This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!
What does poison ivy have against humans? Why just us and guinea pigs that react to it? I’m sorry urushiol I don’t know what we did but I’m sorry
There’s a lot of stuff like this that worries me when it occurs on particularly disparate branches of the evolutionary tree
Hamsters and humans are two of the only animals that preferentially drink alcohol; hamsters are almost unique in the animal kingdom their preference (and tolerance) for alcohol. Some animals will sample alcohol or even seek it occasionally, but most other animals refuse to be poisoned past a certain point. but hamsters are used in research studies because you can pop Everclear into their drinking bottles and they’ll choose it over water, day after day, resisting symptoms of intoxication and with apparently no hangover. Why
Why do armadillos and humans share leprosy (yes I know about Columbus. What I’m asking is WHY)
Why, when mammals have perfectly good well-preserved pathways for making their own vitamin C, was this discarded in the lineage of primates including humans, and the lineage of caviomorphs including guinea pigs. Like, “I’ve invented scurvy, chaps! But not to worry - most of you will be physiologically incapable of it - the only mammals who need a constant source of Vitamin C in their diet or they’ll fuckin die will be humans, tarsiers… and uhhhh. Capybaras? 👍”
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Oh, I actually know this one. That was a policy decision. Yeah, those monkeys voted to delete their entire perception of aspartame.
(The answer is along the lines of genetic code being just like computer code, in that seemingly random stretches of data turn out to be load-bearing, and this stuff results from glitches like “giving the player character a hat and immediately leaving the room results in all cutlery floating for half an inch above the table and deleting the “sweet” mechanic from monkeys” but that’s discomforting too)
They told you that you were going to lead an army, 10,000 men strong, they didn’t tell you it contained only a single trained soldier, and 9,999 support musicians.
We’re so used to the sexual reading of the entire book of Dracula, which takes the sensuality of the early chapters and jams everything that follows it into the same metaphor no matter how poorly it fits, but I feel the segment we’re approaching works much better with a lens of chronic illness and disease.
Vampire legends are inextricably intertwined with disease. Many of them are said to have been birthed by burying victims of disease too soon, who later seem to rise from the dead. But what’s more is that Stoker and his family have deep-seated trauma over disease: his mother had to flee her hometown at the age of 14 because of a horrific cholera epidemic, and Stoker himself was bedridden as a child from an illness that no one could identify.
Found this quote from Irish Historian Mary McGarry:
Bram as an adult asked his mother to write down her memories of the epidemic for him, and he supplemented this using his own historic research of Sligo’s epidemic. Scratching beneath the surface (of this essay), I found parallels with Dracula. [For instance,] Charlotte says cholera enters port towns having traveled by ship, and can travel overland as a mist—just like Dracula, who infects people with his unknown contagion.
I bring this up because a lot of academic analysis insists that Lucy sleepwalking is proof of her being the Slutty Woman archetype that needs to be punished. This suggested symbolism is hilarious when put next to the text saying she inherited it from her father, but I’d like to suggest a different angle from the lens of disease suggested earlier:
Lucy’s sleepwalking is a condition that predates Dracula but makes her an easy target for him to prey on. Through the lens of disease symbolism, she now is someone with chronic illness or disability who is especially vulnerable to infectious disease. This becomes a cross-section of Stoker’s trauma regarding disease: his own mystery illness and his mother fleeing a plague.
To wind down my rambles with a bit of a soapbox, I feel this adds a very poignant layer to the struggle to keep Lucy alive. The COVID pandemic showed a horrifying level of casual ableism vs disabled and immunodeficient individuals, shrugging off their vulnerability and even their deaths with “well COVID only kills them.” There’s something deeply gratifying at seeing the way everyone around Lucy fights to the bitter end to protect her and refuses to just give her up to Dracula, whether it’s Mina physically chasing him away or the suitor squad pouring their blood into her veins or Van Helsing desperately searching for cures. The vulnerable deserve no less than this. They’re not acceptable casualties.
Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.
From the article – excerpts from a letter from the captain of the boat that was towed:
The arrival of the Götheborg on the scene was rapid and surprising, as we did not expect to see a merchant ship from the East India Company of the XVIII century. This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it? The Götheborg approached very close to us to throw the line and pass a large rope. The mooring went well, and our destinies were linked for very long hours, during which we shared the same radio frequency to communicate with each other.
The crew of the Götheborg showed great professionalism and kindness towards us. They adapted their speed to the size of our boat and the weather conditions. We felt accompanied by very professional sailors. Every hour, the officer on duty of the Götheborg called us to ensure everything was going well.
Dear commander and crew of the Götheborg, your kindness, and generosity have shown that your ship is much more than just a boat. It embodies the noblest values of the sea, and we are honored to have had the chance to cross your path and benefit from your help.
We thank you again for everything you have done for us.
I think ASOIAF is not about “there are no true knights,” it’s about how hard it is to be a true knight, and doing so anyway. It’s about earning tropes more then just ripping them up. It’s about reconnecting with the values behind those tropes, remembering why those tropes appealed to us in the first place. It’s about declaring that while The System may corrupt those values, or fail to reward them, the values themselves are still worth upholding, and they can be the spark for the reformation of said System. It’s about our choices in the face of the abyss, from Will internally complimenting Waymar Royce’s stand against the Others forward.
It’s existentialist genre fiction. It’s about why the heroes save the world: because that’s who they want to be, not because the prophecies say so. Not that the prophecies are inaccurate or pure hokum (they’re not), but GRRM wants to emphasize that it’s your choices that matter most, not your abilities. As I’ve said before, there’s a reason the final book is named not after the battle for the dawn (as vital and urgent as that will be), but the dream of what will follow.
since GRRM hasn't (yet?) published The Winds of Winter this is pretty much a Star Trek/Tolkien/M*A*S*H/history/dinosaurs/Jane Austen/fantasy blog, with cats and science, sprinkled with some
A Song of Ice and Fire-posts
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