hotcupote

May I present the best apple:

The replies are full of idiots like this, btw, which is why you have GOT to be careful and nuanced when discussing problems with the Bechdel test and fiction that doesn't meet it.

Alma and Annamaria talk about the firewood the Creature gathered for them. or at least, they interact about it. Alma's name is only said briefly onscreen, but she IS a named female character who talks to another named female character about something other than a man

however, it doesn't pass the spirit of the test in its original context, namely: can you pretend these characters are lesbians? you cannot. they're mother and daughter. and the interaction in question is like five seconds long, and I think Annamaria says a few words at most, and it's background action to something else

and it's still a movie where there are only two MAJOR female characters, they never interact, and they both die before the end (to be fair, the dying is true to the book as well, although it's more like four main female characters and three of them die before the end. I do not actually like the book, but that's another conversation)

I feel like this highlights both the shortcomings of taking the Bechdel test literally and the importance of remembering its original purpose as well rather than Rules Lawyering it

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

an omnipotent creator being almost certainly doesn't exist but if it does, it's a supervillain

gods shouldn't exist but we keep creating them to use as weapons. and no one knows how to defuse one

gods don't exist which is a relief bc otherwise we'd be forced to hunt them down for execution

creator god exists and we owe it nothing (DEEPLY unqualified)

god/s abandoned us and it hurt at the time but in hindsight we escaped a highly toxic relationship

1. The creator being of Entropic Collapse/Unification that created us is dead having been the cause of the big bang and entropy is slowly pulling this being back together again over time, but won't be done until Perfect Entropy/Unification is achieved through the Heat Death of the Universe? (We owe it nothing, completely qualified as deity but no requirements, True free will exists, no plan for individuals, just its own self)

You cannot hope to emulate Tolkien as a fantasy writer unless you are intentional about your fictional naming/language choices.

Put that apostrophe down unless you know what it's for and don't put an h after that consonant unless you're going to pronounce it differently than you would without it or so help me.

Language is part of wordbuilding, and if you can't be bothered to put care and intent into it, your world will be all the flatter and emptier for it. You don't have to be a linguist like Tolkien to do this. You don't have to construct complete languages. You just have to put some thought into the words you do use. You have to understand that there's rules and patterns to how language works.

If you are monolingual, study another language. Any language. You don't even have to be good at it. It will show you interesting possibilities that exist outside of English, open your mind, and help your creativity.

Tolkien wasn’t just a linguist, he was a historical linguist. He knew language arises out of a place and time and culture. You can’t translate Old English and Middle English into Modern English without knowing that. Read Tolkien’s translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and you’ll see what I mean.

Hell, so many big names (Tolkien, GRRM, Herbert) have entire plot lines, scenes, and lines lifted wholesale from the historical material that inspired them. The canon they draw on is part of what gives them their timeless quality and depth. The lesser-known inspirations they draw from also are arguably responsible for so much of what made their work fresh and exciting. It’s not that Túrin Turambar is Kullervo, it’s not that Game of Thrones is the Wars of the Roses, it’s not that Dune is The Sabres of Paradise/the Murid War. Rather, it’s that there’s an artistry to being inspired.

And frankly I think stuff begins to get stale when inspiration comes second- or third-hand.

I’ll never forget how fresh Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword felt to me, because he and Tolkien were dipping from the exact same wells. You can tell which bits of sagas and myth they’re both drawing from, and it feels exciting because they’re both doing such extremely different things with it. Meanwhile, you can tell when someone is getting their dwarves exclusively downstream of Tolkien. They start to feel a little inbred.

I also think we need to stop doing the photocopies of Tolkien’s photocopies of The Kalevala and The Nibelungenlied. We do need to read those to keep Western fantasy, as a literary tradition with its own inspirational canon, from limiting itself. But we also need the same enthusiasm people bring to reading Norse sagas to be brought to The Shahnameh, The Kebra Nagast, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Mahabharata, or The Secret History of the Mongols.

A simpler version of this- please, for the love of Nerd Culture & Science Fiction: Watch the original The Twilight Zone - the first season is enough.

It's slow, and long, but then you start to see them.

The myriad of references every television show writer & director has made in every show you've ever watched since, referring to this one.

Sometimes they're subtle. Sometimes they have entirely changed meanings as references compared to the original quote.

But then you see it & you GET it. It is an overwhelming moment in the show, & you see how it affected so many people so deeply, they just HAD to include this line, even if it's only as a touchpoint/no context aside from same setup.

Your awareness of the cultural zeitgeist then expands, and as long as you pay attention, you'll keep seeing them.

That's what op is asking you to do with the Norse legends, and I'd advise the same about the Gaelic and Welsh traditions as well (The Black Cauldron saga has some Angband like references from a different interpretation), and of course the other "non- Western" cultures as well!