The Very Hungry Caterpillar is, on a the surface, merely a sweet story about a very hungry caterpillar and his journey of consumption and metamorphosis.

The author had an entirely different meaning in mind.

TVHC is a story about the author's struggle with their sexual and gender identity, preceded by years of substance abuse and high-risk sexual encounters.

The story begins with the caterpillar hatching from an egg. The Egg is both vaginal and penile, resulting from the combination of ovum and sperm. Within the author, they realized their own sense of vagina and peepee, causing a cognitive dissonance in their own identity.

TVHC's insatiable hunger for food can be seen as a metaphor for a deep longing to explore and understand one's own identity. It reflects the desire to consume knowledge about gender and self-discovery.

TVHC starts by eating through one red apple. This symbolizes the early stages of puberty, menstrual blood, and singular s*x (masturbation). The fact that future foods continue to grow in number and frequency shows the author's increasing libido, but also a shame cycle that is both calmed and exacerbated by continued high-risk exploration.

When TVHC eats through two pears, this symbolizes their first sexual encounter with two people. The green color of the pears symbolizes marijuana abuse, as well as the color of young, supple growth of a plant and the loss of the author's innocence. Since this is the second day of TVHC's life, it can be inferred that this sexual encounter occurred early in life, most likely in abuse as a minor, setting the stage for a life of sexual confusion and impulsiveness.

As the numbers of food increase, so too do the sexual partners. As visualized in the artwork, the penetration of TVHC through food symbolizes the penetration the author experienced as the sexually receiving partner, and the resulting holes in the food represent the continued diminishing of their psyche and worth.

After the numerical scaling of partners achieves maximum, TVHC binges in many different singular foods, much like the author's series of promiscuous encounters. The pace of the text is at a crescendo, the sexual encounters frequent and fleeting.

The Cocoon is not a transformative moment, but one of death and burial. Death of the Soul. Death of the Vagina. Death of the Peepee. Death of the Self.

The emergence of The Butterfly is the emergence of Denialism. Unable to face the damage to his body and soul from illicit drugs and STDs, the author adopted a new persona in order to dissociate from their true self. It is too late however, and so a short-lived life of denialism is all that is possible, until TVHC lays a new egg for the cycle of abuse to continue.

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

!bookworms !classics !ringbearers

• I ended a line of dialogue with a double exclamation point and I'm not changing it

• the second draft of my manuscript had 849 em-dashes in it

• I mentally swap the races of characters in Golden Age sci-fi to make it more interesting for the modern audience (me)

• I make fun of audiobooks, but I actually just can't concentrate on them.

!writecel !bookworms

I remember reading the couple and then one from way further in the series since I didn't know the order and a comic / manga thing.

That shit was a real trip.

Wonder if there was cat fascism eventually

!bookworms !mathematics

It's honestly comical how the woman is like a textbook case of autism,and yet no one in Japan has even heard of it so they all think the main character is just bizarre, to the point that the incel she gets into a relationship with is more normal than her. It almost has socialist underpinnings to me too-spoilers, at the very end the incel gets her to quit her job and look for a prestigious full time position,only for the incel to go take a leak in a conbini nearby and she follows him in and begins rearranging the products in the optimal way. This woman knows everything that needs to be done and understands the store inside and out,but because she lacks the capital to join the owner-class she's stuck grubbing for pennies. Meanwhile, some dude(and his wife probably) are raking in all that fat income as a passive investment with no work being done on their part.I don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way.

!bookworms !classics all the talk today on @kaamrev post about Rangz of Power reminded me what a language nerd Tolkien was, he was particularly fascinated with the Finnish language and mythology which he would use as a base for Quenya.

He went as far as to learn enough finnish to read the darn Kalevala in the original.

Which brings me to translations. Translating is tricky, especially for poetry or books which are famous for their prose because part of their beauty is lost, them there's the issue of "word-by-word" translation or whether to convey the general idea of the text.

What are some books you guys find "untranslatable" so to speak?which translated works you find good and what are some terrible translations you came across?

Shakespeare doesn't translate well in other languages, same with Cervantes and Camões when is translated to English but some annotated translations of Don Quixote do the original justice. I see no point of reading Moby Peepee or Lolita in Portuguese either, lot's of what make those books special will be lost.

!straggots Explain yourselves

TLDR: it's because there is a way higher expectation to be financially successful and to not spend time on "useless" things placed on men because of course there is.

Ironically the same day I got kicked from the commie ping group ( ).

While at work today I was contemplating the topic of political legitimacy as I often do, I am basically neurodivergentally obsessed with the topic. But while thinking about it, I was thinking about a coworker I dislike.

He is the typical "union man", a fat slob that never seems to be able to finish his assigned work on time, a constant source of workplace drama, and quick to involve the union in any and all disputes at work. He recently earned my ire by tailgating me on my way to work, while I was already driving 10 over the speed-limit.

While thinking about him and his "modus operandi", my thoughts naturally drifted to pro-union redditors, and their excessive faith in unions (I don't hate them, they just don't have my loyalty unconditionally) and while doing this I suddenly had an apifiny that to these people, the union truly must be seen as representative. They have replaced the feeling of belonging to a tribe, with a feeling of belonging to a "class".

Obvious, I know, but for a moment I truly understood it, it was as if I had accidentally joined some kind of hivemind. I somehow felt both a sense of joy and disgust (Collectivism is incompatible with me), I felt I was close to puking. ( )

Anyway, I think I now meet a minimum requirement to be able to find commie literature profound, I am looking for recommendations.

!neolibs Saruman the White and Sauron both impulsed the industrialization of Middle Earth (the first even brought industrialization to the distant Shire!) while Rohan and Gondor were focused in keeping their agricultural realms and Elves were focused on migrating after millennia of ruling over forests.

Their coalition was also the only diverse one, including orcs, goblins, Uruk Hais, Dunlendings and Eastlings while the Kingdoms of the West were ethnostates and also monarchies favoring the ethnic supremacist Numenorean lineage.

Just how close was Saruman of patenting steam machinery?

!bookworms

https://old.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1e9n9n6/hugo_awards_statement_july_2024/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/1e8ispo/not_the_nyt_list_100_fine_books_from_around_the/le7lbx1/?context=8

@Noelle and other smarty pants r-slurs

!bookworms

The world is interesting. There is an amazing cast of characters throughout the story which I have rarely ever seen before in a graphic novel. There is a great diversity of different powers and groups in the graphic novel all with their own styles and aesthetics.

The introduction of the endless nation was the coolest part of the Graphic novel for me.

Most disappointing aspect:

They wasted the potential of the horsemen, the apocalypse prophecy, and the beast that would lead the horsemen. They were all surprisingly shallow impact plotlines at the end for what they could have represented.

I would still recommend the comic for the unique style and the number of cool characters it has, probably the highest density of cool characters I have ever seen in a comic.

Over the entire course of the story line, it felt like the story went from a deep ocean's depth, large conflict or great epic and half way through shifted its focus to tell more personal stories with far more limited impact compared to the scale of the story it felt like it was supposed to be.

The best way to explain how the story leaves you feeling is like reading something that is truly great and still leaving with the feeling that it could have definitely been even more amazing. Like getting the best quality carton of eggs in your life but 2-3 eggs are missing.

The nations felt more powerful than the apocalypse itself ever did.

I loved how the different civilizations had different tech aesthetics and mysticism to them. The technology of the Union, the confederacy, the endless nation, and the PRC strongly differed in style, and it was noticeable how different their cultures were from one another.

You leave knowing that this is some really great stuff, but its definitely not perfect.

I would give it a 9.5/10 because I could not see any other author or artist blending this many genres together this perfectly without making any of them feel out of place within the setting for 45 chapters straight while still maintaining the quality of the characters 95% of the time and keeping the story at the level of the greats of the comic book industry.

East of West is like Saga for people who didn't like Saga, or Saga is East of west for people who didn't like East of West.

If you are going to read the series I would also recommend the additional East of West The world comic which adds more information about the lore of the setting.

I highly recommend the comic. It is really good.

Drove a good few hours to get to Gem City Comic Con and this my haul:

Some eerie mags, some issues of Prez an utterly insane bronze book Dc bool about a teenage hippie president, and a Warren Ellis Omni.

I also got some mags like wizard and toy mags:

There was this pretty cool free manga zine at the front which looked like Jiro Kuwata:

Some more notes:

-The manga tables stunk and had hentai for sale

-i saw three separate indie comic booths were the artist was showing off their lightbringer tier art

-i saw 3 fursuits

-lots of hazbin hotel cosplay

-i saw a really fat Mandelorian cosplayer

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

I'm reading "Fire & Blood" and "La Guerre de Cent Ans" .

So far (Fire & Blood) I think Aenys I was a weakling and a naive idiot and that Maegor and Visenya had a point.

!bookworms !classics

Timothee Chalamagne as The Kid

Walton Goghins as Toadvine

Herschel "Guy" Beahm IV as Judge Holden

Alec Baldwin as John Glanton

TL:DR

The domination of the Draka series shows the worst aspects of the United States brought to an extreme in the two large societies present (the Draka and the Alliance)

The draka being essentially a mass slaveholding nation that ends up enslaving majority of the world, first being a racial form of slavery and limited citizenship to including whites, asians and anyone from defeated nations.

The society isn't just a "big ol' plantation" as it advances but instead ends up like a stalinist state where the "workers" (slaves) work as they're assigned, be it manufacturing, designing, research, etc.

The Alliance are basically the paranoid and military-obsessed aspects of the United States where a war economy and military industrial complex is the entire focus.

Sounds berry interesting as a series, might read

Greetings illiterate strags

I've been continuing on the Submarine movie binge autism streak, and watched the 2020 movie Greyhound last week. When I discovered it was based on a book, I hightailed it to the nearest torrent.....I mean I hightailed it to the nearest totally legal bookstore not yet pillaged, and got me a copy of the 1955 book.

I also got an audiobook version, cuz i wanted to keep reading this week, and I had to go do surveying, and it's kind of hard to read a novel when you're driving 300km over potholes a day.

Also this book barely counts as a Submarine book, but also frick you.

Basically Good Shepherd is a historical fiction based on real events or actual real world situations, but with the main character and his exploits based on the amalgamated experiences of WW2 atlantic theatre Allied captains of destroyers (Anti-submarine specialist warships) during their brutal campaigns against Kraut U-boats, and their often forlorn and desperate attempts to protect civil and military cargo ships from being torpedoed, before they could deliver their vital supplies from USA to Bongland.

Sort of like an amalgamation character and missions, like those Biggles books, which followed the titular character Biggles, a Bong fighter-pilot who fought on the Western-Front of WW1 in the age of biplanes. Biggles' adventures in each novel was based upon real world happenings in the great war, but of course would never have happened to any singular pilot, though similar scenarios had in fact been recorded by numerous WW1 aviation veterans from which his amalgamated adeventures drew upon.

The same principle applies to our fictional protagonist, George Krause, who is a yank captain of the Destroyer Keeling, is thrust upon the responsibility of shepherding a civil convoy of 37 ships and commanding an escort battle group of 4 destroyers, across the U-boat infested Atlantic Ocean.

One of the main Themes of the book is the weight of responsibility, and our protagonist Krause, is under constant duress due to the supreme magnitude of the responsibility placed upon his shoulders. The timeframe of the novel is in 1942, just shortly after Burgerland had joined the war, consequently the US had to scramble to put battlefleets into the ocean, and men in them to command, thus at the beginning of the novel Captain Krause finds himself in the unenviable and awkward situation where he is an inexperienced commander placed in command of a Polish (Szrotmistrz), Bong and Canadian destroyer in his squad, all of whom had previously seen battle, while he himself is untested - and has only found himself into his seat of command due to a terminal shortage of high enough ranking senior personnel at the outbreak of the war (for the US). The Polish and British destroyer, and their captains, specifically had both been at war for 2 years by now.

In this specific convoy, which the novel follows across the Atlantic, in the 37 civil ships, and 4 destroyers there are over 3000 men under his direct command, including the 3 other destroyers of the other nationalities.

The novel explores how Kraus, though supremely competent and gifted, in his inexperience in battle, finds himself in difficult moments, and having to weight his options when giving orders to Junior captains that he feels may judge him badly, and he fears they might resent his seniority over them. He has to consider difficult decisions, like allowing the Polish/British destroyer to chase down possible U-boat sightings, hedged against the fuel-levels they need to preserve for the rest of the voyage - but to also keep in mind that restricting their attack may lead to them resenting him.

Throughout the voyage Kraus is placed in perpetually worsening and awkward moments where he has to make dramatic and quick decisions on which the lives of hundreds depend upon. Not only is he in command of his own vessel, but he also has to communicate with the civil convoy and give them orders for how to steer (zig-zagging to make themselves less easy for prospective torpedoes), as well as to command all the other destroyers in terms of what flank of the convoy they ought to shield, and what targets they must run down.

Few examples include Kraus having to make haunting decisions as to whether to halt to rescue a few dozen survivors from sunk ships, or to speed ahead to protect vulnerable ships unprotected from torpedo attacks - he has to weight the lives of a few dozen men in sight about to be burned alive in oil against the vulnerability of the most invaluable rescue vessel escorting the civil convoy and which is possibly worth a 1000 men by itself.

Kraus also has to temper his messages to his allies over Signaling by flashing light is carried out by using Morse Code, and when allied destroyers ask him for ammunition he has to politely let them down, because he has even less, or when he leaves behind a civilian cargo ship which had lagged behind the convoy, he has to abandon it to help protect a flank under imminent attack, and has to let the civil captain know that though he is fricking off he had driven the nearby german sub beneath the water, and "has confidence the ship will catch up" Kraus is haunted by how abandoned this captain must feel even as Kraus must weight the safety of 1 ship against 30.

Luckily this ship catches up to the convoy unmolested and Kraus feels unequal amounts of relief.

Other themes include the fallibility of early equipment and the reliability of subordinates. WW2 trailblazer technology like RADAR and SONAR were in their infancy during the time of 1942, and despite the popular view by many non-historians 80 years later, were brokenshit failing all the time. With the relatively primitive early versions of RADAR being especially vulnerable to weather, the book also explores how WW2 captains often had to make due with false, faulty or broken equipment, even under battlefield conditions, which as you guys can imagine put a catastrophic amount of strain on warships, and gave U-boats decisive edges in combat.

The yank RADAR equipment specifically was vulnerable to harsh weather conditions, and unlike Bongs, were not yet at their most sophisticated development so early in the war for the US.

For the Human parts, Kraus has to weight the competency of his subordinates constantly, like his preference of a specific SONAR operator which is very talented, but whom needs to sleep across shifts, and Kraus cannot just force a sailor to man his post end over end. He also has to decide whether to trust the eyes of his lookouts and whether to trust their judgements - because whether they had seen a periscope or oil slick in the tumultuous waters has effect upon his greater tactics.

And if they had fricked up - his resulting decision was a frick up too.

The novel also explores a great deal of religiosity - Kraus is devout and tries to find inspiration from the Bible constantly, and near every page is peppered with verses directly quoted, as our protagonist tries to find guidance for how he must behave under exceptional duress - should he save men calling for help in the water, at the expense of lagging behind the convoy and risking ever greater amounts of sunken vessels.

This is noteworthy cuz so many modern writings have Redditor type absolute contempt for Christianity in general that anything even positive is a strange surprise to me, even if it is as lukewarm positive as a man in dire straights using his belief for support.

In spite of all this shit our main guy goes through over the course of 2 and a half days voyage, in the intense combat between the Keeling (Kraus's ship) and multiple U-boats, with the Keeling eventually ends racking up multiple kills, and winning the absolute respect of his Allied destroyers, and his convoy .

AUDIOBOOK AND FILM:

The Audiobook is pretty charming, especially the 1980 one as it involves instruction on how to change cassettes, to replace cassettes back in order once finished, and how to mail it back to the audio-renting company! This original Audiobook took over 10 cassettes!!! Just to finish this 300 page novel.

All in all the book is pretty spectacular and follows the real world historic military conduct of nautical warfare as it occurred during the atlantic, 10/10.

The movie Greyhound which is also based upon this book, also follows the narrative relatively closely, and in normal circumstances I would have given the film a 10/10 rating for being so spectacular and because of Tom Hank's acting, and the realistic portrayal of destroyer and submarine combat.

OR I WOULD HAVE

You see in the fricking movie the Krauts mock and verbally harass the convoy and destroyer escort over the radio, and threatens them in the most fricking Comic Book villain manner possible. HOLLYWEIRD JUST COULD NOT HELP THEMSELVES

it's like the f@ggot executives just could not add a fricking scar and monocle to the krauts to indicate they were the Badguys and thus went full r-slur and cocaine mode

I'm not usually one to b-word about showing nazis in a disrespectful light or whatever, but this type of portrayal does more disservice to the heroes than the villains than you could think. In movies like We Were Soldiers or Firebase Gloria, the Viet Cong is displayed as competent, menacing and formidable - they are never caricatures or villainous for the sake of making the protagonists seem more heroic in comparison - this creates a sense of tension and raw realness, and even by showing their human side, the tragedy and banality of war is enhanced by these films.

With this cartoonish portrayal of the U-boat krauts, it completely strips a raw realness from the film, it reduces it down into an unintenional basic b-word propaganda poster - it is so tacky and of poor taste it just makes me cringe

Worse still, because U-boats would rarely ever break radio silence and the their real world captains were extremely ruthless and professional. The movie even had the inspired idea of having the Submarines be represented by whale singing sound cues, thus enhancing their presence like an ominous lovecraftian threat, similar to the Dunkirk movie in which the krauts had no visible moment on screen, but the threat of their presence were felt

Instead this is completely discarded by this fricking fricking fricking Hollyweird need to have yank popcorn guzzling mouthbreathers understand who the badguys are in these two tacky scenes where the krauts mock Greyhound that they are going to sink his flock

Which infuriates me even more, as the probable fricking reason they changed the protagonist Destroyer name from Keeling (in the book) to Greyhound (the film), was just to have this shitty scene what an astronomical waste

I'd go as far as saying these two scenes, reduced the movie from a 10/10 to fricking 7/10 at mostfor me personally

@nuclearshill

https://www.fullyramblomatic.com/reviews/beauty.htm

Another link

Anyone else write fanfiction?

I recently decided to get back into writing, and wanted to do something low stakes. I really only wrote technical documents, design or worldbuilding docs, and like 500 words of an original story that never went anywhere. I finished a short fanfic story (not lewd) the other day, and was able to keep a 1k words a day pace. Been a good chance to learn about how I write, and I'm starting to see where I have a lot to work on. Maybe it is the fact I like the original work a lot that it motivated me to actually complete it, but I do feel like I'm improving at how much I can write in a day. Unrelated, but org roam in Emacs has been a pretty good ecosystem to write in. I am a vim-strag so I have to use evil mode, but I like the built-in tooling and the nodes system that roam has.

Not having to worry about describing certain relationships or settings is nice. Especially when you aren't writing a whole series out of it, just a short scenario. Also, I definitely pulled punches on how I wrote the scenario because I want the characters to end up in a good place. If I had written something original, I'd have probably let my cynicism take over. It's a good opportunity if you just want to practice getting words on a page, especially if you are like me and can't even start writing because your worldbuilding or something is not absolutely perfect.

Bad part is you can't really share that shit with anyone you know to get feedback. I'm going to post it on AO3 at some point, once I do some edits.

Also, I've been reading a shit ton of fanfic for this fandom as a consequence. That shit is a rabbit-hole. It's all just pure slop, but there have been some gems here and there. I really had the impression that most fanfics were just excuses for smut, obviously that's a lot of it, but I was actually surprised how much were just pure romance. Female-dominated fandoms probably have way more lewd writing than the male spaces.

TL:DR Humbert (the guy telling the story in his memoir) is intentionally acting subversive and attempting to win the reader to his side by painting things through his view. His attraction, instead of being immoral and illegal is framed instead as pure love, despite him not even seeing Dolores as anything but a child to molest and use. He's an unreliable narrator trying to seem innocent in his kidnapping and molestation by blaming the young girl and spends the book trying to be buddy and playful with the narrator to get them to see things from his view (as it's his memoir he's writing)

And the people who think for some reason it's a proper romance book need to be

!bookworms !classics have you guys ever read them? What are your takes?

I mean all the corpus ranging from Geoffrey of Monmouth fanfic history about WE WUZ TROJANZ N SHEET to "Le Mort D'Arthur" and most recently "The One and Future King"

Book 14 came out I need to get it!! 🐺🐺🐺

AwOOOOooo werewolves rock