I’ve been watching Good Omens for ’ll of about ten minutes and I have to say, I do like the poetry between hell’s most angelic demon and heaven’s most demonic angel coexisting
Through watching the rest of the show I went from “worst demon and worst angel- a demon that is too kind and an angel that is too hedonistic”, to “best demon and best angel- a demon so rebellious he can’t even cooperate with the rebellion and an angel so angelic he was ordered to love humanity and now refuses to stop”, and having finished, now, I’ve found myself resting on “two beings who are in fact very very human and love each other very much”
I don’t think I ever wanted to be anything more than a storyteller and a writer. Other people can decide where the books get shelved.
@eurphrasie That felt rude. Since when is fantasy not literature?!
You know, It’s kind of fitting that It was Sir Terry Pratchett himself who answered this question in an interview, just going to paste this up real fast:
O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?
Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.
O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.
P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.
O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.
P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.
Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.
(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.
Have to say I agree with the man.
It’s the casual death threat for me
Rude ass interviewer who also doesn’t know what they’re talking about: “I mean, you’re obviously a clever man, so why bother with this lowly fantasy drivel.”
Sir Terry Pratchett: “I’ll break you in half like a stick.”
god i love reading about stupid drama in ancient greece. like there was an athlete named theagenes who was so good at every kind of athletic contest that when he died, one of his opponents would go to beat the shit out of a statue of him out of spite, but then one day the statue fell on the guy and killed him so the greeks took the statue to court for murder, convicted it, and threw it into the sea
actually i left out the best part of this story which is that a plague then struck and when people consulted the oracle at delphi she was like “well you’ve pissed of theagenes” so they had to go dig the statue back up out of the fucking water
Nicola Scott, a hero who loves Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, pitching the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman 80th anniversary covers: they all face the front of the cover in the same position, showcasing their different suits over the years!
Dc: Fantastic. Fantastic work, Nicola. Now how about Dick Grayson?
Nicola Scott, a hero who loves Dick Grayson but who also understands Dick Grayson on a fundamental level:
Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.
Who makes the porn bots.
Where do they come from. What do
they hope to achieve.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.
do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?
My voice repeats what
you all say: I love you I
love you I love you.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
ALT
