Jack Law's Lord of the Rings Thread.

[luka]

Of course there's always lots of fuzziness around what your 'thing' might consist of

 

[Corpsey]

Yes I've always wanted a "thing". A road to Damascus lightning bolt that defines what the rest of my life should be about. Instead I'm always dipping my toes in various shallows.

 

[constant escape]

@Corpsey Well what do you think is important? What do you think much of everything boils down to?

 

[version]

Where were we having a big discussion about the fantasy genre recently?

Idle Rich Turns `The Wheel of Time.'

this is a thread for Rich to explain the Wheel of Time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

dissensus.com

 

[luka]

That's right.

 

[version]

Yeah, that's true - I sometimes get depressed about that. That you only get one shot at life and so you only experience a tiny fraction of what could be experienced. But of course that's the universal experience of individuals. I suppose you can make a concerted effort to broaden your range of experience, at least.

Sylvia Plath's fig tree,

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

Sylvia Plath's fig tree,

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Plath was talented ambitious and hardworking. For the rest of us those figs would be
Option 1. Have a beer
Option 2. Play skyrim
Option 3. Have a wank
Option 4. Stare at the wall
Option 5. Despair

 

[version]

The narrowing of possibility is fucking terrifying. The thought that at some point you have to be something in particular and choose not to be everything else.

 

[luka]

I chose pretty early so I don't really care

 

[luka]

I mean, you get to 18 and realise you'll never ride a skateboard get to 25 and realise you'll never get a university education get to 40 and realise you'll never have kids but oh well

 

[luka]

Looking back I think my problem was more I didn't want to do anything. It all looked like a waste of time.

 

[Leo]

I think most people tend to fall into things in life. they may have an inclination for or against certain life choices, but those are usually very broad, vague guard rails. I never mapped out a career path with a goal at the end, just started out with a general notion of something I was sort of decent at and it meandered from there.

 

[version]

There's a letter Hunter Thompson wrote to a friend of his when they were teenagers where he says something along the lines of a choice will eventually be made and if not by you then by circumstance.

 

[Leo]

when I was in college, I lived next door to a guy who was majoring in accounting. I couldn't wrap my head around how an 18-year old could decide on such a boring career choice. maybe he was more focused on the salary potential. or who knows, maybe he somehow found it to be challenging and exciting.

 

[version]

Yeah, I know very few people like that. There's a character in a DFW novel who goes from a stoner to an accountant. Weird arc. He ends up in some sort of introductory class to accounting or something and gets completely sucked in and decides that's what he wants to do.

 

[woops]

Mind you, academia is basically a more respectable form of 'fandom', isn't it?

knowing more about one tiny speciality than about 5 other people in the world, and therefore
having furious arguments over tiny points of disagreement
engaging with teenagers, on their level
spending all day in a room piled high with books and ephemera and a flickering computer screen

 

[version]

The guy I knew who was in academia left and got a normal job. I see quite a few online saying they got fed up with it too, e.g.

I pursued graduate work in philosophy after getting my Bachelor's and very quickly decided to do something else with my life because I just couldn't put up with the bullshit of academia... The job market is terrible, there's enormous pressure to publish, there's increasing specialization in the discipline as a whole and within sub-disciplines, such that you feel like you're writing or caring about increasingly, increasingly minor or finer distinctions to the point where you don't even know what the fuck the original point was.

 

[shiels]

Where were we having a big discussion about the fantasy genre recently? It's inherently backward looking and that seems to correlate to inherently reactionary.
NRx is computer programmers dreaming of feudalism and buxom serving wenches carrying jugs of mead and that is exactly the audience for fantasy

matrix vs ghostbusters thread maybe?

My view is that in the case of the trenchcoat warlock tolkien bro perspective we have someone who, in their most sensitive years , acutely aware of their social status (none), has been excluded boxed in and perhaps feels deserving

And this makes them believe that a deep level that this is how the world works, stratum of people etc, its traumatic and they get stuck here for one reason or another

And through fantasy they transmute some of the pain with even more extreme strata, goblins and shit, but in their fantasy the nerds can win the girl etc, there is also some justice and rules and retribution

Im fascinated by this type, a real commitment to skull stuff etc. totally dedicated

 

[luka]

It was idle rich turns the wheel of time the archivist remembered