Q-Q

I’m done saying “I hope we get a second Season of Lockwood & Co UwU”. Now it’s just “I’m so excited for the second season”

So something interesting I’ve noticed is how people treat Lockwood’s character especially how they handle his obvious suicidal tendencies. I mean, Winkman picked up on it within literal minutes of meeting the kid it’s not like he’s hiding it well, but anyways

My hottake is that people are trying to fit Lockwood into character archetypes he doesn't fit, because they see "traumatized teen boy with a big ego and a passive death wish" and go "oh. emotionally unavailable asshole character" when that's.....not actually the character we're shown.

Take, for instance, The Handmaid’s Tale, an explicitly political work of fiction. It can serve as a wake-up call and a rallying cry with regards to women’s reproductive rights in particular and feminism in general. But it cannot give you a complete understanding of the history and struggles of the real world feminist movement, because it is a work of fiction set in a fictional society, and Atwood is first and foremost an author telling a story, not a schoolteacher educating you on history and politics. If you want to understand, for instance, the events leading to Roe v. Wade being overturned, you’re at some point going to need more substance than «oh this is just like Gilead».

I mean, to be extra explicit, can good art ever be explicit and didactic enough to not allow for alternate interpretations? Even the most political work not only doesn't replace an essay because it lacks detail, but can be interpreted in multiple ways because artistic ambiguity is how artists reflect the ambiguity and uncertainty of the human experience. This means that Orwell's fiction can be appropriated by conservatives in a way his essays can't, but that doesn't make the novels bad* (though perhaps it means that they can't be used for some things - I don't think 1984 is a replacement for Grossman when it comes to understanding Stalinism). It just means that novels, to be true to the world, can't wrap up everything in a neat ideological package.

#honestly i think being on tumblr for it's 'representation!' era#which was like 2012-2018#or whenever steven universe discourse peaked#gives you this like outsized perception of fiction#because for so long the focus was on like how important represenation was#and so much social justice orientated language was developed or moulded to that purpose#that it made you feel like if we just got enough tv shows with gay characters#or diverse fantasy books#then it would like fix all the problems in the world#cos how could someone be racist when their fave character was black???#and then we actually have gotten 'representation' to some extent#and it obviously hasn't fixed much#and the works are as full of flaws as anyother#and ppl take it really personally#anway brave of op to come on the media consumption as identity identity as morality website#and say that media consumption is not a good basis for morality lmao 

Reading through the Tortall books in publication order is funny because you start with Alanna “the village healing woman taught me all she knew” going off to become a knight, and end with Numair “world’s most powerful mage” as young Arram Draper first learning magic at the Carthaki university. Because of the 40 intervening years and five(?) different series further developing the Tortall universe, the magic system is now SO much more complex.  Arram is learning an elementally-based, heavily theory-dependent form of magic where conceptual power is applied to physical objects or energy constructs. His teachers make him develop skills in non-magical areas like juggling, jewelry making, and gardening so eventually they can safely guide him through complicated applications of magic. In comparison, Alanna complains that Duke Roger is spending too much time on theory in order to prevent her and her peers from learning “actual magic” and becoming his rivals. And then she throws purple light at things until they explode or she passes out! We also learn from Arram’s misadventures that most of “magic” is creating methods of applying, storing, and accessing power so the user doesn’t drain their own life force and pass out or die. Alanna uses NONE of these techniques; instead, she pulls her magic directly out of her own life force, thinks about what she wants it to do, and hopes she reaches that goal before draining herself. She even (sometimes) factors in the impact of magically draining herself of energy while attempting tasks that require both magical and physical endurance (such as when deciding how much magic to spend warming herself when making her blizzard hike to claim the Dominion Jewel.)

I firmly believe that the general state of organised magical education in Tortall was so poor in Alanna’s youth that the Carthaki University spent decades leading up to the events of Emperor Mage saying among themselves, “and then there’s Tortall, only the gods know what the fuck they’re doing up there!” Some years - like the year with the crazed duke getting resurrected - this was said more loudly than other years. The year they finally got their hands on enough raw data and publications to prove that yes, King Jonathan did have the actual facts Dominion Jewel in his treasury and used it to stop an earthquake raised the roof.

my mom asked why i don’t read as many books as i used to and i just said it was because i read a lot of unpublished stories from independent writers online and she thinks that’s very good of me to give undiscovered authors a chance