I like to think when King Taran gets a little too bogged down in boring Royal paperwork, his wife is good at insisting he attend to more important matters. Art by Dawn Davidson, aka @highqueenofprydain
I always kind of laugh when people get into the “Susan’s treatment is proof that C.S. Lewis was a misogynist” thing, because:
Polly and Digory. Peter and Susan. Edmund and Lucy. Eustace and Jill.
Out of the eight “Friends of Narnia” who enter from our world, the male-to-female character ratio is exactly 1/1. Not one of these female characters serves as a love interest at any time.
The Horse and His Boy, the only book set entirely in Narnia, maintains this ratio with Shasta and Aravis, who, we are told in a postscript, eventually marry. Yet even here, the story itself is concerned only with the friendship between them. Lewis focuses on Aravis’ value as a brave friend and a worthy ally rather than as a potential girlfriend–and ultimately, we realize that it’s these qualities that make her a good companion for Shasta. They are worthy of each other, equals.
In the 1950s, there was no particularly loud cry for female representation in children’s literature. As far as pure plot goes, there’s no pressing need for all these girls. A little boy could have opened the wardrobe (and in the fragmentary initial draft, did). Given that we already know Eustace well by The Silver Chair, it would not seem strictly necessary for a patently ordinary schoolgirl to follow him on his return trip to Narnia, yet follow she does–and her role in the story is pivotal. Why does the humble cab-driver whom Aslan crowns the first King of Narnia immediately ask for his equally humble wife, who is promptly spirited over, her hands full of washing, and crowned queen by his side? Well, because nothing could be more natural than to have her there.
None of these women are here to fill a quota. They’re here because Lewis wanted them there.
Show me the contemporary fantasy series with this level of equality. It doesn’t exist.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop
[Text ID: “October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy.”]
Nothing really compares to waking up to a crisp October morning
My random unsubstantiated hypothesis of the day: the popularity of "stim" videos, fidget toys, and other things like that is a warning sign that something's Deeply Wrong with our world.
Don't freak out. I am autistic. These things are not bad. However, can we just...take a second to notice how weird it is that there are entire social media accounts full of 10-second videos of things making crunching noises, people squishing slime in their hands, and objects clacking together, and that enjoying them is mainstream and normal?
It seems that nowadays, almost everyone exhibits sensory-seeking behavior, when just a decade ago, the idea of anyone having "sensory needs" was mostly obscure. It is a mainstream Thing to "crave" certain textures or repetitive sounds.
What's even weirder, is that it's not just that "stim" content is mainstream; the way everything on the internet is filmed seems to look more like "stim" content. TikToks frequently have a sensory-detail-oriented style that is highly unusual in older online content, honing in on the tactile, visual and auditory characteristics of whatever it's showing, whether that's an eye shadow palette or a cabin in a forest.
When an "influencer" markets their makeup brand, they film videos that almost...highlight that it's a physical substance that can be smudged and smeared around. Online models don't just wear clothes they're advertising, they run their hands over them and make the fabric swish and ripple.
I think this can be seen as a symptom of something wrong with the physical world we live in. I think that almost everyone is chronically understimulated.
Spending time alone in the forest has convinced me of this. The sensory world of a forest is not only much richer than any indoor environment, it is abundant with the sorts of sensations that people seem to "crave" chronically, and the more I've noticed and specifically focused on this, the more I've noticed that the "modern" human's surroundings are incredibly flat in what they offer to the senses.
First of all, forests are constantly permeated with a very soft wash of background noise that is now often absent in the indoor world. The sound of wind through trees has a physiological effect you can FEEL. It's always been a Thing that people are relaxed by white noise, which leads to us being put at ease by the ambient hum of air conditioning units, refrigerators and fans. But now, technology has become much more silent, and it's not at all out of place to hypothesize that environments without "ambient" white noise are detrimental to us.
Furthermore, a forest's ambience is full of rhythmic and melodic elements, whereas "indoor" sounds are often harsh, flat and irregular.
Secondly: the crunch. This is actually one of the most notably missing aspects of the indoor sensory world. Humans, when given access to crunchable things, will crunch them. And in a forest, crunchy things are everywhere. Bark, twigs and dry leaves have crisp and brittle qualities that only a few man-made objects have, and they are different with every type of plant and tree.
Most humans aren't in a lot of contact with things that are "destroyable" either, things you can toy with and tear to little bits in your hands. I think virtually everyone has restlessly torn up a scrap of paper or split a blade of grass with their thumbnail; it's a cliche. And since fidget toys in classrooms are becoming a subject of debate, I think it pays to remember that the vast majority of your ancestors learned everything they knew with a thousand "fidget toys" within arm's reach.
And there is of course mud, and clay, and dirt, and wet sand. I'm 100% serious, squishing mud and clay is vital to the human brain. Why do you think Play-Doh is such a staple elementary school toy. Why do you think mud is the universal cliche thing kids play in for fun. It's such a common "stim" category for a reason.
I could go on and on. It's insane how unstimulating most environments humans spend time in are. And this definitely contributes to ecological illiteracy, because people aren't prepared to comprehend how detailed the natural world is. There are dozens of species of fireflies in the United States, and thousands of species of moths. If you don't put herbicides on your lawn, there are likely at least 20 species of plant in a single square meter of it. I've counted at least 15 species of grass alone in my yard.
Would it be overreach to suggest that some vital perceptive abilities are just not fully developing in today's human? Like. I had to TEACH myself to be able, literally able, to perceive details of living things that were below a certain size, even though my eyes could detect those details, because I just wasn't accustomed to paying attention to things that small. I think something...happens when almost all the objects you interact with daily are human-made.
The people that think ADHD is caused by kids' brains being exposed to "too much stuff" by Electronic Devices...do not go outside, because spending a few minutes in a natural environment has more stimuli in it than a few hours of That Damn Phone.
A patch of tree bark the size of my phone's screen has more going on than my phone can display. When you start photographing lots of living organisms, you run into the strange and brain-shifting reality that your electronic device literally cannot create and store images big enough to show everything you, in real life, may notice about that organism.
I am learning to imagine the future:
My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.
Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.
I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.
I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.
There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.
But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell
and on the other side, I see a tree
There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.
It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.
Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die
in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.
I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).
I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.
That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:
Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home
say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now
I am learning to imagine the future. There is a crack in the wall of this prison, of this machine, of this darkness, and through it, I see a tree.
In a world where you can pupate anywhere, pupate under a dragon wing.
When working with an octopus…
There are many benefits to being a marine biologist.
rowantheexplorer
They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.
They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.
apurplefriend
So its that easy huh
Of course it is
Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.
Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)
Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).
What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….
Nobody else has any excuse.
thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes
reasons for this:
- basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.
- like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.
- here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.
- TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.
- Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”
- all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that
- I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.
- But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.
- In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.
- On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”
- like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not
An incomplete list of really useful or interesting reads from TvTropes.
please note that yes many of these are concepts that exist elsewhere and a few are even taught in fiction writing classes but TvTropes just does an amazing job at displaying the range of things that can be done with them
legitimately so much of the terminology I use to talk about storytelling, and even think about it in my own head, i learned about from TvTropes
- Willing Suspension of Disbelief
- Watsonian vs. Doylist
- Trope Tropes, for all the ways tropes are used, deconstructed, subverted, and played with.
- The Oldest Ones in the Book, which is basically my favorite thing on the entire Internet
- Punk Punk, for -punk subgenres
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism
- The Weird Al Effect is a fun one
- Chekhov’s Gun, Chekhov’s Boomerang, Chekhov’s Skill, and further variations
- Law of Conservation of Detail
- Law of Conservation of Normality
- Anthropic Principle
- Word of God, Death of the Author
- Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness
- Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness
- Genre Savvy
- Flashbacks and Chronology breaks down all the ways you can handle chronology in storytelling
- Show, Don’t Tell is a very good breakdown of what is showing, what is telling, and how both can be used effectively.
- Lampshade Hanging
- Noodle Incident is just fun imo
- Genre Title Grab Bag
- Fridge Horror
- Rule of Cool, and also Cool of Rule
- The Smurfette Principle
- The Hays Code - not a trope but a very good breakdown of how the Hays Code affected storytelling in film
this is just a really short list of examples I encourage people who write or otherwise create stories to browse around on this site it’s so useful
Anonymous asked:
"But mighty odd children they were, known ever after for their strangeness, their magnetic charm, the glimpse of them fey and frightening in the right light."
I love your wild and savage Narnia. You particularly captured my attention with this sentence. Do you have headcanons or written pieces about the Pevensies seen as "fey and frightening" in London?
Thank you! The strangeness of the Pevensie kids as observed by their mother I wrote about in this piece: mrs pevensie on her children, autumn 1940
I also started on something lately about the Pevensies being disconcerting in England, but it might be a while before that one appears anywhere, so I shall share a few headcanons:
- once during a swimming class, Susan Pevensie vanished under the water. Another girl dived down and saw her kneeling at the bottom of the pool, her hair a great dark cloud around her, longer and thicker than it ever looked on the surface. When it drifted away from her face and they caught one another’s eyes, the other girl gasped
- it was Susan herself who pulled her to the surface, hacking up pool water. She never would say what she had seen; she never would talk to or about Susan Pevensie at all after that day
- Peter Pevensie was a very tall man - only he wasn’t, not really, he was just a bit above average height. But something about him made whole rooms tighten as if the walls themselves were pressing in to be closer to him, to hear what he said in his low and even voice
- but Peter was a sound chap, it was generally agreed. Except by those who ever saw him in the boxing ring or in his army days, where he never flinched when blood spattered his face, where his eyes were as cold and blue and paralysing as the breath of a glacier
- Edmund Pevensie was a quiet, watchful thing, who could melt into one shadow and then step out of a completely different one, without the slightest hint of how he had gotten from one place to another
- it made you jump, to find that he’d been next to you all the time, or to carry on a conversation alone with his tall, magnetic brother, only for Edmund to step out of his shadow at the end, his smile always knowing in a way that made it impossible to feel there was any point in trying to keep secrets from him
- Lucy Pevensie had far too many teeth for a young girl. When she spoke, her words had a strange, laughing, tripping cadence, like water in a brook, and the things she said rhymed just often enough to be disconcerting
- she would sing songs to herself, lovelier than anything, but no one who heard them could ever remember how they went afterwards
- being in a room with all four of them was not for the faint of heart
I know that Peter’s Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy technically has flaws but also….it doesn’t. It’s perfect.
‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them. with wonder.
‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”
- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien
This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.
Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?
When they made that movie, they put all that they loved into all that they made.
Wait tell me more about that chainmail thing
“Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.
“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”
YOU GUYS
they took forced perspective and scaled sets to a new level by adding moving set pieces to create the illusion that the hobbits and dwarves were much smaller than everyone else even when the camera moved.
every scene you see in the 11+ hours of glory that is the LOTR masterpiece is most like ridiculously elaborate or expensive–from model towers to the all-new motion capture technology used for gollum to the costumes and sets to the aerial on location shots of mother-fracking new zealand and the big impressive battle scenes and horse charges.
but then the story and the screenplay too–there is just SO much lore that is there in the background lurking if you want to look for it, yet it still remains simplified for the average viewer. Crazy impressive feat.
And the acting is heartfelt and real and makes you love the characters.
ALSO DON’T GET ME STARTED ON FREAKING HOWARD SHORE AND HIS 100+ HEARTSHATTERINGLY BEAUTIFUL LIETMOTIFS AND BRILLIANT SUBTLE VARIATIONS IN THE FLIPPING 13 HOUR SOUNDTRACK. AND ENYA SINGING IN REAL ELVISH.
I loved the books long before the movies came out and… yes, this.
I disagree with a few choices here and there but they’re really, really good.
Dustin Panzino - https://www.artstation.com/inkwell - https://twitter.com/inkwell_illust - https://www.deviantart.com/dustinpanzino - https://linktr.ee/Inkwell - https://www.instagram.com/inkwell_illustrations/ - A Tribute to Studio Ghibli Featuring the following films Kiki’s Delivery Serves Howls Moving Castle Princess Mononoke Spirited Away Castle in the Sky Ponyo Whisper of the Heart My Neighbor Totoro Nausicaa valley of the wind The Secret World of Arrietty
wait it’s only just now fully hit me that howl’s moving castle takes place over two months
after two months of knowing each other howl and sophie were IN LOVE and COMMITTED
at the beginning of the book howl theoretically had TWO MONTHS TO LIVE before the witch got him! and his plan was like, FUCK ALL. he didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t even know the terms of the curse.
howl didn’t have a plan to get out of his contract either. sophie waltzed into the castle and calcifer took one look at her and was like “oh man thank goodness this woman showed up and can CONVENIENTLY talk life into things, she’s gonna get us out of this contract”
this made me laugh so hard bc you’re RIGHT, Howl’s only demonstrable plan re: his impending doom is getting really drunk with the rugby club and then going BACK TO INGARY and letting the curse hit him.
I do think it’s really interesting that he invites all of Sophie’s family over the day the curse is supposed to hit. He says it’s to keep her out of trouble, which is probably part of it, but Howl seems like one for multi-layered plans (see: taking Sophie to Mrs. Pentstemmon’s to prep her for her visit to the king but also to see if Mrs. Pentstemmon could unspell her).
Who ends up at the moving castle due to Howl’s invitations? Sophie and Michael, Martha, Lettie, Fanny and Mrs. Fairfax. This includes every living magic user that we know of in Ingary. (Fanny and Martha don’t do magic, but they’re also the two that Howl wouldn’t have met, and for all he knew they were powerful sorceresses too, or at the very least hardheaded like Sophie.) So Howl may not have had much of a plan for evading the curse, but he arranged things so that once the witch got him, his loved ones would be at the castle, surrounded by every magician he could gather, and incidentally in the best possible position to launch a rescue operation.
i would also like to add that if things had gone askew for Howl, Sophie’s entire contention network would have been there for her, if she was to mourn for him
i’m DYING over the idea of howl, possibly doomed, probably enamored, and definitely wallowing in self-pity, being like “at least now she’ll have GUESTS for the PARTY that she’s going to throw when i’m DEAD” because howl loves imagining himself as a unappreciated martyr
Today’s update. Possibly my favorite page ever.
Reblog because I ❤️ them.