linkdump

[queenlua]

Cleaned out my bookmarks. Some good ones I rediscovered:

• A letter of advice from Fitzgerald to a young writer. Excerpt:

  ...I've read the story carefully and, Frances, I'm afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell...

• Magic: the Gathering is Turing complete


• "Mrs. Sinclair Lewis to You". Heh.


• Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists. Very interesting essay.


• Aisle, an interesting one-turn interactive fiction thing


• hey look yet more interactive fiction

Also, I briefly felt enough faith in the opinions of strangers on the internet to play To the Moon, a recently-hyped indie art game. It was disappointing and I do not recommend it. See also Passage, another overhyped indie art game that at least had the decency not to charge money for the experience, and the far-more-amusing parody of Passage on Kongregate.

Comments

[mark_asphodel]

That Potter essay covered a great deal of the things that bother me about the underlying philosophy of the books.

As for Passage, I remember having arguments with my spouse back in the day because he thought it was brilliant and I... didn't.

[queenlua]

be sure to show your spouse the Kongregate ten second version :P

[amielleon]

I wouldn't be too hard on JKR for confusing her message. In at least one part of the Odyssey, Homer did too. (will tell you more about this if interested when I'm not in class)

[queenlua]

I still very much enjoyed the books! but I thought the essay brought out an angle I hadn't consciously thought about before, but definitely niggled me a bit subconsciously (mainly in the portrayal of James and Lily).

Tell me more about this Odyssey thing, though.

[amielleon]

Meh, the Harry Potter series have always bothered me deeply in their presentation of inherent goodness.

Re: Odyssey -- My bad, it was the Iliad. Still relevant, though. :P

There's a scene where Diomedes and Glaukos meet, and, upon discovering that Glaukos's ancestor was a guest at Diomedes's ancestor's place, Homer writes,

[Diomedes said,] "So let's exchange armour.
Then these men here will recognize
that we pay tribute to our father's bond as friends."

With these words, the two men jumped out of their chariots,
clasped hands and pledged their mutual friendship.
Then Zeus, son of Cronos, stole Glaucus' wits,
for he gave Tydeus' son his golden armour,
worth one hundred oxen, exchanging that
for armour made of bronze, worth only nine.

Homer here interprets this exchange as deception.

However, it's well-attested that this is an example of an ancient tradition harkening back to Proto-Indo-European times. What their speeches to each other emphasize is that the idea that "guests are kin" is to be taken absolutely seriously -- and in fact can be so extended that, like kin, guest-host status is heritable. Therefore Glaukos gives Diomedes his fancy armor to repay a very very old, inherited debt. Apparently Homer did not understand the roots of this tradition, and instead took this as a bit of stupidity on Glaukos's part. The fact that Glaukos was Trojan probably played a part in his narrative bias.

But yeah, I basically thought Homer's error here is perfectly analogous to JKR's incoherence regarding certain aspects of her religion and where her faith system came from.