#but for just a book? A BOOK? one that you theoretically wrote and had published for loads of people to read?

[martianbugsbunny]

Here's smthn I find very annoying: when an academic book uses latin or French phrases to describe what it's talking about for no reason. an average person reading that book bc they want to learn from it isn't gonna know what they mean. they're never explained. it's jargon, really, and it gets in the way. every time I come across one of those I feel a little spike of pure annoyance and mutter to myself "why couldn't the author have just described it in the same language as the rest of the book?" it's so distracting from the process of engaging with the material that I came onto Tumblr for a solid couple of minutes to write this irritated post about it instead of continuing on in the chapter I was reading.

[consanguinitatum]

Rare David Tennant audios: another Did He or Didn't He? in The Tragedy of Two....whatsits?

I've talked about David's rarer audio work before (referring to the magical Tuesdays & Sundays, which I've covered earlier) but today I thought I'd switch gears and talk about one of the very few audio works of his I don't have and would love to find. This particular one is special because I've never seen it listed on any forum as an audio David ever did. I popped over to see if it was listed at the venerable David Tennant fan site and nope, they don't have it listed. Neither does VK's usually stellar David Tennant Asylum.

But he did it.

Before continuing, I need to first mention dramatist and author Jane Rogers. Rogers wrote the book The Island and worked on its radio adaptation in 2002. She also adapted The Beach of Falesa and The Ebb Tide from Terror in the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson. The Island was broadcast 22 Oct 2002 on BBC Radio 4 as the Radio 4 Friday Play, and the Stevenson duo was broadcast in Dec 2016 on BBC Radio 4. David has played roles in all of these audio plays.

Let’s keep Jane in mind for now, shall we? For here is where my journey began.

I first learned about this mystery audio's existence years ago from David's profile in the programme for his 1999 play Vassa. Listed among his radio credits was a play called The Tragedy Of Two Virtues.

WELL.

Knowing for certain I'd never seen this play listed elsewhere in his credits, I began to hunt. During the few years of frustrating on again and off again searching which followed I saw the words "Two Ambitions" pop up now and again. I kept dismissing this as a 'close-but-no-cigar' kind of thing - until finally I didn't, and started taking an alternate possibility more seriously. Perhaps the programme had just mis-named the thing?

To that end I did some reading on Hardy's A Tragedy of Two Ambitions. The story is about two brothers, Joshua and Cornelius Halborough, who want to escape from their humble surroundings and get away from the alcoholic, irresponsible father who threatens to destroy everything they've worked for. If you're interested, you can read further details about the plot here.

I also needed to narrow down the date when David might've done this audio, so I went back to the programme it had been mentioned in - the Jan 1999 Vassa programme. It was there, but it wasn’t in any published programmes from David's previous play (Real Inspector Hound/Black Comedy, Apr to Oct 1998). That helped me place the audio's possible production date between Oct 1998 and Jan 1999.

But this possible late 1990s time frame worried me. After 2000, the BBC policy was to archive all "performance programmes" on CD, so (theoretically) plays after that date should exist in the BBC archive. But before then? Oh boy. Well over 90% of broadcast radio plays were not kept. Ughhhh!

But onwards, research-wise. I dove into the BBC Genome Project to see if an audio production called The Tragedy of Two Ambitions fell in that time frame, and lo and behold it had! But it wasn't the full court press "AH HA!" moment I'd hoped; while David's name wasn't listed in its entry, it did give me the dramatist's name. So I determined it was best to just go to the source and ask.

(Re)enter Jane Rogers.

When I finally managed to contact her, my first question to her was, “Was a young David Tennant one of the cast members in the piece? I ask because he did an elusive audio in the same time frame that's been (possibly) mislabeled A Tragedy of Two Virtues, and I suspect your piece might be the correct title?”

Initially she told me she wasn't at all sure he was in it, because her first recollection of meeting David was for the audio adaptation of The Island. She told me, "As far as I remember, the first time I met David Tennant was when he played Callum in my radio drama The Island, adapted from my own novel. He was a young and relatively unknown actor at that point, and was absolutely brilliant. As, of course, he has continued to be!"

But later, after she found her script for the play, she was able to confirm for me that David was indeed a cast member in the audio - a fact which surprised and delighted her as much as it did me. Rogers said David played the lead part of Joshua, and the play had been recorded on 21 Nov 1998. And here's a cool story: she said the fact it was David had probably slipped her mind because the play was recorded in West Country accents, and she strongly associated David with his natural Scottish accent. West Country, huh? Now that's an accent I'd like to hear him do!

A Tragedy of Two Ambitions was broadcast on 7 Dec 1998 as the fourth of four episodes of Life's Little Ironies, a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play. It was 45 minutes in length. Other cast members were Alex Lowe, Abigail Docherty, Anthony Jackson, Susan Brown, and Charlie Simpson. Its producer was Clive Brill for Watchmaker Productions, and it was recorded at The Soundhouse in Shepherds Bush, London.

It's an audio play that I would dearly love to have in my collection. I've searched high and low. Unless someone recorded it back in 1998 and saved it, it's likely gone. But stranger things have happened. After all, old DW episodes are still being found, right?

Now - if you've stuck with me this long, I've got a goody to tell. But it's not about The Tragedy Of Two Ambitions - it's about The Island (and if you haven't listened to that play go forth and do it! It's a lovely piece). Rogers told me The Island was recorded on the Isle of Skye because with a small cast, it was often cheaper to record on location than rent a studio in London. The cast stayed at the Kinloch Lodge and recorded in the hotel and on a small private beach. But recording on location meant the cast couldn't access fancy sound effects, so sound effects were done on the fly. While on that private beach, Rogers said, the cast noticed a ruined rowing boat half-full of water. David splashed around in it when they needed watery effects. So when you listen to the play and you hear splashing water, that's our dear David!

And thus ends my story of the mystery of The Tragedy Of Two Ambitions (and the tiny treat of a behind-the-scenes story about The Island).

If anyone can find that audio, contact me. I beg of you!

[aaronstveit]

Hi! What is a zero draft? I'm not sure I've heard that before. But I will also send you some numbers! 31, 33, 36, 37, 39, and 46!

hi anon!!! thank you for asking <33333 i'm gonna answer this one under a read more because it got away from me a bit

omg i am so excited to introduce you to the concept of the zero draft. so a zero draft is sort of like a document that's between an outline and a first draft, and it's almost like an information dump for your WIP. there are no real rules to it but the way i do it is i pretty much just type out everything i'm thinking like i'm talking aloud. so parts of it are actual lines that will probably end up in my wip and then some parts are just like "He says something about fate here, I'll expand the metaphor later." and i'll just go through the entire story like that because it's easier for me to put together something resembling a plot when i'm just talking it out (in a google doc) than when i'm actually trying to "plot" or "outline." i hope this makes sense? if not, this article is very helpful i think! again there are no actual Rules to it, just do whatever works for you! it works for me because of how my brain is but everyone is different of course etc etc <333

31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

um probably more the characters? plot does NOT come easily to me and it's a huge fight for me to actually come up with one, i usually start with vague concepts and let the characters propel it forward!

33. Do you want to be published some day?

oh sigh what a question. theoretically yes i would love to actually finish one of my original wips and get it published but in practice there is soooooo much about publishing that i find very frightening. i am not a social media darling and if i wrote a book and it ended up on a booksamillion booktok table i'd do something that got me put on the evening news. but yes i would actually like to like, write something original and put it into the world for people to see one day. theoretically.

36. How do you write kissing scenes?

gonna be honest i usually cringe my way through it. writing physical intimacy is NOT a strength of mine and there are really only so many words you can break out before you start to sound ridiculous. other people are amazing at this but unfortunately all i can really do is throw in some metaphors and try focusing more on the emotions than the physical act.

37. How do you choose where to end a chapter?

i pretty much just give up at some point... okay that's a bit of a lie. while i do suck at all forms of endings, i do generally (think that i) have a sense for good emotional stopping points. i base my chapter endings wayyyyy more on emotion than actual plot. OH and it also depends on POV. like for instance in deep end i have 3 different POVs happening and sometimes i'll get to a scene and be like wait this should be in someone else's POV so i know i have to close things up for this chapter and start the next one. otherwise though i usually like to stop at a semi-emotional moment so a reader is mostly satisfied but left ready for the next chapter!

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

oh god oh fuck um. here is a bit from deep end !

This must be horrible for you, Enjolras had said. And he wasn’t wrong, not even a bit. Every second of it has been horrible for Grantaire. The way his shoes stuck to the floor of the Corinthe, the bartender’s familiar smile. Enjolras’ chaste pink lips, his half-unbuttoned shirt. The crowded street. The smell of the inside of the taxi. The stairs, Enjolras’ weight against his side, the smell of Enjolras’ breath, Enjolras’ voice in his ear, Enjolras, everything fucking Enjolras. Grantaire wonders if this is another trap, if he’s gotta chew through the bone to get out of it. But he can’t, he knows he can’t. He’s all bled out. Carving his way out of this trap will kill him.  (Staying in the trap will kill him, too, he thinks. But there isn’t really anything else to do about it now.)

46. How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

is dialogue-driven an option? because my plots are completely driven by dialogue it's kind of ridiculous. otherwise i would say emotionally driven. possibly too emotionally driven. i have a lot of emotions and i like throwing them all at my google doc to see what sticks. unfortunately this results in a lot of suffering for my characters BUT i have fun and that's all that matters!

get to know your fic writer!

[justmybookthots]

Love, Theoretically

4.25/5 stars

Technically, this is a reread. I was feeling low because of another book yesterday, and I really wanted a good pick-me-up before I spiralled into a slump. And given how much I freaking loved this book the first time (I read it a week or so after it first got published?), I was hoping it would do the trick. 

It did. I just finished rereading the entire thing a few hours ago. Oh my gosh. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is by the same woman who wrote my romcom archnemesis: Love Hypothesis. How do you go from writing… Adam Driver (Carlton? Ca… Something) to fucking Jack? (And yes, Ali needs to consider giving her male leads less basic white boy names. That said, Levi’s name wasn’t so basic. His personality though…)

Jack is my favourite Hazelwood hero by FAR. Of course, Hazelwood technically only has two distinguishable heroes, since Adam and Levi are just differently named versions of each other. My point is, Jack is… wonderful. He’s blonde—I’m partial to fair-haired male characters, okay? He’s calm. Humorous. Communicative. Understanding. Emotionally intelligent. Like, look at this: 

And to sum it up:

He wasn’t perfect, obviously, but I… My brain was short-circuiting at so many of his scenes, his actions, his easy banter, his sense of humour. There’s one scene where Elsie thinks they’re about to have sex, but she’s clearly too tired for it, and he just plays along:

I loved their banter, omg. Some parts, not so much, but most of it was hilarious. It isn’t only with Elsie; Jack’s exchanges with his grandmother were gold, too. Millicent Smith made me crack up in that singular scene when they had tea—I think she’s a phenomenal character.  It’s amusing and admirable how Jack could respond to and handle her eccentricities without batting an eyelid. 

I really wanted to give this a five stars. I really did. I still do. I mean, the first half of the book before Jack and Elsie got together is fantastic, and is possibly the highlight of the entire story. Hazelwood nailed the tension between both leads. Furthermore, I love the throughline of the story: Elsie suffers from chronic People Pleaser Disorder where she constantly plays different versions of herself to—you guessed it—please different people. She does this incessantly, not just when she fake-dates but in many aspects of her life. As someone who dislikes the fake dating trope, it’s nice to see that this trope is being tied to an ongoing character development arc. (It also helps that she isn’t fake-dating Jack. I’m so, so tired of fake-dating between two romantic leads.) Jack is privy to all this through observation, and he encourages her constantly to be nothing more than herself. 

This theme has, to be honest, been giving me some food for thought. I’m about to derail, but I do think women are societally expected (more so than their male counterparts) to be many different things. I don’t want to go too far in depth about it because this isn’t the place, but I remember (this is still going to be a bit out of left field, but this is my reading journal, so I’ll say what I want) reading somewhere that women are likelier to be better at masking autism than men. Simply put, I believe it’s because men can be themselves, whatever that may entail, and not have to apologise for it. It’s why I’m annoyed by male characters like Adam, or just the male “grump” archetype, because men rarely need to be polite. There’s almost no flak for them if they behave in a way that lacks any kind of grace.  

But if a woman behaves the same way, she’s simply put: a bitch.

Anyway. I digress. All I’ll say on this subject is that I really enjoyed the overarching theme regarding Elsie’s character growth. 

However, this is not a perfect book. There are some points that I don’t love:

The smut. This is the biggest issue. Jack is very giving, which is great, and he is BIG on consent, which is also great. I can’t put a finger on why I don’t love how the smut is written though. Whatever it is, it’s a me problem. Ali’s writing style for smut isn’t to my taste. It doesn’t feel very… sexy? The whole scene where Jack and Elsie made out and did something sexual for the first time was really awkward. I am a firm believer that consent CAN be written in an attractive way, but this was not it. 

Twilight is not it. I’m sorry, Elsie.

I do not understand why Jack is so muscular. Big, I get because that's genetic or whatever, but why muscular??? How is a nerd who spends his days in a lab getting that muscle tone? That allusion to him playing basketball in a gym on certain weekends is NOT enough.

The PDA between Jack and Elsie at George’s house near the end of the story made me cringe. Please stop. 

Adam’s cameo. Gag. I read this book to get away from Adam, not return to his presence.

Now. Going back to more things I did love, that I haven’t mentioned yet:

Jack and the article. No, not the one he wrote when he was seventeen. The fucking article he wrote at the end as penance was AMAZING

Elsie running back to him and falling apart and saying that he probably thought they’d broken up forever because of how she’d ignored him after their fight. To which he, very calmly, goes: Nope. Who said we broke up? I was giving you space, just as you asked me for. 

GEORGINA/GEORGE. Zero girl-on-girl hate in this book. I have to give Ali credit where it’s due; there is none of this in any of her books, if I’m not wrong. Instead of having Georgina, who “stole” Elsie’s job, be the stereotypical catty bitch, she turns out to be an amazing character who saves Elsie’s career. I love how the literary landscape of female characters has changed in recent years.

“Manuscript I’d love to finish” being called MILF is something I am claiming for myself. 

Never thought I’d say this two months ago, but I absolutely loved this book. Now my biggest question is: will this be an outlier in Hazelwood’s repertoire, or will she be ever-evolving into something new and better with future books? (Bad Boy of chess, though? Really?)

FINE. I’ll stick around to find out. 

- 16 Aug 2023

[caesarflickermans]

If you had the opportunity to meet Suzanne Collins for 30 minutes,

What would you do?

What questions do you want to ask?

(PS : There is no limit for topics :)

Thank you.

@curiousnonny

Honestly? I wouldn't want to meet her.

I'm not one to gush and praise Collins, and tell her how much her books influenced my life (German attitude, we don't really do that), and so my only interest would have been to have a conversation with her about some of my favourite characters, themes, worldbuilding aspects.

But in reality, I would ask myself why her thoughts on my favourite characters, themes and worldbuilding aspects matter so much more than those of myfavouritetumblrmutual or this cool person on caesarflickermans dot tumblr dot com.

I'm just not someone (and never have been) to lift up a celebrity—be it an actor, writer, or musician—to this persona to be fangirled around.

The author is dead (in a theoretical way). The trilogy released a long while ago, and even without the book, Collins isn't the same person she was when the books were published. She might feel different on what she wrote, she might have come up with new ideas since then that contradict things she wrote that I love.

Outside of J/K / R being a terf, I only need to think back to her once writing she wouldn't have paired up Hermione and Ron were she to write the books now (that was at the height of her popularity on twitter iirc); and that's a perfect example of an author who is far removed from what they originally wrote making additional content/changes that wouldn't originally have made the cut. It's an innocent enough example outside of her harmful ideology, but one that did irritate fans at the time when they still held her in very high regard. Once we arrive at the idea that post-publishing, the author is nothing more than a big name fan whose ideas we can freely disagree with (Hermione/Ron) or accept (Gay Dumbledore), we have a much better engagement with authors in fandom.

And I feel like had Collins written about a topic more people in the fandom engage with; say, Haymitch's backstory, his Games, and District 12 at the time, the fandom would have been much more split, because that's a topic many more have pre-shaped opinions and thoughts on; as opposed to e.g. the creation of the Games. But as someone who had those opinions and thoughts, I am allowed to feel a little peeved about those ideas contradicting my own, when in reality the fandom would have accepted many ideas as valid, because a lot didn't have strong preconceived opinions on those. I reckon a lot of you would have hyped her for writing the creation of the games as e.g. a systematic removing of the "shooter" from the gun by bringing in a larger organisational structure, and praised her for this "deep" holocaust parallel and anti-republican gun politics.

I'm one of the first to say we need to remove the creator from their work, and it would be almost hypocritical of me if I'd now gush about wanting to meet her when she essentially matters fairly little in my engagement with the material. One of my favourite authors is a homophobe, and yet I still rank 1984 as one of my favourite books.

The death of (fandom) culture is when we lift authors on a pedestal. They've got no reason to be there; and we can't pick and choose that some of them do not deserve to be there while others do*. Humans are flawed beings, and Collins holds fewer weight in my personal life than whatever my brain comes up with when spinning in the microwave at 3 am.

[echo-bleu]

The WIP ask. :) For 2 ✍️ and 👷. For 4 💡 and 👀. For 5 🎮 and 👀. Also, have to comment on those numbers on Whitcher fics - AWESOME!! *grin*

So many questions!! Thank you! and thank you, I'm so happy to be inspired again, it feels incredibly good.

2 is Singer Street, one of my original projects. It's about a neurodivergent shared house and the community they build around it. There's a little synopsis here and a presentation of the main characters here for anyone curious.

✍️ How far have you got with it?

Uh not much more than the last time I talked to you about it, or talked about it here actually. I haven't written in two months. So the actual draft is like 8k, most of which is the first 3 scenes. I did open the file yesterday and read the first scene, and I went "yeah I'd read that book" so I guess that's a good thing? I do have a mostly clear plot, all the characters, so most of the work outside of the actual writing is done.

Theoretically, writing it is my priority, but I'm not gonna lie, the Witcher stuff are taking over for as long as the hyperfixation is on, because brain (and because it's fun, too).

👷 How has the creation of the story gone so far? Stressful or fun?

More fun than stress, unless I start thinking about it in terms of a novel I might one day want to publish. Then I get all perfectionist and just end up dropping it. Given that you've picked me back up a bunch of times already, you know that :)

4 is left you behind just standing there, a Witcher fic. I started it a week ago, and it's one of those fics I just plot as I go, so I have no idea about length (it's 11k now). It has a disabled&traumatized Jaskier and a powerless Yennefer running a small inn and raising a little autistic girl named Maja, six years after Jaskier was tortured by Rience, and Ciri finding them there.

💡 What inspired you to want to write it?

It's a mix of things. I came up with Maja as Jaskier and Yennefer's daughter as a crack concept originally (where Jaskier had a kid from one of the many women he slept with and he wasn't raising her, but when Yennefer saves his life in Oxenfurt she claims the law of surprise and the next day the mother dumps Maja into Jaskier's arms. Jaskier isn't going to give her up, thank you very much, so they'll just have to co-parent, won't they?) I might still write that fic, I actually wrote a little stub, but then Maja took a life of her own.

The second thing was that I wanted to explore Jaskier actually going to the coast (as he offered to Geralt) without Geralt and staying there, and the idea of Rience's torture ending in disability and life-altering changes. Those Jaskier/Yennefer scenes in season 2 are what got me hooked to the show, so that was the starting

👀 Can you give us any sneak peaks?

She can see in Julian and Yen’s eyes that they’ve been through as much as she has, if not more. The calm and peace of this place is deliberate, a comfort that they’ve crafted for themselves and their little girl. Maybe that’s why Ciri feels like she can trust it. It’s real, but it’s purposeful.

This is a place made to rest and recuperate.

What happened to them? Why do they need this quiet so much? Julian’s scars look terrible, although Ciri has seen – and acquired – more than her fair share. But it’s more than that. It’s in the way they move around each other, the way they gracefully, almost unnoticeably shy away from contact with anyone other than their family, the compassion in their gazes.

Yen gives hints of being more distant, cold, even, like she wasn’t always so caring. There’s something about her that reminds Ciri of her grandmother, a fierceness, an old anger that hasn’t quite been smothered. Julian, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a vicious streak in his body. Oh, Ciri has no idea what he’d do if someone tried to harm those he loves, but he’s genuinely as kind as he shows himself, she’s sure of that.

She’s curious about his witcher story, and even more curious about why Yen felt the need to intervene before he could tell it. How would he have met a witcher? Does it have anything to do with where he got those injuries?

Her thoughts drift back to Geralt, and then to his bard, the man she’s here to find. Jaskier. The spell led her here – why? Why would Jaskier be in Enktell of all places?

Oh.

I'll answer 5 in a second post, because otherwise this is going to be too long.

From this WIP game

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

Doomed to Repeat the Same Mistake: The Canticle of Leibowitz

Note on the text: I used A Canticle of Leibowitz as written by Walter J Miller Jr and published in 2006 by Eos

The theme, or rather the question, of eternal recurrence, of whether mankind is forever doomed to repeat its mistakes over and over again for all eternity, is at the core of this thought provoking novel. And the answer, at least according to Miller, is yes. Perhaps not on an individual level, but when talking about mankind as a whole it appears that we are stuck in a state of eternal recurrence.

Knowledge is an incredibly interesting thing and is, in many ways, the central character of this story. Because if to know better is to do better it means that mankind has the ability to learn and make a different choice. But if eternal recurrence is true, than it means that learning is, at the very least, irrelevant because humanity is doomed to make the same choices it did before. 

This takes place in the future, starting in the 26th century stretching all the way to the 36th. When the book starts we learn that there was a nuclear war in the mid 20th century (this book was originally published in 1959) which resulted in the complete breakdown of civilization and the death of some 90% of the population. Most of those who survived live in small communities that populate a planet that has essentially become a desert wasteland. The monastery of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz is the site of the most of the action. Their somewhat legendary founder, Saint Isaac Leibowitz, lived in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear war, called the “Flame Deluge”, and, in an attempt to preserve the culture and knowledge of the world that had just been destroyed, Saint Isaac wrote down all the scientific knowledge of the time and created what would become a series of religious texts called the Memorabilia. The order of monks which he founded is dedicated to preserving all that knowledge and passing it down. 

Knowledge is a strange and powerful thing. It’s one thing to understand what something is theoretically. It’s another thing entirely to understand how that thing works in the real world, and to truly know what something is means that you not only know what it is theoretically but that you understand something of how it works in the real world. Saint Isaac has been dead for over 600 years by the time the book starts and a lot of legends have built up around him, the founding of the order, and the nuclear war which destroyed everything. It is said that because of man’s inflated ego, God commanded a certain sect of people to “devise great engines of war which had never been seen before on Earth” (61). Every prince upon receiving these weapons was warned not to use them because of the great calamity which would ensure. But each prince ignored the warning and thought: “If I strike but quickly enough, and in secret I shall destroy those other [princes] in their sleep and there will be none to fight back; the Earth shall be mine. Such was the folly of princes and then followed the great Flame Deluge” (61). This story, and it’s message of humanity’s ability to destroy itself because of its arrogance and greed, will rear up its ugly head time and time again throughout the course of this story. 

It’s interesting that the first character we meet is Brother Francis. He is, in many ways, a really unassuming character. But it’s in his unassumingness, his humility, that he becomes a good foil for the characters who come later. When we meet him he is on a retreat in the desert and he has a mystical experience in which a mysterious man leads him to underground fallout shelter which houses a lot of “first class relics” pertaining to Saint Isaac, including a bunch of books that were written in his own hand. Now remember it has been 600 years since Saint Isaac died. 600 years since the founding of the Order which bears his name. In the mind of most of the monks there, it has been 600 years since the age of miracles. To say that the monks are skeptical when they hear about what happened to Brother Francis is an understatement. They think that all the stories of what happened in the past, all the miracles that supposedly occurred, are just that: stories. Most of them don’t even understand or care about what is actually in The Memorabilia. They don’t understand the science because it belongs to a world that died 600 years ago. It would be like us reading a science textbook from the 1400s. So they keep pushing Brother Francis to deny what happened and admit that he made it all up. However, Brother Francis, who isn’t an idiot and understands how ridiculous and unlikely it all sounds, keeps insisting that he “cannot deny what [he] saw with [his] own two eyes” (46). It’s likely that when he was growing up he assumed just like anyone else that these stories were just stories and that the knowledge inside the Memorabilia was antiquated at best and absolutely useless at worst. But he allows his experience in the desert to change him. He allows that experience to change the way that he looked at the Memorabilia and its contents. He all of a sudden starts to believe that the knowledge contained in those books might actually be worth something and he spends the next fifteen years creating beautiful copies of the books and doing everything he can to make sure that it is not forgotten. That ability to allow himself to change, to allow what he experiences in in the desert to challenge his preconceived notions about the world, is what sets him apart from other characters in this book. He refuses to ignore what is happening around him. Like I said, it’s his unassumingness and humility that makes him a good foil for the characters that come after. 

Now we jump to the 38th century and, thanks in large part to the Memorabilia, people have rediscovered how to build nuclear weapons. Now humanity has the chance to see if it has learned from its mistakes and can make the right choice. Unlike those “princes” of the past, these people know from experience what it means to live through a nuclear war. The question is, will they use what they have learned to make a different choice or will they allow the same old evils of avarice and pride to push them to make the same mistake again. Can humanity resist the allure of nuclear power?: 

Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America- burned into the oblivion of centuries. And again and again and again (264).

There is a new abbot of the monastery named Jethro Zerchi who, reflecting on the story we heard in the beginning, certainly hopes that the “princes” of his time will be able to make different choices: 

Back then, in the Saint Leibowitz time, maybe they didn’t know what would happen. Or perhaps they did know, but could not quite believe it until they tried it like a child who knows what a loaded pistol is supposed to do, but who has never pulled the trigger before. They had not seen a billion corpses. They had not seen the stillborn, the monstrous, the dehumanized, the blind. They had not seen the madness, the murder, and the blotting out of reason. Then they did it and then they saw it.

Now- now the princes, the presidents, the praesidiums they know- with dead certainty. They know it by the children they beget and send to the asylums for the deformed. . . . Now they have the bitter certainty. They cannot do it again. Only a race of madmen would do it again (275).   

He prays and hopes that those in power will now have the ability to keep their pride and greed in check and not use nuclear weapons again. It says something about the depth of Miller’s level of pessimism regarding the human race as a whole that the people in his book choose to wage nuclear war on each other again. More than that humanity has decided to invade other planets, and Miller sees it as inevitable that the human race will “succumb again to the old maladies on new worlds, even as on Earth, in the litany of life and the special liturgy of man” (243). It is the theme of eternal recurrence writ large: humans will always be who they are, they will always do what they do. Individuals, like Brother Francis, may change, but because human nature cannot fundamentally change therefore the human race as a whole cannot change. Humanity is doomed to keep on doing what it has done before- to our detriment. God I hope he is wrong. 

[snicketstrange]

Rereading BB to LS #1

This really is Beatrice Jr's most mysterious letter ever. This letter has already taken me in the most different directions. I am currently convinced that the key to understanding it is to consider the possibility that the letter is in the wrong order. As Hermes said, you have to keep in mind that there was a mystery about who Beatrice was when the book was published. Even taking that into account, as much as I understand when the book was published, I don't agree that the mystery of who Beatrice was was being treated as a great mystery by Daniel Handler when he wrote this book. TBL reveals a few things by itself: There are two beatrices, one of them died and the other was still alive. This is made clear in the letter to the editor. Beatrice who was dead is Lemony's old love. The Beatrice who was alive was looking for Klaus, Sunny and Violet and Lemony Snicket. This basic plot doesn't hide any sensational secrets. I believe the editors, reading what Daniel Handler wrote, realized that it would be interesting to publish before TE rather than after TE, just to heighten public curiosity about "the Beatrice mystery" that would be definitively solved in the last word of TE. But TBL is not about "Who is Beatrice?" As many times as I read, I can only perceive TBL as "since you've read asoue, have a little more fun with this epistolary novel that tells a fragmented story about what happened before and what happened after the main story of asoue but which evidently contains mechanisms to avoid important spoilers for those who happen to decide to read this book before reading asoue." I think that despite being a very mysterious letter, BB to LS#1 shows the intention of the author when he makes it very clear that the Beatrice who was writing this letter could not, under any circumstances, be the Beatrice the author was in love with. Beatrice Jr wrote: "Now I must... write to a man I have never seen." This sentence would be dismissed if the author's intention was to try to confuse the reader about the identity of Beatrice Jr. This seems to have been written thinking of the people who already knew about the existence of Beatrice Jr. On the other hand, there is a clear intention of the author to leave a mystery for the reader to try to solve. And that mystery is not "who is Beatrice". This mystery was stated clearly in the letter to the editor, and I repeated it here: "The Beatrice letters could explain the Beatrice letters and even the Beatrice letters, no matter which letters they are, and no matter what ORDER the letters are in." The mystery has always been "What's the order?" This is said not only by Lemony, but by Beatrice Jr herself, as if tipping the reader on "what's the mystery" in BB to LS #2: "I cannot determine what the letters would spell if I put them in you proper ORDER." "What is the order of the letters?" That's the mystery of TBL.

If you've understood Beatrice Jr's story backwards, as I've discussed so far, finding the right position for BB to LS#1 isn't all that difficult. When BB to LS #5 was written, Beatrice Jr was already a VFD member with some experience, as her tutor had already left. She was already known as Baticeer, as she referred to bat training. When she wrote BB to LS#4, she was in theoretical VFD training. She wrote #4 less than 24 hours after she read the poem My Silence Knot. It was when she read this poem that she discovered the meaning of the word "baticeer". It doesn't take much effort to deduce that she only became a baticeer after reading this poem, as before that she didn't even know the meaning of it. Furthermore, she must have only become a baticeer during her practical training, as the activity of training bats is something much more practical than theoretical.

All that being said, I want to inform you that I believe the correct position of this letter should be between the letters BB to LS#4 and BB to LS#5. It's true that some things may seem a little out of place and out of order at first reading. However, I believe they were purposely written this way to make it difficult for the letter to be correctly positioned, and even to allow it to be moved, allowing for a game of anagrams with letters. The way this letter is written is what allows this game to be a reality. Also, it is one thing when the letter was written and another thing is when the letter was received by Lemony. In any case, my opinion should not be taken as definitive, because as Lemony said, the variation in the order of the letters allows for a different understanding of our understanding of the set of letters as a whole. But at the moment I believe the way I suggest is the simplest explanation of when this letter was written. First, in the first paragraph Beatrice Jr claims to have the ability to use a communication network to get the letter to reach Lemony's office. Second, Beatrice demonstrates awareness that Lemony's office is "smal and dusty". She also knew the exact location of Lemony's apartment. More interesting than all this is the fact that it makes a direct reference to bat training. It says, "All I can two hope for the best, but hoping for the best, like hoping for a bat to obey your orders, almost always leads to disappointment." All of that first paragraph makes me imagine a Beatrice Jr who was already in her hands-on VFD training. If the way I'm thinking is really right, the phrase: "For years a I kept quiet, feeling all my words twisting and tangling inside me like skeins of yarn," in addition to being a reference to a letter Lemony had written to Beatrice Sr, (letter Beatrice Jr had access to years earlier in Lemony's own office), also indicates that years have passed since Beatrice Jr's last contact with Lemony through letter (BB to LS#4). Now, let us move on to the consideration of the paragraph which seems to contradict everything I have said, namely paragraph 4 of this letter. Beatrice claims she was told a few things about Lemony, like the fact that the word detective was printed on his office door. If she had already been there, why would it be necessary for someone to tell her about what they had printed on Lemony's door? I think the answer evidently lies in the time that elapsed between Beatrice Jr.'s going to Lemony's office for the first time (BB to LS #2) and the time BB to LS#1 was written. Many years had passed, so in the meantime Lemony had already been cleared of his crimes, and he could have set up a small private detective agency in his own office. When she was first there, Lemony was a fugitive from justice... Few people would hire a fugitive as a private detective. Lemony's career as a detective must have officially started after he was exonerated. Before that, he was best known as a biographer, an obituary writer, a theater critic... All very much related to being a writer. He had worked as a detective in his practical training in VFD, as we now know from the ATWQ, and was only able to practice this profession after publishing TPP. So when Beatrice Jr first came to Lemony's office, there wasn't even the name "detective" printed on his door. But, while she was in her practical training, that name had already been printed, after all, many years had passed between one event and another.

The same paragraph shows something that favors my ideas. The sentence: "I am hoping you will discuss your past with me. I am hoping you will tell me a story that began many years ago." Beatrice shows interest not only in her adoptive parents, but she also shows interest in Lemony's own past. This same interest is seen in the lyrics BB to LS#5. Also, paragraph 4 talks a lot about things Beatrice Jr was told. Who could share details about Lemony's past involving something that was a kind of classroom if not someone who belongs to the VFD? It also strengthens the idea that this letter was written when she was already involved with VFD. An important detail is that in #5 Beatrice Jr hints that she met her adoptive parents recently, and that she will be seeing them again later. Already here in #4, she claims that at that moment she is looking for her family, namely Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire. With this in mind, we can conclude that this search for her parents gave results. She found them (or found people she believes to be them) and then (before writing #5) she lost them again. Despite this, it is quite likely that Beatrice Jr realized that Lemony had not received any of her previous letters when she wrote this letter. She thought it was important to introduce herself again, as if Lemony had never heard of her, as can be seen in paragraph 5. It is precisely her attitude that may have been the cause of so much confusion about where this letter should be placed. While the letter has a tone of "I'm introducing myself" it has information that shows Beatrice Jr was already involved with VFD. But I think the simplest way to reconcile these two realities is to understand the matter from the point of view I just demonstrated. A final detail that highlights that Beatrice was in her practical training is the note: "PS - Day woud be better because my bedtime is fairly early". If Beatrice Jr were just the lone orphan in the world, it would be unlikely that she would be so strict with herself about bedtime. On the other hand, if she was with a VFD tutor, it is more likely that this tutor would set a bedtime.

[stylishanachronism]

Tumblr is not kind to me and does not let me check the post for any details to ask about, but do you have something more to add to the Waidwen's clothes thing I asked about a while back? And also the questionable authorship of our favourite porn book we talked about. 👀

Hilariously, I have a draft of the 'what the fuck is Waidwen wearing' post collecting a couple of different people's responses and my thoughts on them open in another tab right now, because I did have more to say and then I just.... didn't, and now it's been too long for that not to be awkward as hell.

Anyways, to summarize:

The consensus, when we left off, was that the metal armor was mostly dreamscape stuff, not literal, but that it was probably reflective of what everybody who did have metal was actually wearing.

It's... probably an technical limitations thing that it's in the Vailian style, because there's no point in adding Yet Another art asset for one scene when they already had so many highly necessary one off art assets for BoW, and there just isn't a lot of extant non-Vailian plate to begin with in the existing art assets, (and also I am solidly unconvinced that the coup had any sort of international backing just based on timing. Would the Vailians have backed it? Oh totally, not only do they get to spit at the Aedyrans they also get better access to the dye supply everybody was, is, and continues to be convinced is a viable thing, despite the fact they're having a hell of a time growing it. But I just can't see them getting their shit together fast enough to actually make much of a difference when Waidwen came out of nowhere and the coup itself was pretty much done before it started.), and what there is really wouldn't do, so. You make do with what you've got.

(Unrelated, it's high key hilarious to me that there's such a strong (entirely unintended) default visual tie between the Watcher and the Eothsians in general, because despite the text saying they all wear purple, they're all in green, and green and yellow are Caed Nua's canonical colors, so if you don't change the colors everybody matches! Most people do change their colors of course, but like, it is a whole thing.)

As for Our Favorite Eroticist:

I think I've settled on 'somebody in the priesthood with a vivid imagination and too much time on their hands, who crucially never met Waidwen or anyone who spent a lot of time with him personally' (so... Xoti's spiritual predecessor, so to speak); because on one hand, access to enough disposable paper not only to write the thing but also publish it and a better than average understanding of Eothas, (metatextually, the same people who wrote Eothas-the-god's dialogue also probably wrote the porn, so of course it sounds the same, but in game...), but I feel like anyone who actually like, knew Waidwen wouldn't be able to write it with a straight face. Not even Xoti, and you know my feelings about her theoretical Watcher/Eder/Xoti fanfic, so that's saying something.

[discountalien-pancake]

Late to the discussion I guess xD just wanted to ask: speaking of supporting authors, what's the difference between not reading their book at all, like you suggested, and reading it but pirated?

They're not getting money either way

So what the difference if one reads it online, rather than not read it at all?

Is it just a personal moral problem?

Wouldn't a book pirated by many people actually benefit the author in some way? For example spreading the word in other countries (I'm thinking about Neil Gaiman's opinion on pirating here; I know he's a big author now, but he seems to think that part of his fame is the result of being pirated so much in countries like Russia, when his books were not translated in Russian for years, yet he had a fanbase there already; I think he said that people "discovered" him outside of the UK thanks to being pirated).

Hope you understand what I'm asking, english is not my language but I tried my best >.<'.

Note: whenever i say “you” i mean the general you and not anon specifically.

The thing with pirating is that it gives hosting sites incentive to pirate more books by authors you theoretically *do* want to support, in addition to affecting sales statistics and revenue for the author you meant to pirate. How do we decide who’s worthy of being protected from piracy? An author you love might be one someone else hates. What then? How can you then argue we shouldn’t pirate from that author? Because you like them? But the other person thinks they’re problematic. It’s not as cut and dry as “well i only pirate books by bad authors!”

Also I do find it really hypocritical for someone to claim they’re “boycotting” an author but then still go out and read their books anyway. Yes, it’s publicity. Criticism is publicity too. And it’s publicity for the very same authors you don’t want to support. It’s why, as I keep mentioning, the Quileute didn’t want people reading Midnight Sun.

Because for every person who thinks they’re different and better than those other pirates who are pirating books from “good” authors, there’s a dozen more who are going to read that book and enjoy it. And continuing to pirate it keeps that book in circulation on the internet. So if you genuinely hate the book that much, hate the author that much, why would you contribute to that circulation? If you want to be really spiteful about it, why aren’t you making it as hard as possible for potential fans to access those horrible awful books for free? Why aren’t you doing everything possible to keep that paywall between those horrible awful books and their fans?

As positive publicity, it’s still cutting into sales. An author as prolific and established as Neil Gaiman can maybe afford to take the loss. But in the meantime, how much damage will it have done to less established authors? How many books will now never be published because publishers don’t want to risk what little capital they have on an author that might not make them any money? It’s not just about the money the author loses directly, it’s also about other authors who are now losing royalties, and debuts who won’t get paid as much or even picked up at all.

The only books i can advocate pirating are school* textbooks because those aren’t published the same way as novels or general nonfiction. Those are a fucking scam and my professor gave us all the pdf to the textbook he wrote, if that gives you any indication of the difference.

*independently published research and reference texts are not the same thing and you shouldn’t pirate those either.

Also, PSA to anyone who isn’t confident about their English: don’t worry too much about whether or not you make perfect sense. If I can’t understand something, I’ll ask. My parents speak English as their second language, and I will never judge or mock you for struggling with a foreign language. If you need me to simplify something, please ask.

[alexmitas]

Why I’m Just Like Crime & Punishment’s Raskolnikov and so Are You: A Brief Analysis of Dostoevsky’s Most Famous Novel

Just last night I finished Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. After mulling it over for a day (likely not nearly long enough to have substantiated a complete analysis, but with my memory I risk forgetting things if I move on to another book before writing about one that I’ve just finished), I’ve decided to get some of my thoughts down. Firstly, I will say that I am struck. While I’m clearly neither the first nor last person to be amazed by this novel, a work as significant as this one still deserves its praise where it’s due. People will often preface praise based on their interpretation of a creative endeavor by stating that its imperfection is obvious, even though that it’s also the best-est or their favorite, or one of the best-est or their favorite creative works that they have ever encountered, or something of the sort. I won’t be so bold to as to make that statement. That’s because, without a doubt, this was a perfect novel. After all, if something is so close to approaching a spade, by all reasonable measures, and only becomes better and better, and more and more like a spade, with age, then why not call it a spade?

Since the beginning I had a certain kind of resonance with Raskolnikov, the novel’s main character. But just as you can’t fully judge a story unless you consider it as a single, coherent piece (that is, until you have read from beginning to end), so too did I not understand the reason for my resonance with Raskolnikov until I finished reading his full tale. He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s intelligent: check, check, check; these things all apply to me, at least to some minor degree - that much was obvious from the very beginning - but while this superficial resonance was my first impression upon dining, it paled in comparison to the impression I had after the final bite of desert; to say nothing of the pleasant after dinner conversation among friends, the latter of which, of course, I use as a metaphor for the epilogue[1]. Every flaw I see in Raskolnikov, I also see in myself; for every action he takes, I can imagine a world in which I could be drawn down a path that would lead me to make the very same decisions, and to take the very same actions. I don’t know what could possibly be a better model than that for a main character.

Perhaps Raskolnikov’s biggest flaw is his overinflated ego, which is hardly out of the ordinary for someone his age, and isn’t entirely unjustified - as I said, he has three of the most promising traits one could hope for: intelligence, youth, and good-looks – but which does, in his case, lead him down an ideological rabbit hole of naivete, a hole which he creates for himself by dropping out of school, refusing work when it’s offered to him, and letting his resentment for the world grow as he lives off of a handful of meager sums sent to him by his mother and sister as a debt ridden fool in a poor Russian city during the eighteen-hundreds. This ideological thinking, which we shall not confuse with illogical thinking, for it is very much logical, brings Raskolnikov to the thought that, yes, it would in fact be a good idea to murder and rob the wealthy old pawnbroker whom is commonly considered amongst his peers as a mean-ol’ crone, holder of many a promissory note, rumored to have left her wealth to the building of a statue in her image through her will, rather than to her own children, whilst also being a generally unsightly and disagreeable woman, and, having done this, could aim to put her money to a more just cause, perhaps distributing it to others, or perhaps using it to further his own career which he would certainly payback in the form of greater value to society later on. And it isn’t such a crazy sounding idea, is it? After all, what is but one crime if the outcome provides a much greater net good? I’ve known many people, including myself, who’ve had thoughts not so unlike this one, and I suspect you are no different, dear reader. So having rationalized this to himself, Raskolnikov goes through with it, and thereby provides us a story of his Crime, which occupies only about one-fifth of the length of the novel, and his Punishment, which nearly occupies the novel’s entirety; with these proportions themselves giving us an idea of the many-fold burden of consequences for actions, as well as foreshadowing what is to come. And this rationalization runs deep. It isn’t until later, that we learn of truer reasons for Raskolnikov’s action, beginning with the discovery of an article he was able to have published while still enrolled in school, and ending with a true confession of his deepest motives to Sonya, to be discussed later.

This article that he wrote sometime before the crime, “On Crime,” reveals deeper rationale for his decision to commit the murder: and that is that he does it as a way to become something more than he is; to break down the cultural and religious structures around him, and more than that to supersede them; to rise above his fellow man as a type of “superman” or Napoleon, as he puts it, becoming someone who is able to “step over” the line which divides who is ordinary and who is great, a line that’s substance consists of rules for the hoi polloi only; ultimately inferring this idea – which, from what I understand was prevalent in Russia during the mid 1800’s – that the best way to view the world is through the lens of nihilism, which employs utilitarianism – the tenet which proposes that actions should be considered just insofar as they help the greatest number of people overall, and where acts of evil may be balanced properly, without the need for consequence, in the face of equal or greater acts of righteousness, especially if that person can prove themselves of some sort of higher value – as a central axiom. Pulling back to a macroscopic view of the novel, this sense that Dostoevsky had to instill within his characters arguments for what at the time was – and still in some sense very well are – contemporary issues, and eternal ideological and philosophical battlegrounds, rather than thrusting his own opinions through the narrator, is something I found to be brilliant and endearing, not only for the sake of keeping the author’s own bias more subdued than would otherwise be the case, but also just as a means to see what happens; to let the characters in the story have the fight, leaving both author and reader alike to extrapolate what hypotheses or conclusions they may as a consequence. In this regard, other characters – including Raskolnikov’s friend, Razumikhin, and state magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich – have the chance to debate with the nihilistic ideology of Raskolnikov after interacting with “On Crime.” This provides depth to contemporary discourse, without reeking of contrivance, and also allows us to see Raskolnikov argue for himself also, even though what he, ‘himself’, stands for is ultimately not clear; not for the reader but also seemingly not for Raskolnikov, as even after deciding to commit the crime, Raskolnikov’s opinion on whether or not it was a just event osculates frequently throughout the novel. It is this osculation, in fact, which constitutes most of Raskolnikov’s early punishment and suffering, as even though it appears as if Raskolnikov has managed to get away with the crime in the domain of the broader world[2], his conscious will not allow such an event to be swept under the rug, or even allow Raskolnikov to continue to live his life unhindered by spiritual corruption, mental destabilization, or physical trauma – all three of which plague him constantly both during his initial contemplations and later fulfillment of the crime. Ultimately, these ideological battles and inward rationalizations do not provide Raskolnikov with the accurate prognostication needed to foretell the outcome of his own state of being after committing such an act; and thereby lies Raskolnikov’s fatal flaw, derived from his arrogance and naivete, where he is left blinded by an ideology which never fulfills its promise of return. Oh, but if only he had a predilection for listening to the great prognosticator within him, his conscious, which, despite his waking thoughts, was calling out to him in the form of dreams.

In what is one of several dream sequences observed by characters in the novel, Raskolnikov dreams himself a young spectator, holding the hand of his father, as the two of them watch a group of misfit boys pile into a carriage. The carriage master, no more than a youthful fool, whips a single mare solely responsible for pulling the carriage. Overburdened and unable to do more than struggle forward at a pathetic pace, the mare whimpers and suffers visibly as the cruel and drunken carriage master orders it to trudge on, whipping it forcefully, all the while calling for any and everyone around the town to pile into the carriage. Laughing and screaming hysterically, the carriage master turns brutal task master when he begins to beat the mare repeatedly after with much effort the beast finally collapses to the ground in exhaustion. Horrifically, a handful of other people from the crowd and the carriage find their own whips and join in on the beating of the poor mare until it finally dies. Young Raskolnikov, having witnessed this event in its entirety, rushes to the mare after its brutal death, kisses it, then turns to the carriage master brandishing his fists before he is stopped by his father. This is the reader’s first warning of the brutality to come, and had Raskolnikov payed heed to what his conscious was trying to communicate to him in his dream, he may have noticed, as we as readers do, that the reaction the young Raskolnikov had to the barbaric murder of the mare very much predicted what Raskolnikov’s ultimate reaction to his then theoretical crime would be – regret; and, therefore, repentance. A second dream of Raskolnikov’s, which very much enforces this idea, pits Raskolnikov in the act of once again murdering Alyona, except this time, when he strikes her atop the head with the same axe, she simply brandishes a smile and laughs uncontrollably instead of falling over dead. This all but confirms Raskolnikov’s suspicions to himself, as his subconscious relays his foolish inadequacy, as a man who thought that he could elevate himself above others by “stepping over” the moral boundaries all of his societal peers abide by (and for good reason). Again, through this tendency that he has to stubbornly ignore his conscious, I find Raskolnikov eminently relatable, to some degree, and it is no wonder: it is a rare individual who finds obeying their conscious to be anything but onerous (then again, perhaps this is only most common in individuals who are still relatively young and naïve, a trait which I share with Raskolnikov, but one in which you may not, dear reader; but I digress). Of course, just because a task is onerous, does not mean that it is impossible. The characters which have been placed around Raskolnikov, and specifically the ones which serve as foils to his character, provide examples of contrast with individuals who at the very least are able to combat the compelling desire that we all have to ignore our consciouses. The three most blatant examples of foils for Raskolnikov are his sister, Dunya, his best friend, Razumikhin, and his eventual wife, Sonya Marmeladov.

The first example of this contrast apparent to the reader is in the character Razumikhin. Razumikhin is also a student living within the same city as Raskolnikov. Unlike Raskolnikov, however, he has not bailed out of university for financial necessity nor wanton of a grand ideological narrative. There is also no reason to believe he has more financial support than Raskolnikov, as he also appears to be poor with no hint of endowment, instead supporting himself through the meager-paying work of translating for a small publisher. And while Razumikhin is even more naïve than Raskolnikov – having never once suspected Raskolnikov of so much as a dash of malevolence – he lacks the same venomous arrogance, whilst showing no signs of lower intelligence. Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, provides another example of similar contrast. This is because, as his sister, and, again, with no reason to believe that she is any more or less intelligent or attractive than her brother, Dunya comes from the same upbringing, whilst holds no apparent resentment towards the world around her. Even when she is given the choice to harm someone else – when she finds herself on the side of a gun pointing at a man who has locked her inside of a room against her will (arguably giving her a modicum of a reason to kill another, depending on one’s own stance on morality) – she is unable to do it, instead casting her tool with which to do so aside and letting fate take care of the rest[3]. Lastly, and this may be the most apparent example, presenting what may be Raskolnikov’s true foil, we have dearest Sonya, stepdaughter of the Marmeladovs. Sonya, who in the face of two useless parents, takes it upon herself to prostitute herself so that her family, including three young siblings, may eat, makes Raskolnikov look privileged and morally woeful in comparison. Recognizing this himself, Raskolnikov does his best to look out for Sonya, in what is perhaps his most genuine form of empathy. Despite this – or perhaps, in fact, in spite of this; for early on Raskolnikov identifies Sonya as the sole individual whom may be able to help him redeem himself – Raskolnikov obsessively pushes Sonya to read a verse from the bible involving the story of Lazarus, as a redemption for himself, but also for Sonya, projecting as he does his misdeeds unto her and equating his murderous acts with her soiling of her sexuality for the sake of providing for her family. The story of Lazarus is a story which promises resurrection of the individual as Jesus Christ resurrected Lazarus from the dead. In this way, Raskolnikov probes, a part of him reaching out ever fervently for the means of the rebirth of his soul, despite his hitherto forthright determination to escape his guilt and conviction, looking for proof of Sonya’s moral purity, which he already suspects, despite his accusations, to which she responds by admitting herself a sinner, asking God for forgiveness, and later by bestowing upon Raskolnikov one of her two precious necklace and crosses. And it is in a kindred vein to these three examples of contrast in which the final contrast is made in small part by every character in the novel; for in some sense this novel represents the journey of one man as he isolates himself from a community he loathes to subordinate himself to; of a man who wishes to supersede his place in the world and become a “superman”; of a man who places his individual ideology above the morality of his peers; and it is in this way that the ordinary character, subservient to religion, provides contrast for the atheist who mocks them, not with critique, but with arrogance.

…

…And that ought to be enough for now.

TLDR: 10/10 would recommend.

Thanks for reading,

- Alex      

[1] The epilogue, from what I’ve observed from others’ critiques, seems to be controversial in that some believe the novel stands alone better without it. It is not until the epilogue – well into the sentence of punishment by the state for his crimes – that Raskolnikov finally gives up his idea that, essentially, ‘the only thing he did wrong was improperly rob the old lady and to then fall emotionally and mentally apart afterwards’; where, too, he finally gives up his last bit of arrogance and outward loathing for the world and his circumstances, and accepts responsibility for his actions, likely brought on by the outwardly visible sacrifices made by his then wife, Sonya, who he looks to for repentance. However, critics argue that without the epilogue, we would simply be left to assume on our own that Raskolnikov finally gave in to repentance when the novel ended with his confession, and that that would be preferable to what is otherwise a heavy-handed ending, condensed as it is compared to the rest of the novel. This would make sense and likely be fitting enough of an ending. However, in defense of the epilogue, without it, a reader’s main takeaway from the story might be only, ‘do not underestimate how much opposing your conscious will degenerate your soul,’ while with the epilogue, the takeaway is more likely to also include something along the lines of, ‘beware denigrating religion and the multitude of cultures which it has produced, for without the ability to hold yourself accountable for your own deeds and also to be redeemed, there is nothing standing between you and self-destruction and misery, to say nothing of the destruction and misery of those around you,’ which of course is realized by the death of Raskolnikov’s mother as well as the sickening of himself and his wife, as a consequence of his refusal to actually accept his punishment and repent even after his confession (which without acceptance of responsibility is still only a selfish act), outlined in the two chapters proceeding the end of the novel. So if I’d had the genius necessary to write this story, I’d also have looked to include an epilogue to ensure that the totality of my characters’ lessons would also be realized by the reader, for whatever that’s worth.  

[2] While Raskolnikov does seem to commit the crime of murder and robbery without getting caught, this does not mean that things go according to plan; in fact, far from it: while Raskolnikov manages to murder Alyona, he very poorly robs her – leaving behind a large bundle of cash she had under her bed, which he missed due to his state of unanticipated frenzy. He also ends up killing Alyona’s younger sister, Lizaveta, when she arrives immediately following the murder, in an act of pure self-perseverance, which just goes to show: when you take the fate of the world into your own hands, when you ‘step over’ the boundaries that your culture (or God; whichever) has deemed should not be crossed – when you arrogantly and naively take the fabric and truth of the universe into your own hands – you do not know what it is you are doing; you do not know what the consequences of your actions will be. It isn’t made clear the degree to which the killing of Lizaveta changed the outcome for Raskolnikov’s soul. Perhaps committing one crime constitutes the same moral weight as committing two crimes simultaneously, but also perhaps it was everything; the one factor unaccounted for which destroyed his evaluation of just outcomes and, having done so, his resolve.

[3] Here is a specific instance in which Dostoevsky’s propensity to pit ideas against each other in the form of characters playing out their practicalities in a real-world context comes to bear. This specific battle, represented by the juxtaposition of the aforementioned scene with Raskolnikov’s murdering of the two women, pits morality against ideology, while leaving a clear winner: for it is one which leads to the eradication of two lives and the degradation of more than one soul, and it is another which leads to the absolution of a dangerous conflict. These two specifically – morality and ideology – clash frequently during the novel’s entirety, with morality often taking its microcosmic form of religion.

[notchainedtotrauma]

What is your top 5 artists of all diciplines, series and random things you like to do on a rainy day? ❤️

So for the first one, when it comes to top 5 artists:

Fred Moten. I think all that beauty, a book I mentioned previously, is a masterpiece of erudition, language, writerly grace and virtuosity, and based on this book alone (knowing that I adore Fred Moten’s poetry in general), he’s one of my top poets.

Outkast. This is a toss up between Missy Elliott (an absolute multidisciplinary genius, a fellow Cancer and someone from the state I adopted, that is Virginia, therefore ALSO a Southern rapper) and them. I choose them right now because ATLiens. I just...I’ll need a book to explain the Afrofuturist feel, the adequate melancholy, the way The Love Below rocked me and Speakerboxxx (yeah Speakerboxxx) brought me to my knees crying (Church did something to me I cannot explain), the way ATLiens ripped my guts out of me...

Alexis Pauline Gumbs. She’s not only my favorite poet, she’s one of my favorite theorists and the work she did with and around Black feminist citation is Nobel Prize worthy and no I didn’t misspeak.

Saidiya Hartman. She’s my favorite Black feminist theorist of all times. Solely because of Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments. I have never seen theoretical writing this DAMN gorgeous (I can’t even call it academic writing, because the book is a literal nonfiction NOVEL), nor writing (from a straight person) that was this respectful and loving of gender non conforming Black lesbians or any Black member of the LBGTQI+ community for that matter. And yeah, I know this said artists, but just look through my Saidiya Hartman tag and you’ll understand why I place her there.

Nydia Blas. She might be my favorite Black female photographer capturing young Black female intimacy, even above photographers I put above her technically and in terms of affect, such as Carrie Mae Weems and Deana Lawson. Her photographs of young Black teenage girls (and young Black girl children) do something to me that only LaToya Ruby Frazier is able to match affect wise.

I don’t watch TV (because of my emotions, or rather my nerves) so this top 5 is just a top 5 of different types of series.

The triptych of the three poetry books based each on one Black feminist theorist by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, composed of Spill (Hortense Spillers) M (M. Jacqui Alexander) and Dub (Sylvia Wynter). She basically decided on each of those theorists because none of them have ever written a coherent book (Hortense Spillers and M. Jacqui Alexander have both released a collection of their essays, but no single monogram about one topic). She sat with a phrase from their work every morning and wrote a poem from that, and had three poetry books published from the whole experience. I now can safely say I have every book in the series.

The Notion of Family by LaToya Ruby Frazier, which is an autobiographical work of documentary photography that spans a twelve years period. LaToya Ruby Frazier basically decided to photograph her family and her town Braddock, which used to be a prosperous mining town with an overwhelmingly Black population, that became impoverished because of the mining industry going obsolete. And so she collaborated with her mother she didn’t originally live with (because her mother was unstable and thought it better for her child to be raised by her own mother) to create those gorgeous and extremely affecting photographs of what racialized socioeconomic degradation can do to a (Black) family and to a (Black) town.

Grogu/Baby Yoda and his relationship with Din Djarin. No, I’m not paying for Disney + and I’m not watching The Mandalorian but I love to go on YouTube and watch any snippets featuring Grogu and especially featuring him interacting with Din Djarin. Which means that I’m absolutely infuriated at the recent developments (fuck a plot).

The series centered around Cindi Mayweather by Janelle Monae. I get why Janelle Monae felt she had to shift gears with Dirty Computer but I still feel like Cindi Mayweather hasn’t told us all her secrets yet and I think the lore rich story Janelle developped has so much potential that hasn’t been unlocked that it would be sad to throw the whole story arc away. So I hope we get to see Cindi (and maybe Mary, as a new love interest ?) again soon.

Nydia Blas’ series The Girls Who Spun Gold, who is about the interactions between a group of Black female teenagers she decided to gather in a group to empower and lift them up. She knew all of them because she had lived around them in Ithaca, New York and decided to photograph them as they grew up around each other.

When it rains, those are five things I like to do.

I love to sleep. There’s nothing like the sound of the rain falling to lull you to sleep.

I like to have a cup of hot, sweet lemony green tea. 

I love to read poetry as I listen to the rain fall against my windows.

I love to listen to sad, melancholy tinged music.

I love to look at visual art that deeply moves me.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Thought on the Writing Process

Most people have been taught, usually in an English or creative writing class, that the writing process is roughly as follows:

1.    Brainstorm

2.    Outline

3.    Write your first draft

4.    Edit/Rewrite

5.    Write your second draft

6.    Lather/Rinse/Repeat

7.    Write your final draft

8.    Publish

In theory, yes, this is generally how one gets from idea to finished product. Generally. Unfortunately, newbie writers see this as law rather than guidelines. This leads to questions like, “Is it ok to edit before you finish your first draft?”, because, according to The Writing Process(TM), editing must follow drafting. On the flip side, there are those who reject parts of the processes entirely, not just for themselves, but for everyone, saying things like “Outlines kill creativity”, because, you can't revisit and tweak your outline, because outlines must precede all other parts of writing except brainstorming because that's how it is in The Writing Process.

Of course, if you’ve been writing long enough, particularly if you’ve written drastically different stories, you know why these ideas fall short. Simply put, there is no one writing process; there is only your writing process. And that process is whatever works for you.

I would even say that you can have different processes for different books. In Styx, I jumped from brainstorming to drafting with no outline. Once I had finished my WIP and started editing, I used very sketchy outlines of what I had already written and where I wanted things to go to aid in rewrites. I continued brainstorming, known in professional circles as “daydreaming”, until I finished the whole series. My writing process is not linear; most of the individual parts exist side-by-side as I go.

But the Alternate-History/Fantasy/Mystery WIP has a totally different genre, setting, tone, and target audience from Styx, so it makes sense that it’s not going to come together in the same way. Happily, it is coming together, though.

I've discussed my outlining phase before, so let's look at how I wrote my prologue and chapter one. My hope in sharing my method (and madness) with you is to dispel some “hard and fast” ideas—i.e. myths—about how one "should" begin a book.

To preface this examination, I must reiterate that I have begun three books, and a novella, and yet still find writing the first chapter to be an agonizing ordeal. It’s a whole new voice and set of characters, and it’s hard for me. But I did it. And if I can do, anyone can.

Myth one: You must “just sit down and write”.

I don’t think I need to explain how much I hate this “advice”, which is generally said in a holier-than-though tone, like “I, a hard worker, can just sit down and write; I needn’t wait for inspiration like you lazy plebeians.” Bully for you, mate, but the rest of us find staring at a screen a hopeless and depressing endeavor.

No, I did not “just sit down and write,” though I wanted to. I felt, around mid-July, that I probably knew enough about my story to start. “Any day now,” I thought. “Any day now…” And then, I was in the shower (one of the best places for brainstorming, as I’m sure you know), and it came to me: a prologue, fully-formed like some Greek god springing from the appendage of another Greek god. This was how I would begin my book. “It’s time,” I thought.

And it was.

Myth two: Don’t worry about editing the first chapter until the draft of the whole book is done.

After writing a pretty rad prologue, if I do say so myself (and I do), I began chapter one. And it dragged. I was putting way too much detail and backstory for so early in the book, introducing too many characters, and saying too much about the setting. It was heavy. It was monstrous. It had to change.

I see first chapters as the foundation that the rest of a story stands on, or the trunk of the tree from which the rest of a story grows. It needn’t be perfect, but it needs to also not fail hard out the gate.

So I brainstormed. How could I trim the fat, while still having my character flying into the city the book is set in (because the flying scene was key). Could I also be lazy, I wondered, and avoid researching the type of plane the military might use to transport this character from the battlefield to the city?

Laziness won out. I realized I could change the timing of the scene. The character had already returned from battle, sat at home for a couple weeks pre-story, and is now, in chapter one, on her way to the city on a comfy commercial airline (which also lets me add some details about the time period: did you know that everyone smoked like a chimney even on airplanes in the 60s? Cause they did!). Problem solved.

Myth three: Just throw writing out there; it doesn’t have to make sense

This is related to Myth 2, but I still need to address it, because my problems weren’t quite solved. Though the first chapter flowed much better now, it was flowing straight toward a Grand-Canyon-sized plot hole!

I knew two things:

1.    My two MCs, Constance and Cherry, must become roommates at least by the end of chapter 2 for the rest of the book, nay the series, to work

2.    There is a very good reason for Cherry, knowing what she knows about Constance’s situation, to not want her as a roommate.

Theoretically, and according to popular advice, I should just throw the writing out there or skip this part and worry about it later, but I couldn’t do that. First of all, Constance and Cherry’s growing friendship is a large part of the theme and plot, so it would be weird to not know how it started. I needed to see them decide to move in together. I wanted to know how it all began.

Second, and more importantly, this wouldn’t just be a plot hole, but the mother of all plot holes from which rifts in the story would be berthed! When I say Cherry has a “good reason” for not wanting a roommate in Constance’s situation, I mean a reason that relates to the plot of the entire series, the villain’s motivation, the setting, and, well, everything. If I didn’t fix this hole, the entire story could come crashing down at any point. Again, first chapters are a foundation, and mine was shaky.

What to do… Well, why not return to my outline? I had a rough sketch of how the first book in the series was going to go, the vaguest idea of the plot for the second one, and only the beginning and ending of the third. I had been wanting to outline the arcs of the main characters and villains in each book, and now seemed like a decent time to do this.

I outlined Constance’s arc, with a big, blank, circled area that said “Moves in with Cherry for some reason???”, and left it at that. I then outlined her coming to terms with her backstory, and learning secrets about Cherry, and conflict, and so on. So far, no ideas.

I started outlining Cherry, from her backstory, and what she’s investigating (she is a detective, by the by), and how this leads to an eventual conflict with Constance, which had always kind of bugged me… and then everything fell into place. This thing that she knew—that thing that would make it weird for her to invite Constance into her home?—turns out that there isn’t any reason for her to know it at the beginning of book one. Literally no reason.

So now, she can become roommates freely and easily, then learn this terrible thing by the end of the book, and her and Constance dealing with this fact is a major part of the second book. I even figured out something about the climax of book 1 because I would now have o explain Cherry’s learning of this terrible fact.

So, because I desperately needed things to make sense and did not just throw writing out there, I came up with a more organic conflict for my characters, a plot for Book 2, a key part of the Book1 climax, and fixed the initial plot hole. Not too shabby!

Conclusion

So that’s my process: a continual spiral of drafting and brainstorming and outlining and rewriting and drafting and so on. You probably have a different process, and that’s fine.

I know that this may not actually help anyone start their own books, because it’s not exactly advice, but that’s the point. There is no magic formula that can make you write a good book, or even a good first chapter. You just have to find what works for you, wether that’s daydreaming for three months and then punching out a novel in a few weeks, or forcing yourself to write every day, or writing when inspiration strikes.

Too often, I believe writers focus on the “how” of writing and forget the “why”. You’re not writing to produce a book the “correct” way, nor are you writing to get as many words down as possible. You are writing in order to tell your story. As long as your process lets you do that, then it is the only writing process you need.

[drkoestersmithrpg]

So This Week

was not good.

First, as I posted, I HAD to admit that there would be no close Von’s moneypool.  There were some VERY generous donations right after Christmas, but nothing since, like, the 5th.  So I’m sad about that because that was the last THING I could do for Von, and now there isn’t anything.

But the MAIN thing was:

Remember when we talked about Toxic Positivity... about how you could be SO positive and absolutely deny ANYTHING negative, to the point where you might actually accidentally create an echo chamber/become a gaslighter?  

Due to something an old friend from Medieval Fair posted, accusing some other people in our theater group of Toxic Positivity, I really started thinking about how I can be faulted for that, at least at times in my life.  As a teacher being grimly, steadfastly positive can be a GOOD thing - lord knows it got me through that week of the Ice Storm/Von Dying/Husband In The Hospital - but I’m sure it must have frustrated some people when I was a director.  (Not that this individual was talking about MY Toxic Positivity, but she accused the group of Toxic Positive and I can’t help but think I added to that.)

This is probably ridiculous, but I really got obsessed with all the news of women in abusive relationships in the few weeks.  Army Hammer.  Shia Labeouf.  No reason really (except for maybe that it is Winter) but I really wondered how much work and effort I would dedicate to changing my behavior and every aspect of my life to adapt to that abusive/obsessive person, and how long it would take for me to leave, if I ever left at all.

Remember this?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088565/chapters/50174225

Peter is me - constantly dealing with a partner’s demands by adjusting my schedule/expectations, only to be met with another demand, and dealing with it with another adjustment.  Solving the immediate problems, one after another, without looking at the big picture, or asking the big questions.

Now this is ridiculous because it’s all rhetorical   - I’m 51 and been in a relationship since I was 23.  I’m worried about aspect of my personality that are  theoretical in situations that aren’t real.  But it’s really been weighing on me.

AND I’M READING We Have Always Lived In The Castle - and spent the whole book going OH MY GOD THIS WOMAN IS THE ABSOLUTE DEFINITION OF TOXIC POSITIVITY (although when I got to the end I decided “yes, but, in the end, it was probably the only way she COULD have lived in that situation, and in the end, they were happy.)

Then Evan Rachel Wood came out about Marilyn Manson and I literally haven’t been able to think about anything else.

So for a week I’ve been in a shame-spiral over imaginary situations with no basis in reality.

So in conclusion I really really really want to think about something else right now.  

I want to finish up Quentin Beck’s Dream (need to find a title) and publish it.  The making-out session is almost over, and I THINK It is about over.  Which means I have a rough draft and now I just need to clean it up and put it on A03.

THEN I want to think about something to publish on Valentine’s Day that Von and I wrote.  I don’t know what - there are several things to chose from, but they all need a lot of work.

[irhinoceri]

I’ve seen a lot of fanfiction vs original fiction discourse in the past couple months on tumblr and I feel like there’s a lot of talk about fanfiction as a starting point, or the be-all-end-all, but no one talks about it as something to get into after having  already written original fiction. I know I’m not the only one who has done this... but it’s strange that it’s almost never talked about in these discussions.

I read voraciously and wrote avidly as a child/teenager and while my writing was undoubtedly derivative of whatever I was reading at the time, none of it was actually fanfiction. It was squarely in the realm of original work. I’ve had a fraught relationship with writing since, but have managed to complete at least first drafts of several novel length works, and in my early twenties (mid 2000s) I was highkey into “web fiction” which is just making a blog (usually a wordpress site) to post original work online, a la fanfiction. I went so far as to self-publish a novel via Lulu so that anyone who wanted to read it in a traditional way (paperback book) rather than via chapters posted via wordpress could do so.

I didn’t have any self-delusion that this made me a legitimate published author, but I still never wrote fanfiction and I looked down on it. I looked down on it far more harshly than a lot of harshest fanfic-critical posts I’ve seen on tumblr lately. The only thing close to fanfiction I would write was parody, because I’d never write anything serious that wasn’t original and that I couldn’t claim total ownership over. The idea of anyone in the hypothetical future writing fanfic of MY characters was awful to me and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with George R.R. Martin’s anti-fanfic stance, if I knew who GRRM was at the time.

In short, I was proud of my originality even though I knew nothing I had written was good enough to pursue traditional publication. I took inspiration from others, as I was aware no man is an island and there’s nothing truly new under the sun, etc. etc. etc. but I firmly believed that you should at least file off the serial numbers so you’re not insulting original creators by going against their intentions for their creative work to change or “fix” it. The popular fandom attitude that fanon can improve upon original work was just ridiculous to me. You either liked a work or you didn’t, there was no in between where you liked bits and pieces of canon and threw out the rest.

It wasn’t until 4 years ago that I set aside my pride enough to try writing a serious work of fanfiction, to engage with the idea that you could love a thing and still want to imagine it a different way, and to actually look into reading what other people were publishing on fanfiction.net and Ao3, rather than treating fanfic as an untouchable thing that would forever tarnish me.

The catalyst for this was that I wanted to read and write Padme Lives! fiction that imagined Star Wars without having to knock Padme off at the end of RotS. I’d seen RotS four times in theatres and many more times since, but always hated that Padme had to die at the end, and after TFA came out and there was a Star Wars revival, it rekindled my SW love that began with Attack of the Clones in 2002.

That’s it. I finally decided that I wanted Padme to live enough to write fic where she was alive or seek out other fic people had written about her being alive, despite everything. I was delighted to find entire novels set in a world where Anakin didn’t fall to the Dark Side at all, or repented in the nick of time, or other different ways for the story to unfold. I discovered that Vaderdala was an actual thing people thought was at all theoretically possible. I finally understood why people wrote fanfic. I was 31 years old.

I’ve written maybe about 500k words of fanfiction since 2016 but I’m still pretty sure the collective word count of all my original fiction since childhood still vastly eclipses that. I wrote a lot, guys. I was a homeschooled child who was largely left to my own devices (i.e. self-taught) and I had nothing in the world to do except milk goats, play in the woods, and read/write. You can get a lot of writing done when you’ve got nothing else.

So anyway.

I see people talking about this in reverse, how so many authors use fanfic and as a stepping stone towards originality, but I rarely see anyone talk about discovering the merit of fanfiction and the joy of writing it later on.

I had my reasons for starting to write fanfic after roughly 25 years of only writing original fiction, besides just wanting Padme to live. I won’t get into all of it here, but I graduated from college at the end of 2015 with a creative writing degree and haven’t written any original fiction since.

Suffice it is to say that I really admire people who brave the traditional publishing world and go out there and try to get published, get paid, to be a legitimate Author of Original Published Works. It takes a certain kind of courage to do that. The world would be a worse place if all writers just wrote fanfic. More people should be discovering new authors and stories, and consuming media that isn’t made by committee under the watchful eye of a corporation. People who have new ideas, who have something to say to the world that is totally original and isn’t just a revamp of licensed work should absolutely be doing that. And we should be celebrating and supporting them.

But if that’s not in the cards for you, fanfic can be very important. Fanfiction can be a life-saver.

I’m glad that fanfiction gives me a way to still write. I already know what it’s like to write original fiction. I don’t need to use fanfic as a stepping stone to anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about it in my own way. Letting go of the need to be profound and original (or publishable) is behind me, personally, but I still do care about the quality of the work I put out.

I just wonder how many other writers who have chosen fanfic as their main outlet feel that way? I.E. it’s not a vehicle to one day write your own original work because you’ve Been There and Done That.

[edwad]

What are your least favourite Marx books? Which ones are the worst?

this is sorta tricky because i guess you’d have to define “books” since

many of his most famous writings are tiny pamphlets or speeches which were then published as articles or pamphlets and might not properly be considered “books”, especially since some of them were only published posthumously as texts once transcripts were found for speeches. value price and profit would be the go-to example for this.

a lot of the “books” we now have are really just editorial collages of manuscripts that were not written in the format of a “book” and were in many cases not even intended to be published. so when we try to measure their worth in how Good they are or not, sometimes the “book” we’re talking about doesn’t really exist or is constructed/“finished” (often poorly) from the raw manuscript(s). great example would be the economic manuscripts of 1864-5 which were then turned into volume 3 of capital, but the debate around the nature of engels’ job as editor means that the “book” capital volume 3 is considered by many to be inferior to the unadulterated manuscripts, if not an outright distortion of them.

but if we can sorta treat all the published texts as “books” (excluding like, individual articles unless they are noteworthy enough to single out. if they’ve been published as a pamphlet and are considered Important Texts i’ll consider them here) and ignore the fact that marx was an extremely prolific writer (meaning that there’s a lot that i haven’t read), id largely come down on the younger marx.

i think pieces like the communist manifesto, paris manuscripts, wage labor and capital, etc are relatively intellectually immature compared to his later works. a lot of what’s in them had to be corrected or outright abandoned by the 1860s. there’s also the problem where the paris manuscripts suffer from the 2nd problem listed above where they are mishmashed together in such a way that they appear inconsistent and where the actual process of inquiry gets lost in the rearranging of pieces of text. for example, the piece we read at the beginning as the “preface”, but which was actually from the third manuscript and was pulled to the front by editors, shows an attempt by editors to “finish” what marx apparently would’ve done himself, despite the fact that the manuscripts were from marxs personal notebooks and for his own development/clarification as he studied, not manuscripts for a “book”. this seemingly minor change reflects the overall editorial attitude to the publication of the manuscripts. a more apparent alteration is in the last “manuscript” regarding the critique of hegelian philosophy, which was never written by marx. it is an “essay” compiled from paragraphs and stray remarks throughout the paris notebooks, put together in a semi-coherent order so that it could stand as a single text (the same thing happened with the first “chapter” of “the german ideology”). when editors are this bold, it is hard to distinguish the good/bad of marxs work from the heavy hands of editors.

the same is true of wage labor and capital, which was republished by engels after marxs death with numerous “corrections”, especially around the category of “labor-power” which marx developed in the late 1850s, about a decade after WLC was written. the result is that engels decided to publish “not as Marx wrote it in 1849, but approximately as Marx would have written it in 1891,” which ignores the fact that merely changing “labor” to “labor-power” everywhere in the text that mentions its sale as a commodity doesn’t magically bring it to some hypothetical peak. marxs theoretical foundations between 1849 and 1867 (not to mention 8 years after his death in 1891!!) were radically different, meaning that the updating of a single category doesn’t resolve the problems of the text. here again, the editor plays a heavy role in the reception of the text (if you’ve read WLC, you almost certainly read the 1891 edition with engels’ editing), but also the theoretical foundations themselves are inadequate and were jettisoned in a matter of years.

the communist manifesto comes from this era of marxs thought as well and suffers from the same problems, although marx and engels treated the text as a kind of “historical document” which shouldn’t be altered, displacing the explicit “corrections” to the prefaces of later editions. regardless, its fame as The text of communism means that it becomes the go-to text for encountering and combatting communism. this is why it’s taught in high school classrooms and why jordan peterson thought it was enough to simply deal with the manifesto (beyond the fact that he’d obviously never read anything else by marx) as if it was the final word on communism. it isn’t, and the text has many problems that it’s authors pointed to, but also several which are only ever made implicitly in other texts, as the theoretical foundations are constantly being placed under scrutiny and changed. in the manifesto, he is largely uncritical of political economy’s categories, adhering to a malthusian conception of wages and a naïve theory of crises.

but there’s another issue, which isn’t wholly unrelated here, regarding the esoteric/exoteric dimensions of marxs writings which aren’t really grappled with until the 1970s by the neue marx-lektüre, concerning the ways in which marx would often write in “popularized” fashion, resulting in a kind of theoretical “dumbing down” of the concepts. he was extremely aware of the need to make himself understandable and even rewrote the beginning of capital several times in order to escape the same fate of the 1859 contribution which did poorly, in large part due to the fact that most people didn’t really understand it and those that did weren’t the people he was trying to reach.

the problem is that this often led to simplification rather than clarification, crudifying the analysis and turning it into something else which meant, at the end of the day, he was still misunderstood. this problem exists in many of his texts (even my favorites), meaning that some of his pieces, especially those which are often more explicitly political, become somewhat contradictory when compared to his private notebooks at the time. another serious and related issue here is the political censorship he faced at the time, which likely had a lot more to do with the way he expressed himself in published texts than we typically think. in my view, both of these things together help explain bernstein’s identification of a reformist tendency in the later marx, which was combatted by equally bad readings of traditional “exoteric” marxisms.

anyway, this is less a list of my least favorite marx books and more of a marxological wash of problems with making lists like this in the first place. it’s often hard to distinguish between marx and his editors, but also he was constantly developing and self-criticizing older conceptions, meaning that his “worst” books for me come from periods/texts where he isn’t on very firm footing (basically everything he wrong up to the grundrisse as far as i’m concerned), but excluding some of the texts which i think are actually quite strong despite their editorial weaknesses. my interest, then, is in understanding his intellectual development and bringing context to some of his later positions. that makes even the worst texts really important, even if i don’t find them adequate, which is sorta the point since he didn’t either.