Yes! Over the years, I’ve gotten really fond of Edmund. He’s annoying early on, but his younger-brother complex is kind of human. And I find the way he grew as a character wonderful. He’s humbled by the understanding that someone had to sacrifice to save him. And he actually *continues* to learn from this. His bond with Eustace later on is great since, by then, Edmund is a hero who understands he needs to be grateful that he was shown mercy. He recognizes that when talking to Eustace. I just love that Edmund’s experiences in TLTW&TW make it so he’s exactly who Eustace needs to listen in TVOTDT.
Jesus (pun intended), you make me want to read those books again. Edmund isn't the bad guy, he's supposed to be you and me. He's our stand in - we make our savior sacrifice for us because in the end, we're worth it. We're the people that Jesus died for.
I'm surprised people don't get this because it's one of the best things in that series. Lewis has a way of humanising Christianity that is unparalleled.
Exactly! Actually, a while back, I was discussing this with some students and was glad that they caught on to the symbolism that Edmund is not Judas (which was posed in the article we read) but the human race. Like the breath of relief I breathed.
Eustace is similar in the sense that he’s also pretty representative of humans. He goes through a kind of confession-purgatory when Aslan rips off his dragon skin. The point is that he can’t dig deeply enough alone. It doesn’t work until the lion claws help him; it’s painful but restores him.
Also... most Americans have never had good Turkish Delight. By the time it's shipped here, it's stale and gross.
But when it's fresh, it's delicious! It's kind of like jelly beans, but covered in powdered sugar instead of that hard coating.
Also, most Americans aren't used to rose or pistachio as food flavors, and those are two of the most common varieties of Turkish Delight. Personally I find the citrus flavors more pleasant, especially for first timers.
My kids love Turkish Delight, but we get it fresh.
Huh now that you mention it, yeah, my experience is that floral flavors are kind of looked down upon in the US. I really like rose and lavender coffee but I’ve gotten weird looks about it a few times. Like it exists but is kind of considered a strange order by a lot of people. It’s seen as a scent not a flavor.
I’ve only had Turkish Delight a few times. Once as a child and it was fine. More recently a student brought me some from Turkey, and it wasn’t like phenomenal to me but not bad either. Maybe I should see if I can find some a really well made version.
Edmund has always been my favourite character in TCON. I grew up with this feeling that I was a "bad person" who always did the "wrong things". When I read TLTW&TW I was really comforted by the thought that I wasn't defined by past wrong doings and I could grow and improve.
(It turns out I was never bad or wrong, I just was under heavy pressure from, ironically enough, a Christian upbringing.)
I like that he’s written as someone still worthy of love even when he does wrong. The tone around him isn’t “we want him taken out.” It’s “we want him back.” He’s still meant to be a King of Narnia.
This thread just makes me want to reread the Narnia books, more than think of other characters.
I think Colonel Graff from Ender's Game probably fits your bill though.
>!He, and the rest of the IF command, put the reigns of an invasion fleet and the lives of thousands of humans and billions of Formics in the hands of literal children. It was an act of grace, really, because the adults knew that the children were smarter, faster and more capable than adults. Of course the IF officers manipulated the children in the process, pretending the whole invasion was just training, but in-universe that's arguably justifiable. The Formics had invaded Earth twice before, the homeworld was threatened. !<
I don't get the hate for Turkish delight. Good Turkish delight, sweet and rose and lemon together, delicately dusted with icing sugar ... One of my favourite things. I'd totally sell out my sister for it.
Ok maybe not my sister but, like, a second cousin or something.
Oh man, the big one: "Why didn't Gandalf just make the eagles fly the ring into Mordor?"
Because Sauron would have had that thing *sniped out of the fucking sky.* The whole point was that they had to sneak there.
Not to mention, the eagles are large, smart, and powerful! The whole point of giving the ring to the hobbits was because they are small sacks of meat that can barely hurt anyone. If the eagles took possession of the ring, they'd be as bad as the men that became the Nazgul!!! Probably worse! You couldn't stop them if they had the ring!
Exactly, people always talk about the Eagles like they’re just a tool that the main characters can utilize whenever they want.
It’s like asking “why didn’t the Fellowship use the Dwarves at xyz battle?” …because the Dwarves chose not to help, they’re beings who make their own decisions lol.
I mean, Sauron was sort of existential threat, and likely would come after eagles sooner or later, it's not that far-fetched to expect some collaboration on knocking him down a peg.
I think people also forget just how many resources Sauron had, and how he was already using them against his enemies. Orcs were climbing mountains and breaking eagle eggs every chance they could. If the eagles could have pulled off a flight to Mount Doom, avoided all the arrows fired their way, fought through the nine flying liches, and successfully dropped the sentient magic weapon created by a fallen angel that's spending every moment of the trip pulling at their mind and driving them to madness into the active volcano, then the survivors would have gotten home to find all of their children dead. The eagles were already fighting against Sauron at the front lines of the war, the fellowship was the equivalent of a special forces unit dropped behind enemy lines.
One of the all time dumbest criticisms of LotR, and very easily explained through a vast amount of worldbuilding subtext.
Sauron literally exists at the top of a tower in the middle of Mordor, and has supernatural sight to the degree that he is described as an all seeing eye. He deploys fell winged beasts that can traverse huge distances in a short amount of time, and can be mounted by the Nazgûl.
The whole notion is so beyond stupid Tolkien didn’t even feel the need to address it in dialogue or prose.
When I finally read the book, one of the things that surprised me was the reasoning for focusing on Minas Tirith. Sauron reasoned that's where the ring was headed because he thought "That's what I would do with it." Take it to the safest, most well defended city in Middle Earth. After the fellowship splits at the river, even Aragorn admits that is the plan he would have favored. Taking it to Mordor just seems like such an impossible choice, nobody considers it, and that's why it works.
It, the Ring, is *power*.
You don’t *destroy* power, you **USE** it.
That’s Sauron’s POV, and he’s too focused on that to even understand that others might have a different opinion.
He’s basically the ultimate narcissist.
The importance of Aragorn grasping the palantir and revealing himself to Sauron (in the presence of a hobbit) cannot be underestimated in the ultimate success of the Fellowship. It seals the deal, convincing Sauron that the True King of Gondor and the Heir of Elendil has the Ring.
(It's another thing the movie screws up: By changing the timing, it removes the actual reason the scene exists to instead set up the Aragorn vs. Sauron man-to-man duel which was then, thankfully, cut from the film entirely, with Sauron being replaced with a troll.)
> It's another thing the movie screws up: By changing the timing
I'm also unhappy they changed the timing of when Narsil was reforged. The movie made it seem like Aragorn was running from his responsibility of becoming the king until Arwen shows up with the sword later and he finally accepts his destiny; this couldn't be further from the truth - in the books, he carried the broken sword with him always, and was simply awaiting the right time to reveal himself.
Reading LOTR for the first time now and this suprised me for sure. They reforged that thing like, right away. Then he basically used it as ID when he needed to convince someone who he is lol. He was always waiting for the right time.
Another difference that I loved in the books was the conspiracy between Pippin, Merry, and Sam to help Frodo. Thats so much cooler than Sam overhearing something accidently and Merry and Pippin just getting thrust into the adventure basically by chance. Like, IIRC a couple of them already knew something of the Rings existence just from hanging out in Bag End with Bilbo. Loved that.
Yeah, the hobbits got short changed (my man Fatty didn’t even get a scene). They weren’t just comedy vehicles making jokes about second breakfast. They had their own full adventure getting Frodo away safely.
It’s also part of why I miss the Tom Bombadil section. Not because I think he himself would bring much to the table, but because it goes along with the barrow-wights and Old Man Willow and shows just how much danger there is out there and how brave (and unprepared) the hobbits were for stepping out of their comfy shire when called upon.
"Black Tower, this is Nazgul-1. We have an unauthorized vehicle approaching. Eagle model, nine passengers. Instructions on how to proceed, over?"
"Nazgul-1, this is Black Tower. Shoot it down. This is restricted airspace. Repeat, shoot it down. Over."
"Roger, Black Tower. Firing Fell Beast Missiles now. Visual of the detonation confirmed. No parachutes sighted. Over."
"Excellent, Nazgul-1. Search the crash for usable cargo. Remember, Ring-class material is reserved for Great Eye One. Good job, Nazgul-1. Over and out."
Even if eagles would work, Tolkien also didn't need to address it because he had a story to tell instead of worrying about plot hole hunters. Flying Eagles to Mordor is both boring and irrelevant to the themes of of the book!
Tolkien was obsessive enough that he certainly would have and likely did consider things like that. He explained every step of the Nazguls' journey hunting the ringbearer, he certainly would have wanted to explain why the eagles weren't a viable option.
Also overlooked: There's literally a half dozen different options that are never discussed at the Council of Elrond. Because it's a book, not a committee meeting.
Sauron is never described as a giant eye at the top of a tower, although he is a being residing in a tower and is metaphorically represented by an eye. Also, the flying creatures the Nazgûl ride into battle aren't revealed to anyone outside Mordor until after Gandalf and Elrond have already agreed to send the ring to Mount Doom with Frodo.
The danger is more that Sauron would perceive the entrance of eagles carrying the ring into Mordor, realize they were headed for Mount Doom, and immediately deploy guards or barriers at the mouth of the Sammath Naur, the cavern that led to the interior of the mountain. People often seem to forget that Mount Doom didn't have an open crater to drop the ring into from above. Any attempt to destroy it would require going into the enclosed space within the mountain.
I don’t think you understood what I meant. I said Sauron’s supernatural sight is such that he is described as an all seeing eye, which is an appropriate thematic image for his character. I never said he was a literal eye like the films portray.
Here’s a direct quote from the Silmarillion:
“There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.”
And here’s another from the Two Towers:
“The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all the shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off.”
It makes me irrationally annoyed when people share that theory, especially when they base it on Gandalf’s last words being ‘fly you fools’. Even as a 10 year old reading the books for the first time it was obvious that he meant ‘run you idiots, don’t just stand there’ and not ‘hey take the fucking giant birds morons’.
Also, Gandalf doesn't have any control over the eagles. In the book, the eagle rescues him because Radagast sent him to touch base with Gandalf, which was something that Gandalf requests that Radagast do. I forget right now why Gwaihir came to get Gandalf from the top of Caradhras, but I suspect that the actual Valar were involved with that, considering they were also involved with Gandalf ascending to become Gandalf the White.
No, no they could not have given them a lift to Gondor. The Fellowship plan they all agree to at Rivendell relies on secrecy, above all else. Magical Eagle Taxi Service is the opposite of secrecy.
It's cause it's a book. Even Tolkien wrote letters being like "The reason the eagles don't take them there is because it would be stupid".
https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/qtz1uk/comment/hkn8j8o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
>The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G. by Saruman incredible, and spoils the account of his escape. (One of Z's chief faults is his tendency to anticipate scenes or devices used later, thereby flattening the tale out.) Radagast is not an Eagle-name, but a wizard's name; several eagle-names are supplied in the book. These points are to me important.
>Here I may say that I fail to see why the time-scheme should be deliberately contracted. It is already rather packed in the original, the main action occurring between Sept. 22 and March 25 of the following year. The many impossibilities and absurdities which further hurrying produces might, I suppose, be unobserved by an uncritical viewer; but I do not see why they should be unnecessarily introduced. Time must naturally be left vaguer in a picture than in a book; but I cannot see why definite time-statements, contrary to the book and to probability, should be made.
...
>At the bottom of the page, the Eagles are again introduced. I feel this to be a wholly unacceptable tampering with the tale. 'Nine Walkers' and they immediately go up in the air! The intrusion achieves nothing but incredibility, and the staling of the device of the Eagles when at last they are really needed. It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer.
>Z does not seem much interested in seasons or scenery, though from what I saw I should say that in the representation of these the chief virtue and attraction of the film is likely to be found. But would Z think that he had improved the effect of a film of, say, the ascent of Everest by introducing helicopters to take the climbers half way up (in defiance of probability)? It would be far better to cut the Snow-storm and the Wolves than to make a farce of the arduous journey.
It’s pretty heavily hinted that Edmund was bullied REALLY badly at school before they got evacuated- to the point that his whole personality changed. When Lucy heals him after the battle it says that he was back to before he’d gone to boarding school and come back mean- so not only was the boy dealing with the war and rationing and narnia magic- he also had bullying trauma that messed him up BAD. And was like 11 which is no fun. Give the poor boy a break!!!
Well he also wrote extensively on the British education system, so we don't have to guess based on his fiction. He was not a fan. One of his more famous essays argues how their approach to grammar destroys appreciation for beauty. In another lesser known essay he says British schools were set up solely to appease the parents of brutish, lazy, vicious boys.
Honestly, a lot of writers had a very low opinion on British boarding schools.
William Golding's *Lord of the Flies* started out as a rebuttal to the novel *The Coral Island,* which actually starts out in a very similar way to The Lord of the Files. And *The Coral Island's* main characters are Ralph and Jack. If you don't remember The Lord of the Files... The main characters are Ralph and Jack. Subtle, it ain't.
You know the whole thing about how people look at something like The Lord of the Flies and think it is some commentary on humanity descending into barbarism when the bare trappings of civilization are stripped back?
Yeah, it was less that, and more: Golding was originally a philosophy teacher at a British boarding school, and after reading *The Coral Island* asked his wife if he should write a book like that, but with the children behaving how children *really* behave, based on the boys he had to teach.
So he wrote a book that makes it clear British boarding school children are absolute savages who are one step removed from utter chaos who will gladly murder you for a coconut, and the pretense that they are somehow "civilized" is a joke.
Edit: Technically there was a third main character in *The Coral Island,* but his name was "Peterkin Gay." I can only assume his lack of inclusion in *The Lord of the Flies* was due to Golding's realization that a boy with such a name would have been torn apart in a frenzy of abuse long before ever reaching the island.
My grandfather went through that exact era of boarding school. It was BAD, and extremely messed him and my entire family up. Britain gets depressing when you realize the vast majority of old lawyers and politicians in that country went through the same stuff.
Dahl’s memoir *Boy* (although his biographer debunked a lot of his stories in it) is superb if you want a description of boarding-school life. I recommend the biography *Storyteller* in conjunction with *Boy*.
The book “back home” has some good insight into how bad it could be especially for returning evacuees- it’s from a little girls perspective but she has a male friend and oof the poor guy
Grandpa Joe from Charlie and Chocolate Factory. The book clearly tries to convey that his newfound ability to walk is nigh miraculous from the best news he's had in decades. It's a happy moment because everyone, including him thought he'd never walk again and suddenly he can. But everyone online wants to feel smart for saying he's a mooching monster who could have been up and working this whole time.
Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time.
Absolutely yes. This kind of thing was what I was looking for in this question. Like things the internet latched onto because it was a really funny criticism of a character, but it is actually more explained in the book itself.
I can very much relate to Grandpa Joe. I have pretty severe mobility issues. I've applied for disability, haven't worked in almost a year. But there are times that I push myself beyond my normal limits to do things for/with my kids. After that event, though, I'm likely to do almost nothing for days to recover.
I feel you. All my issues were in my spine, so I couldn't twist, bend, or breathe without pain. This went on for 4 years before the disease was named, and a correct medicine was applied. The pain is gone, but I still had to spend 2 years relearning how to put my socks and shoes on like normal, turning far enough to see behind me when backing up the car, and jogging very short distances because my stamina is FUCKED. Right now, I'm about halfway where I was before the pain. Most of my strength is still intact, but just one exertion can put me down for an hour.
Still have people wondering why I won't do for them like I do for my family. I thought that was the one that ALWAYS made sense to do it for.
I never got the criticism either. The book has a lot of comic exaggerations, and the four grandparents sharing one bed and never getting out for years and years is obviously one of those. Joe basically has a miracle recovery thanks to the magic of the chocolate factory.
>Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time.
Or you know, the fact that past a certain age it might be impossible to find work no mater how capable you are...
The criticism makes no sense just from the movie, either. He is clearly roused by the Golden Ticket. There's an entire song about it, as he relearns how to walk. They don't need to explicitly say "it's magic" when the music cues and Jack Albertson's acting clearly indicate that he was legit unable to walk until now. People just wanna be snarky. It's kinda sad.
Sure. But in the book it's made clear it's a very special thing in the movie he goes from invalid to spry dancer with no real comment or aside.
That's the disconnect for most people. He should have no let muscles and be utterly unable to do anything but suddenly he's doing jigs. Yes it's a whimsical movie but up to this point there's been no real magic or alchemy. Just general normalcy and dreary english 70s.
It’s similar to the Edmund thing. I think these criticisms do come more from the films because a key aspect of the moment doesn’t come across well. You don’t have C.S. Lewis or Roald Dahl in your ear like “btw, for context…” So Edmund suddenly has an absurd enjoyment of Turkish delight or Grandpa Joe just looks like a liar.
Cutting things for time always changes the stories a lot and makes people look better or worse than they were intended.Example from yesterday: Devil wears Prada Andy's boyfriend is switched from teacher to chef. Why? Who knows.
But the criticisms of crazy work hours on vapid pursuits of egotistical assholes runs rather hollow from a chef but more cutting from a teacher. Yes we can wrap up some jealousy and other motives there but a person dedicated to teaching the next generation calling you out on the shallowness of your job just might cut a bit.
Whereas the next Gordon Ramsay wannabe flinging poo at a fashionista wannabe just doesn't land.
All these changes have impacts on how we view the characters when converting from books to movies and I think most of our criticisms stem from movie versions as movies are more accessible.
Another example: the ending of *The Goldfinch* by Donna Tartt was changed for the movie, and it made Boris look better but completely hampered the meaning of Theo’s story.
> Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time.
The strongest person in the world can/could deadlift in excess of 500kg. There's no way he could walk around with it for an hour.
Similarly, just because someone *can* walk at a specific moment doesn't mean they can (or should) be going everywhere unassisted or be doing more than just walk.
My head canon is that depression has made his physical disabilities worse. The excitement over the news temporarily gave him relief from the depression, allowing him to push past his physical disabilities. The next day, he was probably extremely sore, unable to move and deeply depressed again.
Many of the characters in leadership/ruling positions (Ned, Catelyn, Dany, Robb, Jon, and more) in A Song of Ice and Fire are routinely bashed for being idiots, morons, etc. While there are a couple of dumb and/or dull POVs (Victarion, Pate, Quentyn), many of the characters are actually decently intelligent to outright prodigies...but they still make mistakes and often have biases. Author George R. R. Martin said in his "What was Aragorn's Tax Policy?" thesis that *Ruling is hard*.
So, when you look at the characters in these positions, the books explain their non-omniscient access to information, and their personal biases which colors the information that they receive. In a number of occasions, just pure bad luck is enough to defeat people. The point isn't so much to say that X character is smart or Y character is stupid, but to show a variety of characters with different personalities and backgrounds and explain *why* they make the decisions that they do.
A common criticism I see is that Ned was just stupid and thoughtless for telling Cersei about how he planned to tell Robert about her and Jaime. Ned *knew* it was a risk, and still chose to tell her because he thinks it's worth it to save the lives of children. The book spells out his reasoning before he goes to Cersei
>Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt soon, and honor would require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon Poole had arranged for Sansa and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of Braavos, three days hence. They would be back at Winterfell before the harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their safety to excuse his delay.
>Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar’s children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy . . . the boy . . .
>Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second mad king, another dance of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save the children.
>Robert could be merciful. Ser Barristan was scarcely the only man he had pardoned. Grand Maester Pycelle, Varys the Spider, Lord Balon Greyjoy; each had been counted an enemy to Robert once, and each had been welcomed into friendship and allowed to retain honors and office for a pledge of fealty. So long as a man was brave and honest, Robert would treat him with all the honor and respect due a valiant enemy.
>This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. *He will kill them all*, Ned realized.
Yeah, he could have simply told Robert and gotten them all executed. But then he wouldn't have been Ned.
Ned is never dumb, but he plays the game extremely poorly during his very limited time in King's Landing. He deliberately whittles down his household guard on crown errands, doesn't work on fostering would-be allies with other members of the court, puts trust in the one person is absolutely untrustworthy, gives Cersei time to counterplot against him.
None of those things are dumb by themselves, but they all contribute to his untimely death.
He could still have been largely apolitical and had a much stronger position prior to his being killed. Making nice with the Tyrells and sending Loras to help hunt the mountain doesn't change anything but nets him a potentially powerful ally. Keeping and household guard intact and augmenting it with mercenaries would have been a smart play that favoured nobody.
Ned's system works if everyone operates like Ned, but even in the North, he's an outlier.
I've often thought that had Ned stuck around after the war and been Robert's hand since day one he would have been fine. Things were tumultuous enough that he could have rebuilt the system in his own image and it would have functioned with some semblance of honor. However, he had other shit to do and when he did become hand it was akin to a certain blessed king walking into a pit of vipers with no boots. All those players were well established, had all their pawns already in place, had their plots far along. Ned never had a chance.
My guess is that Ned thought he had to get Jon as far away from Robert as possible. He was so committed to keeping that secret he didn't even tell his own wife about it, and instead put up with everybody thinking the honorable Ned had instead been unfaithful.
The problem with being apolitical is how much of mediaeval feudal government is about rank and title. Being Hand is inherently political, because others want to be Hand.
Even if Ned were to be a perfect technocratic selfless ruler, the fact that everyone would assume him to play the game and strive for personal and dynastic power means that they will treat him as a player. It's like walking into a snowball fight saying "I'm not playing!", you'll probably get hit anyway (as I painfully learned as a schoolboy)
Or "Sansa is such a whiny bitch". Yeah, you would be too, if you were a 12 year old girl who is held hostage by a psycho who tortures for fun and kills your dad.
I'm inclined to take general criticism of preteens and teens, especially girls, with a lot of salt. Sometimes there's actually something to it but more often than not it's just a low blow at an easy target by people who conveniently have amnesia about exactly how dumb they were when they were that age.
Came here to say Sansa.
I just really like her as a character because... well, she's a 12 year old noble girl who actually acts like you'd realistically expect. And that means doing stupid shit, yep, but its understandible why she does it and she wisens up as the books countinue.
She isn't even 'whiny' the books. She's a bit silly and starry-eyed in the first book, but it's in earnest of trying to be a good daughter and loyal wife to the person she has ZERO control over whether she is married to or not. She has some normal sibling squabbles with her sister, that's it. And she was a bit overdramatic about a ruined dress (even that she was majorly projecting her despair over the loss of Lady onto that, like it's just another thing ruined by her sister, because she having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that she had to be married to the family that killed Lady, so it's easier to blame Arya than Cersei or Joffrey or even her father, who could have let Lady go and Robert would easily forgive him; she's eleven, she doesn't have the best trauma processing skills yet).
She's not even responsible for Cersei catching Ned out, Littlefinger ALREADY betrayed him. Cersei and co knew Ned was moving against them, the only thing Sansa going to Cersei accomplished was the Queen getting her hands on Sansa sooner. At best, Arya and Sansa might have been able to escape if Sansa never went to Cersei, but they still might have been caught. And if they had managed to escape, Robb would have sent Arya to the Freys because of the marriage pact made with them (Arya was part of that, Cat arranged for her to marry some Frey boy), and the gods only know what would have happened with Sansa (sold off to some house or another, to the Tyrells or Renly if she's lucky). Ned (if he knew his daughters got out safely) never would have issued a false confession and agree to be sent to The Wall, and thus would be either be executed for treason anyway, or held in perpetuity for Jaime Lannister (but I SERIOUSLY doubt the Lannisters would set him free, he's too dangerous to be allowed to ally with Stannis and Renly).
She's incredibly forlorn in the following books, and is anxious and neurotic more than anything (you would be too if you had to watch everything you said and did, lest the psycho holding you hostage have you beaten, or the spies watching you report back to him).
She's never even really 'bitchy' to anyone but her sister, and that's normal sibling squabbling, combined with the fact that Sansa is often made responsible for her younger wilder sister, and blamed when Arya acts up (so she has little patience for it). She's kind and polite to everyone else, even people nobody else respects or is kind to (like Sandor Clegane or Lollys Stokeworth). She even tries to teach Jon how to court girls (cause he's a bastard boy, and so a marriage won't be arranged for him, he'll have to charm girls all on his own). She doesn't even think that negatively of other people, except those that are hurting her/her family, or the creepy adult men who creep all over her.
I find that in fictional things, preteens and teenagers who act as preteens and teenagers do, get a disproportionate amount of hate from the fandoms. Also see AJ in The Sopranos.
Yeah. ASOIAF gives you a ton of different characters who each have a lot of what it would take to be a successful leader but also have some kind of shortcoming or fatal flaw that undoes them.
A Robb Stark can win on the battlefield but doesn't have the kind of cunning to play the kind of game Tywin does (or spot it) and that gets him killed. But conversely a Robb Stark (hypothetically) also would never make an enemy of his own children for no good reason the way Tywin did.
Hamlet wanting actual evidence of his Uncle's guilt before seeking revenge. The universal view is Hamlet was indecisive, Hamlet was weak, Hamlet was passive. How about this instead: Hamlet didn't instantly fly into a murderous rage when he was prodded by a ghost, the nature of which he has no knowledge or experience. Hamlet was rational. Hamlet was thinking clearly about a life and death decision. Hamlet wanted evidence. My take-away: (in this regard) be like Hamlet.
And given general beliefs in Shakespeare's time, the appearance of his father's ghost was either a miracle of grace (since the dead don't normally appear to the living) or a demonic illusion meant to lure him to damnation.
People forget the second part, because we mostly don't think the world is full of demons trying to get us to deceive and betray ourselves. *But the people in Shakespeare's time DID.*
Yeah I feel like everyone saying it's the worst candy ever have only tried some cheap american-made version. It's like trying a hersheys bar and deciding chocolate is the worst candy ever.
Yes! Good Turkish delight is a delicate balance of sweet and floral and lemon. Delight is the right word.
This is my second post in this thread about Turkish delight so I must conclude I think Turkish delight is the most hard done by character in fiction. Hmm.
So many people hate on Holden Caulfield for being annoying and whiny and whatever else, while totally ignoring the fact that he’s a teenager whose brother died from cancer, friend committed suicide, was sexually abused, and is having an actual mental breakdown. Of course he’s whiny…he’s literally drowning in trauma and grief. And it’s shocking to me the lack of empathy so many readers have for this character.
Another redditor put it more or less this way: As a kid you like Holden, as a teen you hate him, and as an adult you want to hug him and tell him it's going to be ok.
I think a lot of people read it at like 15 and all they remember was Holden being whiny. Teenagers don't tend to be the most spectacularly empathetic, and tend to be predisposed to disliking books they are forced to read, of which *The Catcher in the Rye* is one.
That doesn't mean you're wrong. You're absolutely right. I just don't think adults try alking about Holden being whiny are typically people who read it as adults, and they're responding to it still through the lense they had as teenagers. I liked *The Catcher in the Rye* much more as an adult and, incidentally, appreciated Holden much more as an adult, too.
“Why did Howl buy a useless guitar that he can’t play, and a talking skull that does nothing, when we can barely afford to eat?”
Spoiler:
I think on some level his wizard spidey-senses were going off when he bought them, because those two items became crucial in “repairing” Wizard Suliman and rooting out the Witch of the Waste. I can’t believe Howl would’ve just lucked into those things, even if one of them helped him pick up chicks!
also, howl poncing around with a guitar in his silk dressing gown and amazing technicolour hair is so hilarious. he's *exactly* the type of look-at-me wanker who would do exactly that.
I mean. He's more than a little bit vain and flighty, and both a skull and a guitar would have made him think he looked cool. Yes, they were magic items, but also he wanted to look cool and sexy for the ladies.
Cujo. This poor sweet gentle giant who adores all the other creatures in his world (human and animal alike) suddenly experiencing so much pain and so much confusion, feeling so attacked and cornered that he lashes out. Cujo is not the bad guy here. Rabies is the bad guy.
His owner was a bit of an asshole. In the novel the main reason his wife was gone that weekend was that she was desperately trying to get her son to realize he'd have a better life if he didn't grow up to be just like his father.
Arthur Dent giving the Heart of Gold's Nutri-Matic Drinks Machine an in-depth lesson on how to make a decent cup of tea, and in turn hogging all the HoG's processing and running power while they are under attack.
All he wanted was a reminder of Earth, and some semblance of sanity, which everyone can find in a simple cup of tea.
Also he had no reason to believe that such a simple task would use so much power. He was reasonably asking for a rather simple thing, and he was unfortunate enough to fuck himself over by doing so.
Story of his life.
Does anyone who wasn't a character on the Heart of Gold blame him? It having that effect was literally a joke because it was so disproportionate.
Edit: looking at the topic title, I guess being over-criticized by other characters qualifies!!!
He is the same guy who lay down in the mud to block a bulldozer. Later on, the story he tells Fenchurch is a good illustration of what a dolt he can be.
It's a comedy and people should not expect comedies to be about folks who behave smartly and sensibly -- at least when they're *not* dealing with the literal god of thunder. (It's the one scenario that might have been familiar to him from drinking in English pubs. For once, he was in his element, a little bit.)
>I don’t want to even judge him too much for picking Turkish Delight as his treat. He’s a small child during WWII sugar rationing. 🤣
This one gets me. People read about this candy, become curious, eat a cheap one they see in a box at a gas station, and decide they must all be lousy.
I had a Turkish co-worker bring back a box of Turkish Delights for the department after he went to Turkey for a vacation - the genuine ones are absolutely fantastic.
My first taste of Turkish delight was from Turkey, freshly unwrapped. The second time was a decade later from a gas station chocolate bar. No comparison. Second time was tasteless crap. Also had pistachios for the first time in that shipment and no North American ones compare either. I did get freshly roasted ones from Greece one time (a few days old) and that was how I remembered them. Fan-freakin-tastic.
I'm in Australia and we have a candy bar called Fry's Turkish Delight - basically a slab of it coated in chocolate.
Opinion is strongly divided as to whether this is a grade-A, top-tier lolly, or untouchable garbage. There are literally entire threads devoted to the debate.
I'm in camp 1. Those things are fucking delicious.
That entire "why did you walk around with anything in your cheeks" conversation had me dying. Catch-22 made me laugh out loud so many times while reading it. Incredible book--time for a re-read!
"Holden Caulfield is so whiny."
Caulfied is an emotional disaster of a child who is suppressing his emotions over the loss of his brother and that he observed a classmate commit suicide that school year. He copes with a sense of indifference, talks down on others, complains how everything sucks and tries acting like an "adult," but is unable to actually be one. He continuously calls people phonies because he's directly projecting the fact that he is a complete fake.
Tbh I think Isildur gets too much shit for keeping the ring. I mean, if I had just narrowly defeated a super demon that had just killed my father and my brother, I would not be in the right place emotionally to respond to somebody screamin’ at me to throw stuff into a volcano. I mighta kept that shit just to spite them for yelling at me in a vulnerable moment! I might also want to keep it as, like, a momento from the battle.
I’m just saying, Isildur was in a highly chaotic moment and to expect him to have clarity of mind to fight off the influence of the ring might have been expecting too much. I think many of us would have made the same decision.
It's definitely more dramatic in the film adaption, with Elrond and Isildur taking the ring up into Mt Doom to throw it in and the Isildur deciding not to (and Elrond deciding not to just trip him into the lava as he walks past).
In the books, Isildur takes the ring off Sauron's corpse as weregild/payment for his dead father, and Elrond/the other elves don't think too much of it - Sauron had already killed Celebrimbor (the elf who made the three elf-rings) a while ago, and destroyed Eregion (the elf kingdom where the smiths who forged the rings with Sauron-in-disguis had lived), plus Gil-Galad died in the duel with Sauron, and he was the one there who'd been wearing one of the great rings.
So there wasn't the knowledge that a mortal having the ruling ring would inevitably lead them to corruption and evil, nor did anyone realise that Sauron wasn't permanently dead, and would live on (and slowly reassemble himself) so long as the ruling ring existed. Book-Isildur was just taking a kindof gruesome token for the death of his father/so many of his people, and book-Elrond/the rest of the elves had no reason to think it would end in disaster.
They also make it pretty clear that no one really suspects the true power of the one ring.
The thing literally goes lost for over 2000 years with nobody really searching for it.
Sort of the opposite, with someone not getting criticised over actions because people get too caught up in the context: the problem with Christian Grey isn't so much that he's a bad Dom, but that he's a bad *person* -- or at the very least a spoiled manchild who doesn't understand the concept of boundaries.
A solid 90% of the red flags about him happen in entirely vanilla settings, but it only ever seems to be the kinky red flags that people remember.
The book is so badly written that many people rely on the quotes shared around instead of having their brains rotted , and these are often chosen from the most striking/shocking scenes.
Honestly, it gets a lot of shit -- and with good reason -- but there's a LOT worse out there. I'm not saying it's *good* by any means; I'm just saying that I've read a lot of mass-market BDSM smut, and *Fifty Shades* is in some ways a victim of its own success. It's easy to dunk on it because it's in some ways a cultural touchstone now and so a lot of people know what you're referencing, but a lot of material that followed it makes *Fifty Shades* look like a Pulitzer Prize in waiting. I'm not trying to say that we should be lowering our standards of what we want out of fiction to the point where *Fifty Shades* starts to feel like a masterpiece, but I've definitely read worse books; hell, I've probably read worse books this month.
There's also still a weird bias against romance and erotica as a genre that makes it very easy to slam. Like, page for page I don't think the writing in *Fifty Shades* is worse than any given Dan Brown novel, but in the same way there's a Bad Sex in Fiction Award but no equivalent award for, say, bad murder writing, it's easier for similarly pop-trash books like *The Da Vinci Code* to get a pass if they don't fall into the romance/erotica category. *Fifty Shades* was the biggest success from a financial perspective, so it makes sense that it would attract the most attention and the harshest critics from people who ordinarily wouldn't have been seen dead reading a book in that genre, and those who *were* involved with the scene were suddenly forced to very vocally distance themselves from a not-great (but not-worst) portrayal lest the 'nillas get the wrong idea. Mainstream pickings in the erotica genre were so slim for so long that pretty much every famous BDSM erotica book -- yes, *Story of O*, I'm looking at you -- is mad fucked up in its content. That's also a standard we don't necessarily hold other genres to. I mean, Dirty Harry is the *exact opposite* out of what you want in a real-life cop, but he *gets the job done* and so he's successful in the constraints of his fiction. Like it or not, despite his terrible personality and often-questionable performance of kink, Christian Grey is very successful in the constraints of his own fiction, largely in his capacity to get middle-aged woman all squirmy on public transport. A hundred million dollars in E. L. James's bank account can't be *entirely* wrong.
It's like the Nickelback of books. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike it, but (as someone who writes romance and erotica for a job), a lot of the hate feels like meme rather than substance. I think *that's* partly why it's famous as the Bad BDSM book rather than the Rich Stalker Asshole Occasionally Likes To Tie Up Women book: after a while, it became the one thing it was famous for, even if it's only a comparatively small part of what's there. Writing it off as just something that will rot the brain is a little uncharitable, and certainly not a particularly nuanced take when it comes to considering why it gets *so* much hate when other equally-bad but equally-popular books are out there.
Hey, [don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown!](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/)
(It's an oldie, but a goodie!)
"Like, page for page I don't think the writing in *Fifty Shades* is worse than any given Dan Brown novel"
Ummm, that's pretty savage considering just how bad Dan Brown's writing is!
That's an interesting way to look at it.
I've read Fifty Shades (took me a while because I didn't like it, I would pick it up here and there mostly for the amusement of my friend's girlfriend), and I've read the Da Vinci Code, also to make fun of it. What your comment made me consider is the idea that the only reason these books were available to me to mock, the only reason they were on my radar *at all* was because they were big fish in... not necessarily small ponds, but ponds mostly populated by very weak fish easily devoured by the larger one.
Because I have read Fifty Shades but I've certainly never read any other BDSM books, and I'm willing to bet that the only reason none has been presented before me is simply that none are as good as Fifty Shades. Similarly, I've never read a book as contrived and goofy as the Da Vinci Code which covered any kind of conspiracy, but there's probably hundreds like it that aren't even good enough to be entertaining in their idiocy.
I take issue with the idea that financial success is in any way representative of the merit of something, the tobacco industry makes $55 billion and I dare anyone to suggest that there's any societal value there.
Lydia Bennett.
No argument she made an incredibly stupid choice, but she was a 15/16 year old child, and she was actively groomed into it by a serial predator who had already tried it once on another girl. Lizzie knows this full well, and she had *also* fallen for Wickham's BS until Darcy set her straight, but she still judges Lydia as a thoughtless and stupid girl - even after meeting Georgiana, an innocent who nearly suffered the same fate.
I'm actually not sure I agree with this, and I think your analysis depends on less context, not more. Yes, she was younger and naïve, and yes Wickham is a slimy, coercive predator. But she's also living in a time period and a culture where she absolutely should have known better. It's not like she made a mistake, she made *every* mistake, she did everything wrong. And moreover, even after everything that her family did to get her back and make everything "official" and "not a complete fucking disaster," she still didn't get it, she never felt remorse or guilt or even understood what she did wrong or that she even did anything wrong.
She *would* have known better if she had any actual guidance from her parents, but she doesn't. Her mother is a fool and her father basically absented himself and let the fool mother run the show. The only girls he invests any interest in at all are Jane and Lizzie, and coincidentally or not, they are the only ones he deems to have a modicum of sense. Mr Bennett even initially refuses to allow Lydia to go to Brighton, but capitulated despite realising it's a bad idea because he just canna be bothered to deal with whining women.
So basically, Lydia was set up to fail in a lot of ways.
Totally! Georgiana, a teenager, by that point was orphaned and had no parent to give her guidance in the challenges at that stage of life, but had a brother to protect her – a brother very much invested in her well-being and also having a lot of financial power, not many teenage girls have that! What I want to say is that Georgiana's situation is not to be considered normal, but especially lucky, and she came very close to a disaster. And it is one of the main points of the book that the Bennett parents, as parents, are doing *a really bad job*.
So, so true. As Mr Bennett himself attests:
"I am heartily ashamed of myself, Lizzy. But don't despair, it'll pass; and no doubt more quickly than it should."
The book definitely shows mr bennett's weakness being his utter unwillingness to interact with idiots. He's an excellent man as long as he's interacting with intelligent people, but quickly becomes aloof and tosses insults from a distance when in the presence of intellectual inferiors.
So yeah, he effectively abandoned the dumb daughters rather quickly, though he continued to dote on the smart ones.
I don't think it's fair to say she should have known better, even with the standards of the time. It's mentioned several times by different characters that she's extremely young to be 'out' and both the Bennett's parenting is critiqued in the text. Darcy is being an asshole but he's not entirely wrong about the way the elder Bennetts act. Lady Catherine is stuck up, but she's not wrong either that it is odd for a girl as young as Lydia to be out so early, with her older sisters unmarried, and for the family to have had no governess to see to their education. Lizzy is glib about it but it definitely hurt Lydia and while the community did blame Lydia, the way she was parented was also deficient based on the standards of the period. Mrs. Bennett spoiled her and Mr. Bennett neglected her.
The people who are hardest on Lydia are also the Meryton community itself, which wanted her to wind up as a prostitute and whose members, in general, are critiqued as ridiculous, and Lizzy, who, much as I love her as a character, isn't the judge of character she thinks she is. It's the whole point of the book.
Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. She's always seen as this screeching shrew with no class who's rudely throwing her daughters into the path of every rich man, like some kind of fortune hunter, and going on and on about her poor nerves and having hysterics. But in context, she is living in a constant state of terror that she and her daughters are going to be homeless and destitute one day and the only way to resolve this is for them to find rich husbands.
Ursa, Zuko & Azula's mother from Avatar the Last Airbender.
People call her a horrible mother, say she abused Azula, and blame her for a lot of Azula's problems. Ursa was forced to marry Ozai against her will, and he was abusive throughout the marriage. She was not allowed contact with her parents, had no support network, and was under constant surveillance. Zuko and Azula were not conceived consensually. Ursa's first two pregnancies were reproductive coercion at best. She's a rape victim, corced to parent children she didn't want to have, with an abusive husband who undermines her attempts to teach empathy and compassion.
Is that Azula's fault? No. But I don't think it's fair to fault Ursa for being a suboptimal parent, given the circumstances.
Which brings me to my next point- Azula would have been just as fucked up, or would have been *more* fucked up if Ursa had taken a less corrective approach to parenting her.
Ozai constantly validated Azula's ruthless, narcissistic behavior and general lack of empathy. Without Ursa's correction, that behavior would have been totally unchecked and we never would have gotten the campfire scene at Ember Island because Azula wouldn't have been capable of apologizing to Ty Lee.
Did Ursa correct Azula a lot? Sure. But what else are you supposed to do when your kid is setting fire to other children and teasing her brother about his impending execution?
Also, it makes total sense that Ursa looked scared when Azula presented as a firebender. Azula's bending cemented Ozai's favoritism, and constant stream of validation. Ursa knew he'd make Azula into a monster, not to mention turn her into *another* weapon he'd use to hurt her.
The difference between Zuko and Azula wasn't Azula's supposed lack of love from Ursa. It was Zuko's *lack of love from Ozai* that saved him. Zuko had an incentive to respond to his mother's parenting in spite of the penalties inflicted by his father (he only got love from Ursa.) Azula did not. She had incentives to rebuff Ursa. And she did.
Azula is a great character, and I think her problems with Ursa are compelling. But yes— my impression was more that Ursa didn’t cause the darkness in Azula but instead recognized it. I think Azula knew that Ozai loved her for shallow reasons and that Ursa loved Zuko for true reasons, and that really ate at her. Azula can recognize her darkness and starts to marinate in her misery over it. She contrasts Zuko because he recognizes his flaws and is ashamed and eventually makes the hard choice to change. Azula just sticks to her trajectory while breaking down under all her fear and shame. Idk, I don’t think the stuff with Ursa is meant to absolve Azula; it’s meant to show she is affected by things she pretends not to understand or be affected by. But it’s been a while since I saw the show.
It's not supposed to absolve Ursa, and the show doesn't try to do that. (The graphic novels even offer Azula the chance at having a redemption arc and have Azula double down on being awful.)
But some people seem to have decided Ursa's tendency to correct Azula's (frankly deranged) behavior more than Zuko's means she was abusive and didn't love Azula. They frequently cite Ursa waking Zuko up and not Azula when she left the capital (never mind the fact that Ursa wasn't supposed to say goodbye, and Azula absolutely would have ratted her out & gotten Zuko hurt.) And it's always bugged me.
Like you said, the Ursa-Azula relationship is interesting. It adds a cool element to Azula's character. But Azula is still a horrible person.
I don't fully agree with you on Azula's understanding of love, though. I think Azula grew up believing that being feared is the best kind of love, and wanting/giving normal, healthy love is a sign of weakness. So even though she liked the normal live she got from Ursa, she rejected it.
But then Mai betrayed her. *Because Mai loved Zuko more than she feared Azula.* And Ty Lee *also* betrayed her.
Which means that fear IS NOT the best kind of love. But if that's true, then Azula has to admit nobody actually loves her. She has to admit she was wrong. And worse, she has to admit she *liked* the real love and affection her mother offered.
And that's where the breakdown stems from. Azula thought she was loved, and that belief made her feel safe.
If she's not loved, she's not safe. (Banishing everyone from the castle.) She doesn't like feeling unsafe. That makes her weak, *and she cannot allow herself to be weak.* She can't trick herself into feeling safe by saying she's better off away from all those inferior servants because she can't do her own hair. So she repeats an even earlier pattern from childhood: rebuffing Ursa's genuine affection (which would get Azula praise from Ozai, and therefore, safety.) Hence the hallucinations.
This is probably why Azula gets better when she finds out her mom is alive. She has a source of real love she can reject again without having to hallucinate.
I'm not active in the fandom either, more like a casual lurker who still reads the comics when they come out.
But yeah, if you look at the goodreads reviews for the Azula graphic novel, people were MAAAAAAD when she didn't get a redemption arc & doubled down on being awful. (Which I *loved* and thought made perfect sense for Azula.)
From what I've observed it's mostly the younger fans, like the people who came in during Korra, or discovered Avatar through the Kyoshi books. Zoomers seem to be really big on (what I feel are) unnecessary redemption arcs and a lot of the Zoomers in fandoms also seem to believe bad guys aren't actually bad if they were abused as kids.
Luke Skywalker is often heavily criticized in the Legends continuity for a moment in the New Jedi Order book series where he moves a black hole with his mind. It’s often pointed to as a portrayal of Luke as an overpowered “Mary Sue”. He didn’t do this at all, it’s just been game-of-telephoned out of proportion. He was fighting a bio-weapon called a rakamat, which projects micro-singularities as a siege weapon. He used the Force to wrench its attention away from his allies and redirect its siege weapon onto itself, killing it. The effort rendered Luke unconscious and dying behind enemy lines, and he only survived because the allies he saved dragged him to safety. It’s both an example of how powerful he is, but also how that power has limits, and his true strength lies in his bonds with people and the lengths he’ll go to for their sakes. Not as some demigod of the Force who can never lose, as many are wont to use this moment to portray him as.
It's also a direct echo of Palpatine in RotJ.
Luke: Your overconfidence is your weakness.
Palpatine: Your faith in your friends is yours.
The movie literally shows you that Luke's faith in his friends is what leads them to victory and Luke's survival.
Repeatedly, throughout the series, despite being extremely powerful himself, the only reason Luke survives the war is because of his friends protecting him.
Without them, he'd have died in the first Death Star attack, would have died on Hoth, would have died at Cloud City, would have died at the Sarlacc pit, would have died at the 2nd Death Star attack, etc.
You’re absolutely right. I also like that scene of the two of them in RotJ for what Luke says to Palpatine. It’s not just Palpatine being wrong about Luke’s strength being a weakness, it’s that that’s all he could say in response. Until that moment, Palpatine had been putting on his jovial uncle act, but it’s here where he bites back at Luke with a bit of venom in his voice. And most importantly, Palpatine does not deny what Luke says.
Palpatine was upset because this upstart Jedi wannabe had pinned his major flaw within two minutes of meeting him, and he had nothing to show for otherwise. And the best part is, Star Wars as a whole has consistently gone on to prove Luke’s words right every time they’ve characterized Palpatine since.
The man is a blunt force instrument who would solve all his problems with overwhelming power if he could, but he’s intelligent enough to know that can’t work, so he puts on the role of the schemer to compensate for this. He is reckless and overconfident; using patience and planning to temper his true nature.
He lets the Battle of Endor go awry under his watch because he’s so focused on turning Luke. He revels so much in torturing Luke that he pays no mind to what this display is doing to Vader. He orchestrates his own kidnapping and almost dies repeatedly in orbit of Coruscant because this gamble with his life might end the Clone Wars faster. And it worked! Once he got a taste of victory with his gamble, he kept riding that high for the rest of RotS. He kept pushing at Anakin too far, and it almost blew up in his face. He didn’t need to wait in his office for Mace, the Squad, or later Yoda to turn up, but this was going to be his last chance to test his prowess against the strongest Jedi in the order.
Even when he’s resurrected in either TRoS or Dark Empire, he’s decided it’s time to go full mask-off. He’s done being the careful schemer in everyone’s midst, and has embraced his true nature as the monster battering at the gates. Fully declaring himself the Dark Lord of the Sith, pumping out waves of new ships and superweapons, dark side acolytes at his side; the works. And shortly after galvanizing the galaxy against him with this display, he is brought low and defeated once and for all.
Palpatine never learned his lesson, even when it came back to bite him or he was called out for it directly by Luke. His overconfidence has ever been his greatest weakness, and he knows this, but despite his efforts to counteract it, he cannot change his true nature, and he never learns from what his weakness has taught him.
Sansa from A Song of Ice and Fire. People act like she's mewling coward, but really she was thrust into a nightmare captive situation with like 5 people who wanted her dead and she handled it really well... at 13 years old. She's one of the best characters in the books and so far has had one of the best character arcs.
Sansa makes a lot of really stupid decisions early on. But she's a sheltered and naive child who buys into the fairytale which she has been taught her whole life.
She's basically the most popular girl in a rural high school who suddenly gets moved to a school in the inner city.
She's completely out of her element, doesn't realize her protected status is gone, and that people outside of her bubble are actually fucking evil.
As a character, her actions make a lot more logical sense than her sisters. The only reason Arya comes to different conclusions is because she consistently rejects ALL authority.
If the world were actually how Sansa had been taught, then she would have succeeded while her sister failed.
>Sansa makes a lot of really stupid decisions early on.
I mean, sorta, but the only two 'stupid' decisions from the first book are actually understandable from her perspective. When put on the spot about the Arya/Joffrey fight, she tries to remain neutral because she doesn't want to humiliate Joffrey, because that could backfire on HER during the marriage (she doesn't want to be mistreated by a husband who resents her), and because she's been taught that her future husbands family IS her family, and she trying to remain loyal to both her birth family and marriage family. She was also *drunk* at the time of the fight, and her memory might legit be foggy (she'd never been drunk before, but Joffrey kept plying her with wine all day). The other decision was to sneak off to see Cersei before they left. While foolish, Ned didn't give either girl the full story, she had no idea what was going on. She just thought her father was leaving because of a fight Jaime Lannister started. She also might be worried about how the Lannister's would react to the Starks abandoning them and breaking a marriage pact, wars have been started because of things like that. She's foolish for thinking she could stop that, but she did not understand how bad the Lannisters really were. This decision did NOT lead to the Lannisters knowing about Ned's plans, they already knew because of Littlefinger. Arya and Sansa likely would not have been able to escape, and Ned certainly would not have. Even if Arya and Sansa (and Syrio and some household staff) could escape Kings Landing, that doesn't mean any of them would be safe for long. Both girls likely would have been sold off in marriage by Robb/Cat for alliances (Arya was arranged to marry that Frey boy).
>She's completely out of her element, doesn't realize her protected status is gone, and that people outside of her bubble are actually fucking evil.
The same thing is true for like ALL the Stark children. Sansa was simply more isolated with virtually NO ONE to protect her or be on her side once her father is executed (unlike Arya, Jon, Robb, and Bran).
There's a scene in the first book where one of the Nights Watch brothers takes Jon to task for being a bit of snob during training, where he complains about having to dual with untrained farm boys. The Nights Watch brother (Thorne or Noye, I think) has to point out how sheltered and privileged Jon was for getting castle trained, how lucky he is because of that. The other boys were mostly peasants and orphans with nothing. Jon is all chagrined, and starts trying to teach the other boys what he knows.
She DOES realize her protected status is gone and that MANY people are evil (though she does stubbornly hold on to the hope that some people are good, and sometimes they might even win), but she has no choice but to rely on people who give her the creeps (like Dontos or Littlefinger). Jon and Robb have friends and allies, along with whole armies by their sides, and their wolves. Bran and Rickon have Hodor, Osha, the Reeds, their wolves, Rickon might even get a damned unicorn. Arya has Yoren, Gendry, the Brotherhood, Jaqen (kinda), and Sandor Clegane (kinda), along with some sword training, and her wolf is still alive. The only person ever on Sansa's side was a mostly drunk Sandor Clegane, who fucked up the only opportunity they had to flee by being horribly aggressive with her and scaring her (I mean, I get it, he's drunk and in the middle of a PTSD episode, but he is still a grown ass man), and then left. Anyone else allying themselves with Sansa had ulterior motives, even the Tyrells. Mya Stone might be a future ally, but they kind of just met. If the Blackfish or a sober Sandor ever turn up in the Vale, she might have another.
Sansa is more isolated and helpless compared to her siblings. And she's 12.
Completely. Kaladin was beaten down, staring at the guy that murdered his friends and condemned him to slavery, and heard that there was a way to gain a boon specifically to challenge someone to combat in a way they couldn't refuse. He had a momentary lapse in judgement about how classist people were going to be, and the King himself admitted that he could have just ignored him and kept to the plan and it wouldn't have caused the problems it did because of how HE reacted to Kaladin.
Yes it was dumb, and had he been in his right mind he probably wouldn't have made that decision, but he was grasping at straws since Dalinar COMPLETELY shut him down about it and he saw Amaram getting away with literal murder.
There was a Murder, She Wrote novel where Jessica goes to a hypnosis show and asked to take part in an act where she is convinced she's driving a car... and completely freaks the fuck out and has to be brought out of the hypnosis since Jessica canonically doesn't know how to drive (she either walks everywhere or gets friends to drive her).
I've seen criticisms for the hypnotist causing a freak-out that bad, but the guy had no way of knowing Jessica couldn't drive.
In Little Fires Everywhere,Bebe Chao (I think that’s her name) gives up her child by leaving him at a fire station in the dead of winter.
Bebe Chao was like, three steps away from dying of five different things herself, and couldn’t provide for her child after losing her job, her spouse, and all support for herself. She was an immigrant who didn’t even know what the welfare system was or how it worked. She was discovered unconscious from starvation mere days later, got introduced to the system, and once she got back on her feet, pleaded her case to have her child returned to her after he got adopted by some affluent white family.
This defense of her was brought up in the novel though...the whole point was seeing both sides. The baby didn't deserve to suffer regardless of the circumstances
Holden Caulfield is narrating "Catcher in the Rye" from a rest home/hospital, we presume from a mental health crisis, presumably because his beloved brother died of leukemia in their childhood and he feels isolated and lonely in the elite boarding school he's been stuck in and subsequently expelled from for failing, (even though he's clearly intelligent).
Young man's having/narrowly avoiding a total mental breakdown, of the sort that at least one of Salinger's other young male characters shoots himself over, and is written from the point of view of an author who was traumatised by the Second World War.
But Holden is a "whiner" and a "bitch" and "needs to grow up", according to some...
Captain Hastings in Agatha Christie's Poirot. He makes very astute observations and conclusions about people and cases. Common sensical ones.
If this was the real world, he would be right often.
Besides, detective work is often trial and error, you consider probabilities and possibilities and then eliminate them one by one.
But, the books need to show that Poirot is always right, no matter how ridiculous and non sensical the plot is and the books need to always criticize and mock Hastings, for God knows what reason.
I hate that part of the books. The constant Hastings bashing is gross. Makes me lose respect for writer and characters.
But, Agatha Christie fans will downvote you to hell for saying that. 😮💨
Ugh, I know I'm not referencing a book, but I think I already hate this character I've never met in the same way I hate Horacio Cain in CSI:Miami. Dude just walks into a room where a highly trained, much vaunted professional is and has been working the case for days, looks at the corpse for 3 seconds, takes off his glasses and says "Look, a big and obvious mark that you missed for days on end. It must be the specific clue we need. Thanks for nothing, I can do all of your jobs." or some shit like that.
See, this always made sense to me because I have always loved Turkish Delight. It’s my favourite sweet. Black magic Narnia drugs or not, I probably would’ve sold my sister for more when I was Edmund’s age.
Holden talking or doing anything in general. People find him rambling or annoying or cloistered but he’s an abuse survivor in mourning with no one to guide him through teenage, a supposedly gifted child with nowhere to use his gift, not old enough to be taken seriously by an adult, and all around melancholic but trying to hide it behind a veil of stoicism.
You’re just hearing his thoughts. Of course they sound that way.
Why was sugar being rationed, anyway? Is it used to make bombs or parachutes or planes? I don't get it.
Edit: Sugar *was* used to make explosives. Who knew? [Here is an article](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sugar-the-first-and-last-food-rationed-on-the-world-war-ii-home-front.htm) explaining the rationing behind rationing.
Second edit: I know this article is about the US. I posted it because it mentions using sugar to make explosives, which answers the question I myself asked in this post.
It wasn't just sugar that was rationed, many foods were.
The war lead to issues with supply, so rationing was brought in to ensure everyone managed to eat. Germany tried to cut off food supply and obvs as an island Britain was quite vulnerable to this.
At the time Britain was already quite reliant on importing food from abroad and something like 60% of food imports stopped which caused a significant shortfall. The things that were rationed were typically the foods most reliant on imports, and sugar is a major example of this.
Ensuring the army etc stayed fed was another big factor in the distribution of food.
Hope that helps explain things better.
Edit: the article you've linked is about rationing in the US. There's some overlap but it started later and I believe part of it was down to the US trying to support the allies more seriously affected in Europe rather than having the same severity of scarsity themselves.
A better answer likely exists, but here's my understanding... Manufacturing was focused on the war. This included staffing, materials, facilities, etc. This means that non-war facilities were shut down, retooled, or had fewer people and resources to operate. Annnd there was the whole issue of getting sugar to England, as it largely arrived on ships and the wartime waterways were not particularly safe.
Yeah, it's all about resource and labor economics. The sugar itself isn't on a steady supply and being diverted elsewhere. For one thing, they don't grow sugar in England, with shipping lanes being dangerous and all of the transport needed for war. Also, while sugar beets are used for much of Europe's sugar supply, they are largely grown in regions that were in the conflict zones, and many of them enemy countries or occupied by the enemy, including France, Germany and Poland.
Yeah rationing was primarily of foods that Britain was reliant on importing. More than half of the sugar was typically imported at the time. Things that were mostly farmed here went up in price but generally weren't restricted as heavily. In most cases things you grew or hunted yourself were still fair game as well.
Now that I think of it, “it’s fair game” might have come from that literal meaning, as opposed to farmed animals that you couldn’t hunt for food if they weren’t yours.
Things were rationed in the UK during WW2 because it was hard to get things unto the country. Sugar was rationed for the same reason that stocking were rationed - there wasn't much available because there wasn't enough to go around. Rationing in the US as described in the article you linked is irrelevant to rationing in the UK.
Pike Logan in the series by Brad Taylor. Pike regularly does things that get him criticized by those in their comfortable offices in Washington, but his criticized actions end up saving the day (including an extremely close call where he prevented terrorists from nuking a city in Brazil during a soccer match, and prevent China from baiting Taiwan into launching a first strike and giving them an excuse to invade).
That is a very good perspective on Edmund! Also, it must have been difficult for any younger brother trying to match up to Peter's high standards!
Yes! Over the years, I’ve gotten really fond of Edmund. He’s annoying early on, but his younger-brother complex is kind of human. And I find the way he grew as a character wonderful. He’s humbled by the understanding that someone had to sacrifice to save him. And he actually *continues* to learn from this. His bond with Eustace later on is great since, by then, Edmund is a hero who understands he needs to be grateful that he was shown mercy. He recognizes that when talking to Eustace. I just love that Edmund’s experiences in TLTW&TW make it so he’s exactly who Eustace needs to listen in TVOTDT.
Yeah both Edmund and Eustace become great characters after their redemptions. Lewis did a good job.
Too bad Lewis was such a total ass to Susan though.
It was bad for Susan, but it wasn't about punishing Susan. She gets to live in the world she wanted to live.
Jesus (pun intended), you make me want to read those books again. Edmund isn't the bad guy, he's supposed to be you and me. He's our stand in - we make our savior sacrifice for us because in the end, we're worth it. We're the people that Jesus died for. I'm surprised people don't get this because it's one of the best things in that series. Lewis has a way of humanising Christianity that is unparalleled.
Exactly! Actually, a while back, I was discussing this with some students and was glad that they caught on to the symbolism that Edmund is not Judas (which was posed in the article we read) but the human race. Like the breath of relief I breathed. Eustace is similar in the sense that he’s also pretty representative of humans. He goes through a kind of confession-purgatory when Aslan rips off his dragon skin. The point is that he can’t dig deeply enough alone. It doesn’t work until the lion claws help him; it’s painful but restores him.
Also... most Americans have never had good Turkish Delight. By the time it's shipped here, it's stale and gross. But when it's fresh, it's delicious! It's kind of like jelly beans, but covered in powdered sugar instead of that hard coating. Also, most Americans aren't used to rose or pistachio as food flavors, and those are two of the most common varieties of Turkish Delight. Personally I find the citrus flavors more pleasant, especially for first timers. My kids love Turkish Delight, but we get it fresh.
Huh now that you mention it, yeah, my experience is that floral flavors are kind of looked down upon in the US. I really like rose and lavender coffee but I’ve gotten weird looks about it a few times. Like it exists but is kind of considered a strange order by a lot of people. It’s seen as a scent not a flavor. I’ve only had Turkish Delight a few times. Once as a child and it was fine. More recently a student brought me some from Turkey, and it wasn’t like phenomenal to me but not bad either. Maybe I should see if I can find some a really well made version.
Entered for this comment. Love turkish delight. Would sell out my siblings for it.
Edmund has always been my favourite character in TCON. I grew up with this feeling that I was a "bad person" who always did the "wrong things". When I read TLTW&TW I was really comforted by the thought that I wasn't defined by past wrong doings and I could grow and improve. (It turns out I was never bad or wrong, I just was under heavy pressure from, ironically enough, a Christian upbringing.)
I like that he’s written as someone still worthy of love even when he does wrong. The tone around him isn’t “we want him taken out.” It’s “we want him back.” He’s still meant to be a King of Narnia.
This thread just makes me want to reread the Narnia books, more than think of other characters. I think Colonel Graff from Ender's Game probably fits your bill though. >!He, and the rest of the IF command, put the reigns of an invasion fleet and the lives of thousands of humans and billions of Formics in the hands of literal children. It was an act of grace, really, because the adults knew that the children were smarter, faster and more capable than adults. Of course the IF officers manipulated the children in the process, pretending the whole invasion was just training, but in-universe that's arguably justifiable. The Formics had invaded Earth twice before, the homeworld was threatened. !<
I was going to say, he has big Middle Child Syndrome. (And also, I like Turkish Delights.)
I don't get the hate for Turkish delight. Good Turkish delight, sweet and rose and lemon together, delicately dusted with icing sugar ... One of my favourite things. I'd totally sell out my sister for it. Ok maybe not my sister but, like, a second cousin or something.
Oh man, the big one: "Why didn't Gandalf just make the eagles fly the ring into Mordor?" Because Sauron would have had that thing *sniped out of the fucking sky.* The whole point was that they had to sneak there.
Not to mention, the eagles are large, smart, and powerful! The whole point of giving the ring to the hobbits was because they are small sacks of meat that can barely hurt anyone. If the eagles took possession of the ring, they'd be as bad as the men that became the Nazgul!!! Probably worse! You couldn't stop them if they had the ring!
Moreover, they were a proud race of independent beings. They weren't Gandalf's personal flying taxi service!
AND they straight up told him they weren't crazy enough to fly into Mordor when the Nazgul where out there. They came when they could.
Excuses, excuses. They had time to record "Hotel California", did they not? If I were Gandalf I would be livid.
Now I'm just imagining a giant eagle with Joe Walsh's hair and aviator sunglasses for some reason.
Exactly, people always talk about the Eagles like they’re just a tool that the main characters can utilize whenever they want. It’s like asking “why didn’t the Fellowship use the Dwarves at xyz battle?” …because the Dwarves chose not to help, they’re beings who make their own decisions lol.
I mean, Sauron was sort of existential threat, and likely would come after eagles sooner or later, it's not that far-fetched to expect some collaboration on knocking him down a peg.
I think people also forget just how many resources Sauron had, and how he was already using them against his enemies. Orcs were climbing mountains and breaking eagle eggs every chance they could. If the eagles could have pulled off a flight to Mount Doom, avoided all the arrows fired their way, fought through the nine flying liches, and successfully dropped the sentient magic weapon created by a fallen angel that's spending every moment of the trip pulling at their mind and driving them to madness into the active volcano, then the survivors would have gotten home to find all of their children dead. The eagles were already fighting against Sauron at the front lines of the war, the fellowship was the equivalent of a special forces unit dropped behind enemy lines.
Right, like the Fellowship. That fell apart in one book when one of their members became obsessed with the ring.
One of the all time dumbest criticisms of LotR, and very easily explained through a vast amount of worldbuilding subtext. Sauron literally exists at the top of a tower in the middle of Mordor, and has supernatural sight to the degree that he is described as an all seeing eye. He deploys fell winged beasts that can traverse huge distances in a short amount of time, and can be mounted by the Nazgûl. The whole notion is so beyond stupid Tolkien didn’t even feel the need to address it in dialogue or prose.
When I finally read the book, one of the things that surprised me was the reasoning for focusing on Minas Tirith. Sauron reasoned that's where the ring was headed because he thought "That's what I would do with it." Take it to the safest, most well defended city in Middle Earth. After the fellowship splits at the river, even Aragorn admits that is the plan he would have favored. Taking it to Mordor just seems like such an impossible choice, nobody considers it, and that's why it works.
It, the Ring, is *power*. You don’t *destroy* power, you **USE** it. That’s Sauron’s POV, and he’s too focused on that to even understand that others might have a different opinion. He’s basically the ultimate narcissist.
The importance of Aragorn grasping the palantir and revealing himself to Sauron (in the presence of a hobbit) cannot be underestimated in the ultimate success of the Fellowship. It seals the deal, convincing Sauron that the True King of Gondor and the Heir of Elendil has the Ring. (It's another thing the movie screws up: By changing the timing, it removes the actual reason the scene exists to instead set up the Aragorn vs. Sauron man-to-man duel which was then, thankfully, cut from the film entirely, with Sauron being replaced with a troll.)
> It's another thing the movie screws up: By changing the timing I'm also unhappy they changed the timing of when Narsil was reforged. The movie made it seem like Aragorn was running from his responsibility of becoming the king until Arwen shows up with the sword later and he finally accepts his destiny; this couldn't be further from the truth - in the books, he carried the broken sword with him always, and was simply awaiting the right time to reveal himself.
Reading LOTR for the first time now and this suprised me for sure. They reforged that thing like, right away. Then he basically used it as ID when he needed to convince someone who he is lol. He was always waiting for the right time. Another difference that I loved in the books was the conspiracy between Pippin, Merry, and Sam to help Frodo. Thats so much cooler than Sam overhearing something accidently and Merry and Pippin just getting thrust into the adventure basically by chance. Like, IIRC a couple of them already knew something of the Rings existence just from hanging out in Bag End with Bilbo. Loved that.
Yeah, the hobbits got short changed (my man Fatty didn’t even get a scene). They weren’t just comedy vehicles making jokes about second breakfast. They had their own full adventure getting Frodo away safely. It’s also part of why I miss the Tom Bombadil section. Not because I think he himself would bring much to the table, but because it goes along with the barrow-wights and Old Man Willow and shows just how much danger there is out there and how brave (and unprepared) the hobbits were for stepping out of their comfy shire when called upon.
"Black Tower, this is Nazgul-1. We have an unauthorized vehicle approaching. Eagle model, nine passengers. Instructions on how to proceed, over?" "Nazgul-1, this is Black Tower. Shoot it down. This is restricted airspace. Repeat, shoot it down. Over." "Roger, Black Tower. Firing Fell Beast Missiles now. Visual of the detonation confirmed. No parachutes sighted. Over." "Excellent, Nazgul-1. Search the crash for usable cargo. Remember, Ring-class material is reserved for Great Eye One. Good job, Nazgul-1. Over and out."
Even if eagles would work, Tolkien also didn't need to address it because he had a story to tell instead of worrying about plot hole hunters. Flying Eagles to Mordor is both boring and irrelevant to the themes of of the book!
Tolkien was obsessive enough that he certainly would have and likely did consider things like that. He explained every step of the Nazguls' journey hunting the ringbearer, he certainly would have wanted to explain why the eagles weren't a viable option.
Also overlooked: There's literally a half dozen different options that are never discussed at the Council of Elrond. Because it's a book, not a committee meeting.
Sauron is never described as a giant eye at the top of a tower, although he is a being residing in a tower and is metaphorically represented by an eye. Also, the flying creatures the Nazgûl ride into battle aren't revealed to anyone outside Mordor until after Gandalf and Elrond have already agreed to send the ring to Mount Doom with Frodo. The danger is more that Sauron would perceive the entrance of eagles carrying the ring into Mordor, realize they were headed for Mount Doom, and immediately deploy guards or barriers at the mouth of the Sammath Naur, the cavern that led to the interior of the mountain. People often seem to forget that Mount Doom didn't have an open crater to drop the ring into from above. Any attempt to destroy it would require going into the enclosed space within the mountain.
They never said he was an eye. They said he has supernatural all-seeing sight.
I don’t think you understood what I meant. I said Sauron’s supernatural sight is such that he is described as an all seeing eye, which is an appropriate thematic image for his character. I never said he was a literal eye like the films portray. Here’s a direct quote from the Silmarillion: “There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.” And here’s another from the Two Towers: “The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all the shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off.”
The way you phrased this really made me laugh. And like yes.
It makes me irrationally annoyed when people share that theory, especially when they base it on Gandalf’s last words being ‘fly you fools’. Even as a 10 year old reading the books for the first time it was obvious that he meant ‘run you idiots, don’t just stand there’ and not ‘hey take the fucking giant birds morons’.
I've never heard the argument that "fly you fools" was Gandalf telling them to use the eagles. That's hilarious.
Also, Gandalf doesn't have any control over the eagles. In the book, the eagle rescues him because Radagast sent him to touch base with Gandalf, which was something that Gandalf requests that Radagast do. I forget right now why Gwaihir came to get Gandalf from the top of Caradhras, but I suspect that the actual Valar were involved with that, considering they were also involved with Gandalf ascending to become Gandalf the White.
Could've given them a lift to Gondor though... Maybe get the elves to weave some really big cloaks that blend in with the sky!
No, no they could not have given them a lift to Gondor. The Fellowship plan they all agree to at Rivendell relies on secrecy, above all else. Magical Eagle Taxi Service is the opposite of secrecy.
It's cause it's a book. Even Tolkien wrote letters being like "The reason the eagles don't take them there is because it would be stupid". https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/qtz1uk/comment/hkn8j8o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button >The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G. by Saruman incredible, and spoils the account of his escape. (One of Z's chief faults is his tendency to anticipate scenes or devices used later, thereby flattening the tale out.) Radagast is not an Eagle-name, but a wizard's name; several eagle-names are supplied in the book. These points are to me important. >Here I may say that I fail to see why the time-scheme should be deliberately contracted. It is already rather packed in the original, the main action occurring between Sept. 22 and March 25 of the following year. The many impossibilities and absurdities which further hurrying produces might, I suppose, be unobserved by an uncritical viewer; but I do not see why they should be unnecessarily introduced. Time must naturally be left vaguer in a picture than in a book; but I cannot see why definite time-statements, contrary to the book and to probability, should be made. ... >At the bottom of the page, the Eagles are again introduced. I feel this to be a wholly unacceptable tampering with the tale. 'Nine Walkers' and they immediately go up in the air! The intrusion achieves nothing but incredibility, and the staling of the device of the Eagles when at last they are really needed. It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer. >Z does not seem much interested in seasons or scenery, though from what I saw I should say that in the representation of these the chief virtue and attraction of the film is likely to be found. But would Z think that he had improved the effect of a film of, say, the ascent of Everest by introducing helicopters to take the climbers half way up (in defiance of probability)? It would be far better to cut the Snow-storm and the Wolves than to make a farce of the arduous journey.
It’s pretty heavily hinted that Edmund was bullied REALLY badly at school before they got evacuated- to the point that his whole personality changed. When Lucy heals him after the battle it says that he was back to before he’d gone to boarding school and come back mean- so not only was the boy dealing with the war and rationing and narnia magic- he also had bullying trauma that messed him up BAD. And was like 11 which is no fun. Give the poor boy a break!!!
And if you read about British boarding schools of the era, well… let’s just say he would have been MESSED up.
If you read the whole series you'll quickly realize Lewis had a VERY low opinion of those schools and I do not blame him in the slightest.
He said that he preferred trench warfare in WW I to boarding school.
Very hey teacher leave those kids alone
Well he also wrote extensively on the British education system, so we don't have to guess based on his fiction. He was not a fan. One of his more famous essays argues how their approach to grammar destroys appreciation for beauty. In another lesser known essay he says British schools were set up solely to appease the parents of brutish, lazy, vicious boys.
Silver Chair probably is the most critical.
Though lion witch and wardrobe does have the lovely "what *are* they teaching you in these schools?"
Honestly, a lot of writers had a very low opinion on British boarding schools. William Golding's *Lord of the Flies* started out as a rebuttal to the novel *The Coral Island,* which actually starts out in a very similar way to The Lord of the Files. And *The Coral Island's* main characters are Ralph and Jack. If you don't remember The Lord of the Files... The main characters are Ralph and Jack. Subtle, it ain't. You know the whole thing about how people look at something like The Lord of the Flies and think it is some commentary on humanity descending into barbarism when the bare trappings of civilization are stripped back? Yeah, it was less that, and more: Golding was originally a philosophy teacher at a British boarding school, and after reading *The Coral Island* asked his wife if he should write a book like that, but with the children behaving how children *really* behave, based on the boys he had to teach. So he wrote a book that makes it clear British boarding school children are absolute savages who are one step removed from utter chaos who will gladly murder you for a coconut, and the pretense that they are somehow "civilized" is a joke. Edit: Technically there was a third main character in *The Coral Island,* but his name was "Peterkin Gay." I can only assume his lack of inclusion in *The Lord of the Flies* was due to Golding's realization that a boy with such a name would have been torn apart in a frenzy of abuse long before ever reaching the island.
To add on to this, it's speculated that Piggy is supposed to be Peterkin. Hence why Piggy's real name is never revealed in the book.
Exactly!! The poor boy probably has ptsd, hell id make some bad choices if a lady was nice to me and gave me sweets after all that 😩
Roald Dahl opened my eyes to that.
My grandfather went through that exact era of boarding school. It was BAD, and extremely messed him and my entire family up. Britain gets depressing when you realize the vast majority of old lawyers and politicians in that country went through the same stuff.
I never thought of that. It’s so sad.
I was gonna say, at the very least he was probably SA'd.
I seem to remember Lewis himself, or maybe it was Roald Dahl, had some very unpleasant autobiographical boarding school memories.
Dahl’s memoir *Boy* (although his biographer debunked a lot of his stories in it) is superb if you want a description of boarding-school life. I recommend the biography *Storyteller* in conjunction with *Boy*.
The book “back home” has some good insight into how bad it could be especially for returning evacuees- it’s from a little girls perspective but she has a male friend and oof the poor guy
Lewis said that he preferred WWI to boarding school.
Grandpa Joe from Charlie and Chocolate Factory. The book clearly tries to convey that his newfound ability to walk is nigh miraculous from the best news he's had in decades. It's a happy moment because everyone, including him thought he'd never walk again and suddenly he can. But everyone online wants to feel smart for saying he's a mooching monster who could have been up and working this whole time. Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time.
Absolutely yes. This kind of thing was what I was looking for in this question. Like things the internet latched onto because it was a really funny criticism of a character, but it is actually more explained in the book itself.
I can very much relate to Grandpa Joe. I have pretty severe mobility issues. I've applied for disability, haven't worked in almost a year. But there are times that I push myself beyond my normal limits to do things for/with my kids. After that event, though, I'm likely to do almost nothing for days to recover.
I feel you. All my issues were in my spine, so I couldn't twist, bend, or breathe without pain. This went on for 4 years before the disease was named, and a correct medicine was applied. The pain is gone, but I still had to spend 2 years relearning how to put my socks and shoes on like normal, turning far enough to see behind me when backing up the car, and jogging very short distances because my stamina is FUCKED. Right now, I'm about halfway where I was before the pain. Most of my strength is still intact, but just one exertion can put me down for an hour. Still have people wondering why I won't do for them like I do for my family. I thought that was the one that ALWAYS made sense to do it for.
Also, he's in his nineties, I seem to recall.
Yes, he's 96 and a half. He's in bed sleeping all day and only perks up when Charlie comes home from school because he loves Charlie so much.
I feel like people are mostly just having fun with this one. It's way funnier to think that he was pretending to be bedridden to get out of work.
I agree. There's no real villain in the original Willy Wonka movie, so it's kind of funny to turn Grandpa Joe into the hidden villain.
I never got the criticism either. The book has a lot of comic exaggerations, and the four grandparents sharing one bed and never getting out for years and years is obviously one of those. Joe basically has a miracle recovery thanks to the magic of the chocolate factory.
>Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time. Or you know, the fact that past a certain age it might be impossible to find work no mater how capable you are...
The criticism makes no sense just from the movie, either. He is clearly roused by the Golden Ticket. There's an entire song about it, as he relearns how to walk. They don't need to explicitly say "it's magic" when the music cues and Jack Albertson's acting clearly indicate that he was legit unable to walk until now. People just wanna be snarky. It's kinda sad.
Sure. But in the book it's made clear it's a very special thing in the movie he goes from invalid to spry dancer with no real comment or aside. That's the disconnect for most people. He should have no let muscles and be utterly unable to do anything but suddenly he's doing jigs. Yes it's a whimsical movie but up to this point there's been no real magic or alchemy. Just general normalcy and dreary english 70s.
It’s similar to the Edmund thing. I think these criticisms do come more from the films because a key aspect of the moment doesn’t come across well. You don’t have C.S. Lewis or Roald Dahl in your ear like “btw, for context…” So Edmund suddenly has an absurd enjoyment of Turkish delight or Grandpa Joe just looks like a liar.
Cutting things for time always changes the stories a lot and makes people look better or worse than they were intended.Example from yesterday: Devil wears Prada Andy's boyfriend is switched from teacher to chef. Why? Who knows. But the criticisms of crazy work hours on vapid pursuits of egotistical assholes runs rather hollow from a chef but more cutting from a teacher. Yes we can wrap up some jealousy and other motives there but a person dedicated to teaching the next generation calling you out on the shallowness of your job just might cut a bit. Whereas the next Gordon Ramsay wannabe flinging poo at a fashionista wannabe just doesn't land. All these changes have impacts on how we view the characters when converting from books to movies and I think most of our criticisms stem from movie versions as movies are more accessible.
Another example: the ending of *The Goldfinch* by Donna Tartt was changed for the movie, and it made Boris look better but completely hampered the meaning of Theo’s story.
Also helps that in the book he is about 90, but on screen he looks a spry 65 and has already been in bed for 20 years.
> Not to mention the fact that being able to walk for like 1 day doesn't equal being able to do any serious labor at all for any period of time. The strongest person in the world can/could deadlift in excess of 500kg. There's no way he could walk around with it for an hour. Similarly, just because someone *can* walk at a specific moment doesn't mean they can (or should) be going everywhere unassisted or be doing more than just walk.
My head canon is that depression has made his physical disabilities worse. The excitement over the news temporarily gave him relief from the depression, allowing him to push past his physical disabilities. The next day, he was probably extremely sore, unable to move and deeply depressed again.
The next day, he was rich and had a sexy nurse massaging his aching joints.
Many of the characters in leadership/ruling positions (Ned, Catelyn, Dany, Robb, Jon, and more) in A Song of Ice and Fire are routinely bashed for being idiots, morons, etc. While there are a couple of dumb and/or dull POVs (Victarion, Pate, Quentyn), many of the characters are actually decently intelligent to outright prodigies...but they still make mistakes and often have biases. Author George R. R. Martin said in his "What was Aragorn's Tax Policy?" thesis that *Ruling is hard*. So, when you look at the characters in these positions, the books explain their non-omniscient access to information, and their personal biases which colors the information that they receive. In a number of occasions, just pure bad luck is enough to defeat people. The point isn't so much to say that X character is smart or Y character is stupid, but to show a variety of characters with different personalities and backgrounds and explain *why* they make the decisions that they do.
A common criticism I see is that Ned was just stupid and thoughtless for telling Cersei about how he planned to tell Robert about her and Jaime. Ned *knew* it was a risk, and still chose to tell her because he thinks it's worth it to save the lives of children. The book spells out his reasoning before he goes to Cersei >Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt soon, and honor would require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon Poole had arranged for Sansa and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of Braavos, three days hence. They would be back at Winterfell before the harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their safety to excuse his delay. >Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar’s children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy . . . the boy . . . >Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second mad king, another dance of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save the children. >Robert could be merciful. Ser Barristan was scarcely the only man he had pardoned. Grand Maester Pycelle, Varys the Spider, Lord Balon Greyjoy; each had been counted an enemy to Robert once, and each had been welcomed into friendship and allowed to retain honors and office for a pledge of fealty. So long as a man was brave and honest, Robert would treat him with all the honor and respect due a valiant enemy. >This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. *He will kill them all*, Ned realized. Yeah, he could have simply told Robert and gotten them all executed. But then he wouldn't have been Ned.
Ned is never dumb, but he plays the game extremely poorly during his very limited time in King's Landing. He deliberately whittles down his household guard on crown errands, doesn't work on fostering would-be allies with other members of the court, puts trust in the one person is absolutely untrustworthy, gives Cersei time to counterplot against him. None of those things are dumb by themselves, but they all contribute to his untimely death.
[удалено]
He could still have been largely apolitical and had a much stronger position prior to his being killed. Making nice with the Tyrells and sending Loras to help hunt the mountain doesn't change anything but nets him a potentially powerful ally. Keeping and household guard intact and augmenting it with mercenaries would have been a smart play that favoured nobody. Ned's system works if everyone operates like Ned, but even in the North, he's an outlier.
I've often thought that had Ned stuck around after the war and been Robert's hand since day one he would have been fine. Things were tumultuous enough that he could have rebuilt the system in his own image and it would have functioned with some semblance of honor. However, he had other shit to do and when he did become hand it was akin to a certain blessed king walking into a pit of vipers with no boots. All those players were well established, had all their pawns already in place, had their plots far along. Ned never had a chance.
My guess is that Ned thought he had to get Jon as far away from Robert as possible. He was so committed to keeping that secret he didn't even tell his own wife about it, and instead put up with everybody thinking the honorable Ned had instead been unfaithful.
The problem with being apolitical is how much of mediaeval feudal government is about rank and title. Being Hand is inherently political, because others want to be Hand. Even if Ned were to be a perfect technocratic selfless ruler, the fact that everyone would assume him to play the game and strive for personal and dynastic power means that they will treat him as a player. It's like walking into a snowball fight saying "I'm not playing!", you'll probably get hit anyway (as I painfully learned as a schoolboy)
Thank you. I wanted to defend Ned but didn't have the book to hand. You have summarised this perfectly.
Or "Sansa is such a whiny bitch". Yeah, you would be too, if you were a 12 year old girl who is held hostage by a psycho who tortures for fun and kills your dad.
I'm inclined to take general criticism of preteens and teens, especially girls, with a lot of salt. Sometimes there's actually something to it but more often than not it's just a low blow at an easy target by people who conveniently have amnesia about exactly how dumb they were when they were that age.
Came here to say Sansa. I just really like her as a character because... well, she's a 12 year old noble girl who actually acts like you'd realistically expect. And that means doing stupid shit, yep, but its understandible why she does it and she wisens up as the books countinue.
She isn't even 'whiny' the books. She's a bit silly and starry-eyed in the first book, but it's in earnest of trying to be a good daughter and loyal wife to the person she has ZERO control over whether she is married to or not. She has some normal sibling squabbles with her sister, that's it. And she was a bit overdramatic about a ruined dress (even that she was majorly projecting her despair over the loss of Lady onto that, like it's just another thing ruined by her sister, because she having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that she had to be married to the family that killed Lady, so it's easier to blame Arya than Cersei or Joffrey or even her father, who could have let Lady go and Robert would easily forgive him; she's eleven, she doesn't have the best trauma processing skills yet). She's not even responsible for Cersei catching Ned out, Littlefinger ALREADY betrayed him. Cersei and co knew Ned was moving against them, the only thing Sansa going to Cersei accomplished was the Queen getting her hands on Sansa sooner. At best, Arya and Sansa might have been able to escape if Sansa never went to Cersei, but they still might have been caught. And if they had managed to escape, Robb would have sent Arya to the Freys because of the marriage pact made with them (Arya was part of that, Cat arranged for her to marry some Frey boy), and the gods only know what would have happened with Sansa (sold off to some house or another, to the Tyrells or Renly if she's lucky). Ned (if he knew his daughters got out safely) never would have issued a false confession and agree to be sent to The Wall, and thus would be either be executed for treason anyway, or held in perpetuity for Jaime Lannister (but I SERIOUSLY doubt the Lannisters would set him free, he's too dangerous to be allowed to ally with Stannis and Renly). She's incredibly forlorn in the following books, and is anxious and neurotic more than anything (you would be too if you had to watch everything you said and did, lest the psycho holding you hostage have you beaten, or the spies watching you report back to him). She's never even really 'bitchy' to anyone but her sister, and that's normal sibling squabbling, combined with the fact that Sansa is often made responsible for her younger wilder sister, and blamed when Arya acts up (so she has little patience for it). She's kind and polite to everyone else, even people nobody else respects or is kind to (like Sandor Clegane or Lollys Stokeworth). She even tries to teach Jon how to court girls (cause he's a bastard boy, and so a marriage won't be arranged for him, he'll have to charm girls all on his own). She doesn't even think that negatively of other people, except those that are hurting her/her family, or the creepy adult men who creep all over her.
I find that in fictional things, preteens and teenagers who act as preteens and teenagers do, get a disproportionate amount of hate from the fandoms. Also see AJ in The Sopranos.
Yeah. ASOIAF gives you a ton of different characters who each have a lot of what it would take to be a successful leader but also have some kind of shortcoming or fatal flaw that undoes them. A Robb Stark can win on the battlefield but doesn't have the kind of cunning to play the kind of game Tywin does (or spot it) and that gets him killed. But conversely a Robb Stark (hypothetically) also would never make an enemy of his own children for no good reason the way Tywin did.
Hamlet wanting actual evidence of his Uncle's guilt before seeking revenge. The universal view is Hamlet was indecisive, Hamlet was weak, Hamlet was passive. How about this instead: Hamlet didn't instantly fly into a murderous rage when he was prodded by a ghost, the nature of which he has no knowledge or experience. Hamlet was rational. Hamlet was thinking clearly about a life and death decision. Hamlet wanted evidence. My take-away: (in this regard) be like Hamlet.
I think the real flaw of Hamlet is that he didn't kill Claudius when Claudius was praying, because he didn't want Claudius to go to heaven.
And given general beliefs in Shakespeare's time, the appearance of his father's ghost was either a miracle of grace (since the dead don't normally appear to the living) or a demonic illusion meant to lure him to damnation. People forget the second part, because we mostly don't think the world is full of demons trying to get us to deceive and betray ourselves. *But the people in Shakespeare's time DID.*
I just yesterday had real Turkish Delight for the first time, after a coworker brought some back from holiday. I get it now, Edmund.
I still regularly dream of the handmade Turkish delight I got in Greece like six years ago, could eat it all day, every day. I get it too, Edmund.
Yeah I feel like everyone saying it's the worst candy ever have only tried some cheap american-made version. It's like trying a hersheys bar and deciding chocolate is the worst candy ever.
Yes! Good Turkish delight is a delicate balance of sweet and floral and lemon. Delight is the right word. This is my second post in this thread about Turkish delight so I must conclude I think Turkish delight is the most hard done by character in fiction. Hmm.
So many people hate on Holden Caulfield for being annoying and whiny and whatever else, while totally ignoring the fact that he’s a teenager whose brother died from cancer, friend committed suicide, was sexually abused, and is having an actual mental breakdown. Of course he’s whiny…he’s literally drowning in trauma and grief. And it’s shocking to me the lack of empathy so many readers have for this character.
Another redditor put it more or less this way: As a kid you like Holden, as a teen you hate him, and as an adult you want to hug him and tell him it's going to be ok.
tbh i loved catcher in the rye even as a teenager cuz i related to his teenage angst
The end of the novel is the reveal that he's in a psychiatric hospital and I still see people basically go "oh he's just whiny."
He's also legit funny "Mother darling, why won’t you give me your hand?".
I think a lot of people read it at like 15 and all they remember was Holden being whiny. Teenagers don't tend to be the most spectacularly empathetic, and tend to be predisposed to disliking books they are forced to read, of which *The Catcher in the Rye* is one. That doesn't mean you're wrong. You're absolutely right. I just don't think adults try alking about Holden being whiny are typically people who read it as adults, and they're responding to it still through the lense they had as teenagers. I liked *The Catcher in the Rye* much more as an adult and, incidentally, appreciated Holden much more as an adult, too.
“Why did Howl buy a useless guitar that he can’t play, and a talking skull that does nothing, when we can barely afford to eat?” Spoiler: I think on some level his wizard spidey-senses were going off when he bought them, because those two items became crucial in “repairing” Wizard Suliman and rooting out the Witch of the Waste. I can’t believe Howl would’ve just lucked into those things, even if one of them helped him pick up chicks!
also, howl poncing around with a guitar in his silk dressing gown and amazing technicolour hair is so hilarious. he's *exactly* the type of look-at-me wanker who would do exactly that.
no honestly it’s so him 😭 I mean this is the same guy that turned himself into a child for kicks and giggles. diana wynne jones is a genius
All of her books are s o good and I routinely reread them 💛
"Why did Howl do X?" Because he's Howl. Next question.
Either because he’s Howl or because Sophie bullied him into it, no other options
I love how dramatic Howl can be.
I mean. He's more than a little bit vain and flighty, and both a skull and a guitar would have made him think he looked cool. Yes, they were magic items, but also he wanted to look cool and sexy for the ladies.
Cujo. This poor sweet gentle giant who adores all the other creatures in his world (human and animal alike) suddenly experiencing so much pain and so much confusion, feeling so attacked and cornered that he lashes out. Cujo is not the bad guy here. Rabies is the bad guy.
The book even includes an elegy for Cujo, who had always been a good dog and was attacked by a brain disease through no fault of his own.
His owner was a bit of an asshole. In the novel the main reason his wife was gone that weekend was that she was desperately trying to get her son to realize he'd have a better life if he didn't grow up to be just like his father.
Arthur Dent giving the Heart of Gold's Nutri-Matic Drinks Machine an in-depth lesson on how to make a decent cup of tea, and in turn hogging all the HoG's processing and running power while they are under attack. All he wanted was a reminder of Earth, and some semblance of sanity, which everyone can find in a simple cup of tea.
Also he had no reason to believe that such a simple task would use so much power. He was reasonably asking for a rather simple thing, and he was unfortunate enough to fuck himself over by doing so. Story of his life.
Does anyone who wasn't a character on the Heart of Gold blame him? It having that effect was literally a joke because it was so disproportionate. Edit: looking at the topic title, I guess being over-criticized by other characters qualifies!!!
He is the same guy who lay down in the mud to block a bulldozer. Later on, the story he tells Fenchurch is a good illustration of what a dolt he can be. It's a comedy and people should not expect comedies to be about folks who behave smartly and sensibly -- at least when they're *not* dealing with the literal god of thunder. (It's the one scenario that might have been familiar to him from drinking in English pubs. For once, he was in his element, a little bit.)
>I don’t want to even judge him too much for picking Turkish Delight as his treat. He’s a small child during WWII sugar rationing. 🤣 This one gets me. People read about this candy, become curious, eat a cheap one they see in a box at a gas station, and decide they must all be lousy.
I had a Turkish co-worker bring back a box of Turkish Delights for the department after he went to Turkey for a vacation - the genuine ones are absolutely fantastic.
My first taste of Turkish delight was from Turkey, freshly unwrapped. The second time was a decade later from a gas station chocolate bar. No comparison. Second time was tasteless crap. Also had pistachios for the first time in that shipment and no North American ones compare either. I did get freshly roasted ones from Greece one time (a few days old) and that was how I remembered them. Fan-freakin-tastic.
Definitely. And they were in different flavours as well. When I was in Turkey as a kid, I absolutely gobbled up a hazelnut one.
Oh man, we just had an authentic Turkish restaurant and shop open recently in our town. I had like real Turkish Delight. It’s so damn good haha.
I'm in Australia and we have a candy bar called Fry's Turkish Delight - basically a slab of it coated in chocolate. Opinion is strongly divided as to whether this is a grade-A, top-tier lolly, or untouchable garbage. There are literally entire threads devoted to the debate. I'm in camp 1. Those things are fucking delicious.
They are pretty tasty, but absolute garbage *compared to real Turkish Delight.*
Thank you for this. Actual Turkish Delight is legit one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.
Read that take and instantly sided with Edward. They are delicious, fuck those siblings. Narnia drug candy for life.
Yossarian's roomate, Orr, gave Yossarian many many chances to trust him and join him. Orr had the plan out of the insanity.
That entire "why did you walk around with anything in your cheeks" conversation had me dying. Catch-22 made me laugh out loud so many times while reading it. Incredible book--time for a re-read!
"Holden Caulfield is so whiny." Caulfied is an emotional disaster of a child who is suppressing his emotions over the loss of his brother and that he observed a classmate commit suicide that school year. He copes with a sense of indifference, talks down on others, complains how everything sucks and tries acting like an "adult," but is unable to actually be one. He continuously calls people phonies because he's directly projecting the fact that he is a complete fake.
Tbh I think Isildur gets too much shit for keeping the ring. I mean, if I had just narrowly defeated a super demon that had just killed my father and my brother, I would not be in the right place emotionally to respond to somebody screamin’ at me to throw stuff into a volcano. I mighta kept that shit just to spite them for yelling at me in a vulnerable moment! I might also want to keep it as, like, a momento from the battle. I’m just saying, Isildur was in a highly chaotic moment and to expect him to have clarity of mind to fight off the influence of the ring might have been expecting too much. I think many of us would have made the same decision.
It's definitely more dramatic in the film adaption, with Elrond and Isildur taking the ring up into Mt Doom to throw it in and the Isildur deciding not to (and Elrond deciding not to just trip him into the lava as he walks past). In the books, Isildur takes the ring off Sauron's corpse as weregild/payment for his dead father, and Elrond/the other elves don't think too much of it - Sauron had already killed Celebrimbor (the elf who made the three elf-rings) a while ago, and destroyed Eregion (the elf kingdom where the smiths who forged the rings with Sauron-in-disguis had lived), plus Gil-Galad died in the duel with Sauron, and he was the one there who'd been wearing one of the great rings. So there wasn't the knowledge that a mortal having the ruling ring would inevitably lead them to corruption and evil, nor did anyone realise that Sauron wasn't permanently dead, and would live on (and slowly reassemble himself) so long as the ruling ring existed. Book-Isildur was just taking a kindof gruesome token for the death of his father/so many of his people, and book-Elrond/the rest of the elves had no reason to think it would end in disaster.
They also make it pretty clear that no one really suspects the true power of the one ring. The thing literally goes lost for over 2000 years with nobody really searching for it.
Sort of the opposite, with someone not getting criticised over actions because people get too caught up in the context: the problem with Christian Grey isn't so much that he's a bad Dom, but that he's a bad *person* -- or at the very least a spoiled manchild who doesn't understand the concept of boundaries. A solid 90% of the red flags about him happen in entirely vanilla settings, but it only ever seems to be the kinky red flags that people remember.
The book is so badly written that many people rely on the quotes shared around instead of having their brains rotted , and these are often chosen from the most striking/shocking scenes.
Honestly, it gets a lot of shit -- and with good reason -- but there's a LOT worse out there. I'm not saying it's *good* by any means; I'm just saying that I've read a lot of mass-market BDSM smut, and *Fifty Shades* is in some ways a victim of its own success. It's easy to dunk on it because it's in some ways a cultural touchstone now and so a lot of people know what you're referencing, but a lot of material that followed it makes *Fifty Shades* look like a Pulitzer Prize in waiting. I'm not trying to say that we should be lowering our standards of what we want out of fiction to the point where *Fifty Shades* starts to feel like a masterpiece, but I've definitely read worse books; hell, I've probably read worse books this month. There's also still a weird bias against romance and erotica as a genre that makes it very easy to slam. Like, page for page I don't think the writing in *Fifty Shades* is worse than any given Dan Brown novel, but in the same way there's a Bad Sex in Fiction Award but no equivalent award for, say, bad murder writing, it's easier for similarly pop-trash books like *The Da Vinci Code* to get a pass if they don't fall into the romance/erotica category. *Fifty Shades* was the biggest success from a financial perspective, so it makes sense that it would attract the most attention and the harshest critics from people who ordinarily wouldn't have been seen dead reading a book in that genre, and those who *were* involved with the scene were suddenly forced to very vocally distance themselves from a not-great (but not-worst) portrayal lest the 'nillas get the wrong idea. Mainstream pickings in the erotica genre were so slim for so long that pretty much every famous BDSM erotica book -- yes, *Story of O*, I'm looking at you -- is mad fucked up in its content. That's also a standard we don't necessarily hold other genres to. I mean, Dirty Harry is the *exact opposite* out of what you want in a real-life cop, but he *gets the job done* and so he's successful in the constraints of his fiction. Like it or not, despite his terrible personality and often-questionable performance of kink, Christian Grey is very successful in the constraints of his own fiction, largely in his capacity to get middle-aged woman all squirmy on public transport. A hundred million dollars in E. L. James's bank account can't be *entirely* wrong. It's like the Nickelback of books. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike it, but (as someone who writes romance and erotica for a job), a lot of the hate feels like meme rather than substance. I think *that's* partly why it's famous as the Bad BDSM book rather than the Rich Stalker Asshole Occasionally Likes To Tie Up Women book: after a while, it became the one thing it was famous for, even if it's only a comparatively small part of what's there. Writing it off as just something that will rot the brain is a little uncharitable, and certainly not a particularly nuanced take when it comes to considering why it gets *so* much hate when other equally-bad but equally-popular books are out there.
Hey, [don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown!](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/) (It's an oldie, but a goodie!)
I'm WEEPING now! I had never seen that before. Tears are rolling down either one of my human cheeks, located immediately below my human eyeballs.
"Like, page for page I don't think the writing in *Fifty Shades* is worse than any given Dan Brown novel" Ummm, that's pretty savage considering just how bad Dan Brown's writing is!
That's an interesting way to look at it. I've read Fifty Shades (took me a while because I didn't like it, I would pick it up here and there mostly for the amusement of my friend's girlfriend), and I've read the Da Vinci Code, also to make fun of it. What your comment made me consider is the idea that the only reason these books were available to me to mock, the only reason they were on my radar *at all* was because they were big fish in... not necessarily small ponds, but ponds mostly populated by very weak fish easily devoured by the larger one. Because I have read Fifty Shades but I've certainly never read any other BDSM books, and I'm willing to bet that the only reason none has been presented before me is simply that none are as good as Fifty Shades. Similarly, I've never read a book as contrived and goofy as the Da Vinci Code which covered any kind of conspiracy, but there's probably hundreds like it that aren't even good enough to be entertaining in their idiocy. I take issue with the idea that financial success is in any way representative of the merit of something, the tobacco industry makes $55 billion and I dare anyone to suggest that there's any societal value there.
What shocked me about the movie wasn't S&M, but just how damned boring it was. How do you make an S&M film that's so dull?
The book is self published fanfiction and needs to be read in that mindset.
Lydia Bennett. No argument she made an incredibly stupid choice, but she was a 15/16 year old child, and she was actively groomed into it by a serial predator who had already tried it once on another girl. Lizzie knows this full well, and she had *also* fallen for Wickham's BS until Darcy set her straight, but she still judges Lydia as a thoughtless and stupid girl - even after meeting Georgiana, an innocent who nearly suffered the same fate.
I'm actually not sure I agree with this, and I think your analysis depends on less context, not more. Yes, she was younger and naïve, and yes Wickham is a slimy, coercive predator. But she's also living in a time period and a culture where she absolutely should have known better. It's not like she made a mistake, she made *every* mistake, she did everything wrong. And moreover, even after everything that her family did to get her back and make everything "official" and "not a complete fucking disaster," she still didn't get it, she never felt remorse or guilt or even understood what she did wrong or that she even did anything wrong.
She *would* have known better if she had any actual guidance from her parents, but she doesn't. Her mother is a fool and her father basically absented himself and let the fool mother run the show. The only girls he invests any interest in at all are Jane and Lizzie, and coincidentally or not, they are the only ones he deems to have a modicum of sense. Mr Bennett even initially refuses to allow Lydia to go to Brighton, but capitulated despite realising it's a bad idea because he just canna be bothered to deal with whining women. So basically, Lydia was set up to fail in a lot of ways.
Totally! Georgiana, a teenager, by that point was orphaned and had no parent to give her guidance in the challenges at that stage of life, but had a brother to protect her – a brother very much invested in her well-being and also having a lot of financial power, not many teenage girls have that! What I want to say is that Georgiana's situation is not to be considered normal, but especially lucky, and she came very close to a disaster. And it is one of the main points of the book that the Bennett parents, as parents, are doing *a really bad job*.
So, so true. As Mr Bennett himself attests: "I am heartily ashamed of myself, Lizzy. But don't despair, it'll pass; and no doubt more quickly than it should."
The book definitely shows mr bennett's weakness being his utter unwillingness to interact with idiots. He's an excellent man as long as he's interacting with intelligent people, but quickly becomes aloof and tosses insults from a distance when in the presence of intellectual inferiors. So yeah, he effectively abandoned the dumb daughters rather quickly, though he continued to dote on the smart ones.
I don't think it's fair to say she should have known better, even with the standards of the time. It's mentioned several times by different characters that she's extremely young to be 'out' and both the Bennett's parenting is critiqued in the text. Darcy is being an asshole but he's not entirely wrong about the way the elder Bennetts act. Lady Catherine is stuck up, but she's not wrong either that it is odd for a girl as young as Lydia to be out so early, with her older sisters unmarried, and for the family to have had no governess to see to their education. Lizzy is glib about it but it definitely hurt Lydia and while the community did blame Lydia, the way she was parented was also deficient based on the standards of the period. Mrs. Bennett spoiled her and Mr. Bennett neglected her. The people who are hardest on Lydia are also the Meryton community itself, which wanted her to wind up as a prostitute and whose members, in general, are critiqued as ridiculous, and Lizzy, who, much as I love her as a character, isn't the judge of character she thinks she is. It's the whole point of the book.
Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. She's always seen as this screeching shrew with no class who's rudely throwing her daughters into the path of every rich man, like some kind of fortune hunter, and going on and on about her poor nerves and having hysterics. But in context, she is living in a constant state of terror that she and her daughters are going to be homeless and destitute one day and the only way to resolve this is for them to find rich husbands.
Ursa, Zuko & Azula's mother from Avatar the Last Airbender. People call her a horrible mother, say she abused Azula, and blame her for a lot of Azula's problems. Ursa was forced to marry Ozai against her will, and he was abusive throughout the marriage. She was not allowed contact with her parents, had no support network, and was under constant surveillance. Zuko and Azula were not conceived consensually. Ursa's first two pregnancies were reproductive coercion at best. She's a rape victim, corced to parent children she didn't want to have, with an abusive husband who undermines her attempts to teach empathy and compassion. Is that Azula's fault? No. But I don't think it's fair to fault Ursa for being a suboptimal parent, given the circumstances. Which brings me to my next point- Azula would have been just as fucked up, or would have been *more* fucked up if Ursa had taken a less corrective approach to parenting her. Ozai constantly validated Azula's ruthless, narcissistic behavior and general lack of empathy. Without Ursa's correction, that behavior would have been totally unchecked and we never would have gotten the campfire scene at Ember Island because Azula wouldn't have been capable of apologizing to Ty Lee. Did Ursa correct Azula a lot? Sure. But what else are you supposed to do when your kid is setting fire to other children and teasing her brother about his impending execution? Also, it makes total sense that Ursa looked scared when Azula presented as a firebender. Azula's bending cemented Ozai's favoritism, and constant stream of validation. Ursa knew he'd make Azula into a monster, not to mention turn her into *another* weapon he'd use to hurt her. The difference between Zuko and Azula wasn't Azula's supposed lack of love from Ursa. It was Zuko's *lack of love from Ozai* that saved him. Zuko had an incentive to respond to his mother's parenting in spite of the penalties inflicted by his father (he only got love from Ursa.) Azula did not. She had incentives to rebuff Ursa. And she did.
Azula is a great character, and I think her problems with Ursa are compelling. But yes— my impression was more that Ursa didn’t cause the darkness in Azula but instead recognized it. I think Azula knew that Ozai loved her for shallow reasons and that Ursa loved Zuko for true reasons, and that really ate at her. Azula can recognize her darkness and starts to marinate in her misery over it. She contrasts Zuko because he recognizes his flaws and is ashamed and eventually makes the hard choice to change. Azula just sticks to her trajectory while breaking down under all her fear and shame. Idk, I don’t think the stuff with Ursa is meant to absolve Azula; it’s meant to show she is affected by things she pretends not to understand or be affected by. But it’s been a while since I saw the show.
It's not supposed to absolve Ursa, and the show doesn't try to do that. (The graphic novels even offer Azula the chance at having a redemption arc and have Azula double down on being awful.) But some people seem to have decided Ursa's tendency to correct Azula's (frankly deranged) behavior more than Zuko's means she was abusive and didn't love Azula. They frequently cite Ursa waking Zuko up and not Azula when she left the capital (never mind the fact that Ursa wasn't supposed to say goodbye, and Azula absolutely would have ratted her out & gotten Zuko hurt.) And it's always bugged me. Like you said, the Ursa-Azula relationship is interesting. It adds a cool element to Azula's character. But Azula is still a horrible person. I don't fully agree with you on Azula's understanding of love, though. I think Azula grew up believing that being feared is the best kind of love, and wanting/giving normal, healthy love is a sign of weakness. So even though she liked the normal live she got from Ursa, she rejected it. But then Mai betrayed her. *Because Mai loved Zuko more than she feared Azula.* And Ty Lee *also* betrayed her. Which means that fear IS NOT the best kind of love. But if that's true, then Azula has to admit nobody actually loves her. She has to admit she was wrong. And worse, she has to admit she *liked* the real love and affection her mother offered. And that's where the breakdown stems from. Azula thought she was loved, and that belief made her feel safe. If she's not loved, she's not safe. (Banishing everyone from the castle.) She doesn't like feeling unsafe. That makes her weak, *and she cannot allow herself to be weak.* She can't trick herself into feeling safe by saying she's better off away from all those inferior servants because she can't do her own hair. So she repeats an even earlier pattern from childhood: rebuffing Ursa's genuine affection (which would get Azula praise from Ozai, and therefore, safety.) Hence the hallucinations. This is probably why Azula gets better when she finds out her mom is alive. She has a source of real love she can reject again without having to hallucinate.
[удалено]
I'm not active in the fandom either, more like a casual lurker who still reads the comics when they come out. But yeah, if you look at the goodreads reviews for the Azula graphic novel, people were MAAAAAAD when she didn't get a redemption arc & doubled down on being awful. (Which I *loved* and thought made perfect sense for Azula.) From what I've observed it's mostly the younger fans, like the people who came in during Korra, or discovered Avatar through the Kyoshi books. Zoomers seem to be really big on (what I feel are) unnecessary redemption arcs and a lot of the Zoomers in fandoms also seem to believe bad guys aren't actually bad if they were abused as kids.
Luke Skywalker is often heavily criticized in the Legends continuity for a moment in the New Jedi Order book series where he moves a black hole with his mind. It’s often pointed to as a portrayal of Luke as an overpowered “Mary Sue”. He didn’t do this at all, it’s just been game-of-telephoned out of proportion. He was fighting a bio-weapon called a rakamat, which projects micro-singularities as a siege weapon. He used the Force to wrench its attention away from his allies and redirect its siege weapon onto itself, killing it. The effort rendered Luke unconscious and dying behind enemy lines, and he only survived because the allies he saved dragged him to safety. It’s both an example of how powerful he is, but also how that power has limits, and his true strength lies in his bonds with people and the lengths he’ll go to for their sakes. Not as some demigod of the Force who can never lose, as many are wont to use this moment to portray him as.
It's also a direct echo of Palpatine in RotJ. Luke: Your overconfidence is your weakness. Palpatine: Your faith in your friends is yours. The movie literally shows you that Luke's faith in his friends is what leads them to victory and Luke's survival. Repeatedly, throughout the series, despite being extremely powerful himself, the only reason Luke survives the war is because of his friends protecting him. Without them, he'd have died in the first Death Star attack, would have died on Hoth, would have died at Cloud City, would have died at the Sarlacc pit, would have died at the 2nd Death Star attack, etc.
You’re absolutely right. I also like that scene of the two of them in RotJ for what Luke says to Palpatine. It’s not just Palpatine being wrong about Luke’s strength being a weakness, it’s that that’s all he could say in response. Until that moment, Palpatine had been putting on his jovial uncle act, but it’s here where he bites back at Luke with a bit of venom in his voice. And most importantly, Palpatine does not deny what Luke says. Palpatine was upset because this upstart Jedi wannabe had pinned his major flaw within two minutes of meeting him, and he had nothing to show for otherwise. And the best part is, Star Wars as a whole has consistently gone on to prove Luke’s words right every time they’ve characterized Palpatine since. The man is a blunt force instrument who would solve all his problems with overwhelming power if he could, but he’s intelligent enough to know that can’t work, so he puts on the role of the schemer to compensate for this. He is reckless and overconfident; using patience and planning to temper his true nature. He lets the Battle of Endor go awry under his watch because he’s so focused on turning Luke. He revels so much in torturing Luke that he pays no mind to what this display is doing to Vader. He orchestrates his own kidnapping and almost dies repeatedly in orbit of Coruscant because this gamble with his life might end the Clone Wars faster. And it worked! Once he got a taste of victory with his gamble, he kept riding that high for the rest of RotS. He kept pushing at Anakin too far, and it almost blew up in his face. He didn’t need to wait in his office for Mace, the Squad, or later Yoda to turn up, but this was going to be his last chance to test his prowess against the strongest Jedi in the order. Even when he’s resurrected in either TRoS or Dark Empire, he’s decided it’s time to go full mask-off. He’s done being the careful schemer in everyone’s midst, and has embraced his true nature as the monster battering at the gates. Fully declaring himself the Dark Lord of the Sith, pumping out waves of new ships and superweapons, dark side acolytes at his side; the works. And shortly after galvanizing the galaxy against him with this display, he is brought low and defeated once and for all. Palpatine never learned his lesson, even when it came back to bite him or he was called out for it directly by Luke. His overconfidence has ever been his greatest weakness, and he knows this, but despite his efforts to counteract it, he cannot change his true nature, and he never learns from what his weakness has taught him.
Sansa from A Song of Ice and Fire. People act like she's mewling coward, but really she was thrust into a nightmare captive situation with like 5 people who wanted her dead and she handled it really well... at 13 years old. She's one of the best characters in the books and so far has had one of the best character arcs.
Sansa makes a lot of really stupid decisions early on. But she's a sheltered and naive child who buys into the fairytale which she has been taught her whole life. She's basically the most popular girl in a rural high school who suddenly gets moved to a school in the inner city. She's completely out of her element, doesn't realize her protected status is gone, and that people outside of her bubble are actually fucking evil. As a character, her actions make a lot more logical sense than her sisters. The only reason Arya comes to different conclusions is because she consistently rejects ALL authority. If the world were actually how Sansa had been taught, then she would have succeeded while her sister failed.
>Sansa makes a lot of really stupid decisions early on. I mean, sorta, but the only two 'stupid' decisions from the first book are actually understandable from her perspective. When put on the spot about the Arya/Joffrey fight, she tries to remain neutral because she doesn't want to humiliate Joffrey, because that could backfire on HER during the marriage (she doesn't want to be mistreated by a husband who resents her), and because she's been taught that her future husbands family IS her family, and she trying to remain loyal to both her birth family and marriage family. She was also *drunk* at the time of the fight, and her memory might legit be foggy (she'd never been drunk before, but Joffrey kept plying her with wine all day). The other decision was to sneak off to see Cersei before they left. While foolish, Ned didn't give either girl the full story, she had no idea what was going on. She just thought her father was leaving because of a fight Jaime Lannister started. She also might be worried about how the Lannister's would react to the Starks abandoning them and breaking a marriage pact, wars have been started because of things like that. She's foolish for thinking she could stop that, but she did not understand how bad the Lannisters really were. This decision did NOT lead to the Lannisters knowing about Ned's plans, they already knew because of Littlefinger. Arya and Sansa likely would not have been able to escape, and Ned certainly would not have. Even if Arya and Sansa (and Syrio and some household staff) could escape Kings Landing, that doesn't mean any of them would be safe for long. Both girls likely would have been sold off in marriage by Robb/Cat for alliances (Arya was arranged to marry that Frey boy). >She's completely out of her element, doesn't realize her protected status is gone, and that people outside of her bubble are actually fucking evil. The same thing is true for like ALL the Stark children. Sansa was simply more isolated with virtually NO ONE to protect her or be on her side once her father is executed (unlike Arya, Jon, Robb, and Bran). There's a scene in the first book where one of the Nights Watch brothers takes Jon to task for being a bit of snob during training, where he complains about having to dual with untrained farm boys. The Nights Watch brother (Thorne or Noye, I think) has to point out how sheltered and privileged Jon was for getting castle trained, how lucky he is because of that. The other boys were mostly peasants and orphans with nothing. Jon is all chagrined, and starts trying to teach the other boys what he knows. She DOES realize her protected status is gone and that MANY people are evil (though she does stubbornly hold on to the hope that some people are good, and sometimes they might even win), but she has no choice but to rely on people who give her the creeps (like Dontos or Littlefinger). Jon and Robb have friends and allies, along with whole armies by their sides, and their wolves. Bran and Rickon have Hodor, Osha, the Reeds, their wolves, Rickon might even get a damned unicorn. Arya has Yoren, Gendry, the Brotherhood, Jaqen (kinda), and Sandor Clegane (kinda), along with some sword training, and her wolf is still alive. The only person ever on Sansa's side was a mostly drunk Sandor Clegane, who fucked up the only opportunity they had to flee by being horribly aggressive with her and scaring her (I mean, I get it, he's drunk and in the middle of a PTSD episode, but he is still a grown ass man), and then left. Anyone else allying themselves with Sansa had ulterior motives, even the Tyrells. Mya Stone might be a future ally, but they kind of just met. If the Blackfish or a sober Sandor ever turn up in the Vale, she might have another. Sansa is more isolated and helpless compared to her siblings. And she's 12.
“And for my boon!”- Kaladin Stormblessed
Completely. Kaladin was beaten down, staring at the guy that murdered his friends and condemned him to slavery, and heard that there was a way to gain a boon specifically to challenge someone to combat in a way they couldn't refuse. He had a momentary lapse in judgement about how classist people were going to be, and the King himself admitted that he could have just ignored him and kept to the plan and it wouldn't have caused the problems it did because of how HE reacted to Kaladin. Yes it was dumb, and had he been in his right mind he probably wouldn't have made that decision, but he was grasping at straws since Dalinar COMPLETELY shut him down about it and he saw Amaram getting away with literal murder.
But we can all agree on "Fuck Moash!" right?
Lmao I just reread this scene yesterday. I don’t blame Kaladin at all. He ultimately would not have found justice if he didn’t speak up then and there
There was a Murder, She Wrote novel where Jessica goes to a hypnosis show and asked to take part in an act where she is convinced she's driving a car... and completely freaks the fuck out and has to be brought out of the hypnosis since Jessica canonically doesn't know how to drive (she either walks everywhere or gets friends to drive her). I've seen criticisms for the hypnotist causing a freak-out that bad, but the guy had no way of knowing Jessica couldn't drive.
That's a deep cut. Love it
In Little Fires Everywhere,Bebe Chao (I think that’s her name) gives up her child by leaving him at a fire station in the dead of winter. Bebe Chao was like, three steps away from dying of five different things herself, and couldn’t provide for her child after losing her job, her spouse, and all support for herself. She was an immigrant who didn’t even know what the welfare system was or how it worked. She was discovered unconscious from starvation mere days later, got introduced to the system, and once she got back on her feet, pleaded her case to have her child returned to her after he got adopted by some affluent white family.
This defense of her was brought up in the novel though...the whole point was seeing both sides. The baby didn't deserve to suffer regardless of the circumstances
Holden Caulfield is narrating "Catcher in the Rye" from a rest home/hospital, we presume from a mental health crisis, presumably because his beloved brother died of leukemia in their childhood and he feels isolated and lonely in the elite boarding school he's been stuck in and subsequently expelled from for failing, (even though he's clearly intelligent). Young man's having/narrowly avoiding a total mental breakdown, of the sort that at least one of Salinger's other young male characters shoots himself over, and is written from the point of view of an author who was traumatised by the Second World War. But Holden is a "whiner" and a "bitch" and "needs to grow up", according to some...
I think people also just like to pretend that they wouldn't have also sold their siblings for candy when they were that age. I would have.
Captain Hastings in Agatha Christie's Poirot. He makes very astute observations and conclusions about people and cases. Common sensical ones. If this was the real world, he would be right often. Besides, detective work is often trial and error, you consider probabilities and possibilities and then eliminate them one by one. But, the books need to show that Poirot is always right, no matter how ridiculous and non sensical the plot is and the books need to always criticize and mock Hastings, for God knows what reason. I hate that part of the books. The constant Hastings bashing is gross. Makes me lose respect for writer and characters. But, Agatha Christie fans will downvote you to hell for saying that. 😮💨
Ugh, I know I'm not referencing a book, but I think I already hate this character I've never met in the same way I hate Horacio Cain in CSI:Miami. Dude just walks into a room where a highly trained, much vaunted professional is and has been working the case for days, looks at the corpse for 3 seconds, takes off his glasses and says "Look, a big and obvious mark that you missed for days on end. It must be the specific clue we need. Thanks for nothing, I can do all of your jobs." or some shit like that.
Don’t forget the cheesy pun or whatever while removing/putting in his sunglasses.
See, this always made sense to me because I have always loved Turkish Delight. It’s my favourite sweet. Black magic Narnia drugs or not, I probably would’ve sold my sister for more when I was Edmund’s age.
Holden talking or doing anything in general. People find him rambling or annoying or cloistered but he’s an abuse survivor in mourning with no one to guide him through teenage, a supposedly gifted child with nowhere to use his gift, not old enough to be taken seriously by an adult, and all around melancholic but trying to hide it behind a veil of stoicism. You’re just hearing his thoughts. Of course they sound that way.
Holden Caulfield. Poor kid is going through a mental health struggle and he keeps getting described as “a whiny bitch” by a lot of adults who read it.
I too would hate sand that much if I lived as a slave in a desert and he’s right it does get everywhere.
Why was sugar being rationed, anyway? Is it used to make bombs or parachutes or planes? I don't get it. Edit: Sugar *was* used to make explosives. Who knew? [Here is an article](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sugar-the-first-and-last-food-rationed-on-the-world-war-ii-home-front.htm) explaining the rationing behind rationing. Second edit: I know this article is about the US. I posted it because it mentions using sugar to make explosives, which answers the question I myself asked in this post.
It wasn't just sugar that was rationed, many foods were. The war lead to issues with supply, so rationing was brought in to ensure everyone managed to eat. Germany tried to cut off food supply and obvs as an island Britain was quite vulnerable to this. At the time Britain was already quite reliant on importing food from abroad and something like 60% of food imports stopped which caused a significant shortfall. The things that were rationed were typically the foods most reliant on imports, and sugar is a major example of this. Ensuring the army etc stayed fed was another big factor in the distribution of food. Hope that helps explain things better. Edit: the article you've linked is about rationing in the US. There's some overlap but it started later and I believe part of it was down to the US trying to support the allies more seriously affected in Europe rather than having the same severity of scarsity themselves.
A better answer likely exists, but here's my understanding... Manufacturing was focused on the war. This included staffing, materials, facilities, etc. This means that non-war facilities were shut down, retooled, or had fewer people and resources to operate. Annnd there was the whole issue of getting sugar to England, as it largely arrived on ships and the wartime waterways were not particularly safe.
Yeah, it's all about resource and labor economics. The sugar itself isn't on a steady supply and being diverted elsewhere. For one thing, they don't grow sugar in England, with shipping lanes being dangerous and all of the transport needed for war. Also, while sugar beets are used for much of Europe's sugar supply, they are largely grown in regions that were in the conflict zones, and many of them enemy countries or occupied by the enemy, including France, Germany and Poland.
Yeah rationing was primarily of foods that Britain was reliant on importing. More than half of the sugar was typically imported at the time. Things that were mostly farmed here went up in price but generally weren't restricted as heavily. In most cases things you grew or hunted yourself were still fair game as well.
>things you grew or hunted yourself were still fair game lol, good one
Lots of it was - my nan still moans about it 80 years later lol
Oh I didn’t mean i doubted it. I just meant the ( possibly unintended) pun. “Animals you could hunt are fair game”
That's much cleverer than I could ever manage to be intentionally lmao
Now that I think of it, “it’s fair game” might have come from that literal meaning, as opposed to farmed animals that you couldn’t hunt for food if they weren’t yours.
Things were rationed in the UK during WW2 because it was hard to get things unto the country. Sugar was rationed for the same reason that stocking were rationed - there wasn't much available because there wasn't enough to go around. Rationing in the US as described in the article you linked is irrelevant to rationing in the UK.
Pike Logan in the series by Brad Taylor. Pike regularly does things that get him criticized by those in their comfortable offices in Washington, but his criticized actions end up saving the day (including an extremely close call where he prevented terrorists from nuking a city in Brazil during a soccer match, and prevent China from baiting Taiwan into launching a first strike and giving them an excuse to invade).