alabaster

This is Robby’s Jewishness shining through ✨

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The saying comes from Proverbs 10:7: “The memory of the righteous is a blessing.”

In Hebrew, we say “zikhrono livrakha.” Sometimes you’ll see someone’s name written with the letters “Z”L” after it. That’s a way of abbreviating this very Jewish honorific.

We Jews tend not to say “rest in peace.” By saying that someone’s memory is a blessing, we turn the focus on the living, those who mourn the deceased, and we aspire to live our today and tomorrow in a way that honors the people who are no longer with us.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

After all, last time they declared Bilbo Baggins dead— which involved filling out all the paperwork necessary to declare somebody dead without a body— he had the rudeness to show up again, forcing them to do a lot more paperwork, and this time with an indignant Bilbo having a go at them while they did it.

As a result, the magistrates have decided that they’re not going to declare Bilbo Baggins dead a second time unless they have a body, a coroners report explaining the cause of death, and a three day wake to make sure that he doesn’t get up and walk away again.

the first 40 minutes or so pass with many a delighted exclamation. stan lee was credited & i’m told blade was a marvel property, which is news to me. i’m thoroughly enjoying myself. the cop familiar gets the shit beat out of him & tells blade to check the fridge. the wind roars as the scene transition fades to black.

in fades a helicopter. a man with long dark hair on crutches emerges from it. i do not immediately recognize the man, but from the crutches & the hair i immediately go “morbius??”

they assure me he isn’t morbius. i accept that they don’t want to admit he’s morbius for some reason (maybe they just don’t want me to think blade is in the mcu?) as the entirety of michael morbius’s backstory plays out on screen.

i repeatedly ask “okay but this is literally morbius right” and “why are you doing this” as it becomes increasingly clear that we are now, somehow, watching Morbius (2022). everyone continues to insist it’s Blade (1999) until finally i ask “how long were you planning this” and logan says “you wanna know how long” and gives me a screenshot

I'm finding Jemisin to be a very competent author who can control a narrative with a tight leash when she wants to, and also can let the characters explore themselves a bit before ushering them back on track.

There is a point during the prologue where she says none of the people or settings she's mentioned within the prologue really matter for this story- a lie, if I've ever read one, but one that you can quickly see through if you can spot that this is an author who writes well enough to not just throw you a bunch of shit that doesn't matter just to introduce her world building.

I am understanding why people have described her as "if Tolkien were black"- she really feels just that good at building a living, breathing world and letting you explore it while keeping you on the path she wants you to stroll. It doesn't surprise me that she's also written a few commentaries on the flaws of Tolkien's works, one of which I have already mentioned on this blog being that if I suddenly appeared in Gondor right now I would be killed on sight without hesitation for the crime of existing with brown skin. I can also see her trying very hard to dodge that particular flaw in her own writing while still selling a story as an elaborate fantasy trilogy in a world that continues to exist even after you close the book.

What even is orthodox? Lots of different groups get included in orthodox so what core beliefs unite Hassidic, Yeshivish, Modox, etc. as distinct from for example Conservative? I know some people also use terms like ultra orthodox and modern orthodox but are those different beliefs or just different customs?

ultra orthodox is pretty much exclusively used by non orthodox people as a (sort of pejorative?) term for everyone not modern orthodox, who they consider radical.

modern orthodoxy is a little hard to define, it might mean:

orthodox jews who culturally assimilate into the secular world

the incorporation of secular knowledge into one's jewish practice/philosophy

whatever charedi (haredi) rabbis decide is bad this month

probably more

the difference between modox and conservative can sometimes be blurry (modern orthodoxy is a huge spectrum) , and i think mostly comes down to shabbos, and kashrus (and taharas hamishpacha methinks but i wouldnt know from that) about which modern orthodoxy is still strict

yeshivish usually refers to any "ultra orthodox" people who arent chassidish (hassidic).

chassidish jews are a diverse group, being part of any of a few dozen branches of a more mystical/spiritual form of judaism. chassidus stems from an 18th century spiritual revival headed by a man* called the baal shem tov.