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poetsdepartment · 1 month

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a theme being clear in literature does not mean the way it is approached isn't nuanced! i wish people stopped equating clarity in meaning with the complexity of an argument. long rant below feat babel love:

i'm seeing so many reviews of babel that say it hits its points with a hammer, kuang is too obvious with her points, etc. etc. and it is very outspoken book! you are going to be immediately aware of how a character feels to an extreme extent. but this fixed point is offset through a myriad of complexities, mainly character growth and ever-changing relationship dynamics, that make it easy to understand why characters are drawn to extremes and where the idea of "perfect resistance" falls. it doesn't provide an answer, just different perspectives, because there isn't one! but it does clearly state colonization is bad, and if you're uncomfortable with a text regularly slam-dunking on british imperialism, than that might be either 1) just a writing style you don't like (in other words: learn how to say you dislike something without saying it's bad) or 2) something you need to think more deeply about within your values

i also think this connects a lot to the lack of critical assessment that we're seeing with the rise of tiktok and general reliance on social media to force-feed us algorithmic content that doesn't challenge our perception of the world. we are regularly consuming very overblown content with clear goals, perspectives, biases, etc. but, since it is algorithmically connected to thoughts we already agree with, nothing seems outrageous. it's harder to see complexity in arguments we are always fed just one side of because we're fed just one side of them. so other perspectives always feel louder and more uncomfortable than ever before. and this is an important piece of context to place into readers' reactions to babel because, to be honest, i don't see a huge difference between the way that fitzgerald wrote about capitalism in gatsby and how kuang wrote about empire in babel. but maybe this is because gatsby is so fixed as a classic novel which we often read in an analytical space, like an english class, that the general public can't deny its importance and prowess. babel has far less clout so is under scrutiny for doing something that many authors, including fitzgerald, have done before-- raising questions and complexities around a central idea. gatsby's is that western capitalism is unattainable and becomes dangerous to try and hold due how cruel the unattainability makes people; babel's is that colonialism relies on the colonizer outsourcing labor and extracting resources to the point where that extraction becomes a potential weakness as much as it is a grounds for power. even if those points are clear, whether or not all characters agree with that is where the complexity always arises.

also, authors willingly witholding information for shock value does not a good novel make! plots should be comprehensible. they should make sense. a good novel is not a gotcha. ideally, you should figure things out at the same exact time as they happen in the book. the unfolding of ideas in real time that aren't unpredictable, yet not so cliched they had no impact-- that is good writing. but we are beyond the time where originals exist. nothing is going to be without context or pretense. it's how the author uses/remakes these limited number of plots (i think only seven kinds of stories exist in the world) that make them interesting-- not the omittance of plot coherency to artificially make something ~mysterious~ or ~edgy~ or ~surprising~. things can be both obvious and meaningful.

#lit

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 3 years

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please tell me your headcannons about the silly old traditions and funny hats and gowns worn at the Assassins Guild graduation ceremonies (bonus points: Vetinari occasionally attends as a distinguished alumnus; differences for those not taking the black) Downey has to make a speech

I love this ask, thank you so much. <3

Downey has added feathers to the hats because it’s Downey and he believes all hats need a nice feather.

Vetinari: . . .I refuse.

Downey: It’s a single, white feather. Very stylish.

Vetinari: You can’t make these hats stylish. It’s impossible.

Downey: That will not stop me from trying.

First it must be said, I place most of my Discworld fashion firmly in the “anywhere from 1350-1650″ camp. Which means there’s lots of diversity but it’s all still very late medieval/early modern. This is a just-me thing though, as the books are all over the place with the fashion. There seemed to be a sense, in the early Watch books, that fashion went backwards (i.e. the more recent, to our mind, the clothes the more old fashioned they are on discworld) but that was quickly abandoned partway through the series and then it became a hodgepodge.

I still like the early modern feel and so am keeping to it. You can pry Downey’s stupid fucking doublet with its black pearl buttons and his slouchy hat with the Florentine “I’m very gay” feather from my cold, dead hands.

This got long so it’s under the cut.

Fashion first, because this is Downey and the Assassins we’re talking about after all.

So I imagine the hats that the professors/teaching staff wear are the slouchy ones like these. This is modeled off of hats that were in fashion when the guild first instituted formal graduation ceremonies which are relatively recent (for a given value of “recent” i.e. only circa 150/200 years ago).

The students graduating with the Black get the slouchy hats too. The ones who didn’t take the black get the more familiar flat board graduation cap. (Students 100% balance things on top of the flat board cap. This may or may not be desired by the cap-wearer.)

The formal, ceremonial gowns, indeed the entire outfit, for the teachers are hilariously ornate because of course they are. It’s the Assassin’s Guild.

All ceremonial gowns would be different iterations of the houppelande.

Beneath the gown there is the Assassin’s black of the doublet with a long-ish skirt beneath the belt (knee length? perhaps floor - but then it starts hitting gown territory). The doublet is form fitting at the top, belted off with the skirt below. Naturally, there are very nice buttons. The linen undershirt is white and can be seen at the collar and wrists. Leggings/tights/hose/whatever you want to call them, also black and worn with dress shoes, not their usual working day boots. All men present wear this, including Vetinari.

(Downey: No grey-blacks allowed on stage unless it’s representing your specialty and I know you didn’t specialize in astronomy and quantum mathmatics.

Vetinari:

Vetinari: But it’s My Colour.

Downey: Put the doublet on.)

Women on staff are also all in black, but it’s a dress over a kirtle which is over their undershirt which can be seen at the cuffs. The dress et al is also form fitting on the top with tightly buttoned (or laced) sleeves, then there’s the belt and full skirts after. Dresses are always worn with a high neckline. They too have formal dress shoes, though you can’t see them.

The ceremonial gowns are black with coloured lining and trim. I’m thinking the sleeves are large and pinned back to show the lining which represents the general field you’re a specialist in. So, green for biology; red for literature/linguistics; white for deportment/dancing; blue for history; yellow for mathematics or whatever. The lining can be dual-colours if applicable. The trim will accent the lining but doesn’t mean anything in particular.

The slouchy hats, however, tell you what the person specialized in with regards to their training i.e. poisons; knife work etc.

Some gowns have that long drapey hood that is purely for aesthetics, but not all. I’m thinking if your specialty is stealth (coughHavelockcough) you get it. But, of course, as a specialist in stealth you don’t want people knowing that so no one who qualifies for a drapey hood wears it.

Students wear simple black gowns with relatively short, deep cut sleeves so you can see more of their doublet beneath. Boys wear the usual doublet/hose combo (kind of like this) and girls the formal dress/kirtle combo (think this, but all black and with less jewels and tighter sleeves) beneath their graduation gowns.

All gowns on students and staff alike are closed in the front - either with buttons or ties.

Aside from the hat distinction between those who are taking the black and those who aren’t, the gowns for those taking the Black are all black and have the drapey hood. Those that aren’t taking the black have gowns trimmed with a dark colour - maybe blue? grey? something that blends but still is distinct.

Ceremonial Nonsense

The graduation is held in the great hall where the students usually dine on a day-to-day basis. Parents are allowed and all families get a “plus two” for grandparents or family friends or whatever.

There are two separate ceremonies - the first is for those taking the Black. That’s the one where Downey forces Vetinari to give a speech as he is Guild Provost and one a Distinguished Old Boy etc.

Downey does his speech first and usually lines up those coming after him (Vetinari; Mericet; Lady T’Malia is what I have in my head. Though Mericet can usually convince Downey to sub in someone else as he is Too Old For This Shit).

For those taking the Black Downey will pepper in Fun Facts About Assassins and Helpful Pro Tips for Life (some of which are more helpful than others). Vetinari’s speech usually offers subtle rebuttals to Downey’s more outlandish life advice. Lady T’Malia’s is a universal favourite because she has the dry, disdainful wit of a person who has seen way too much nonsense in her life and has lived to continue to roll her eyes at it all.

Mericet, when he’s made to do a speech and can’t pawn it off on one of the younger staff, is always very short. His record time was 15 seconds wherein he got to the podium, looked somberly out at his soon to be former students, and said “All I can say to you is, good luck and don’t die” then he sat down. Downey could be heard to mutter: Really?? rather loudly.

Vetinari, more out of a desire to cause Downey some form of annoyance than anything else, will drone on for a long time and pepper in weird references only the headmaster of the guild will understand. He makes a few tiger jokes every year to which Downey, when he gets up to introduce the next speaker, will reply: “You really need to get over that”. No one knows what they’re talking about. However, the students always haaate it when Vetinari takes the podium. There is much sighing and sliding down in seats out of boredom.

The students are called up to the stage the receive their diploma in order of their name and it’s done by house (so viper house then black widow then poison dart frog or whatever they all are).

Weapons are expressly forbidden on all students after that One Unfortunate Incident back when Cruces was headmaster about which the least said, soonest mended.

Back when Downey and Vetinari were graduating, when weapons were allowed, all students were given a ceremonial sword and they got to wear it when they went up to take their diploma. Students still get a ceremonial sword (or dagger, depending on preference) but they are received after the ceremony.

The infamous ring is presented alongside the diploma.

For those not taking the Black, it’s still the same roster of speakers but it’s usually a faster ceremony (though, that is changing over the years as the Guild is sought out more and more as a general-purpose educational institution for parents seeking a classical education for their children).

Students in this group are also gifted a ceremonial sword but they’re allowed to wear theirs during the graduation ceremony because most can do nice, polite, gentlemanly dueling and not much else. Unlike their colleagues who can use it in increasingly diverse and experimental fashions.

After both ceremonies are complete there is a grand dinner with students and their families and much conviviality. Under Downey’s reign as headmaster the amount of “accidental deaths” that occurred at this dinner have decreased dramatically. Mostly because unlike previous headmaster, Downey thinks it a waste of a good education to knock someone off so soon. Also, it is deplorable manners and not civil.

(Vimes, “It’s also immoral.” Downey, “I fail to see your point, commander?”)

Wait at least a year or two until inhuming that One Guy who was A Class A Cunt During Maths. Or, if they’re really that bothersome, at least have the grace to wait until after the pudding has been served.

Pre-graduation tomfoolery

The graduating class, as a whole (well, those who survived the Run and those not taking the Black who haven’t accidentally fallen down the stairs), have two weeks between end of term and graduation and tend to run absolutely wild.

Downey’s main rule is: no one is inhumed, his dogs are left alone and nothing is set on fire; flooded; booby-trapped; or exploded etc.*

*see fine print for continuing list.

It is considered a grand tradition for each house to prank their house master. One year, students cellophaned everything in Mericet’s office. Including individual pages of books. Downey thought this absolutely Delightful. Mericet said, “that’s it, I’m retiring.” Which is, coincidentally, what he says every year.

Students will also strike up a very large game of Gotcha (i.e. Assassin) over the course of the intervening weeks between Term and Graduation. It used to be a very deadly endeavour but due to Downey’s new rule of “no inhuming until after graduation you daft kids” it’s just become a way to dunk on people.

These are also the weeks that students clean out their rooms which is always an adventure. Many will try and discreetly sneak out their illegal pot plants and shroom logs. Those that hide them in places that aren’t their room will have minor panic attacks because Lady T’Malia and other staff enjoy rounding up the plants ahead of the students and watching the fallout.

(Vetinari: I really should tell Vimes you have enough here to supply everyone in the city for a decade.

Downey: Leave my drug collection alone.)

There is a lot of Lady T’Malia and others being like, “You all do know we hid our illegal shit in the exact same places, right?’

Students will also throw end-of-year ragers in the common room which the staff pretend to know nothing about. These tend to get very messy very quickly. Downey will show up around 3am to shut it down, though. Because some people need to sleep and aren’t 18 anymore.

Anyway, that’s the long and short of my headcanon for Guild Graduation nonsense. All in all it’s a rowdy if somewhat bittersweet time. Downey secretly gets a little teary eyed over it. Aww look at his tiny little murderers going off into the big wide world. He remembers when they first arrived with knobbly knees and big eyes. His paternal side comes out in full force.

Vetinari: it’s very good you have hundreds of students and several dogs because I don’t know what you’d do without them since you’re basically 110% a dad.

Downey: i might have gotten married. What a horrifying concept.

Vetinari:

Vetinari: I have weird feelings about that which I am not going to explore in any great depth.

Thank you so much for the ask! <3 <3

#ask #reply #discworld #assassins guild #lord downey #vetinari #discworld headcanon

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britneyshakespeare · 5 years

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🔥🔥🔥 !!

hmmm. i’ll see what i can think of. i’ll do 3 but i’ll try to keep em short. these are just off the top of my head.

idk who noah smith is, apparently some journalist from bloomberg, but i always see him on my twitter tl, either people agreeing w him or dunking on him, i don’t care, i DON’T care, but he’s had several different icons on twitter and none of them are of him. they’re ALL of william butler yeats. he’s had several different photographs of w. b. yeats as his online representation of himself and just god y’know... i wish i had thought of it. i wish *i* could be moderately talked about on twitter, and always represented by a little picture of william butler yeats. no one ever brings it up that they’re dunking on/agreeing w yeats and i feel it’s a wasted opportunity.

i like picking up used books not just bc they’re cheaper than new books, but also bc they feel like they have some kind of past life to it. i love big fancy new editions, OH, those barnes & noble collections of classics, the leatherbound ones w the gilded pages, I’LL ADMIT, i picked up a few of those (the treasury of irish literature, the treasury of irish fairy and folk tales, and 3 bronte sisters novels, if i’m coming clean), BUT, if they’re just regular degular classics reprints, i’d rather get em used. plus, you find a more interesting selection when you’re looking at people’s old books... i found a paperback copy of 5 compiled thomas middleton plays, in kinda-shoddy-but-still-holding-together condition, printed sometime in the 80s, and it’s the kinda thing that i KNOW i wouldn’t have gotten if i hadn’t just happened to step into savers on THAT day. because where do you find a new copy of thomas middleton nowadays wo having to stoop to ordering online???

speaking of middleton, on the topic of elizabethan playwrights, the idea that shakespeare was anything other than the man, william shakespeare, writing his plays, is really silly, and i don’t blame people who don’t know much about the man or his time period for thinking it has some credence to it, but i just wish it were known more widely how RIDICULOUS it is—it’s not something anyone believed until about the nineteenth century when some people wanted to revise history. it’s the Victorian “Paul Is Dead.” for a non-noble man of the sixteenth century, his life was SURPRISINGLY well documented. there’s no legitimate paper trail or anything that suggests it was anyone’s pen name or a conspiracy. the idea that he was too “uneducated” to have written his plays is ridiculous because the elizabethan middle class had a pretty impressive standard of education, ESPECIALLY in literature and boys regularly put on and wrote plays in their school years. no historian worth a dime has ever thought francis bacon, or whoever else, wrote a single line. he did collaborate w a few other writers on some of his early plays, but that was standard practice a lot of the time. jonson, kyd, marlowe, middleton, et cetera, all did that (in fact, middleton may have written some of all’s well that ends well). also by that same token, shakespeare probably wrote unofficially credited parts of other people’s plays too. but generally, shakespeare wrote shakespeare, and it’s really annoying that the false hot take “what if he DIDN’T????” gets so much airtime around the popular discourse of his work in the year of our lord 2019. what if the moon landing was faked? well, who cares, ‘cause it wasn’t.

that ended up being too long but ya know once i get goin... i keep on goin!

Send me a 🔥 for an unpopular opinion.

#thank u nancy i'm sorry for taking up a century of your time #pavlovers #dianswered #these were fun to write tho i hope you enjoy a fraction of them

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tarunjtejpal · 3 years

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Tarun J Tejpal - The Missionary Position

Tarun J Tejpal - We all love sentimental trash, especially if it can masquerade as something artistic and meaningful. Often it needn't even do that — in an act of self-affirmation we invest it with these virtues. Slumdog Millionaire is one more representation of India as the white man sees it, not as we do. It's a five-hundred-year old tradition. Look carefully, the triumphant picture in the papers could be the enlightened missionary with the tribal boys. The tradition is strong: we've always been cosy with the representations. It's worthwhile to remember we did not tell an Indian story and force the world to recognise it. They told us an Indian story and forced us to applaud it.

A bit like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who declared from behind the musketry of the colonial conqueror that a "single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Looking up a long barrel with gunpowder at its end, we quietly acquiesced. Quietly turned our backs on hundreds of classical and medieval texts, including the great epics, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, the medical, ethical, linguistic, erotic and political treatises of dozens of pathbreaking thinkers, the plays of Kalidasa, the deeply humanist and philosophic poetry of the sufi and bhakti singers, and the luminous memoirs of emperors and commoners. And having acquiesced in our classification by another — ill-informed at that — proceeded to spend the next nearly two hundred years hunting for approval.

The argument does not proceed from narrowness, from a bristling us and them. Artistic domain, and license, is boundless — even if the art is only commerce. Everyone has the right to tell anyone's story, in whichever way they choose. But if the story is specious and yet is taken for a master tale, it's reason to wonder at the state of cultural discourse.

From a distance, through the refractions of many media lenses, I like Danny Boyle. He exudes great energy and humility. Qualities that make astonishing things possible, qualities that are on display in his rollercoaster film set in Mumbai, his Concorde ride to showbiz stardom. Yet, from a distance, through the rapturous din of critics and viewers, I wonder at the film. Setting aside AR Rahman's ever-enchanting music and the visceral brilliance of the little kids, I try and understand why a reasonably entertaining, mildly inconsistent, mildly incoherent, mildly sloppy in its casting, mildly sloppy on its facts film, with a banal narrative trajectory, and dodgy politics at its heart, becomes such a phenomenon.

One feels awe not for the film, but for its miraculous journey. Clearly, in an increasingly low-brow ocean of publicity and hype, the idea of true excellence is a drowned raft.

Not shorn of the hype, but because of it, to an Indian, the film ought to disappoint. It tells me nothing that I don't already know; and it tells me things I know to be not true. Unlike Amitabh Bachchan I have no problems with the film focusing on India's abject poverty. That focus is salutary, and crying out for further exploration. My problem is the opposite— that it trivialises it. Uses its excreta and chopped limbs to tell a dubious story that leaves the viewer not disturbed but cheerfully smug. You leave the seat exhilarated, not in pain.

The film tells a very big lie: that India's poor have a happy shot at leaping out of their misery into affluence and joy. One day you can be in the crap heap — diving into excreta — and the next running down a slum girl who may have failed to make school but seems to have managed to walk through Vogue's offices on her way to teenage. With a stunning lack of plausibility you see the slum child Jamaal grow into a refined public schoolboy who must surely be eating cucumber sandwiches for lunch. India's wannabe wealthy — billionaires among them — would slice their fingers to boast such a sophisticated son. For that accent alone, they would throw in their toes too.

As many cooing admirers have remarked, the director is on a lickety-split run, pacing his film like a Kobe Bryant fast-break in an NBA finals. Throw, catch, feint, weave, leap, dunk; turn and start running again. Aw! Gee! The camera is shaking, the story is sprinting — there is no way anyone can tell if a few chapters have fallen out, several links of logic lost. You have to be grateful Jamal only grows up to be Dev Patel. Given the absence of any need to explain the miraculous transformation, he could well have become Brad Pitt or Prince Charles. To further celebrate the carnival of implausibility, Master Dev acts with the cool flatness of the cucumber sandwich (that he surely must be eating) — no neuroses of the slums tarnishing his soul.

For those celebrating the authenticity of the film, here's a secret: the makers clearly had no interest in verisimilitude. It's been the rough approach of artists working the India material for the last hundred years. It arises from a clear understanding of "audience". The awgee mobs filling theatres around the world, and paying in dollars or some such muscular currency, cannot tell the difference between Hindi and Hindu or the vast distance between Mumbai and Agra. Much like the American tourists at the Taj Mahal, who cannot distinguish between an unlettered, ignorant urchin and a licensed guide.

The awgee mobs — which include vast swathes of awgee India — will not be held back by the remarkable metamorphosis of Hindi-speaking slum children into English-speaking teenagers — smoothly accomplished whilst riding the roofs of trains, without the intervention of any forms of schooling. Nor will they wonder by what divine principle some of the desperately destitute speak Hindi and others English. In the happy world of air-conditioning and popcorn — and fountain Pepsi — the poor can be made to do whatever we wish. Dance, sing, love, win quiz contests, murder with a Webley & Scott, die in a tub full of currency notes. What is the meaning of being rich if you cannot make the poor do whatever you wish? What is the meaning of being Hollywood if you cannot make India whatever you wish?

Aptly then, the awgee army will not be detained by the representation of the police either. It knows Mumbai's police have vanquished murder, rape, riot, theft and arson. All its working on now is nabbing crooked quiz contestants and torturing them through the night with electrical shocks to evoke the correct answer. If the art direction is right — squalid files and furniture — and the cop is fat enough, there is no reason for further doubt. It also knows behind the fatness and toughness the police hide the soul of Mother Teresa. Once the boy who eats cool cucumber sandwiches begins to talk, his heart will melt, and the empathy flows like faeces in the slums.

THE AWGEE sociologists also know that the grand hosts of India's grandest shows all come from the slums. Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan — the only two who've ever hosted the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And, of course, now Anil Kapoor in this fast-break film — who chooses to host it in English, because the slum boy has lost his Hindi as he grew up (just as Kapoor himself did — the upward mobility from the slums is a veritable avalanche!). Awgee and awgee also know that these grand hosts play sinister games, like planting wrong answers and summarily handing over contestants to the fat and tough police (for electrocution and empathy).

The media tells us the film is about hope. And hope, as we all know, is greater than inconsistency, inaccuracy, implausibility, dodgy politics, and party pooper critics. And since the film is about the triumph of impossible hope, it is impossibly greater than all of the above. QED. And yes, of course it is also a fantasy, a fairytale. And since, for these poor sods, hope too is a fantasy, it all coheres, hangs together beautifully.

The awgee readers of awgee media know that this is the crucial difference between people like Satyajit Ray, Mira Nair and the Slumdog millionaires. Their films were about poverty and street children; this one's about fantastic hope. In their heart of hearts, the awgee readers know the poor are desperately in need of hope. They also know that hope is all they can — and will — give them. And let's be honest — false or true, fantastic hope is still hope. The media knows something even more fundamental. Never criticise the celebrity whose interview keeps your shop alive. The road to poverty is paved with robust criticism.

The world of entertainment is studded with shining pyramids of implausibility. Each one's true reward is a singing cash register. But great awards, fools argue, must go to the fragile hutments of truth and excellence. The wise, on the other hand, know the wages at the Oscars better. They know they have a rare gift (as in the film) for turning ordinary shit into tasty chocolate and peanut butter.

It's Written by Tarun J Tejpal. Some rides are so giddy you can't see the truth, says Tarun J Tejpal. According to Tarun Tejpal “sorrow must not be cultivated: it is a poor lifestyle choice.” Tarun Tejpal is a journalist, publisher, and novelist. In a 26-year career, Tarun Tejpal has been an editor with the India Today and the Indian Express groups, and the managing editor of Outlook, India’s premier newsmagazine. In March 2000, he started Tehelka, a news organisation that has earned a global reputation for its aggressive public interest journalism. Also you can check Tarun J Tejpal.

#tarun j tejpal #tarun tejpal

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