Quote Digest

[Sajainta]

I do not know which to prefer,
 The beauty of inflections
 Or the beauty of innuendoes,
 The blackbird whistling
 Or just after.

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is one of my favourite poems of all time.  I love his image of "evening all afternoon."  So beautiful.

[Licawolf]

Man on the Train: Hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley: Yeah.
Man on the Train: I haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting

[tushantin]

@Thought: Ah, sorry if I had you think that way about my response, but I wasn't really accusing you or anything. Just a thought crossed my mind that I wanted to share. once again, sorry about that.

@Licawolf: Walking Life? Would you review that book/media to me? Because it reminds me of a beloved philosophy lightnovel/anime series I'm a big fan of: Kino's Journey!

"Though I did not know the place,
I set out to find the land of my dreams,
Having arrived at the land of my dreams,
I found that I did not know the place."

One day, I'll write a similar genre novella like that.

The Author: "The difference between reality and illusion is that illusions are which humans have created. Life begins when u make a distinction between yourself and others. From that moment, the world becomes a stage in which you are the main character. Yet all people exist in the illusion that they are the main character. But the world, cruel as it is, denies you that role of the main character. It’s quite a twist and everyone is burdened with this sad bit of irony. But there is one way to escape."
Kino: To not to be a main character, to be a smaller role, or…
The Author: "That’s right, to be an author."
Hermes: "You do know he’s crazy right?"
Kino: "All I know is that normal people would never become authors."

"The world is not beautiful; and that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty."

Anime transliteration: "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is."

"Hermes": Don't you believe that sometimes anxiety creates nations?
"Kino": Anxiety?
"Hermes": Yes, anxiety. If people are afraid of the river, they will build a dike. It's the same thing.

"Man:" The reason we hurt others is because we don't understand their pain.

[Mr Bekkler]

Waking Life is a movie by Richard Linklater about lucid dreaming and it uses a digital rotoscope animation technique he perfected later for A Scanner Darkly. Definitely a trippy movie.

[Licawolf]

@Licawolf: Walking Life? Would you review that book/media to me? Because it reminds me of a beloved philosophy lightnovel/anime series I'm a big fan of: Kino's Journey!

As Mr. Bekkler said, waking life is kind of a trippy film   An experimental movie that has only a very very vague resemblance to a plot at certain parts, but it's mostly only dialogue, characters talking about ideas, anecdotes, conversations... many of the scenes  seem to have no relation between each other, except for the fact that all these are being experienced by the main character, who seems to be unnable to wake up, trapped inside this bizarre dream, and he keeps waking up and waking up to another dream.  

The movie is very very weird, personally I think it's full of interesting ideas, but it can be very tiresome if you don't like this kind of thing, or if you're not in the mood for a 2-hour long pseudo-philosophical infodump

Kino's Journey sounds interesting! From your quotes i liked particularly this part:

(...)Life begins when u make a distinction between yourself and others. From that moment, the world becomes a stage in which you are the main character. Yet all people exist in the illusion that they are the main character. But the world, cruel as it is, denies you that role of the main character. It’s quite a twist and everyone is burdened with this sad bit of irony. But there is one way to escape."
Kino: To not to be a main character, to be a smaller role, or…
The Author: "That’s right, to be an author."

[tushantin]

Thanks, Bekkler and Licawolf! Hah, sounds amazing! And it's also got an actress named Lorelei for some reason. Gorgeous name (and I say this because there's already a character by that name in my novel)! I'll take a look.

For some reason I've been obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and Baccano! these days, just as I was with Deathnote, Bartimaeus Trilogy and Chrono Trigger before. Though my obsession is healthy, because it makes me try and get to the level of competence of these great authors, in turn improving my own stories.

John: You get off on this. You enjoy it.
Sherlock: And I said "dangerous," and here you are.

Okay, the following is actually from Andrew Lane's version, Young Sherlock Holmes - Red Leech, which I had to type word for word because there's no online text. Ever wonder how Sherlock Holmes came to be such a genius? Who taught him all of his tricks and trades? Apparently his brother Mycroft Holmes and his teacher Amyus Crowe (American) were way smarter than he could ever hope to be. xD In this book, these three try to uncover a deadly assassin who killed Abraham Lincoln (not kidding).

[Setting: Sherlock walks into the library where his brother Mycroft and teacher Amyus sat.]
Mycroft looked Sherlock up and down critically.
'You have been assaulted,' he said, 'and not by someone your own age.'
'Or from this country,' Amyus Crowe rumbled.
'In fact,' Mycroft said, glancing at Sherlock's shoes, 'there were two assailants. One of them was mentally deficient in some way.'
'And both were armed with pistols,' Crowe added.
'How do you know these things?' Sherlock asked, amazed.
'A trifling matter,' Mycroft said, waving his hand airily. 'Explaining it would waste time. More important is, where did you go and why were you attacked?'

[Licawolf]

[Setting: Sherlock walks into the library where his brother Mycroft and teacher Amyus sat.]
Mycroft looked Sherlock up and down critically.
'You have been assaulted,' he said, 'and not by someone your own age.'
'Or from this country,' Amyus Crowe rumbled.
'In fact,' Mycroft said, glancing at Sherlock's shoes, 'there were two assailants. One of them was mentally deficient in some way.'
'And both were armed with pistols,' Crowe added.
'How do you know these things?' Sherlock asked, amazed.
'A trifling matter,' Mycroft said, waving his hand airily. 'Explaining it would waste time. More important is, where did you go and why were you attacked?'

Ha ha ha!  they totally owned Sherlock!

[Sajainta]

I don't think I'd enjoy reading something about Mycroft being smarter than Sherlock, but it is an interesting premise nonetheless.  I just like my canon Sherlock too much.  ; )

[Syna]

tushantin, since you said you were into lucid dreaming, I can virtually guarantee you'll like Waking Life.

Wallace Stevens is my homeboy.

[tushantin]

I don't think I'd enjoy reading something about Mycroft being smarter than Sherlock, but it is an interesting premise nonetheless.  I just like my canon Sherlock too much.  ; )

Actually, Mycroft is smarter than Sherlock even in the canon universe, in the books.  Which is why he's my idol. If you've seen the Jeremy Brett's adaptation where Mycroft shows up you'd also see his deductions are far more accurate than his younger brother's. But the reason that there's no "Adventures of Mycroft Holmes" is because that guy just HATES any physical exertions; he'd rather sit in his office all day and make his agents do the dirty job, while solving problems with his mind alone. Watching an obese guy all day without violent and gruesome adventures would be boring, no matter how smart or influential he is.

Though he is modest and physically lazy, he represents the British government, and at times, is the government: he's got a lot more power than you can imagine. I'd actually say that Andrew Lane has done a pretty accurate job of portraying the brothers.  Don't forget that Sherlock is just 14 years of age at the time this scene takes place, and thus Mycroft is someone the little guy looks up to.

@Syna: Thanks! Lucid dreaming is a really narrow lane for me, with a big chance of falling in either side (absolute sleep and consciousness). But what's really amazing about it is that while in that state I'm capable of visualizing dreams in such vibrancy and detail it really isn't possible when I'm either awake or asleep, and also capable of shaping them to my will.

[Sajainta]

BOO TO ME!  ><  I should really brush up on my Holmes reading, since it's been ages since I read any of Conan Doyle.  My ten-year-old self would bitchslap me right now.

[tushantin]

Haha you can always start with this TV Movie, Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Steven Moffat. It's the next best adaptation after Jeremy Brett's series, even though it takes place in modern times instead. Well not too different, really: instead of telegrams, he texts via phones, and instead of writing for newspapers, Watson writes a blog.

But if you'd still like to read the canon ones, there's always online texts. Here's the first novel, Study in Scarlet.

[Lord J Esq]

"Hey, physicist!"
"What is it? I'm busy."
"I need you to invent a time machine."
"But I'm playing with theoretical bosons! Why do you need a time machine?"
"So I can go kick my future self in the ass for getting rusty on her Doyle!"
"How do you know she's going to get rusty?"
"Because she came back in time to tell me not to let it happen."
"I'm not sure I want to mess with this. How about a nice volume of TV Guide?"
[censored]
"Okay, one time machine coming right up!"

[tushantin]

Another from Young Sherlock Holmes - Red Leech

Fourteen years-old Sherlock: "I think there's always danger, wherever you go. You can either ignore it or wrap yourself in blankets so it doesn't hurt you, or you can walk towards it and dare it to do its worst. If you do the first thing then the danger takes you by surprise. If you do the second thing then you spend your time swaddled up in the dark, letting the world pass you by. The only logical course of action is to go towards the danger. The more you get used to it, the better you can deal with it."

Mind you, that scene takes place right after the horse chase (and what an awesome one at that!) where Mycroft apologizes for not taking care of Sherlock properly, and Sherlock is more grateful towards Mycroft for never letting him down. Heh, a touching brotherhood scene.

[Licawolf]

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."