to the elements and Gob was always exposed to them, struggling to survive. This just leaves them both unable to handle the waves, becoming overwhelmed and ceasing functionality at even just the slightest ripple in the water.

[thatsbelievable]

[frownyalfred]

How do you handle getting ideas and scenes for other works when your writing a bigger peice? Do you just go for it and switch to writing that or write out the scene in bullet point and go back to the big thing you were working on? Or do you ignore all other ideas until you get your main peice finished? Just curious :0

It's so hard! I'm sure you already know that. But there was a point in the last year where I was switching off updating bloodletting, borderline, and a sky of honey every week and my brain was confused 24/7. Too many worlds, too many different rules, too many things for my goldfish brain to remember.

I have been burned before by my brain, so normally when an idea/scene comes to me (usually in the form of dialogue first) I yank out my phone and write down as much as I can before I lose the idea. Even if I don't use it until later, or I edit it down, I still have it.

So yeah, usually some lines of dialogue and a few bullet points if I think the direction/scene needs extra explaining for future me. I'm of the opinion that, if a scene/line/idea is pushing at you hard enough for it to distract you from your current writing, you should get it out. That's good writing energy, even if it's not helpful in the moment.

A good example of this was the lockdown scene in the cave in borderline. I'm fairly certain that line came to me while I was trying to plot out a complicated scene in bloodletting. It was not what I'd had planned initially for their cave "conflict" but it fit perfectly. I almost couldn't scribble it down fast enough!

[agentravensong]

Ros & Guil Being Victims of the Narrative Compilation

propaganda for @doomed-bythe-narrative's poll tournament

If you've never heard of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, it's a play from 1966 that follows two side characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Any other context I'll provide as we go. This post will spoil the whole play, so keep that in mind before reading further. TL;DR these guys are arguably the progenitors of being doomed by the narrative in our postmodern understanding of the concept, and, as much as it sounds like those orv guys deserve the title too, I want my boys to win. Please vote for them.

If you need more than that to be convinced... I'll oblige.

1.

Ros and Guil don't have any solid memories from before the start of the play, at best impressions of memories, because they only exist within the context of the present narrative. They don't get to have pasts because it's irrelevant. They don't even get to know which of them is which (and every other character treats them as interchangeable).

2.

The reason for Ros and Guil's presence in Hamlet is that they're supposed to figure out what's wrong with Hamlet on behalf of the king (because they apparently used to be his friends), but their efforts are unsuccessful. In this play, it's framed as an impossible request -- they get as close as they can get, despite not really understanding a word he says, but get tripped up at the thought there must be more to it than that -- because they were written to fail.

After Hamlet does a murder, their function in the narrative switches to being the ones to bring him to the king, and then to accompany the prince to England where (currently unknown to the two of them) he will be executed. Roles that, as Guil points out, could have been fulfilled by anyone:

The answer to that last question, is, of course, no. The reason it has to be them is because of how this sequence of events ends: with their deaths.

In short, Hamlet changes the letter with the King's declaration when the pair is sleeping so that they will be killed instead. In the context of Hamlet, this is a key moment for his character (it's his first use of the state violence that's his birthright, and it's a situation he could have gotten out of in plenty of other ways) and for how his bestie Horatio sees him.

But in the context of this show? For as far as Ros and Guil get to know? It is simply what has to happen.

3.

Ros and Guil have no agency over the events of the narrative. When they're not "on stage", they're left in limbo, at the mercy of the other characters' comings and goings.

They try to summon the other characters, because they don't know what to do with themselves otherwise, but nobody comes. Eventually, Ros gets frustrated with this, and then this happens:

When they're "on stage", everything sticks to the script. Even in this example, where Ros and Guil have failed to detain Hamlet and bring him before the King, the world adapts just enough to keep things on track:

They are at the whims of the narrative.

There's even a dig at how they can't get the ever-passive audience to meaningfully react to them:

They can't escape the bounds of the narrative, even if both of them wanted to.

Any chances they might have had to actually change the course of events come too late, when they're already convinced (arguably more as a coping method than anything else) that their choices don't matter in the shadow of what they've been caught up in.

That last snippet is the conclusion of a bit about how Ros doesn't believe in England because he can't conceptualize it as a place, can't conceptualize his and Guil's arrival there -- which is because it doesn't happen, because England is out of the scope of the narrative and thereby doesn't exist. They can't even imagine a different future for themselves.

4.

There's one other major character in the play: the leader of the traveling players (aka tragedians). He basically exists to prod at Ros and (especially) Guil and explain, in a manner that they can't quite grasp (or refuse to), how they're trapped in a tragedy -- and the cost the two of them will therefore have to pay. As he puts it, in this genre of narrative, "blood is compulsory".

5.

Rosencrantz has this whole monologue in parallel to Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy about being trapped in a box, which imo is a pretty clear metaphor for being a doomed character in a narrative and whether it'd be preferable to live that existence or to not be part of the narrative at all -- that is, to not exist, to have never been alive.

6.

Lastly, the ending. Ros and Guil are sent off with Hamlet on the boat to England. Pirates attack (yes, really, it's what happens in Hamlet too), and the prince escapes with them. Our pair discovers that the letter they were sent with now inexplicably calls for their heads (not knowing that Hamlet switched it).

Guil, at his wit's end, desperate to prove he has some influence, some agency, stabs the Player. But the man gets right back up.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern face their deaths.

And the worst part of it all?

The promise of "next time". They're in a time loop. Because that's how theater works. Every performance, following from the previous, is them living through these events again. The same exact events, as dictated by the narrative.

They don't remember, loop to loop. Not enough to make different choices. Not enough to say "no".

They won't learn. They won't improve. They won't save themselves/each other. They will do this forever.

And since that gets me basically to the image limit, that's where I'll stop. These bitches (affectionate) are the definition of doomed by the narrative, and it would make very happy if they could at least get past round 1 of the tournament, as stiff as the competition is.

As a closing bonus, take the ending of Act 2 (of 3) of the play, which just. Kills me every time.

[qroier]

realistically the only thing roier cubito did on that stupid boat as it slowly but surely and inevitably got further and further away from that stupider island was stand there in shock. pure, body numbing shock. I don't think the reaction hit until hours later and by then the max it could be was probably some sort of "that stupid fucker but what else was there to expect at this point" and then immediately transitioning over to the cellbit is dead i've got a dead husband he's as dead and as stiff in the ground as bobby truthing. like that's just how he is he doesn't cry he doesn't make a big scene (when there are other people around) and if he does it's only because whatever he's making a big scene over doesn't really matter, or it's fixable and doesn't matter as much as it could. or because it's objectively funny to see him flop around like some sort of oversized magikarp which thus pulls more attention to his actions and metaphorical fish flopping and less to the reasoning behind said actions (his heart practically physically breaking). but VISUALLY and like. CINEMATICALLY man does the visuals of him desperately trying to throw himself over the boat's edge only to have to be held back by etoiles and fit with bagi and phil standing solemnly at his shoulders go hard. it goes very very hard. no wonder people are making fanart of that version instead of the first one

[loverboybrightsideghost]

i think it's funny when people put song of good hope by glen hansard on zoscar playlists bc the lyrics are so water-y and by the point that zolf became a cleric of hope he'd already had a nasty divorce with. water god

[intertexts]

the thing that's got me really fucking hooked with black sails so far though is that lately i've been going man i really do enjoy splashy violence & gratuitous gore & such, but i want to see something where the violence enacted onscreen has a real and heavy weight to it. (this is of course the fault of me reading what happens next & it entirely + permanently changing my worldview) & this show fucking does! there's so much blood in this show & so far it is always a shorthand or a parallel or a metaphor or foreshadowing or five different layers of such...

[mikewheelerfan2022]

believing in ghosts is stupid but believing a man walked on water, rose from the dead, turned water into wine, and cured fucking blindness with a single touch is smart and logical to you? 💀

Yes, it is. Although I don’t post about it often, I am a Christian, and I believe in the miracles of God. The paranormal is very different. In my opinion, most of the stuff that happens in the Bible is true. And paranormal stuff like ghosts isn’t. Now, there is the Holy Spirit, but that’s different because the Spirit is one of the three aspects of God.

I understand that not everybody is religious. And that’s fine. I respect Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. I even respect Satanists, although that does make me fairly uncomfortable. And of course, I respect atheists. You don’t have to be religious. But can you not be so rude about it? I respect you, please do the same for me.