Imo Kai (who I Think Was Probably Bi And Was Definitely Dating Jennifer) Wanted To Be With Mickey Because

some book armand descriptions that tickled me

yes i know the baratheon brothers are all representations of the different types of toxic masculinity. im still doing fuck marry kill with them

Why do people talk about how harrowing Watership Down was but never mention Cowslip's warren... There are a group of anthropomorphic rabbits in this children's fantasy novel that have accepted their role as living meat. They've convinced themselves that to kick and struggle is to defy the will of a god confined to the tortured ramblings of their poet caste, who beg for their throats to snap under shining wire as their kin look on in polite fascination. They speak with lobotomised tongues and shun their culture for that of their devourers, pushing stones into walls, digging agoraphobic atriums under which to sit in silence, awaiting a fate they are forbidden to name. Why don't we talk about this

Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

Edgar Allan Poe

I love that the Prince that was Promised prophecy involves a mistranslation. Of course it could also be a princess--gender is only of the most inconsistent grammatical rules across language boundaries.

It seems all gruff and barbaric likewise that the Dothraki language has no word for 'thank you,' but why would it? The major plot point involving Dothraki culture is that gifts are given and repaid in their own time. If you pass someone horsemeat around the campfire, the action is not complete until they hand you fermented mare's milk a week later. Perhaps then you then say some polite phrase which we do not see and which does not translate into English, indicating the debt has been resolved. Language both forms and is formed by the society in which it lives.

Here's a question: when the characters in Westeros see 'lion lizards' and 'spicy peppers stuffed with cheese,' what are they describing? Unsurprisingly lion-lizards, the predatory, reptilian, swamp-dwelling sigil of house Reed, seem to be alligators, which get their English name from the Spanish for 'the lizard.' Peppers stuffed with cheese are just what they sound like, though in English we call them chiles rellenos, a name borrowed from Spanish. As the Spanish language has no presence and no analogue in ASoIaF, Westeros has to describe these concept using its own words and its own concepts.

Now imagine we have a character whose name is a common noun, being discussed with someone who does not speak the language that noun exists in. The name might be shared phonetically, or it might be translated to the new language--especially if, say, the communication happens more on the level of concepts than on the level of words. For a name like Bloodraven this is easy enough. All languages have a word for blood, and all have a word for shiny black corvids, although they may or may not distinguish them from crows. But what about a name that's a little more specific? A culture that's extremely tree-focused have a word for every part of a tree, for example, and they may have a name for every part of every type of tree. But when translating a name meaning 'two month old bud on the upper branch of a weirwood' into the Common Tongue, for example, perhaps the best translation they could come up with would just be Leaf.

Bran is another example. Someone from the North would know it's a nickname of Brandon. Someone without that context might assume it refers to the edible husk removed from grain. And finally, someone whose culture eats a grain without a husk that needs removing might understand Bran's name as simply "Corn! Corn! Corn!"

Watership Down + textposts

SACRIFICIAL LAMB.

Being into gothic horror is wild, because you’ll look up the reviews/public opinion on a book and all the posts will be like “ugh, this was insufferable. The main character was the most melodramatic whiny narcissist cunt who’s perspective I’ve ever had the displeasure of following. When the main character wasn’t whining, it was just pages and pages of the most useless boring shit describing stupid landscapes over and over again. Boring and insufferable to read.”

And then you’ll get the book and read it and it’ll be like “Hi, I’m gothic protagonist. My entire family got brutally murdered by an unknown person and I also got horrifically abused as a child and struggle with severe mental illness, and now there’s unholy paranormal forces at work all against me, but at least I have the love of my life and my closest friends who I’d kill and die for and they’d do the same for me. Even though I’m cripplingly psychologically unwell and severely burdened with the mass of terrible things in my past, I’m going to figure out and track down the thing that killed my family and seek to destroy it, whilst poetically mirroring my suffering with the most beautiful and profound descriptions of the nature around me that you’ve ever read, contrasting the horror of nature with the beauty and goodness of it and giving you an existential crisis. This book is going to make you so ridiculously attached to these characters and change your whole perception of the life you lead.”

Not everyone gets lucky enough to find a soulmate like this. None of this would have happened if I'd never boarded this spaceship, so all hail the great loan shark, Darius Blank. Thanks, Darius.

MICKEY 17 (2025) dir. Bong Joon Ho