"That night you made soup more carefully than ever" = itur in antiquam siluam
every opera production would be made funnier/possibly better if you had one of the characters give a powerpoint presentation
Litterally Leporello when he's explaining to Donna Elvira the statistics of Don Giovanni's seductions.
So i made a thing...
millennial nerd bertie wooster for some reason
holy heck, tumblr, i was expecting 50 notes but you all really liked my woosterposting! here’s... more of it...??
update: okay sure have some more
Read Tiassa, made a meme:
#dragaera#base 17 elves#cawti#tiassa#the whole central story felt like a not quite successful lampshade of the Bechdel-Test-Pass (or not) of the series#because it was! all! about! Vlad!#at the same time it is kind of wild that the woman who rules the county doesn't know the name of one of the leaders of the Revolt#and the phoenix guards have no clue who she is either!#it was only like 6 years ago Daro! Which is like 2 weeks in your lifespan!#the city was literally on fire and the proletariat were threatening to storm the palace until the navy came and slaughtered them all?#surely you were involved in the aftermath just ex officio?#so i can see see Cawti's point on a meta level: that the whole plot of the novella is dumb and offensive to her importance#“what do i have to do to be taken seriously as a revolutionary threat around here?”
Young Jewish women, 1897.
Spicebox in the shape of a fish, 1800s, Poland.
y’all I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping on this
live Publio reaction
absolutely no one asked, but...
The difference between the House of the Lyorn and the House of the Hawk is the same as the difference between the Fifth House and the Sixth House: history as recovering and securing the tradition vs. history as scientific enterprise that should change how we think about the past and our world.
A rare dagger for rituals, France, mid 19th century.
Oh you know this was a Ninth Cav’s offhand!
note to self
Don't forget to nominate "Nad adn Dan and Quaffy" for Yuletide this year.
re: the concept of the last post, I have, I think, only one character where I would argue that he’s not as guilty as his narrative says he is – the narrator, a pastiche of Dumas, with the chatty, editorializing 19th century authorial style, has a discussion of whether he’s evil or not, and comes down on the side of “yes” but I’d argue that 1) he had a good reason to rebel (the Emperor searched his daughter’s room for evidence of other crimes, which is a) dishonorable & b) illegal & 2) he didn’t know that his rebellion was going to cause the capital city to be destroyed in a magic explosion. But I’m not going to pretend he’s like, nice, or that rebelling against your emperor isn’t bad.
(His dying words are “Don’t tell them I meant well,” and that’s the kind of sexy hubris I love – “Don’t try to sanitize me,” is how I read it – he’s attempting to control the narrative about himself, and it’s great.)
Let it not be said that you are not completely correct that Adron Did Nothing Wrong (and that his ultima verba are the absolute height of the tragic spirit at its best), but "to the left", I find it interesting that Paarfi spends a lot of time in the preface to the next book defending himself from the charge of being an Adron apologist and insisting that Adron Definitely Did Not Do Any Of Those Other Wrong Things, Like Hire Jhereg Assassins, How Dare You Imply That He Would Act So Without Honor. I think Paarfi may be a not-so-secret Adron fanboy–but you just can't say that and be taken seriously as a historian in the climate he's writing in.*
*Not just because there are still plenty of people who survived the Disaster around, but because the legitimacy of the restored Empire rests on the understanding that Adron was wrong about the Cycle turning. I can't remember when 500 Years After is supposed to be published, but if it's during Zerika's reign, then it presumably would be unwise to imply that Adron was not at best horribly misguided in the timing of his rebellion against the Phoenix. If it's Norathar's reign (with Aliera as Warlord [and Heir?]), opinion is probably shifting a bit, but I imagine it's still a delicate topic.
Am I writing a Röaana/Ibronka fic? yes. Is it so far 800 words of digression and 100 words of dialog about getting to the point? Also yes, because I am good at pastiche.
Steven Brust understands the most important thing about the relationship between politics and aesthetics in SFF: a feudal ancien régime structurally dedicated to preserving the privileges of decadent and casually violent aristocrats in floating castles who will duel over trivialities while brushing off the massacre of a peasant village as nothing is not a Good Thing, and the peasants and burgeoning urban proletariat agitating for revolution are undoubtedly Correct; but at the same time 'to the left' (haha do you like my extremely multilayered meta-joke?), in fiction, casually violent aristocrats fighting duels of honor in decadent court societies with elaborate social hierarchies are fun; even though we are horrified at The Empire, we don't really want it to end, because, aesthetically, it's extremely cool.
#base 17 elfs#dragaera#steven brust#forget problematic faves - this is my problematic aesthetic#don't @ me#i'm a romanist what do you expect#(and yes i know that Revolutions can be cool too)#anyway i'm a normal amount of invested in dragaera#the amount where you think about base 17 all the time that is
I would die for with Tazendra.
#paarfi of roundwood#dragaera#base 17 elfs#sometimes several people whose opinion you respect independently recommend something and it's good actually#i'm not going to talk about my Aerich & Adron feelings because that's too perfectly my favorite kind of relationship#so I'lll just say that I love Tazendra so much#more sword-now-reflect-later characters#who also are good at an intellectual skill that they approach with zero sense that it is a serious intellectual endeavor
It's not that I'm not enjoying Steven Brust's Dragaeran novels*, but possibly my favorite thing so far is the goodreads review noting that upon rereading, Dragaeran society seems awfully racist and classist and hopefully Mr Brust will address that at some point.
(*I've so far read the first eight Vlad Taltos books [publication order, of course] + Phoenix Guards)
#dragaera#shooting fish in a barrel#imagine reading a series where the main character's patron goddess literally sits down and explains Marxist theory#while a coalition of the racially- and caste- marginalized proletariat are trying to create a workers' revolution#and the main character has been (justly) noting all the ways he is treated in elf society because he's a human since page 1 of book 1#and wondering if the author will ever address the structural inequities of his fictional world#tbqh some of the books are perhaps a bit too on the nose#but i guess steven “proud trotskyite” Brust is not unsubtle enough for modern fantasy tastes?
so much trashy fantasy to read in other languages, so few languages I know well enough to read trashy fantasy in...
I haven't read enough of Les Vieux Royaumes (yet) to decide whether I think it's good, but I have to admire the sheer gall (or should one say Gaul) of Jean-Philippe Jaworski, to title the extended deluxe omnibus of his fantasy series La matière de Leomance*. But so far I'm quite liking the high style description** and the way, so far, his grands seigneurs are not romanticized morally or made "likable", but are given extravagant pomp and glister and pride without that being a point against them.***
**(I thought I had a decent grasp on French words related to sieges and armor but in fact I have had to look up not a few words (of which many aren't even in the basic Larousse dictionary app!)
*(Not the edition I have, hélas. And I didn't know he had done that when I picked it up. But FYI to any fantasy writers out there: if you title your epic series "The Matter of [fantasy name country]" I will at least try it.)
*** @elucubrare I think you would at least find these stories interesting.
Today in metaphors taken further than anyone asked:
(P. L. Schmidt, "The Original Version of De Re Publica and De Legibus", in J. G. F. Powell, ed., Cicero's Republic (BICS Supplement 76) 2001, 7–39, p. 7.)