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Bad Horse


Beneath the microscope, you contain galaxies.

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Sep
29th
2015

Recommendations: horizon, The new crop, The Hole in my Face, Riverdream, Horse-Trading · 6:08am Sep 29th, 2015

I've been remiss about recommendations. Mostly because I haven't read much pony lately. I've been struggling through The Iliad, but SWEET BUTTERY CELESTIA IS IT LONG AND BORING. Life is too short for this.


I'm still reading The Mare in the High Castle, which is still excellent, but bleak. The Man in the High Castle is a novel where the Axis won World War 2 and the Japanese rule America; in Mare, of course, the Nightmare won, and rules Equestria with a Stalinesque regime of brutality, propaganda, disappearances, and bureaucracy. This is bleaker than most such stories, because so far the characters mostly accept it as normal. It's very good, but it hurts to read it.


Just out of the gate yesterday was a new crackfic from horizon, This is Not an Adventure Clyde Adventure, which I'm surprised not to see in the featured box, and I shoulda posted this yesterday. If you put Present Perfect, Admiral Biscuit, and GhostOfHeraclitus in a blender, you would end up with a a terrible mess instead of a story like this which you could have gotten by sitting them round a table to write a story together instead. Or you could have just asked horizon to do it.

Also out very recently from horizon is "The Last Dreams of Pony Island", a story in verse, which you have to read in order to read "Dream a Little Dream of Me", the collection of fan-written solutions to the mystery in Pony Island. If you want to read a poem, and you have to choose between "Pony Island" and The Iliad, I definitely recommend Pony Island. The very first poem was added later and is unfortunately one of the weakest; press bravely on, and you'll be rewarded in a way that you would not if you were reading the Iliad.

And then you get to read the contest poems, some of which are very good. The experience of reading 23 independently-produced endings for a single poem-story is something you're not going to find elsewhere.


Inquisitor M turned me on to "The New Crop" by xjuggernaughtx, with a comment about how great its opening sentences are:

The grimy mirror in this locker room’s got three big cracks running across it, and when I look back at myself, my pieces don’t fit together right. The lines of my face are just a little off from each other. Most folks would say this mirror’s busted, but anypony that’s set hoof in here knows better. The reflection’s the truest in all of Equestria. You gotta be a little bit broken if you’re standing here.

Lots of boxers have some kinda ritual they go through before a match, and I guess this one’s mine. Not a real good one, truth be told. More like a curse, but it’s what I do. I stand in front of this mirror and get a real good look at myself because I ain’t gonna look the same afterward.

I wrote a review of it on the Seattle's Angels recommendation thread; read it there so you can vote the comment up if you want them to review it. It's also a contender for the Royal Canterlot Library reader's choice.


Somehow, maybe through Fiddlebottoms, I ran into "Let me Tell You About the Hole in my Face" by our very own Slovenian post-modern pop-culture critic and hopeful bloody revolutionary, Slavoj Zizek. 1187 words. Most of you will not like this story. Many of you won't understand this story. The "Dark" tag doesn't mean gruesome or tragic. This is an Imagist or Symbolist story (I think; I barely understand those words) which draws an extended symbolic picture of Applejack's insecurities. I don't know if AJ is the right pony for this story, but if you can let go of your bloody fan-mindedness for three minutes and appreciate it for what it is, you'll be repaid better than you would for reading the Iliad. And you might discover a kind of storytelling you've never heard before.


"Riverdream at Sunset" by GroaningGreyAgony: Did I not recommend this already? I'm pissed at myself for not reading this when GroaningGreyAgony first sent it to me, because I like to discover new stories, but I let it sit in my inbox, and the Royal Canterlot Library and Ilya Leonov discovered it first, curse them!

It's a perfect crossover, combining the best elements of pony with the wonder of Lord Dunsany's archaic fantasy without ever compromising either. The plot's ending was very clever. These stories where a traveller accidentally visits faerie-land often don't end conclusively, but just sort of stop, like the Iliad, but this one gave a good reason for the dream's end. And the afterword is brilliant. It's very hard to end this type of story! There's no real plot; once the visitor has returned from Equestria, how do you wrap it up? The afterword doesn't do anything at all plotwise, or character-wise; it's entirely a kind of summing up that, if writers' books nowadays mentioned, it would only be to warn you not to do it. Yet it's dense with meaning, quotable, and did what this kind of story is supposed to do: Make the connection between the fantastic and our lives.


TheJediMasterEd quietly published a pair of short stories, "Horse-Trading", hopefully with more stories (chapters) to come. I draw your attention especially to its first story, "Never too far from the tree", a conversation between Applejack and Fluttershy about "The Giving Tree" and Big Mac.

If you want to see Boringest Pony get her come-uppance, here's 738 words for you. That's less than one three-hundredth the length of George Chapman's translation of the Iliad.

Report Bad Horse · 1,250 views · #recommendation
Comments ( 58 )

So, I get the impression that you don't like the Illaid. Just a hunch, not quite sure.

The Mare In The High Castle.. Finished that few weeks ago, amazing story, couldnt put it down. Bleak dystopian worlds are such grim reminders that things can always be worse.

The two by Horizon, great pieces.

Riverdream at Sunset is also an amazing story. Need more like it.

Going to read about the hole in AJ's face right now. As for the other two, ive stopped reading almost all incomplete stories.

Edit: I read it and I loved it. Granted based on the comments I am not smart enough to truly understand everything that was alluded to. But that does not take away from my enjoyment of such a well written piece. I am now on the morrow going to read the rest of his writings

the Nightmare won, and rules Equestria with a Stalinesque regime of brutality, propaganda, disappearances, and bureaucracy.

It's not Stalinesque at all, because the industrialists are actually making a killing off of the police state (quite literally).

Trust me, you'll know when things get Stalinesque. :raritywink:

Most of you will not like this story. Many of you won't understand this story.

You had me at Slavoj Zizek. But then you had to go and whisper such sweet words to me....

Reading now.

EDIT: I understood it.

but just sort of stop, like the Iliad

The Iliad was actually one of, like, ten epic poems which go through the whole Trojan war. It and the Odyssey are the only two that survived. So....be thankful.

(Though I did quite like a prose translation of the Odyssey I read.)

If you put Present Perfect, Admiral Biscuit, and GhostOfHeraclitus in a blender, you would end up with a a terrible mess instead of a story like this which you could have gotten by sitting them round a table to write a story together instead. Or you could have just asked horizon to do it.

...which means you can place the above in a blender, since, what with horizon, they are easily replaceable. So why not have some fun?

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But there's only one of me and three of—

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—What my hivemate meant to say was, he is not a changeling.

He would also like to thank you for the kind plugs and wish you more enjoyable epic poetry readings. Or, y'know, just stick to ponyfic. We'll write our own Iliad for you to hate soon enough.

The Illiad has some very good bits, but large chunks of it are just a slog.

That's why I recommend no one read the whole thing but just specific excerpts.

My father is a huge Illiad nerd. He's been recommending me that book since I was fifteen years old; that, and the Divine Comedy. Although he says you gotta read the original text (or phonetic transcriptions of it) alongside the translation to really grasp the rhythm or something. He also says the Odyssey is far better, though -- as far as I know, both sound kind of tough to get through.

Also, gagh, Hole in my Face. I found that one out just as it came out, in the Popular Stories list, and read it because it was short, well-written, and the cover art/title combo was neat.

And it's really, really bleak. It was cool and I liked it, but it's certainly not the kind of fic I go out of my way to read. While the whole thing is symbolic, it goes into so much detail it feels gruesome.

Still, I think it's worth the read, if only because it's short and different. I personally think it's really good, but not for me -- I'd recommend it to anybody with a more open-minded attitude towards dark stuff.

3429216 Illiad and Odyssey were both on the 'everyone has to read this because we'll spend three weeks of class on it' list when I was in High School, and I hated them both. Frankly, I could say the same for 90% of our 'required reading'. Looking back on it, I have to wonder if most of us (me+my classmates) were simply not mature enough to read these stories, or just too 'teenage minded' to really 'get' them.

Though, otoh, we did have to read the 'Inferno' piece of the Divine Comedy, and I thought it was very enjoyable. So, perhaps I'm just a lost cause, lol. xD

3429228

Looking back on it, I have to wonder if most of us (me+my classmates) were simply not mature enough to read these stories, or just too 'teenage minded' to really 'get' them.

No, it's just boring and long and there is nothing in it that hasn't been done better elsewhere in the last 2000 years.

The Hole in My Face reminded me an awful lot of Twilight Is Sick.

I think. I don't know if I've got the metaphor right, or just how post-modern Slavoj is. It was either a brilliantly constructed obtuse metaphor or a bunch of symbolism vomited onto the screen with no actual meaning behind it. One of the two.

This is why I'm glad I read The Iliad in my first year of college so I never had to do it again. The most enjoyment I got out of it was hearing the other classmates mispronounce words that weren't quite archaic but had never been used on Facebook or Twitter so they didn't get it.

3429121 "Horse-trading" says it's incomplete because he might add more stories. Each chapter is a complete story. "The new crop" is complete.

Reading the Iliad:

Is like examining the corpse of an animal you've never seen before and trying to figure out how it lived and moved and had its being, as the saying goes: you can get a certain amount of info this way, but not the whole picture. Because the Iliad was never meant to be read. It was composed back before writing had been invented to entertain a people who rarely knew a moment that wasn't touched with fear. It's a mummified remnant of something that's hard for us to imagine let alone understand: I can only echo back your words about "Let Me Tell You About the Hole in My Face," actually...

MIke

Thanks for pointing me to The Hole in My Face! One of the more interesting ones I've read so far.

Perchance, which translation of The Illiad are you reading? I personally recommend Robert Fagles, who has done similarly amazing work on The Aeneid. If even that doesn't help much, if you want a sort of compendium of stories about Troy and surrounding events which weave in and out of the main plot of The Illiad and don't involve a solid dozen places that get described as "where the women are a wonder" or "w, x's fighting son clad in burnished bronze from y like a towering z", try Olivia Coolidge's The Trojan War.

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The Iliad isn't that old. Best guess puts it somewhere around 800BC.

In Mesopotamia, writing existed for a millennium-and-a-half before that.

I've actually read the oldest writing in recorded history, the Instructions for Shuruppak.

The first paragraphs ends with, I shit you not, the author complaining about how the reader isn't paying attention to him.

3429630 It's true that the Greeks thought very differently from us. But it isn't just that the sound of the language doesn't translate, or that people had more patience, or that Homer was a complete sociopath. It's that "Homer" didn't know how to write action, and the Iliad is mostly action.

Teachers who assign the Iliad thinking "Oh, it's got lots of action, they'll like that" only show that they don't get action at all. Let's not be humble here: the greatest masters of all time of action writing are 20th and 21st-century Americans. It isn't a simple matter of guys hammering on each other over and over. It helps, for instance, to know who both of the people killing each other are--something that rarely happens in the Iliad. Maybe the original audience knew all of the names in it, though I'm not assuming that. But even mere brute action can be built up into a larger structure. The Iliad doesn't do that. It's a series of duels between people you don't know that each have no impact on the story. The duels don't affect each other. There is very little structure to the battle: no maneuvers, no tactics, no terrain. There are a few objectives, I mean I could count them on one hand: there's the trench they have to cross half-way through, there are the boats... that might be it. You never get a picture of the battlefield. There is no simultaneous interlocking action, so that the things happening in one place can depend on the outcome of something happening somewhere else. There is no planning. And there's no suspense, because you KNOW that all that's going to happen is the Trojans are going to kill the Greeks until some god interferes, then the Greeks will kill the Trojans until some other god interferes, then vice-versa, etc., etc. It's the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's just bad storytelling, even without the dehumanizing and degrading message behind it.

I liked the Illiad, personally--better than the Odyssey, even. However, I read it in high school in a class taught by the best English teacher I have ever had. It was a very good course--basically Euro lit from Gilgamesh to the modern era over the course of the year, with a selection of philosophy from each era as we passed through it.

Another data point in the pile marked 'good teachers are important', I guess.

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Read The Odyssey in prose first (I heartily recommend Walter Shewring's translation). That way, you can actually understand what's going on without the text being twisted to fit another language's poetic form. Once you've got a solid grasp on the plot, then mess around with poetic translations.

Or you can do what Keats did and read Chapman, and then maybe one day you, too, can be silent on that peak in Darien.

When I was younger I adored The Iliad.


Then I discovered Virgil in undergrad. Probably more boring by a lot of folks standards but to me Aeneas is a true sort of hero.

I came across The New Crop awhile ago from quite a few vocal people plugging one of xjuggernautx's other works. I don't think I actually read the one they were plugging, but I did look through his wares and found this jem of a fight fic. Now, the only other mlp fight fics I've read are that one with RD and Rarity duking it out which got high rankings in the Writeoff, and theycallmejub's stuff. While I find jub's stuff sexy since it's written as such, fuelling sadistic and masochistic fantasies (piledrivers are erotic), capturing excellent intensity, and filled with devastating submissions, I do often find myself wanting to read about just the intensity, strategy, that rush of excitement, and the pain. And it's rare to find hand-to-hand combat fanfics that're well written. I've read stuff like Street Fighter and WWE fanfics too, but I guess given the fanbase, especially for wrestling, the writing for any fight scenes is just sub par. The only really good ones I find are the few pony fight fics. Or maybe it's another case of fanfiction.net not having as much networking options and it being hard to find anything quality without reading through literally everything.

Eheh... anyone know of any really good fighting fics? :twilightsheepish:

Ed's fic is how you would write a fic, Bad. It's thought provoking, leaving you pondering after your finished reading. Except it doesn't utilize sex, rape, or apocalyptic death as a plot point. I don't know if you could learn a lot from Ed or, given the chosen profession of criminal mastermind horse, not learn.

I think Let Me Tell You About the Hole in my Face can be interpreted as that knack fanfiction has of taking an existing character and finding new depth to them. Like, it builds on AJ and when you start thinking about it, why wouldn't she have such insecurities? Sometimes, to be strong, you gotta hide things. Put up a mask. Or show your hole proudly— dammit, Bad! I'm not trying to be pervy! :twilightangry2: Well, I think the story can fit AJ. I kinda wonder what inspired this fic. It has that kind of feel that there's source material here.

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This collab needs to happen. Throw Titty D in there. The story needs quality control and supreme standards. But mostly because Admiral Biscuit is dead and you guys need a replacement. I saw Bad Horse shank him hardcore. I never knew a horse could do knife tricks with a knife, let alone a trench knife, but that is what Uncle Bad did (he really wanted his shirt). So unless you want to be working with the Corpse of Admiral Biscuit, I suggest the giant dragon made of titanium. But what do I know. Ghost is dead (maybe?), so maybe collaborating with a dead corpse man isn't so bad.

Also, Titty D would make a great shield against the blender :B

3429720 3429814 Did you read and love the whole Iliad, all 150,000-230,000 word of it, or just parts of it? What was it about it that you liked? Did you like the characters?

How do you get past the fact that they're vain, barbaric, utterly selfish, amoral jocks who are there for no reason except to win personal glory by killing more people, raping more women, and stealing more stuff than the next guy? Neither side has a good reason to fight. They say they're fighting for honor, but neither side is very honorable. The message appears to be that nothing you do matters, since the gods already have everything planned out, so you should forget morality and just kill as many people as you can, whenever you can, and bring yourself up high by casting others down low, because that's all you can do. Also, if you aren't a son or grandson of the gods, you're screwed; you'll never be of any use to anybody except to be killed by somebody who is and bring them glory.

What is the point of it all? Who am I supposed to be rooting for and why?

Part of the problem for me is that I hated everyone except Hector. Most of the Iliad shows Greeks I loathed killing Trojans I'd never heard of, or else Trojans killing Greeks I'd never heard of. The only thing I wanted was to see Agamemnon, Ajax, Achilles, or one of those other Greek jerks get killed, and for Hector to survive.

The Iliad promulgates a kind of ethics for sociopaths, which is supposed to help a tribal society survive without relying on love or friendship or self-sacrifice, and without weakening it with morality. There are parts that depict deep loving friendships, but the emphasis is on motivating men to fight by appealing to their personal vanity. And it can't even say they're fighting for their countries, or their families, or their lives. Homer thinks that for the Trojans to say "here's Helen, goodbye" and live their lives would just be pointless, because they're pathetic mortals and everything they do is pathetic, and the only thing worthwhile is proving that you're better than some other guy by killing him and raping his women. They are fighting because there is nothing else worth doing, mortal lives are not worth living. Or, alternately, they can't stop fighting, because they're puppets of the gods, who will make them fight until one side is dead. This is deeply, deeply fatalistic and nihilistic stuff.

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But I'm talking about written Greek language:

You've got Linear B being used by accountants and folks like that during the Mycenean period during which the Trojan War allegedly took place, but that syllabary disappears after the Bronze Age Collapse--'round about 1100 BC. That's when the oral poets started improvising the Epic Cycle using the techniques of oral-formulaic composition since, well, they didn't know how to write. By the time the ancient Greek alphabet came into widespread use around 800 BC, the bits and pieces that make up what we now know as the Iliad and the Odyssey were already being recited all over Greece. They got further worked on orally till Peisistratos, the tyrant of Athens in the mid-500s BC, had the things written down.

All of the above is still violently argued over in Classics circles, of course, which is one reason I got out of Classics circles 30 years ago. There's no way to prove most of it one way or the other, either. :twilightoops:

Mike Again

3429990 I have some of the same problems.

I vaguely remember Odysseus pretty summarily executing a captured Trojan as well.

Partially I confess that I may reading into it, but for me Homer is concerned with death--it's inevitability and it's frequency. The Aegean is a sea of war. Here is no Valhalla--they go whimpering into the dark. And I think that was the point. That heroes, the mighty, are no different in their dying. That it is incredibly stupid.


The most interesting thing in it, for me, was Achilles. Achilles is not human. He is a machine of death. At best a child. But by the end he is almost human. His dealings with Priam are strange, for at last he is beginning to realize what it means, I think, to kill. A mourning father who wants his child back. Behind all of the pomp and sociopathic slaughter and divine intervention, you have Hektor's family and his father. Snuffed out by blind and futile things.

Whether my own isogetical tendency or not, I began to read it as something of a lament.


It's why I think Aeneas is far better hero.

3430000

I vaguely remember Odysseus pretty summarily executing a captured Trojan as well.

Oh, that's nothing. In the Odyssey, he casually recounts how, after the war, he and his men enslaved an entire fishing village because....well, just because. And Nausicaa's court just nods and says, "Well, that's fair." That was just how life was, back then.

What is the point of it all? Who am I supposed to be rooting for and why?

I think the prime draw is to read about what life was like back then. Not literally what it was like, but symbolically. Art like that survives because it was created to support the culture (well, both art and culture are created to support economics, but that's a whole other thing). We may not understand or like what's going on, but that's what those ancient Greeks actually believed the world was like. Gods fucking with people and violent, bloody kings following their friends into battle for a warped -- by our modern sensibilities -- sense of honor and brotherhood.

Despite the Disney movie, Hercules was not a nice guy. In fact, his main trait was that he would fly into rages and kill innocent people with his tremendous strength, and then when he came to his senses again, he'd feel really, really bad about it. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that all Greek culture heroes save Theseus -- or maybe it was Perseus? -- are incredibly hot-headed and violent warriors. Their culture was built on an economic foundation of slavery and conquest. Of course their cultural myths would reflect a martial spirit.

It's not a place I'd want to live, but it's darkly fascinating to visit.

As for the capriciousness of the gods, to be honest, I'd prefer that mentality to the Christian one. It keeps you on your toes better than the constant whinging of:

"WE'RE A GODLY NATION AND WE ARE PERFECT SO WHY DOES BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO US?!!!!"

"God has a plan, my child."

3429990

This is deeply, deeply fatalistic and nihilistic stuff.

Exactly:

There's nothing that we would call realism in the whole piece. It's all about the soap opera and the grandstanding and the absolute certainty that you and the majority of the people you know are going to die before they reach forty with no rhyme or reason for their lives or deaths. Two people get a sour throat: one feels better in a few days, the other dies coughing up blood.

The ancient Greeks subscribed very heavily to the Great Man Theory--which is why it's only single combat in the Iliad--and were huge believers in the concept of the Golden Age--a time when, as Douglas Adams puts it, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. The people listening to the Iliad saw themselves as weak and unimportant, and it was in the interests of their overlords to keep them thinking that. So the poems underline that we are lesser beings than those who lived before, that we are degraded models from these strong, healthy individuals who could take what they wanted whenever they wanted it. We should just count ourselves lucky that we've got our local tyrant to take care of us.

I mean, the ancients made the argument that Athenian democracy only came about because the noble-born Solon thought, when the other nobles made him archon in 595 BC, it might be a good idea to reduce tensions between the various factions in town but getting them all into one place and forcing them to cooperate. No "people's revolution" for them....

Mike, Rambling During my Lunch Hour

3429525 Or?
3429995 Now you've got me thinking about Twilight going on about Ancient Unicornian and how its roots go all the way back to Dracon-B, which was actually an accounting method used by dragons to track their treasure hoards by cutting notches in pieces of stone, until they invented Woodcarving....

You mention that JediMasterEd published. This felt strange to me, as I never saw it on my feed, and I KNOW I follow him.


Except I am not and when the hell did that happen!

3430000 3429630 There's a good story in there about Achilles and Hector, and it makes me wonder if that wasn't the original story, and it accumulated more and more over the centuries. The text we have comes from the 9th or 10th century A.D. Or if the written script was never meant to be performed, but was like the complete source code to an interactive fiction--that a bard was expected to tell only a tiny part of it to any given audience. It's very modular; you could cut small and large pieces out of it and never miss them. Maybe you told just the parts concerning the ancestors of whichever group you were singing to. (Barding to? Did they have a word for that?)

3430249
Duuuuuuuuuuude... you have missed out on quite a few hilarious blogposts, including musings on a mythical creature christened a "Eunuchorn". Now, you should make sure you didn't accidentally block him instead :trollestia:

3429990

What is the point of it all? Who am I supposed to be rooting for and why?

I felt much the same way about Roger Zelazny's Amber series.

(Easily his weakest stuff and his most enduringly popular. Direct lineal antecedent of Game of Thrones only much better-written: Zelazny on his worst day still beats George R. R. Martin on his best--there, I said it).

Thanks for the shout-out on Horse Trading! I'll send you your cut through PayPal, as usual :ajsmug:

My opinion of The Giving Tree changed significantly as a result of writing "Never too far from the Tree." Before I started writing my opinion was much like Applejack's, expressed with much the same emphasis. I still react to the story that way on an emotional level.

But writing my little drabble forced me to revisit The Giving Tree, and "reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it..." I could see that thematically it's actually quite complex and subtle, my standards for those terms being that a complex theme can't be summed up in a phrase, and a subtle one must be conveyed emotionally rather than didactically.

I still don't like The Giving Tree, but I respect it now. I could go into more detail but this isn't the place for it. Maybe I'll write a blog post about it someday.

I still think the way some people kvell over the The Giving Tree shows little they understand it. It's pretty creepy too.

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3429720

Maybe a more amusing version of the Illiad, Bad Horse?

:trollestia:

I suspect the enjoyment of the Iliad or other early classics is mostly anthropological. It's not a work of literature it is an artifact of a long-gone culture. I've certainly not enjoyed much of ancient literature as a thumping good read, but I've still adored reading, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh as a chance to connect to minds so vastly older than my own. A rule of thumb is that, if the book has to come with explanatory[1] footnotes, you aren't meant to enjoy it on its own merits but study it an a very specific context.

[1] Rather than diverting and humorous. Ahem.

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'course I'm dead. I'm a ghost of an ancient Greek grump and occasional philosopher.

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(Easily his weakest stuff and his most enduringly popular. Direct lineal antecedent of Game of Thrones only much better-written: Zelazny on his worst day still beats George R. R. Martin on his best--there, I said it).

QFT!

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I still don't like The Giving Tree, but I respect it now. I could go into more detail but this isn't the place for it. Maybe I'll write a blog post about it someday.

*puppy-eyed hopeful look* :applecry:

I still think the way some people kvell over the The Giving Tree shows little they understand it. It's pretty creepy too.

I learned a new word! :pinkiehappy:

3430400

A rule of thumb is that, if the book has to come with explanatory[1] footnotes, you aren't meant to enjoy it on its own merits but study it an a very specific context.

Speak for yourself. I thoroughly enjoyed the following passage when I reached it this afternoon, and I didn't even need the footnotes to understand it. Or, for that matter, the context, because it is timeless.

"O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!
Love takes the meaning in love's conference.
I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit
So that but one heart we can make of it;
Two bosoms interchained with an oath;
So then two bosoms and a single troth.
Then by your side no bed-room me deny;
For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie."

Translation: "When I said 'two bosoms', I was talking poetically about our hearts, and not about your boobs. Can we please cuddle now?"

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I'm not saying you can't enjoy it. I'm saying that you aren't meant to enjoy it. It's not expected, though it is a delightful bonus.

3429990

This is the value of a well-led class discussion, I think. I also liked Hector best, but 'liking' didn't really come into it. We discussed the politics, the concepts of honor being advanced, and how the various characters' actions would have been understood contemporarily, among other things. Achilles' parading of Hector's body before the gates of Troy would have been shocking to the ancient Greeks, for instance--it was meant to demonstrate that his grief over Patroclus had driven him beyond the pale.

Mortality is a major preoccupation for the Illiad. As Baal Bunny mentioned, Greeks were fixated on the Great Man Theory, and part of that reason was that it was viewed as immortality of a sort--that which was available to mere mortals. On one level, the Illiad is a very early attempt at metaphysics--it's about why shit happens and how limited the efforts of even the truly great are against the happening of shit.

Unfortunately, I don't remember which translation we read, because I suspect that makes a difference. However, having actually interesting and thought-provoking discussion on the work while you're reading probably makes an even bigger difference.

3430446

Enter Bottom, with the ass head

Oh, you better believe I disagree with that.

3430292

Man, I loved the Amber books, but I still wonder what we lost when he wasn't able to do the last five. They suffer from not being as tight as something like Lord of Light, but it was still a really fun ride, and I think more accessible than some of his other stuff.


3430400

I think this is where I brag that we found a copy of this at Powell's that's signed by Zelazny. Very happy to have that one on our shelf.

3430467

And Cranky says "Well Doctor, it's about this growth on my ass..."

3430489

"....and it hath no bottom."

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I respect that you enjoy it, but I am given to understand that a great majority of of people don't find Shakespeare's comedies particularly funny[1] including Our Gracious Host. I would also like to point out that your enjoyment notwithstanding, the existence of explanatory footnotes, glosses and so on, implies that people will need aid in understanding either the language or the context or both. This means, that you are made at least somewhat distant from the material itself: you cannot interface with it directly and must study it instead. I believe that this view nicely accounts for why so many people[2] find certain works impenetrable, boring, or just annoying.

[1] It's a mixed bag for me, personally, but I do enjoy the sharpness of the wit in Twelfth Night, say.
[2] Though, clearly, not you.


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Oh, wow. I am suitably impressed and slightly-more-than-suitably envious. :twilightsmile:

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I am given to understand that a great majority of of people don't find Shakespeare's comedies particularly funny[1] including Our Gracious Host.

Oh God that's putting it mildly. You should've heard him going on at BronyCon...

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According to my brother (studying classics), the modular-presentation idea is correct. The storyteller would focus on the characters popular in whatever area they were performing in - people who hailed from the region, or ones that had a major impact on it. Apparently, a lot of the content is a basic framework designed as a starting point for customized embellishment, and that stuff is "relentlessly dull" if it's not tailored for the audience.

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Looks like the cultural examination angle has already been dealt with it more detail by other people, so I'll just stick with voicing my agreement on that subject. Tangent time!

I do hope it's not necessary to point out that the whinging described there isn't supported by either doctrine or the more levelheaded Christians. Obviously that doesn't stop the hardcore whingers from making a fuss, but it doesn't seem justified to hold their actions against Christianity as a whole any more than it would to, say, hold pseudoscientists' actions against the scientific establishment.

Personally, I recommend pointing out to any whingers you encounter willing to listen that yes, God does have a plan for them: stop whinging and go make the world better. Maybe it doesn't keep you on your toes in the same way the Greek gods would, but it's a fair sight better than sitting around lamenting the state of things.

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I've had Zelazny's works recommended to me before, and I may finally get the chance to actually check them out soon. What order would you suggest doing so in?

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Any order: This Immortal. Doorways in the Sand. Lord of Light

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Sure, people are allowed to not enjoy it, but I think the fact that Shakespearean comedies still being constantly staged and filmed and quoted four hundred years later means it's not a great majority that dislikes them by any stretch. But, to each their own.

As for the language difficulties, that's definitely for beginners, but the same could be said of German. The more you study it, the more understanding it fluently becomes second-nature. I would be astonished if somebody said, "German literature isn't meant to be enjoyed because I don't understand it right away."*

I don't even really need the footnotes at all by now. I just breeze through the text, going, "Dick joke, poetic image, dick joke about a poetic image, poetic image about a dick joke...."

* actually, as a US citizen, no I wouldn't.

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It's debatable how entwined that mindset is with the father figure aspects of Christianity, but out of respect for Christians as a whole I'm going to bow out of it now, so please ignore my glib remark.

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"German literature isn't meant to be enjoyed because I don't understand it right away."*

* actually, as a US citizen, no I wouldn't.

"Wagner's music is really much better than it sounds."

--Some redneck 'Murican, who cares?

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At first, I was going to put French literature, but then I figured that would open the floodgates for jokes about how French literature isn't supposed to be enjoyed. I figured German, Das Land der Dichter und Denker, would be a safer bet.

Thanks for proving me wrong, Mister Ed.

P.S. That's not a Twain quote, that's Twain quoting someone -- someone from Maine, specifically.

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"At Athens, by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes (Greek bards) should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival... The Hipparchus adds that the law required the rhapsodists to follow on from one another in order, "as they still do". This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laertius (1.2.57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited "with prompting". Many Athenian laws were falsely attributed to early lawgivers, but it is at least clear that by the fourth century the Homeric poems were a compulsory part of the Panathenaea, and were to be recited in order. They are too long for a single rhapsode or for a single day's performance. Therefore they had to be divided into parts, and each rhapsode had to take his assigned part (otherwise they would have chosen favourite or prize passages)."

- from wikipedia

It is also, I think, worth noting that Greek poetry sounds better in Greek, and that two and a bit thousand years ago there were fewer opportunities for any kind of entertainment that didn't involve beating something to death.

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