John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1 [originally Published 1667]

“The little dot we live on.” The Book of knowledge. v. 7. 1912.

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guys I finally did it. I procrastinated something so hard I actually made a uquiz.

mental health status: need to look at the sea for hours and stay quiet

btw you can use whatever gender seasonings you want. paint your nails, wear breast forms, wear a binder, pack, tuck, dress however you want, whatever. you are adding ingredients to your gender soup.

listen atla fandom we don’t talk enough about Iroh’s redemption arc.

i feel like we all just sort of take it for granted that he was always like that? because he was kind to Zuko, and he’s largely presented, in the context of the show, as being a kindly, wise old man who makes a lot of dumb jokes. but Iroh was a general in the Fire Nation army! he was going to become the Firelord! he laid siege to Ba Sing Se! he was a hugely powerful bender, and i’m sure that the Earth Kingdom was (rightfully) terrified of him for a while.

but then Lu Ten died, and Iroh came home. not long afterwards, his father died, and Ozai took the throne. at this point, Iroh had begun to see the horrors of the Fire Nation, the damage his family had done. and he made the conscious, active choice to be kind. he saw the cruelty that his people had inflicted, that he had inflicted, and he went and did better. He was kind to Zuko when no one else around him was, he was kind to the soldiers that had essentially been banished alongside them, he was kind to Song and her family and to Toph and to the whole Gaang and to just about every person he came across, with the (understandable) exception of those who were actively trying to kill him and/or Zuko. he saw everything that his people had done, and he decided that he wouldn’t be party to that any longer.

honestly, it reminds me of Aang, in a way. the major difference between Aang and Iroh, as far as their characterisation and their kindness, is that Aang was born and raised in gentility and kindness and peace, and Iroh very much wasn’t. He chose those things, even after everything that had happened to him, when it would have made just as much sense for him to become another Jeong Jeong, or even an Ozai. but he didn’t. he refused to. he, like Aang, chose kindness in the end, and that made all the difference.

Literature transcends the boundaries of time and space, letting us know we are not alone in our adversities.

When you read Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy, you understand that you are not the first human to feel like your existence will crumble down like ash because of your inability to choose. When you read Santiago’s tale by Hemingway, you know that there is grace and dignity even in loss. When you read Kafka, you realise that there was someone else like you who felt like he couldn't explain his soul to others.

Is there a greater companionship in this world than the ink of a human’s vulnerability? Even in the pits of isolation, we are never alone.

i said i was going to arrange a list of my favorite articles/criticism about shakespeare, so here’s my first little roundup! obligatory disclaimer that i don’t necessarily agree with or endorse every single point of view in each word of these articles, but they scratch my brain. will add to this list as i continue reading, and feel free to add your own favorites in the reblogs! :]

essays

Is Shakespeare For Everyone? by Austin Tichenor (a basic examination of that question)

Interrogating the Shakespeare System by Madeline Sayet (counterpoint/parallel to the above; on Shakespeare’s place in, and status as, imperialism)

Shakespeare in the Bush by Laura Bohannan (also a good parallel to the above; on whether Shakespeare is really culturally “universal”)

The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness (“I was trying to make sense of the different ways men and women related to Ophelia. Women seemed to invoke her like a patron saint; men seemed mostly interested in fetishizing her flowery, waterlogged corpse.”)

Hamlet Is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One (on teaching shakespeare plays about suicide to high schoolers)

Commuting With Shylock by Dara Horn (on listening to MoV with a ten-year-old son, as modern jewish people, to look at that eternal question of Is This Play Antisemitic?)

All That Glisters is Not Gold (NPR episode, on whether it’s possible to perform othello, taming of the shrew, & merchant to do good instead of harm)

academic articles

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to the Merchant of Venice (apologies about the highlights here; they are not mine; i scanned this from my rented copy)

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to Henry the Fourth part 1 (and apologies for the angled page scans on this one; see above)

Richard II: A Modern Perspective by Harry Berger Jr (this is the article that made me understand richard ii)

Hamlet’s Older Brother (“Hamlet and Prince Hal are in the same situation, the distinction resting roughly on the difference between the problem of killing a king and the problem of becoming one. … Hamlet is literature’s Mona Lisa, and Hal is the preliminary study for it.”)

Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony & Cleopatra Criticism (about more than just reviewers; my favorite deconstruction of shakespeare’s cleopatra in general)

Strange Flesh: Antony and Cleopatra and the Story of the Dissolving Warrior (“If Troilus and Cressida is [Shakespeare’s] vision of a world in which masculinity must be enacted in order to exist, Antony and Cleopatra is his vision of a world in which masculinity not only must be enacted, but simply cannot be enacted, his vision of a world in which this particular performance has broken down.”)

misc

Elegy of Fortinbras by Zbigniew Herbert (poem that makes me fucking insane)

Dirtbag Henry IV (what it sounds like.)

Cleopatra and Antony by Linda Bamber (what if a&c… was good.)

No— it was the sort of seeing that unfastens the lacrimae rerum, tears of things. We drowned, not knowing we stood in water.

— Maya C. Popa, from "The Tears of Things," Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

People often wonder why writers are intricate in describing feelings and sentiments in words. It's because we've experienced the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and everything in between. This is one of the reasons I can only write about melancholy feelings - I never had an adequate number of happy recollections to expound on, which thus is the motivation behind why I can't portray happiness in words.

you're always getting statues made, himmel. because i want everyone to remember us. unlike you we don't live that long. but i guess the biggest reason is so you won't be alone in the future. what does that mean? we're not fairy tales. we really existed.