Just fyi, some of us were born deaf, 2e, or with spikey profiles and couldn't rely on phonics to learn how to read, and instead had to develop stronger contextual and inferential reading skills. The best method for learning how to read largely depends on the individual and whether they're Neurodivergent, and I don't think we can make judgements on whether someone possesses strong reading skills without knowing their individual profile.
I personally don't see this as a hot take. I'm originally from Southern Indiana and my platoon in boot camp thought I was from West Virginia based on my dialect. Knoxville is a shorter distance than South Bend, and I have more in common with people from Western North Carolina than I do the northern half of Indiana. But there are a lot of people who don't realise that migration resulted in the Upland South/Greater Appalachia being larger than just the area within the mountain range, so everyone just lumps us in with the Midwest.
@Outlet_Taster Engagement with art in the age of digital media has become passive and many people expect this, shifting the burden of communication onto artists and pressuring them to be explicit rather than using 'show don't tell.' Even if it's unpopular, art should continue to challenge us.
It took me years to realise that I simply do not enjoy interiority, psychoanalysis, or intentionality in literature, which makes a lot of the modern classics absolutely exhausting to read.
My view is that your eruditions into the mysteries of language may be phenomenologically less informed than you'd like to believe. The issue is that you made a descriptive claim on the experience and function of written language without hedging or limiting that claim, and I am merely pointing out that error.
I'm a fan of making readers actually do some work by not listing any age or range at all and letting them approximate what age the character is based on subtle behavioural or descriptive details.
a quality of older books (usually 19th century) that i find rather weird is they continuously refer to characters’ ages in ranges. “she was between 18 and 20” dude YOU wrote the book how do you not know how old she is
@LordIxabert Speak for yourself. Some of us were born deaf and had to learn language through tactile sensation and social feedback. You may be able to tune out subvocalisation while you silently read, but for some of us, writing is most certainly speech, even if it's not auditory.
@holobody@N_Overstreet@lukeisamazing This isn't even a vibes thing. The forest is a threshold that doesn't belong to people and it's something you have to pass through, changing you in the process. A lot of people still have these folk beliefs tied to the land.
@holobody@N_Overstreet@lukeisamazing I grew up in a national forest and yes, it is a liminal space. The forest takes on its own presence and you can feel it watching you, and God forbid you go near the old ruined drystone dwellings and mounds where not even midday's sun can reach through the canopy.
My hypothesis is that kids would engage with reading more if we began writing orally. That is, write as if you were speaking, use verse, and stop tuning out subvocalisation. Phones are hacking their nervous system, so literature has to start working at this level to compete.
Been feeling bleak for the past week after I read an essay saying the market for middle-grade books has collapsed because kids can no longer read them. Two long-time publishers of middle-grades have shuttered, with more to come. We don’t appreciate what a crisis this is. +
@timgill924 I just don't like people calling me a "southern belle" and thinking I'm dumb because of my accent, or continue to see the dumb hillbilly stereotype as an acceptable form of comedy. So if you can jump off the high horse and help with that, maybe the credentials will mean somethin
@moriah_bridges@dimitripilled Yeah, I much prefer Spenser to his contemporaries, but I'm not going to rip on them because of the skill it takes to do what they did and because it's still beautiful to read.
@BundleofRoaches Honestly, our different perspectives on this is exactly why I love Dragon Age so much. It's like a demonstration of the perspectivist philosophy that runs through the series.
Imo, any character sacrificed other than Davrin, including Bellara ❤️, would have been "that's absolutely awful and tragic," but it wouldn't have had the same weight. I like being forced to make these Sophoclean decisions. My rationale for Harding was loyalty to her from DOI, but also because of her importance with the Titans and Dwarves. The scope felt massive. But Davrin and Assan's deaths were a counterpunch that reminded me that even the everyday relationships that we take for granted are no less important or significant. It makes that decision for all subsequent replays even more agonising for me.
I don't see it so much of a flaw as it variety in the characters. Davrin wasn't all that interesting to me, in part because I was a warrior and didn't have him in my party, but watching him struggle with this newfound fatherly role he was thrust into and learning how to navigate it really bumped him up to my top 3 favourite companions, which included Bellara and Harding. Davrin reminds me of a lot of Marines that I served with who didn't like to discuss personal details about their lives, so there's so much about them I never learned about before they'd never get that chance to tell again.
@die_rizzen I learned bagpipes the old way and there's simply no appreciating celtic music without acknowledging how much of it is due to outside influences. Turlough O'Carolan is a perfect example of this.
Yeah, it didn't matter how much character development someone had, I wasn't going to sacrifice Harding over them. The gut punch came from Assan because that was completely unexpected and made me felt like I had just sacrificed a child. Davrin might not have meant much to me, but he meant the world to Assan, and I don't think that moment would have been as emotionally gut wrenching if Davrin wasn't written the way that he was. That's not to say that I believe Davrin's purpose was to serve this plot point, but the plainness of his character and his fatherly role with Assan made that moment far more powerful than it would have with any other companion in my opinion.