hi i hope it's okay that i do some excited shouting off your reblog since it's got the full video linked. to everyone in the notes asking:
I HAVE GREAT NEWS FOR YOU, BECAUSE IT IS BY THE SAME GUY!
allow me to direct you directly to Alan Becker's youtube channel right HERE
(and a quick shoutout to those of you who already knew <3)
HOWEVER!
I SEE YOU IN THE TAGS! and i can promise you that the stuff Alan Becker is making TO THIS DAY is even better than the videos you remember from 15+ years ago! (that's how long he's been around! isn't that wild?)
i'm almost certain everybody remembers - or has heard of - the original animator vs. animation, which went viral back in 2006, or maybe you remember watching the third installment of the series in 2011, with these two:
nostalgia at its finest, genuinely! but did you know that there's a fourth Animator Vs. Animation? i'm sure you recognize this orange fella (he's the one in the math video!) or maybe his friends from 2014?
but hey - did you know that there's a fifth installment? and that it looks like THIS?
i just cannot stress enough how far the realm of stickfight animations has come in these past years - and Animation Vs. Math is truly just the tip of the iceberg for Alan's content.
THERE'S EVEN A SIXTH INSTALLMENT. THE FIRST EPISODE (yes, the first episode) JUST RELEASED A FEW MONTHS AGO. LOOK AT HOW INCREDIBLE THIS IS!!! and this is just a small snippet!!
(full credit for these beautiful gifs goes to my beloved @chosec <333)
and as if that wasn't enough - over sixteen years of incredibly ground-breaking animation done by a team of dozens of wonderfully talented artists - there's even more.
do you remember this?
this is a screenshot from Animation Vs. Minecraft, and to this date, it is the most viewed Minecraft video on Youtube. that's not an exaggeration - since 2015, this one video has accumulated over 316 million views. odds are high that if you've watched any Minecraft content over the past 7 years, you've probably seen this video at least once. and y'know what's crazy?
the series never ended.
there are three full seasons of Animation Vs. Minecraft, and i'm not exaggerating when i say that the sheer amount of storytelling that is put into these little stickfigures as they explore the block game that everyone knows and loves is unbelievable. i've spent the past year dragging everyone i know into it. the full series is a 4 1/2 hour epic, steadily increasing in animation quality over the years its been in the works, building up to stunning conclusion with its own original music score that makes me cry. it's amazing.
here's some links to my personal playlists, organized and updated in chronological order:
the Speedrun playlist (for quick binge watching, my personal favorite for first-time watchers)
the 100% Run playlist (best for shorter watch sessions, with some added bonus content in the form of Shorts (not necessary to enjoy the full story, but fun to watch regardless))
if there's any sort of small-studio/team animation you want to watch and support - i cannot recommend Alan Becker's work enough. there's found family, there's cool action scenes, there's deeply heartfelt moments, all portrayed with the bare minimum of dialogue - and it's set in a delightfully unique medium full of charm that Alan and his team have maintained to this day.
and please come chat with me over on @sec-one if you have any questions! or just want to gush about how cool these stick guys are! i know i'm going to stick around (lmao) for as long as Alan creates more stories for us to enjoy, and there's no signs of stopping anytime soon <3
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I’ve heard versions of this question for years: What if the design moves we make to expand the access of our idea—our building, our app, our gadget of whatever kind—what if that expansion effort in one way accidentally diminishes access in another way? People are worried that their design isn’t universal—and therefore whether they should try to bring it to life in the first place. But making a more accessible world is a broad and shared horizon, not a checklist, and I want to suggest six verbs, in pairs of three, for giving texture and specificity to the things you might be trying to make. Should you seek to make your idea as barrier-free as possible? Yes, in principle. But a big horizon contains within it lots of posts and perches—lots of places to take up parallel projects that aren’t in an easy hierarchy of better-or-worse. For example:
destigmatize / celebrate
A whole line of research and development goes toward miniaturizing hearing aids—where the design value is to make the tech as diminutive and out of sight as possible. This is a destigmatization project: one to address the subjective reasons older adults are reluctant to take up this vital technology, for example (citing “cognitive anxiety associated with increased help-seeking”).
But there’s also a parallel celebration project happening in design, especially among the “out and proud” subcultures within disability rights activism. This hearing aid jewelry has lots of variations on it—where the design value mimics the logic of fashion and glamour. Think, too, of children’s cochlear implant technology, which very often comes augmented by a small plastic dinosaur or other colorful figurine. The point here is to celebrate (and yes, obliquely, thereby destigmatize) by enhancement and strong visibility.
Which motive between these designers is “correct,” more contemporary, more enlightened? This is a boring question. The much more interesting invitation here is to ask yourself: Who are my design partners? What is our collective theory of efficacy here? And when I set out to pursue my idea, do I have the humility to acknowledge these parallel paths taking place?
mitigate / accommodate
At the De Hogeweyk residence for dementia patients in The Netherlands, the built facilities form the simulacrum of a village: there’s a hair salon, gym, theater, restaurant, pub, grocery store, all operative and all dedicated spaces (as opposed to the bland and featureless “multipurpose room” in many elder care settings). These surroundings have strong placeful-ness in their sensory cues, which reduces the agitation and anxiety among patients there—a reassuring set of signals about where they are in space, which can be just as confusing as the slipperiness of time. Patients at sites like this seem to depend less on medication—which makes this design a mitigation project. It’s architecture, in part, as palliative care.
But contrast that with DeafSpace architecture, like at Gallaudet:
Here the logic is design to accommodate, not cure. DeafSpace is a codified series of spatial principles that help guide a building’s shape around deafness, rather than create the condition of hearing. So: long sight lines, in-the-round meeting spaces, hallways that end in a curve rather than a 90-degree point (the better to see folks coming around the corner), and much more.
automate / accompany
Design can also work as an automation effort—as in the ALS Residence Initiative started by Steve Saling, who has now-advanced ALS. Saling trained as a landscape designer, so when he got his early diagnosis, he both 1) watched the latest in medicine in hopes of a cure and 2) set out to design a sustainable life for himself with as much technologically-enabled independence as possible. With a small metal cursor perched on the nose bridge of his glasses, he can navigate the wheelchair-mounted tablet in front of him to activate text-to-speech, raise and lower the blinds, turn on and off his media, summon the building elevators. It’s the best use of automation, alongside a strong affirmation that life is worth living, even when our bodies change dramatically.
But what about that subtler thing—something both practical and affective, but more modest by far?
Inclusive design can also make new connections among people, often in simple moves. Speaking Exchange connected Brazilian high school students learning English with older adults in assisted living outside Chicago. The result was elegant and straightforward: matching an extant resource (adults with extra time and fluent English) with a best-practices pedagogical need (students looking to learn colloquial, extemporaneous speech). It’s technology for accompaniment, and getting it right is much harder than it looks.
So again: seek the universal? Of course, however close you can get. But assume that the world needs a whole riot of adaptive design at all scales—with sharply articulated motives and methods happening in parallel. Students, I say to you especially: be generous with each other while you seek your verbs and forms and topics. It’s a shared horizon, not a moral hierarchy. Look for all the ways you can both critique and repair. Think estuary, not tent.
Of all the redemption arcs in popular fantasy media, I feel like Theoden's in The Lord of the Rings is the most overlooked.
The movies emphasize the magical control that the evil powers exercise over Theoden, but in the books, it's more obviously a depiction of bad kingship, in the British medieval sense. Theoden takes bad advice; he neglects his family; he fails to reward his knights; and he leaves his people vulnerable to attack. He also does not honor his kingdom's promises to help nearby kingdoms, as we can tell from Boromir's account of what Gondor has been going through.
Gandalf doesn't just cast out the curse and magically fix everything. He encourages Theoden to free himself from his bad advisor, but Theoden has to take all the subsequent steps. And those choices are not easy; after so much neglect, his knights are scattered, and his only option for defending his people is to gather them at Helm's Deep. The siege does not go well. His people are afraid and despairing. But nevertheless, he holds firm and charges out to meet the enemy -- and Gandalf literally meets him halfway, bringing with him the lost knights, whom Theoden welcomes and rewards after the battle.
Theoden could have just gone home after that. But when Gondor calls for aid, Theoden proves his worth by honoring his promises. He keeps his oaths not only to his people but to his allies.
And the climax of his redemption in the book is not his death, but his leadership. The ride of the Rohirrim against Sauron's armies is described in lavish detail, with an uncharacteristically heated pace: Theoden leads the entire line of Rohan, his banner streaming behind him in the wind as they race toward their foe. And that's the end of the chapter.
I love Theoden's arc so much, and especially that moment so much, because the message is not that he has to win battles or seek power. He just has to keep fighting. Theoden's greatest enemy isn't really Sauron: it's despair. And over the course of the book, he keeps choosing hope and action over despair and hesitation, until finally he can lead his people with courage.
As someone who struggles a lot with despair, I really needed to hear that story.
yooooo. so I literally wrote a 20 page english paper about the Hope/Despair theme in Tolkien’s work once. It was like ten years ago and I don’t think I have it anymore, but oh boy do I have feeeeeeelings about this topic. And I have drunk a little bit of wine tonight! So here are my unasked for thoughts:
Yes, Theoden’s greatest enemy is despair! Everyone’s greatest enemy is despair. It’s the biggest fucking theme of the series IMO and it makes me crazy how often it gets overlooked.
lord of the rings is a story written by a man whose experience of war was crouching in the bottom of a trench. People like to make a lot of hay about the charge of the light brigade and it’s similarity to the ride of the rohirrim, but no. Tolkien’s experience of war was getting fucking trench fever, not watching cavalry charges. Tolkien’s experience of war was listening to the shells fall around him, knowing that death could come at any moment. He experienced war in a way where the soldiers on the other side of the line were a faceless threat, and the closest and most present enemy was his own fear.
this is the hill I will die on. This is why I hate it when people talk about LotR as a morally cowardly story about fighting mindless orcs that exist to be cannon fodder. No. Lord of the Rings is about seeing the dark coming on the horizon, and fighting yourself. Fighting the fear and despair that rise up inside you. Struggling with your own terror and powerlessness, knowing that you are small, and nothing you do will matter in the face of this massive conflict— you’re just here, one more meaningless soul to feed into the machine guns. Lord of the Rings is about taking a deep breath, and bracing yourself, and deciding that if nothing you do matters, all that matters is how you do it. The ring can’t possibly be destroyed— we choose to form a fellowship anyway. Helms deep will surely fall by morning— we still choose to fight. The quest can’t possibly succeed— and yet we choose to march into the teeth of mordor to distract the enemy. It’s not hope, exactly? But’s it’s not not hope.
I did at one point have twenty pages written about this. Tolkien was a deeply christian man— he believed in eucatastrophe. Salvation. A better world to come, after suffering, if you bore your suffering well. But he was also a world-class Beowulf scholar with a kinda viking-warrior-type view of the world. And do you know what the vikings believed? (Pls don’t anybody @ me for saying viking, I know it’s a verb and not a culture). The vikings believed that the time of your death was preordained, and that all you had control over was how you met it.
And that is some seriously Rohirric shit!! Like, we’re all mortals doomed to die, Ragnarok is coming, and this whole world is an inevitable grind down into oblivion… but if we’re fighting a long defeat, all the more reason to fight it gloriously!! That’s epic. Eomer approves the hell out of that message.
I’m gonna be a real nerd now, and quote from a poem called the Battle of Maldon.
“Courage shall grow keener, clearer our will,
More valiant our spirits, as our strength grows less.
Here lies our good lord, all leveled in dust
The man all marred. True kinsman will mourn
Who thinks to wend off from battle play now?
Though whitened by winters I will not away,
But lodge by my liege lord that favorite of men;
By my dear one and ring giver intend I to lie.”
That’s a translation from an Old English poem that’s literally a thousand years old, but it always gets me how much it sounds like something Tolkien would write. Theoden and Eowyn are practically leaping out of that poem: We’re all going to die, I choose to meet my end fiercely. We’re all going to die, so I want to die beside my king.
It’s an acceptance of death, and even of failure, but not of defeat. Because— to get back to what I was talking about earlier— Lord of the Rings isn’t actually a story about battlefields. It’s a story about being at war with your own heart. Despair or faith? Hope or defeat? Tolkien wants you to know that even if your city is overrun by orcs, or you’re killed in a meaningless push for another 50 feet of french mud, you can still hold on to your courage with both hands and not cede up your soul to despair-- and that’s the battle Tolkien thinks is really worth writing about.
It’s a battle that every major character in the story fights. Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Theoden, Denethor, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Galadriel, Eowyn, Faramir, Eomer, Saruman, Gollum, Aragorn. Some of them hold onto hope through everything. Some of them break utterly. Some of them are defeated, and then with help find their footing again, and make a redeeming last stand.
But the point that Tolkien hammers home again and again is: Death and failure are natural parts of life, and should be accepted. Despair shouldn’t be.
Tolkien says: hope is hard, actually. Fuck that Game of Thrones grimdark bullshit. Hope is hard fucking work. And even if you don’t have hope? Fight like you do. Because the world needs people working to make it better. Do the best you can with what you have, and whether you can see the mark you’re making on the world or not, the simple fact that you’re trying means the world is a better place.
Anyway, I fucking love these books. I am going to stop drinking wine, and go to bed now. :)
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The vast majority of One Nation MPs quit before the end of their first term. They're either expelled or quit because of internal bickering and dysfunction. Pauline Hanson herself was kicked out of the party and wasn't part of it from 2002 to 2013.
Barnaby Joyce will not be a One Nation MP by the next election. David Farley will likely quit or be expelled by the end of this year.
What's missing from all this media obsession with how much One Nation is rising in the polls because of all the oxygen and hype the media is giving to it is the issue of longevity and stability. One Nation has never been stable. Barely any of its members maintain party allegiance after a year in office. Why aren't journalists bringing that up?
One Nation is not a viable alternative. It's the gutter where those too dysfunctional to be part of real political parties go to see if they can whip up enough racist scaremongering to keep their paycheck at the next election.
It doesn't matter how many seats One Nation wins at the next election. It won't have kept most of them by the time the next election afterwards happens. One Nation is a grift. A con. A trap for the disillusioned and angry who want change but don't realise One Nation is the worst way to make that happen.
HEY SO. I wrote a thing. Based on @oblivionsdream's Knight/Jester OCs, who are SUPER AMAZING, which you can find here.
Thank you for your wonderful art!! And also accidentally inspiring a jester obsession in me 🤡
No warnings, contains a little suggestiveness, 3.4k words 💖
*
The grounds were alive with activity. The King doted upon his sons, and now with his second eldest’s twentieth birthday only a scant few days away, the celebrations were in full swing.
The prince, as was his wont, had demanded a tournament to celebrate the day of his birth. The King, as always, had been unable to refuse. And the Knight was looking forward to a week of respite; of celebration and jousting and fun instead of training and war council meetings.
Typically, he tried to remain impassive and stoic with his fellow knights. It was what was expected of him as the King’s champion, after all, and besides: it added an edge to his demeanour that meant orders were obeyed. The other knights weren’t to know that beneath his shining, shuttered helm he was wondering if the stable cat had birthed her kittens yet.
Still he kept his head high as he strode across the grounds, heading towards the armoury where he had left his sword that morning to be honed and polished. Several other knights turned to glance at him as he passed: one, he noticed, standing immediately to attention as he did.
The deference was useful, he supposed, but he hoped it did not extend to the tournament itself. It would be a dull affair if everybody he encountered was afraid of the King’s champion knight.
As he approached the armoury, a familiar noise perked up his ears. He found his steps faltering, his sure stride suddenly broken.
Not everybody was afraid of him.
He turned just in time to see the grinning face of the Jester as he sauntered over, his motley - brand new for the tournament in festive greens and reds - lit up in the dazzling summer sunshine. His hair haloed from his head, sticking in yellow waves from beneath his cap’n’bells. His eyes - startlingly bright, one dark, one nearly gold - shone with excitement.
“Good morning, Sir!” he said cheerily, “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
Lovelier for you, the Knight didn’t say.
“It is indeed,” he said. “Perfect for a tournament.”
“Perfect for a party,” the Jester countered. “I called into the ale tent on the way here, have you seen how stocked it is? Forget the tournament, I fear our Lord means to drown us. Can you swim in that?” he pinged a fingernail against the Knight’s plate.
The Knight rolled his eyes, forgoing a response.
“Although,” the Jester continued merrily, “I must admit, these events always make me laugh.”
“Oh?”
“Come,” the Jester said, “Oh ho - here I am, the picture of virile manhood! Beware my powerful—” he gave a short, sharp thrust. “Lance.”
The Knight bit his tongue to stop himself from laughing. “You have a filthy mind.”
“You should hear me talk about maypoles.”
“I would really rather not.”
“I can do some wonderful things with ribbons, you know.”
“Anything useful in a tournament?”
“Depends what you need,” the Jester said, catching him with a sidelong glance. “I’m very good with knots.”
The Knight swallowed, saying nothing.
“Well!” The Jester said, clearly unphased. “I am afraid I am wanted by— well, by everyone. Which makes it such a shame that I’d rather spend my morning following you around. Nevermind.” His smile twitched a little, before settling back into a grin. “Good luck, my Knight!”
And with that, he was off. The Knight watched him leave, swaying through the crowds with his typically fluid movement. While the Knight would be entering competitions, the Jester would be entertaining in a much different way: joking and turning somersaults and charming the King and his guests. He even had a role in the joust alongside the announcer, riling up the crowds and mocking the competitors.
With luck, the Knight would be able to watch him perform. He enjoyed watching the Jester show off, and he loved his jokes, not that he would ever allow the Jester himself to realise that. The first time they had met he’d been forced to remove himself lest he make an utter fool of himself, and since then the Jester had taken him as a challenge, when he wasn’t making a game of flirting with him.
With a sigh, and a final glance at the Jester’s departing figure, he walked on towards the armoury. He noticed Sir Rowan lingering just outside, standing beside Lady Felicity - one of the Queen’s Ladies in Waiting. Without thinking, he called out a greeting to his fellow knight.
As he approached, he realised far too late that what he thought was simply a polite conversation between knight and lady was something far more intimate. Sir Rowan’s head was tilted just so, Lady Felicity leaning in a little too close. Their hands, he realised, were linked.
Shit. But it was too late now; he had already hailed Sir Rowan and he couldn’t very well turn heel and run. Lady Felicity quickly snatched her hands away, her face mottling in a sweet, pink blush before giving him a slightly lopsided curtsey, bidding them both farewell and quickly rushing off.
As The Knight drew closer, he noticed a scrap of fabric clasped in Rowan’s hand. He pretended not to have seen it as Rowan quickly tucked it into his breastplate.
A favour, then. He hadn’t realised that Sir Rowan and Lady Felicity were courting; although most of their time spent together would have been at banquets and feasts, where the Knight’s attention was more often than not focused on their entertainment and very little else. It was terribly improper to ask Sir Rowan for more information. Even as his friend, he would not push for information too intimate to share; certainly not while Rowan and Lady Felicity were still in the first, tentative steps of the most delicate of dances.
He engaged Rowan in brief conversation, deeply aware of the moment he had managed to ruin. He wished him good luck - making him blush - then headed inside the armoury where he collected his sword.
He couldn't help but peer back as he left. Rowan, now alone, had taken the favour from his breastplate and was tugging it through his fingers. It appeared to be cream-coloured silk: a handkerchief or scarf, perhaps. Rowan's face had gone red.
Something tugged in the Knight's chest. It was a sweet, deeply romantic gesture. It would leave Rowan with no doubt at all about Lady Felicity’s intentions towards him. And, of course, it was furiously lucky: any man blessed with such a token would be sure to do well, especially from one they loved.
The tugging grew more urgent, joined by a leaden feeling in the Knights stomach. He would have no such token. Oh, he was sure that many members of the court would accept him should he attempt to woo them - courtly favours included - but it wasn't any of them he really wanted.
“I would rather spend my day following you around.”
The Knight’s face heated beneath the metal. His heart swelled. Whatever the Jester’s intentions towards him, his feelings were not the sort that spurred a man to give a love token. His were the feelings that spurred a quick fumble behind the stables - perhaps several quick fumbles, judging by the lewdness of the Jester’s tongue. It was no more than that.
Or, more likely, it was even less than that. The Knight was aware of the reputation he had carefully curated at court, and he knew that the Jester had taken him as a challenge. He was just another joke. The Jester had never even seen his face, hadn't seen the scars, didn't know the stories behind them.
He was just teasing.
The Knight tried to shake the thought from his head, fluttering the great plume that burst from the crown of his helm. Chasing such thoughts - be they of fumbles or fools - would get him unseated in the joust and begging for mercy in the duel.
He turned towards the stables, trudging down the muddy path. The earth had been turned by the sheer volume of guests and carts and horses, and was now a sucking, muddy mess.
There was an oddly metallic clink beneath his boot. He paused. He lifted his foot. In the centre of a perfect footprint was a mud-splattered, but unmistakably golden, bell.
There was only one person who wore bells like that.
The Knight picked it up without thinking, desperately wishing he had something to clean it with. He rubbed off as much muck as he could with a fingertip, watching as it glinted in the light. As he turned it in his hand - terribly small against his huge palm - it jingled merrily.
He swallowed and closed his fingers around it, squeezing it tight.
The stables would wait. As a high-ranking man, he had been given a private tent on the edge of the grounds - somewhere he could clean and rest without traipsing through the castle to his chambers. He headed there, pulling the flaps tight shut behind him before unfurling his hand.
The bell had left a neat little indent in his palm. A curving, teasing smile embedded into his skin.
He placed it reverently on the wooden table at the far side of the tent before shooting a final, nervous glance towards the entry. And then he removed his helm.
The air felt cool and good against his burning cheeks. He shook out his hair, tied into a low queue to keep it out of his face, and stared down at the bell. It felt as if it were the only object in the room; perhaps the world.
Mindlessly, he took the cloth he used to tend his sword from the chest beside the table and gently began to clean the little golden thing. Mud had even managed to get inside the bell, and he carefully cleaned away as much as he could until it was shining and jingling once more.
He rolled it in his palm. It felt hot, like a tiny lump of coal, like a nugget of forge-warmed iron.
The Knight thought of Sir Rowan and Lady Felicity.
He would need luck, after all. Skill he had in abundance, but luck? Luck was harder to judge; a tip of the scales that, at present, could fall either way.
Of course, traditionally, a token needed to be a gift. But many Knights - both in tournaments and in battle - found luck where they could snatch it. A sword that had never slipped from their grasp, a tunic worn during a lucky win, a shield taken to war that deflected a killing blow. Perhaps a bell - so small and yet so weighty - could be like those. It was luck, after all, that helped him find it when so many people had stepped over it.
He turned back to the chest and searched through it until he found what he was looking for; the spare ties he kept on hand in case his snapped during the tournament. He typically used them to fasten his gauntlets, and while it was thin the leather was tough and sturdy: perfect for what he needed. Carefully, he threaded the bell onto the strap, ensured it wouldn’t slip off and then twisted the strap around the hilt of his sword, securing it tight.
The Knight gave the sword an experimental shake. The bell jingled against the hilt. He didn’t bother to suppress his smile: it wasn’t as if anyone could see him. The noise set a thrill through him. He would be the first to admit that he was not a musical man, but the ringing of the little bell felt like an angelic chorus just for him.
Besides, he thought, as he sheathed the sword once more: if it didn’t bring him luck, the noise may distract an opponent long enough for him to land a good hit.
He took a few moments to gather himself, taking a long drink of water from the jug atop the table, wiping down his face, and re-tying his hair before donning his helm once more. He pulled on his gloves, too, and now with his hand now gripped tight around the hilt of his sword, he exited the tent.
Outside, the noise was growing more urgent as more people gathered to watch the show. Now buoyed by the token hanging from his sword, he strode with pride towards the centre of the grounds where he intended to take part in the first single-combat duel of the day. It was likely still a little early, but no doubt he wouldn’t be the only one keen to begin and could at least find someone to spar against to pass the time.
He was dodging around a lad from the kennels and a pack of exuberant dogs when he heard a shout from behind.
“Knight! My Knight!”
He hastily shoved his sword behind his back as he turned, watching the Jester bounce across the field towards him.
“I need your skills,” he said, as he slid smoothly to a halt beside him.
“Oh?” The Knight was glad for his helmet, now: the jester couldn’t see him blush.
“Have you seen a bell?” The Jester tugged at the frontmost horn of his cap, which was indeed bell-less. “I’m missing one.”
The Knight gripped his sword harder. He could feel the distinct shape of the bell through his gloves, praying it would not ring and give him away.
“No,” he said, his face so hot he was amazed his helm did not begin to steam, “I cannot say I have.”
“Oh.” The Jester gave him a crestfallen look that was so heartbreakingly sincere that for a moment, the Knight nearly relented. “I suppose it will turn up… or the King will fund me for another, I am sure.”
His eyes darted down, as if taking the Knight in for the first time. His expression turned dark. The Knight found himself standing a little straighter.
“And where are you off to, my chivalrous wonder? That’s—” he peered around the Knight’s back, “—an extremely long sword you have there.”
The Knight rolled his eyes, not that the Jester could see the gesture.
“You have realised,” he said, keeping his tone even, “where we are, yes?”
The Jester gave a dramatic twirl as if assessing his surroundings. “We are standing in the mud,” he grinned.
“Typically,” the Knight said, ignoring him, “A Knight takes part in a tournament. I intend to test my luck in the duel.”
“Luck?” The Jester said, “Not skill? Although—” he gave him another of those long looks, “—I suspect you have plenty of skill in swordplay.”
He gave the Knight a tight, cattish smile, his tongue wetting his lips as he waited for the Knight to respond. The Knight, once he had finally regained control of his lips, could only manage a single word.
“Quite.”
“Well,” the Jester grinned cockily. “I would surely love to see you in action. Lead on, good Sir Knight.”
The Jester looped his hand around his arm, gripping him tight. The Knight was utterly unable to resist, lost in a sudden moment of deep regret that he was so armoured, unable to feel that touch against his skin.
Arm in arm they headed across the grounds towards the ring. The Jester joked and chatted and flirted as they walked, commenting again on that marvellously large blade, but the Knight could barely hear him over the rush of his own spinning thoughts.
He kept his free hand gripped on the sword, over the bell. The Jester couldn’t know.
The Jester finally released him as they reached the ring. Even though the touch had been to the plate steel of his armour and not the skin beneath, the Knight still missed having him hanging from his arm.
“You better win,” he said, stepping back. “There are a dozen other things I could be doing right now, and I refuse to tie my lot to a man who cannot even win a duel for me.”
The Knight’s heart stuttered in his chest. For me. The Jester was watching him, expectantly. And then his eyes widened, as if remembering something.
“Of course!” He said, face splitting into a grin. “You need a token. As you said, to give you luck enough to win. Ah— here…” he reached up, and before the Knight could stop him pulled another bell from his hat. “What’s another bell?” he said with a shrug. “I was lopsided anyway. Here…”
He produced a silk ribbon as if from nowhere, quickly looped it through the bell, and tied it with swift, dexterous fingers to the Knight’s belt.
“There,” he said. “I told you I was good with knots. Now you’ll win.”
The Jester stretched up on the tip of his bell-topped toes, placed a hand to the Kight’s shoulder for balance, and flicked his helmet’s plume with a single, long finger.
“Good luck.”
And with no warning at all, he placed a kiss to the warm metal of the Knight’s helm. Beneath, the Knight felt as if he could no longer breathe, his heart launching a battle of its own.
“I…” he said, gathering himself. “Thank you.”
The Jester gave him another grin, trailing a finger across the spot where his lips had been moments before.
“You’re welcome.”
***
The Jester leaned casually against a stack of crates, watching the Knight perform with genuine interest. The interest, of course, had very little to do with the fight itself - he wanted him to win, sure, but the minutiae of the fight were nothing compared to the strength of his arms, the broadness of his shoulders, or the exceptional noises he made when he struck a particularly good hit.
He fiddled mindlessly with one of the horns of his cap as he watched the Knight take another decisive swing. A hint of gold glinted through the air as he did, catching the light like a comet.
The Jester grinned to himself. No wonder his Knight was being so stiff as they walked towards the ring. What a sneaky little secret; not the sort he had come to expect from him. It was amusing, and quite sweet, too. Anyone would be lucky to have the Knight be their champion, to have him take their token. But the one he had chosen - the one he had taken for himself - was little more than a minstrel’s bell.
He was glad he had stumbled upon the thought to give him a token himself. Now the Knight would know that he would have given him one, had he asked, and even better: now he had twice the luck.
The Knight swung around again, the bell jingling, harmonising with the one the Jester himself had tied to his hip.
Thrice the luck, the Jester thought, if you counted the kiss.
The Knight ducked, dodged and lunged. The Jester watched, lips quirked into a smile.
When the Knight won - a feat which did not surprise the Jester at all - he straightened up, set his shoulders, and looked towards him.
And then his helm snapped down, taking in the hilt of his sword and the bell hanging from it. The Jester was almost surprised that he couldn’t see the Knight blush through his helmet.
The Jester too glanced downwards to the hilt of the sword. He let his gaze linger there. Then he dragged his eyes up, up the Knight’s body, over his chest, to the place where he desperately wished he could properly see his eyes.
He heaved himself away from the crates and waved. The Knight sagged, only a little. A small moment of recognition and relief. A spark of understanding, shared between them.
But the Jester could not stand there all day, no matter how much he wanted to. He shot the Knight another grin - his best grin, saved just for him - blew him a kiss, and swayed away towards the ale tent.
@combat-epistemologist and i are watching laura kampf's youtube series where she works on her house and we started with, like, the last 5 episodes (because i've been following it for a while and that's where i left off) and are now starting from the beginning
and for those of you who are not acquainted, the deal with this house is that it turned out to have, just. everything wrong with it. FULL of The Horrors. so it's funny but also kind of depressing to go back to the beginning of the series where she's like "i hope we find good timbers in these walls!! ^_^" "ooh check out the original hardwood floors!" and then as time goes on it's like. "asbestos?" "termite horror" "water damage"
as @combat-epistemologist said, "i look forward to seeing the light leave this woman's eyes"
Thanks @gender-trash for posting about this series! It's insane.
I'm 18 videos in and this house's problems have escalated to the point of replacing almost every exterior structural beam in the entire first floor. Literally some house of theseus shit.
And yet: There are forty-three videos in this series! How much more can go wrong!
i know we all laugh (mostly fondly) about the paper-thin plots in porn that only exist to make the sex happen, but i was reading some old stargate fic over the weekend, and i really think we're sleeping on the paper-thin hurt/comfort plot that only exists to force the characters to FEEL THINGS.
like, is this scenario realistic? no. does it make any rational sense? no. does it provide a built-in excuse for a character to collapse, bloody and disoriented, into the arms of his beloved/friend/partner? obviously, that's the whole point of this exercise.
My absolute favourite thing is when someone does this but they commit really hard and end up writing a masterpiece. It is essential that the plot is still paper thin or wildly implausible, but the characters and the emotional beats will change your entire life.
yeah yeah aliens made one of them drink truth serum and the other got attacked by squid vampires before they got trapped together in a cave, whatever, the real point is that now they have to talk about their unrequited love and yearning for the next 4 chapters while tenderly dressing each other's wounds...
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I'm going to preface this by saying that i am not an expert in ANY form of poetry, just an enthusiast. Also, this post is... really long. Too long? Definitely too long. Whoops! I love poetry.
If you ask most English-speaking people (or haiku-bot) what a haiku is, they would probably say that it's a form of poetry that has 3 lines, with 5, and then 7, and then 5 syllables in them. That's certainly what I was taught in school when we did our scant poetry unit, but since... idk elementary school when I learned that, I've learned that that's actually a pretty inaccurate definition of haiku. And I think that inaccurate definition is a big part of why most people (myself included until relatively recently!) think that haiku are kind of... dumb? unimpressive? simple and boring? I mean, if you can just put any words with the right number of syllables into 3 lines, what makes it special?
Well, let me get into why the 5-7-5 understanding of haiku is wrong, and also what makes haiku so special (with examples)!
First of all, Japanese doesn't have syllables! There's a few different names for what phonetic units actually make up the language- In Japanese, they're called "On" (音), which translates to "sound", although English-language linguists often call it a "mora" (μ), which (quoting from Wikipedia here) "is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable." (x) "Oh" is one syllable, and also one mora, whereas "Oi" has one syllable, but two moras. "Ba" has one mora, "Baa" has two moras, etc. In English, we would say that a haiku is made up of three lines, with 5-7-5 syllables in them, 17 syllables total. In Japanese, that would be 17 sounds.
For an example of the difference, the word "haiku", in English, has 2 syllables (hai-ku), but in Japanese, はいく has 3 sounds (ha-i-ku). "Christmas" has 2 syllables, but in Japanese, "クリスマス" (ku-ri-su-ma-su) is 5 sounds! that's a while line on its own! Sometimes the syllables are the same as the sounds ("sushi" is two syllables, and すし is two sounds), but sometimes they're very different.
In addition, words in Japanese are frequently longer than their English equivalents. For example, the word "cuckoo" in Japanese is "ほととぎす" (hototogisu).
Now, I'm sure you're all very impressed at how I can use an English to Japanese dictionary (thank you, my mother is proud), but what does any of this matter? So two languages are different. How does that impact our understanding of haiku?
Well, if you think about the fact that Japanese words are frequently longer than English words, AND that Japanese counts sounds and not syllables, you can see how, "based purely on a 17-syllable counting method, a poet writing in English could easily slip in enough words for two haiku in Japanese” (quote from Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer by Kit Pancoast Nagamura). If you're writing a poem using 17 English syllables, you are writing significantly more content than is in an authentic Japanese haiku.
(Also not all Japanese haiku are 17 sounds at all. It's really more of a guideline.)
Focusing on the 5-7-5 form leads to ignoring other strategies/common conventions of haiku, which personally, I think are more interesting! Two of the big ones are kigo, a season word, and kireji, a cutting word.
Kigo are words/phrases/images associated with a particular season, like snow for winter, or cherry blossoms for spring. In Japan, they actually publish reference books of kigo called saijiki, which is basically like a dictionary or almanac of kigo, describing the meaning, providing a list of related words, and some haiku that use that kigo. Using a a particular kigo both grounds the haiku in a particular time, but also alludes to other haiku that have used the same one.
Kireji is a thing that doesn't easily translate to English, but it's almost like a spoken piece of punctuation, separating the haiku into two parts/images that resonate with and add depth to each other. Some examples of kireji would be "ya", "keri", and "kana." Here's kireji in action in one of the most famous haiku:
古池や 蛙飛び込む 水の音
(Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto)
(The old pond —
A frog jumps in
The sound of the water.)
You can see the kireji at the end of the first line- 古池や literally translates to "old pond ya". The "ya" doesn't have linguistic meaning, but it denotes the separation between the two focuses of the haiku. First, we are picturing a pond. It's old, mature. The water is still. And then there's a frog! It's spring and he's fresh and new to the world! He jumps into the pond and goes "splash"! Wowie! When I say "cutting word", instead of say, a knife cutting, I like to imagine a film cut. The camera shows the pond, and then it cuts to the frog who jumps in.
English doesn't really have a version of this, at least not one that's spoken, but in English language haiku, people will frequently use a dash or an ellipses to fill the same role.
Format aside, there are also some conventions of the actual content, too. They frequently focus on nature, and are generally use direct language without metaphor. They use concrete images without judgement or analysis, inviting the reader to step into their shoes and imagine how they'd feel in the situation. It's not about describing how you feel, so much as it's about describing what made you feel.
Now, let's put it all together, looking at a haiku written Yosa Buson around 1760 (translated by Harold G. Henderson)
The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel
We've got our kigo with "the piercing chill." We read that, and we imagine it's probably winter. It's cold, and the kind of cold wind that cuts through you. There's our kireji- this translation uses a colon to differentiate our two images: the piercing chill, and the poet stepping on his dead wife's comb. There's no descriptions of what the poet is feeling, but you can imagine stepping into his shoes. You can imagine the pain he's experiencing in that moment on your own.
"But tumblr user corvidcall!" I hear you say, "All the examples you've used so far are Japanese haiku that have been translated! Are you implying that it's impossible for a good haiku to be written in English?" NO!!!!! I love English haiku! Here's a good example, which won first place in the 2000 Henderson haiku contest, sponsored by the Haiku Society of America:
When you read this one, can you imagine being in the poet's place? Do you feel the surprise as the tide comes in? Do you feel the summer-ness of the moment? Haiku are about describing things with the senses, and how you take in the world around you. In a way, it's like the poet is only setting a scene, which you inhabit and fill with meaning based on your own experiences. You and I are imagining different beaches, different waves, different people that make up the "our" it mentioned.
"Do I HAVE to include all these things when I write haiku? If I include all these things, does that mean my haiku will be good?" I mean, I don't know. What colors make up a good painting? What scenes make up a good play? It's a creative medium, and nobody can really tell you you can't experiment with form. Certainly not me! But I think it's important to know what the conventions of the form are, so you can appreciate good examples of it, and so you can know what you're actually experimenting with. And I mean... I'm not the poetry cops. But if you're not interested in engaging with the actual conventions and limitations of the form, then why are you even using that form?
I'll leave you with one more English language haiku, which is probably my favorite haiku ever. It was written by Tom Bierovic, and won first place at the 2021 Haiku Society of America Haiku Awards
a year at most . . .
we pretend to watch
the hummingbirds
Sources: (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)
Further reading:
Forms in English Haiku by Keiko Imaoka
Haiku: A Whole Lot More Than 5-7-5 by Jack
How to Write a Bad Haiku by KrisL
Haiku Are Not a Joke: A Plea from a Poet Who Has Had It Up to Here by Sandra Simpson
Haiku Checklist by Katherine Raine
my favourite thing about large discord servers is when they make an announcement post and all the reactions on it are like. POG FACE. TRANS HEART. E. CONFETTI EMOJI. FLAG OF PERU. SNAKE. Q. EYES. FIRE. MISCHEVIOUS DEVIL SMILING EMOJI. ANOTHER POG FAGE. PREGNANT MAN. HOT DOG. THUMBS UP. VRISKA.
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