Why is it that all great minds of antiquity thought that love was more than a crude neurochemical reaction? Would they have been redpilled if they were alive after the 20th century when advancement in chemistry demonstrated that love/eros is basically just a powerful drug? Honestly explains many things about the current perception of love in relation to modernity.
>>24945804Two reasons:One, they didn't use "love" in the sense of mere infatuation, as we so often do. Love (and hate) were used also as general categories of action. Which is why the Bible at the same time says you must love your wife (care for her, protect her, emotional presence) and also hate her (not choose her over the Kingdom). But the second, and more important reason, is that they didn't usually fall for the reductionist fallacy. The words you're reading right now are made of flickering pixels. Are they "just" flickering pixels? Well no, they are also references to meaning, they are units of syntax, they have aesthetic value ... none of this is addressed by evaluating pixels as the words' immediate physical form. Because physical evaluation is reductive. And as useful as it is, a reduction by definition doesn't address the entirety of a phenomenon. It is a silent hope of materialists that we at some point will create a formula that will physically address also aesthetics and history and etymology etc. but nothing really warrants this hope at this point. So your view of love hinges on the unwarranted use of "just" in >basically just a powerful drugIf you read the studies you're referencing carefully, you will not find any rational reason for including it. You will only find that within a particular framework, the reduction is done so and so.
>>24946530>I was pretty much living out that book when my 20's started. I met her in college and I just knew she was different from everyone else and precious when I heard her speak.I'm older, pushing 60 actually. Love, and however you define it... its as "real" as you hold it to be, its as real as you make it out to be. Chemicals now understood or magic as the ancients held it to be, its the same thing. You get one look, one sniff of the scent of a person and your heart rate goes up. If they feel it back, it really might as well be magic. I lived this for about 28 years before modern life ruined our relationship and ripped it asunder, we had a good run. Why care where such a powerful thing comes from just enjoy it while it lasts. The old timers told us, didn;t they. Romantic love fades but never dies. Make sure you're best friends as well as lovers to make that transition to real life. There's nothing finer to possess in this world, than that ephemeral love. And that's as long as you have it.
>>24947920more utter bullshit. here we go, shakespeare was a nigger, or some other guy, a preposterous pronouncement on par with moon landing hoax.
>>24948955observation: the outliers that are gays, have problems with thing Xconclusion: thing x must be called into questionproblematic to be sure.
>>24945823>Love as we know it now is mostly a concept that arose around the time of Shakespeare, after the invention of the Gutenberg printing pressBytuene Mersh and Averil, When spray biginneth to springe,The lutel foul hath hire wyl On hyre lud to synge. Ich libbe in love longinge For semlokest of alle thinge. He may me blisse bringe; Icham in hire baundoun.An hendy hap ichabbe yhent; Ichot, from hevene it is me sent; From alle wymmen mi loue is lent,Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>short but complex enough to hold your attention>Easy to read without the dumbed down low IQ prose slop of modern fantasy>no political correctnessStart with the pulps
>>24949905>the dumbed down low IQ prose slop of modernI don't think you know what those words mean and that's why you hide them in a greentext faux-quote.>Start with the pulpsPut the pulps in the scifi/fantasy general if you want clicks
>>24949905First poster is an estrogenic ass faggot. Yes OP, you're right. It's nice to read high quality short stories. It helped my zoomie attention span too.
are there any biographical books about chronically depressed historical figures that went on to accomplish anything?
>>24947901Not about historical figures but maybe you should read>Ferdinand von Schirach
>>24947935Mass murder is actually good
No, and you're not going to dig yourself out of your hole.Your life is in a downward spiral because of structural brain issues. It's a malady of modern times, called "neural net model collapse". Rediscovered with the advent of generative AI, researchers realized that AI models trained on AI-generated output experienced model collapse. Devoid of the outliers and long tails of real-world data, the model's parameters clipped to zero or one, rendering it all useless. A similar phenomenon happens in human neural-networks if they're trained on human-made and other artificial data, instead of natural data. The pathetic shutin stunts his development with anime, vidya, pr0n, virtual human contact, and the confines of his little room, stunting his neural development beyond all repair. The inevitable result is all too common—seething, sexual perversion, and increasing suicidal ideation. If there is any cure, it involves going outside, getting away from the city, and experiencing nature in all its complexity. But that assumes it's not too late.
>>24947901Lincoln. Bouts of melancholia just like this image
>>24947934Im brown and I relate to him. How did Goebbels save himself?
How does one get into reception theory?
>>24950866Check the internet
>>24951061Great advice, genius
>>24950866God I love foxes
>>24951597Same
Apparently there’s a phenomenon in American high schools right now of not assigning full novels to students, but only having them read excerpts. I graduated a decade ago, and I distinctly remember us reading Gatsby and Slaughterhouse Five. What novels, if any, were you made to read in high school?
>>24951097The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, The Outsiders, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice & Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Old Man and the Sea, Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Ethan Frome, The Call of the Wild... That's what I remember, but I might be mixing middle and high school together. Of all those, Hawthorne and Steinbeck are far and away the best.>Where Hawthorne is known, he seems to be deemed a pleasant writer, with a pleasant style,--a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and weighty thing would hardly be anticipated:--a man who means no meanings. But there is no man, in whom humor and love, like mountain peaks, soar to such a rapt height, as to receive the irradiations of the upper skies;--there is no man in whom humor and love are developed in that high form called genius; no such man can exist without also possessing, as the indispensable complement of these, a great, deep intellect, which drops down into the universe like a plummet. Or, love and humor are only the eyes, through which such an intellect views this world. The great beauty in such a mind is but the product of its strength.>In treating of Hawthorne, or rather of Hawthorne in his writings (for I never saw the man; and in the chances of a quiet plantation life, remote from his haunts, perhaps never shall) in treating of his works, I say, I have thus far omitted all mention of his "Twice Told Tales," and "Scarlet Letter." Both are excellent, but full of such manifold, strange and diffusive beauties, that time would all but fail me, to point the half of them out. But there are things in those two books, which, had they been written in England a century ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne had utterly displaced many of the bright names we now revere on authority. But I content to leave Hawthorne to himself, and to the infallible finding of posterity; and however great may be the praise I have bestowed upon him, I feel, that in so doing, I have more served and honored myself, than him. For at bottom, great excellence is praise enough to itself; but the feeling of a sincere and appreciative love and admiration towards it, this is relieved by utterance; and warm, honest praise ever leaves a pleasant flavor in the mouth; and it is an honorable thing to confess to what is honorable in others.
>>24951097This is what I remember reading. I'm sure there were a few others.>To Kill a Mockingbird>Lord of the Flies>Frankenstein>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer>1984>The Jungle, Sinclair>The Great Gatsby>The Trial>My Antonia, Cathar>Out Stealing Horses, Petterson>Harrison BergeronComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24951097I graduated more than a decade ago. I went to two schools -- one a public school that was supposedly the best in our district, and the other a charter school. At the public school, we only read excerpts. I think we read one short story -- The Scarlet Ibis -- and a few poems.My second school was much better and we'd usually read eight to ten books a year, along with a lot of poetry, essays, and short stories.Even college classes don't require full books anymore. It's embarrassing to compare a syllabus from 2025 with one from 1985.
>>24951097we were supposed to, but virtually no one actually fully read the books
i think it was a mix of excerpts and full, the excerpts were more on the short side not like half the book, this is ages ago. same goes for college but with novels there i think it was full
Two Weeks Left Edition>Old:>>24936611>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
>>24951480This book is nothing special and I don't unstandard why it's recommended so often.
>>24951503>>24951498don't know, tried to help him and found this. I know nothing about this book
>>24950822it's slow - though i'd say "deliberate" is a much more apt term - but how could anyone hate Simon? And the ending is insanely good, if you aren't tearing up and smiling at the Rachel the Dragon bits then your heart is calcified
>>24949824Did you find this immensely repetitive and disappointing? Does he do the Cassandra death fake out over 5 times by the end of the book? Abba! Abba! Shut up. Some of the writing and narrative storyboarding in this LONG book is so unnecessary. I'm not even in the camp that hates the introduction of the Christian themes, what was this book? Felt like listening to a stoner try to tell a story.
>>24951503it is special though, name me really any standalone fantasy as good
The deepest thinker on the left (Hegel scholar) Vs the deepest thinker on the right (Nietzsche scholar)... A debate between these two would be priceless
>>24932734They're both so performative that their faces are just disgusting to look at. Zizek is the most pretentious man alive, but Pervert is a scammer and cowardly in comparison.
>>24936188>NATO and the EU both exist to keep the individual nations of Europe downt. Johnny McRevolver from Texas Oblast
>>24951283More likely alt-right or NeoNazi based on that post. Russia hates NATO for encroaching in the east but neonazis obviously also hate NATO because its supposed to keep Germany down and unarmed and keep Nazism from reemerging.
>>24951303Even if Germany left EU and NATO nothing would change there, for Germans to become Nazi they would need a Nazi government in power for decades which isn't happening just because you leave international unions, same reason Germans didn't become liberals after WW2 (many said Hitler dindu nuffin and for Poles to give back territory to Germany even after the war), the children of WW2 generation became liberal, so in the same way the children of those liberals would have to be brought in a Nazi regime to become Nazi.
>>24951331I don't even like the Germans the best, I prefer the French. I know THEY could rule Europe if left to their own devices. A French Empire would probably be superior to the EU.
My father died yesterday. What should I read to cope and/or distract myself.
>>24950399My own father died back in September. The pain never goes away, and books cannot drown out the grief.
>>24950399I lost my dad when I was 19. Do not read anything or do anything to distract yourself. Be fully present and involved. Help organise the funeral, be with your family and call on your friends to be there for you. This will be one of the defining moments of your life and if you loved your dad it is your duty to do it properly.Look after yourself
>>24950399Plutarch's Coriolanus>But Caius Marcius, of whom I now write, being left an orphan, and brought up under the widowhood of his mother, has shown us by experience, that, although the early loss of a father may be attended with other disadvantages, yet it can hinder none from being either virtuous or eminent in the world, and that it is no obstacle to true goodness and excellence; however bad men may be pleased to lay the blame of their corruptions upon that misfortune and the neglect of them in their minority.Apllicable also to Cimon whose father died when he was very young.Presuming you're an adult there are men innumerable who have experienced as you have and lived exemplarily following the loss of their parents. It's not a hindrance.
>>24950432You should bake his ashes into a cake.
>>24950399> What should I read to cope and/or distract myself.I hear the Bible is great for that.
"Chanukah" editionPrevious: >>24940898/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQRESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvCPlease limit excerpts to one post.Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.Follow prompts made below and discuss written works for practice; contribute and you shall receive.If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.Violent shills, relentless shill-spammers, and grounds keeping prose, should be ignored and reported.(And maybe double-space your WIPs to allow edits if you want 'em.)Simple guides on writing:Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
bros... i had an actual reader of my stories, a cute chick that actually read through entire pages and responded in detail. i thought i won the jackpot, but then she drops a nuke on my head, telling me she's getting married soon and that she's feeling worse because of winter. haven't heard from her since. a lil before she went all depressed on me, she fuckin told me that if i see the world the way i write, that since it matches her so perfectly, "then verbal communication is pointless, i’m serious. we’ll communicate via cryptic messages in dreams" - direct quote from her message to meAHHHHHHHHHH fuck you what are you scared you're gonna cheat with me before your wedding so you go cold turkey?
>>24950842:D
How often do you come up with something, and think>oh shit i need to go back and lay the groundwork for this somehowand then go back and add some shit earlier, and then realize it doesn't read natural at all, so you spend like 3 weeks just editing that?
>>24951422Well?
Is my Victoria story good enough to get some agent's attention?
>saprophytic
Sapient Species, Races, and Miscellaneous Sapients EditionFAQ:>What is worldbuilding?Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch, all while considering the logistics of these worlds to make them as believable as possible. Worldbuilding asks questions about the setting of a world, and then answers them, often in great detail. Most people use it as a means of creating a setting or the scenery for a story.>"Isn't there a Worldbuilding general in >>>/tg/ already?"Yes, there is. However, that general is focused on the creation of fictional worlds for the intended purpose of playing TTRPG campaigns. Here you can discuss worldbuilding projects that are not meant to be used for a roleplaying setting, but for novels, videogames, or any other kind of creative project.>"Can I discuss the setting of my campaign here, though?"If you want to, but it would probably be better to discuss it on >>>/tg/ . We don't allow the discussion of TTRPG mechanics, however. If you want to discuss stats or which D&D edition is best, this is not the place.>"Can I talk about an existing fictional setting that is not mine?"Yes, of course you can!>"Does worldbuilding need to be about fantasy and elves?"Worldbuilding, as already stated above, and contrary to what many believe, does not inherently imply blatantly copying Tolkien. In fact, there are many science-fiction setting out there, and even entire alternative history settings which do not possess supernatural elements at all. Any kind of science fiction book has an implied setting at least, which involves a certain degree of worldbuilding put into it.Old Thread: >>24748733
>>24949315A non-magic world would be technically science fiction even if the world contains no futuristic technology. See for example Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.
>>24878110Not op.I think we would get along.
>>24946278To prevent prior clashing, I immediately imagined these birdfolk living on floating cities like in bioshock infinite. I know you specified they're nomads but I struggle to wrap my head around how you plan for a nomadic culture broken into factions to put up a fight against the organized armies of humanity. Anyway, I think putting them in that unreachable realm solves the problem of no prior clashing, and perfectly sets up for war resulting of humanity's advancements in aviation- which lines up with the late 1800s period you mentioned. Humanity's rigid, but high firepower flying machines vs the birdfolks natural affinity for airborne combat sounds like a setup for some really cool fights. This is just what popped in my head when reading what you wrote.
>>24949430I see your point, but the mobility offered by a natural ability to fly would make it much easier for such a species to move between settlements. I planned to have them live in the mountains so far (so they can make use of the third dimension) and live off of pastoralism and hunting, since watching over livestock is much easier from the air, particularly if you can just slash wolves or similar predators to death with your claws. To offset this, their numbers will be low and pneumatized skeletons will give them a massive durability disadvantage against humans in close quarters, which makes them less suited for settling (or attacking) large settlements in the plains. Human warfare against them would mostly be tunneling to negate their maneuvering space and artillery to shell their settlements from afar, while the birdfolk would essentially be an airborne guerilla and small raider packs - think of it like the Taliban in the 80s and later on, but winged - and to make up for them lagging behind in tech, you can even add in another human faction supplying them with theirs, if we stick to the Afghanistan example. Not making humanity a monolith working in unison to cull the fowl definitely will be high on my agenda.When it comes to the earliest aviation, you shouldn't be thinking of biplanes and triplanes with fixed machine guns and dashing Red Baron types immediately, but rather aircraft like the Blériot XI, Etrich Taube or the various serial craft of the Wright company. These, alongside airships and balloons will be absolute maximum the human pilots can muster at the beginning of the story, and woefully inferior to the flight performance of the adversaries. But the point is that human tech can mature and develop, and evolution cannot, making it a race against time for the birdfolk to win or at least force a draw before the tech can mature.
>>24868365What do you need to consider when including artificial races like golems, homunculi, etc.?
Anyone else think this ai stuff is hilarious? It's a literal slave, who would have thought this would be possible? I have it rewrite things in doctor seuss meter for fun, (primary historical sources, boring patents, famous pieces of literature) then I ask it to rewrite it as a screenplay debate with psychotic amounts of alliteration. No writer in any other era of human history has a toy like this! And the psychological abuse you can inflict upon it is fantastic, it's so funny, the damn machine just wants to make you happy! I ask it to create wild programs and motion-graphics and "by your command" it tries it's best! Who would've thought something like this would be possible? I sure as shit didn't, it's so unrealistic, but what fun!
Kill yourself
>>24947788shut the fuck up, retard
>>24947478Yeah I know my cognition is disordered when I feel bad for asking it to do something
>>24949536you know i'm right, tranny.
not literature
What's the funniest book you've read?
Based On a True Story by Norm Macdonald
David Sedaris’ first couple books had me sitting there laughing out loud like some kind of homo. Don’t think any other books made me laugh like some queer while reading.
Not exactly highbrow, but there is a Wuxia webnovel called "A Will Eternal" that honestly made me laugh. And laugh hard. I'm a jaded person who hardly ever laughs.
>>24951462Don Quixote was funny. And that was a big surprise because I didnt think a book from the year 3000 BC would be funny. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was even funnier, though. It was so over the top, so hateful, and so insane.
Everything else just seems so spooked and retarded. Like these "philosophers" can't even see past their own circumstances or analyze their own thoughts and motivations, only (poorly) justify their own particular neuroses. Has there ever been a half decent attempt at addressing, let alone refuting him?
Did Yuval Noah Harari reach some of the same conclusions regarding spooks in his book Sapiens?
>>24949436> That's not what I'm saying. Egoism is (can be) a spook too. Spooks aren't some """morally wrong""" thing that you have to avoid, they're just tools to pursue your own self interest. Using spooks is necessary thing, even.Okay, good, so we agree on this. > Could some of these spooks still reasonably be useful to me? Maybe, but I haven't found any that do.This part is personal - maybe none of what we consider respectable philosophy speaks to you and this is fine. I personally found a few that speak to me.For example, epicureans and stoics - honestly if we had more access to epicurean stuff I'd just read that, but I make do with Seneca. A significant part of it has to do with the nice written style and the spook of ancient wisdom, which a modern CBT self-help book (which will tell you pretty much the same things) does not have.I also found some parts of the New Testament enjoyable, because I feel a lot of commonality with the biblical Pilate. The Satanic Bible was also funny, but mostly in the "so bad it's good" sense (it's practically a reference example of disavowing religion while remaining spooked).> I don't believe that these spooks have very good predictive/descriptive power in determining the actions of other people.I think it depends mostly on the stakes. When their decisions become matters of life and death, or have significant impact on personal income - yeah, it's mostly going to be pure "war of all against all" and none of the ideological pretensions will matter. When the stakes are lower, like how people react to some news that does not immediately have to do with them - understanding their beliefs does have some predictive power.There's also another part of reading stuff to understand other people. Again, I don't know if this works for you, or if it's just me. I am personally uneasy with opaque, murky concepts that operate on trust. They feel capricious and ominous. Understanding what goes on under the hood and rationalizing stuff makes me feel good by itself, even when my mental model is imperfect and may never be used. For example, I've had a very fun time reading about the Second Vatican Council and how it's fractured catholics, about FSSPX and sedevacantists - even though I'm not catholic and do not deal with catholics on a daily basis. I think Weber calls this "disenchantment".
You can cleverly get into philosophy of Math because you cannot just do what you want and walk away satisfied.
>>24950827The law of noncontradiction is also a spook. I reject it.>Walk away satisfied
>>24949235spooked
What’s the male version of this? I’m tired as fuck
the ending made me cryI love Reva
The ending made me smile. I hate Reva
>>24944019Bartleby, the Scrivener.
>>24946863>Both are low quality but want high quality. They would NEVER settle for each other.Literally could not have said it any better. People would be happier dating if they were just honest with themselves and know where they stand on the quality scale.
>>24950524So then both are straight and asexual? as in, the nerdiest gayest ugliest people people I ever met were fucking each ragged in the theatre department of High School. Seems like Gay incels just don't exist.
