Inspiring faith and creativity and exploring the arts through a spiritual lens.

Joined May 2017
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The characterisation of Mr and Mrs Bennet in Pride & Prejudice is brilliant. Mr Bennet married for looks and has since come to regret having done so. He copes with Mrs Bennet’s ceaseless prattle by shutting himself in the library, and has developed a caustic, sharp-edged humor (some intriguing parallels are drawn between him and Charlotte Lucas). He is a negligent father who seems only to care for Lizzy. Non-readers often assume that Austen’s books are syrupy odes to the joys of romance and marriage. Part of the cleverness of her writing is that, with a handful of exceptions, most of the married couples in her stories are miserable. A good marriage is possible, but by no means guaranteed. She is a hard-nosed realist, and her eye misses nothing.
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I should, shouldn't I? Ok Both MacDonald and Wolfe are Christian fantasy authors separated by about 100 years from each other Both authors favor mystery over explanation. They don't hold your hand or even really tell you what is going on. They provide hints that connect scenes thematically but not at the plot level. Both authors use stories-within-stories as microcosms of the larger story going on but they don't provide any explanation (especially Phantastes). They are both deeply sacramentalist/symbolist in their approach to story telling much to the frustration of the reader! They both believe that physical reality consists of signs and symbols that point to a hidden, divine reality. The difference between them is perhaps this: MacDonald is more dream logic and Wolfe is more technical engineer. I'm interested in other thoughts
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All this Narnia talk is making me think it’s time to re-read the series
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It’s time for Wednesday Snippets! Share a line or two from your WIP. Please keep it PG-13. - Admin R
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Wedding dress, 1865. Whitaker Auctions
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“Green is the warning color of the fairy world,” notes Katherine Langrish, “and has been considered unlucky right down into modern times (you should never wear green at a wedding).” Famously, the heroes of The Silver Chair are bedeviled by a Lady in a Green Kirtle, whose color pays homage to the Green Knight and suggests perilous enchantment. There is also a Scots fairy-tale, “The Fair Gruagach,” featuring a powerful sorceress known as the Dame of the Fine Green Kirtle, which Lewis may have read. In the Scots ballad “Alison Gross,” a witch transforms a young man into a great serpent by blowing three times upon a “grass-green horn.”
❤️ how in Gawain and the Green Knight the first indication that anything untoward is about to happen is the sheer greenness of the knight, how even his horse is green, that he’s greener than any grass you’ve even seen 💚
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“Ok” looks unfinished, okay?
People who write okay instead of ok. What are you trying to prove?
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Totally off topic but I actually think it's fun to write epic fantasy at this scale. Yes, the fates of nations hang in the balance, and one false move and the magic that defines the world will be utterly unmade. But there's still only maybe 1000 men on the field max! It's...
This is viking raid small. Early medieval scale. We should be seeing tens of thousands, but this looks like 2-5. And it’s the *combined* armies of men and elves. And you can literally only go down from here. Their version of the War of the Last Alliance is gonna be 12 dudes
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As much as I enjoy learning about authors just for the sake of it, this is very true! A book is written for the sake of the book, for the joy and knowledge it conveys, not for the aggrandizement of any individual and particularly not the author. It's best not to forget that.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 329:
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Not to hate on fanfic, sinceI know many authors who genuinely love it and found it formative in their writing journey, but observations like this are something we have to reckon with. It's one of those unintended-consequences things, though giving into appetites never goes well.
The number one problem with fanfic in the modern age is the following.... Years ago, people would start writing their juvenilia, and everyone knew it was bad. The writer knew that it need work. The readers knew that it need work. The writer would be encouraged to do better and, with time, usually did. But with fanfic, bad writing gets rewarded. If the person's writing is bad, but it also happens to scratch some wish fulfillment itch of the fandom, they can get millions of downloads for really bad writing. This means they never learn to improve. The result is a whole bunch of TV shows and comics that are horrible, because the writers have learned everything they know from being rewarded from writing fanfic--while still being immature writers. They've never had to learn to be a good writer, to tell a good story. As soon as they move outside of the audience of people who have wish fulfillment desires about a particular story, they can't write a story that holds a larger audience. So the problem is not that fanfic is good or fanfic is bad--the problem is that people are being rewarded for writing bad stories and any attempt to say "This storytelling is immature: this writer needs to improve" gets attacked over and over and over again. In other words, it's not writing in someone else's background or writing in your own background that is the problem, it's the audience giving the writer false positives.
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So one of the stories I read to my students describes "a golden crown, triple-locked" (it's The Fisherman and his Wife, where the wife asks a magic fish to make her become the Pope) and I have no idea what "triple-locked" means. Google isn't helping. Do y'all know?
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In Old English, a turtle was called a byrdling, which meant ‘little table’ or ‘little shield’. 🐢🐢🐢
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“With only six novels, Jane Austen is one of the most prolific authors of all time” Once again I am begging people to learn what words mean
All Of Jane Austen's Heroines, Ranked With only 6 novels, Jane Austen is one of the most prolific authors of all time, and she has a litany of wonderful heroines for fans to engage with. Read More: bit.ly/4yyWIH7
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Jane Austen wrote only six novels. Collins Dictionary defines a prolific writer as producing a large number of works, unlike authors with hundreds or thousands of books on typical lists of the most prolific. collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/eng… britannica.com/question/What-… cbr.com/jane-austen-he… tckpublishing.com/prolific-autho…
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Ball gown, 1852. FIDM Museum.
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I think we should generally encourage people not to watch things based on content rather than genre or medium. When you say “don’t watch anime” or “don’t watch horror” you are not encouraging discernment based on the actual content, but saying because these mediums and genres CAN have issues they should be avoided altogether. But I don’t think everyone who likes creepy movies is revelling in gore or causing themselves to fall into anxiety and not everyone who watches anime is watching animated porn.
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Viggo Mortensen leads an audience in a rendition of Aragorn’s song from the end of Return Of The King 🎶
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Dream job
Para mi trabajo actual estoy consultando cinco (en ocasiones seis) libros de #Tolkien a la vez... pero ¡bendita locura! No lo cambio por nada.
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Ball gown by House of Paquin, 1895. The MET.
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‘Sense & Sensibility’ a novel by Jane Austen. The story contrasts the entanglements of the Dashwood sisters—Elinor of ‘Sense’ & Marianne of emotional ‘sensibility’. Forced from their family estate, the sisters navigate societal pressures, heartache & growth in Regency-era England
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