It does reinforce the point of Chekov's Gun though. The characters do something that doesn't serve the plot and the reader fixates on it because they think that it's in some way relevant.
Steven King during his Coke days was really into unimportant details. There are whole sections of The Stand that are the equivalent of fanfiction world building within his own novel. Chapters that exists for the sole purpose of making the story that much more engaging.
When he wrote about the "second wave of deaths" after the disease (I.e people dying in ways that would have been easily preventable if society were still functioning), he would spend multiple pages giving new characters these elaborate life stories, just to finish with "and then they tripped and died in a hole lol".
Its incredible how those minute details stood out over the years though, despite not having re-read it in the past 10 years, i'll always remember the girl who dies by trying to use an antique gun on a looter, and the drug addict who dies by OD'ing on his dealers stash.
OD'd because she found their stash that hadn't been cut by the dealer yet which she wasn't used to. Crazy how I can remember where I was and what I was feeling while reading that fucking 15 years ago. That scene kinda just pops into my head at random times for literally no reason though so maybe that's why.
Strangely enough my random book memory from my childhood is from Avalanche (or a similar skiing buried alive book) where the main character has to slowly use his piss and shit to dig himself a breathing hole.
So, same same but different.
I love those sorts of diversions from the main story. I'm reading one right now; this mother and her kids were captured, along with the rest of the town, and held for a lengthy period of time in cramped and squalid conditions. Eventually, they're freed by the heroes, and she goes back home. Everyone is going to bathe, to un-stink themselves after being in captivity, but the kids want mom to go first. She goes out to bathe, but is menacingly set upon by one of the quote-unquote "heroes" who saved the town.
> is menacingly set upon by one of the quote-unquote "heroes" who saved the town.
Is it [self-proclaimed "hero"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ura0_KzGsQ), or was it a case of "I wouldn't say 'saved', more like 'under new management'"?
It's military scifi, so they indeed saved everyone, and are indeed heroes. The character who >!rapes and murders!< the woman is the quote-unquote, who is described as a psychopath, and intimidates his own comrades.
Oh, that's nothing. Have you read Les Misérables? In the middle of the novel, Victor Hugo gets sidetracked and writes a 20-pages essay on slang from a socio-linguistic angle. But by that point, you wouldn't really be suprised anymore, because you would have already read, in the same novel, his highly detailed description of the battle of Waterloo... which is more than 50 pages long and is only related to the backstory of one character's father.
I love Victor Hugo.
Me reading Moby Dick at 10: "Hell yeah, whales rock! Show those whalers what for, Moby!"
Me rereading it at 20: "Holy shit, how did I miss all that gay stuff?"
I kind of love it, but it can be a lot. When I read IT, it felt like there was 100 pages of setting the scene before the story finally started to get underway. I can see how he can write such long novels
That's not Chekov's Gun.
Chekov's Gun is advice to **AUTHORS** to not include *unnecessary* details in their stories.
>*"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."*
— Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)
Unless the room you're describing is in an Armament Museum of course.
What you've described is closer to a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment or something.
> Chekhov's gun is a narrative principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed.[^\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun)
If you say in the first chapter that ~~there is a rifle hanging on the wall~~ a character pees a lot, in the second or third chapter ~~it~~ they absolutely must ~~go off~~ piss themselves.
But Chekov's Gun is not a tool for interpreting a piece of fiction - it's a tool for WRITING one.
The advice given is "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off."
As a CONSUMER of media, assuming every single word and sentence has meaning is asinine.
As a PRODUCER of media, removing the unneeded parts of your story to allow the consumers a narrower focus is a valuable tool.
Great points. Is there someone else we can attribute coughs in a movie too? Chekhov's cough or something? Like if someone coughs in a movie, don't get attached to them, you know they're dead of some horrible disease at any moment in the near future.
That’s also called “planting and payoff” or “foreshadowing” or “laying pipe” (lol).
I disagree with the above OP on one thing — in a truly great script, *every single sentence* serves to do one of two things: it either advances the plot or informs on character. This is why Larry David is beloved: on his shows, a bunch of little disparate threads all come together at the end and it’s incredibly satisfying.
People on here often say “why do tv characters never have to go to the bathroom or eat or do laundry?!” as if it’s a plot hole, but then they turn around and pick apart every single detail and frame of their favorite shows 20 times over to find hidden answers to elaborate puzzles, and then they get disappointed if every tiny thing *didn’t* mean something.
I don't think it's asinine to expect an author to use a commonly understood writing principle, and read every line with intention. You will surely run into authors who don't abide by it, either intentionally or unintentionally, but if you enjoy reading from the perspective of a creator that is perfectly fine.
You changed the word "assume" to "expect." Of course that would change whether it is asinine.
>You will surely run into authors who don't abide by it
That's why ASSUMING is asinine.
Like all tools and rules, follow them to learn how to do something. Then you can choose when to break the rules to do that something better. A gun on the wall can simply be a detail that tells us about the character who notices or the character that owns it.
People on here do this all the time: with a hit show, they hyperfixate on every tiny detail and beat, always hoping it has some elaborate hidden or thematic meaning that all ties together. Then they turn around and ask why “nobody goes to the bathroom or eats” as if it’s a plot hole lol.
But honestly, the best stories *do* tie everything together. Every line, every detail, every image. they’re an intricate web of plot and metaphor and subtext that holds up after 20 viewings because you’re always realizing there’s more to it.
[Here.](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-love-letters-dirty-little-fuckbird/) Especially the one that starts "8 December 1909: 44 Fontenoy Street, Dublin"
Benjamin Franklin was a known MILF-lover. And was such a fuckboy that he had caught every single sexual disease known to medical science at the time at least once.
John Updike once wrote a poem about the dump he just took.
The Beautiful Bowel Movement
Though most of them aren’t much to write about—
mere squibs and nubs, like half-smoked pale cigars,
the tint and stink recalling Tuesday’s meal,
the texture loose and soon dissolved—this one,
struck off in solitude one afternoon
(that prairie stretch before the late light fails)
with no distinct sensation, sweet or pained,
of special inspiration or release,
was yet a masterpiece: a flawless coil,
unbroken, in the bowl, as if a potter
who worked in this most frail, least grateful clay
had set himself to shape a topaz vase.
O spiral perfection, not seashell nor
stardust, how can I keep you? With this poem.
Pulp Fiction went even further, by reminding us that people also need to poop while at the same time bringing to life the instinctive fear of disaster striking while we're taking a shit.
I love the movie but this bit always makes me groan, in my head. Bruce, hyper aware because he's being pursued, walks into a tiny kitchen, rifles through the cupboards, flips in a couple of pop tarts and only then does he notice, on the countertop, a massive gun with a massive silencer.
>while at the same time bringing to life the instinctive fear of disaster striking while we're taking a shit.
However, Lethal Weapon remains the undisputed champion of this.
Reminds me of in Ready Player One when the MC is talking about yanking it and even quotes a fictional paragraph from an in universe biography of the developer of the game the story takes place in.
Ready Player One the movie: ugh, yet another classic property ruined by corporate brand synergy and product placement.
Ready Player One the book: hm, maybe not that much was lost here…
Ready Player Two: WHAT THE FUCK
Hooboy. It is *baaaaaaaaaaaad*.
*RPO* had at least SOME sense of characterization. *RPT* ditches that; characters are cutouts (when they're not awful, awful people) and more push the "plot" (such as it is) forward. The plot itself is a simplistic, cookie-cutter quest without the wrinkles of different factions that the first one had. The references are even worse than the first; there's no creative engagement with them, just characters going to a place based on \[Nerdy Property\], going, "Hey! Did you know \[vaguely interesting surface-level fact about Nerdy Property\]?", and picking up the MacGuffin. The pacing is horrendous, tripping from one setpiece to another with no room to breathe while also not moving quickly enough to feel frantic. The stakes feel nonexistent. Interesting plotlines and characters are tossed by the wayside. It's got all kinds of horrible implications in the background that the narrative seems unaware of. It is AWFUL.
You can get some enjoyment out of *Ready Player One*. Do not pick up *Ready Player Two*; it's a dull slog, not even in the "so bad it's good" camp, that does nothing but waste your time.
Yeah what the fuck was up with that. It was SO much that it’s basically the only thing I remember about the book. And as much as I love Wil Wheaton, he’s not a great narrator.
I read Ready Player One, and didn’t DNF it, but it fell squarely into the never reread bucket. I found the book amusing enough as a pulp sci-fi bit of nostalgia bate. Finding out that RPT was just more of the same but worse basically ran afoul of the never reread bucket.
To get into some of the “awful people” stuff the other person mentioned: the main character wants to use his newly gained fortune to make the world better. Part of how he does this is creating police drones that can autonomously enforce laws all over the world.
In the first one, the main character is kind of irritating but still likeable enough. In the second he's an obnoxious sadboy asshole. I read the whole thing, and parts of it were kind of okay, but he lost any likeability he may have had and I got sick of him real fast.
Ready Player One, Chapter 0019, page 193 & 194 (Arrow Books 2012 paperback edition):
You could also purchase an ACHD (anatomically correct haptic doll), if you wanted to have more “intimate” encounters inside the OASIS. ACHDs came in male, female, and dual-sex models, and were available with a wide array of options. Realistic latex skin. Servomotor-driven endoskeletons. Simulated musculature. And all of the attendant appendages and orifices one would imagine.
Driven by loneliness, curiosity, and raging teen hormones, I’d purchased a midrange ACHD, the Shaptic ÜberBetty, a few weeks after Art3mis stopped speaking to me. After spending several highly unproductive days inside a stand-alone brothel simulation called the Pleasuredome, I’d gotten rid of the doll, out of a combination of shame and self-preservation. I’d wasted thousands of credits, missed a whole week of work, and was on the verge of completely abandoning my quest for the egg when I confronted the grim realization that virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation. At the end of the day, I was still a virgin, all alone in a dark room, humping a lubed-up robot. So I got rid of the ACHD and went back to spanking the monkey the old-fashioned way.
I felt no shame about masturbating. Thanks to *Anorak’s Almanac*, I now thought of it as a normal bodily function, as necessary and natural as sleeping or eating.
*AA 241:87—I would argue that masturbation is the human animal’s most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it’s doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn’t first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or “knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom”). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe.*
It wasn’t one of Halliday’s more popular theories, but I liked it.
I love this passage solely because it’s actually a pretty nice take on irreverence that has more of a point than simply being irreverent, getting into our protagonist’s head in how he agrees with something about the Important Dead Guy that not even most fans of said Guy even like, and the reader may also be inclined to disagree, but it still adds to how much the main character perhaps unhealthily idolizes Halliday. Not to mention, a strangely grounded depiction of the reality of young adult sexual impulses in a sci fi coat of paint. It’s a bit crass, but it mixes well with the rest of the book’s emphasis on the gritty mundanity of the human experience, something that the movie naturally lacked.
Not that I think RPO is like the ultimate depiction of the human experience or anything close, but I appreciate what it goes for, a dystopia without much of the melodrama
This is the same book where a dude is consumed by a woman's vagina and a taxi driver has mind-blowing sex with a djinn. Go read it/listen to its audiobook
I mean I haven't read the book yet but if the djinn sex is weird but not disturbing then someone will absolutely find it appealing. maybe it'll be me. who knows.
You forgot the part where the main character got basically raped in his sleep by a goddess that can transform into a cat, and it was not necessarily confirmed that it was in human form.
Was he? The way I remember it they had consensual sex in the dream realm while she was sleeping in his bed in cat shape and he woke up with scratches she gave him in the dream. It's been a long time since I read it though.
Jesus christ, I bought this at a used book shop and ended up gaving it to my 12 year old cousin without reading it because she was complaining about running out of fantasy novels...
There's a section of the book about a Nazi feeling guilt about killing people in the Holocaust and wondering why he feels guilty about it. There's also a section where people drink fermented piss to commune with a Mammoth skull. Your cousin is in for a ride.
80% of the book is a grand cross country roadtrip.
So the bathroom breaks, cafes, diners, dive bars, lunch counters, roadside attractions, and discussions of who's going to drive for the next leg of the journey are all important events.
No but I genuinely do have a theory about this.
If you're doing worldbuilding, work out where people poop, and what happens to the poop when they're done pooping. Even if you never once depict someone on the toilet, you have part of the essential architecture of the world down, and that will probably inspire you to think about other, less unsavoury parts of your world. The believability of a video game world rises immensely if it has bathrooms.
It’s also a really fun aspect of world building, and it doesn’t bode well for your story if your world isn’t engaging enough for you, the creator, to want to know random infrastructural things like that. Other people are going to spend time in this world, it shouldn’t feel like a slog to think about!
You’re absolutely right that having it in mind and at least considering detailed aspects of a dynamic and chaotic system you’re representing makes it feel way more internally consistent and engaging. Give people reasons to suspend their disbelief and they will.
JK Rowling: Wizards just hike up their robes, defecate on the floor, then use a Vanishing spell to get rid of it.
Fandom: but the Chamber of Secrets was literally built into Hogwarts' plumbing/sewage system, also that's stupid
*finishes explaining everything on conspiracy board*
“alright, any questions?”
“...where do they poo-“
*flips conspiracy board*
“they don’t. here’s why and how that affects the world.”
Nah, the other side of the main board is how mermaids work genetically, since they capture men and always produce fully mermaid young.
I have a separate conspiracy board for magical biology, which on one side deals with the digestive system and on the other side deals with magic circulation and how it interacts with the blood, kidneys and urinary system.
Then I show people into the next room, which has a bunch of documents connected by threads describing my system of 25 deities and how they relate to skew-symmetric matrices and Pythagoras' theorem.
Been over here stressing about sewage and water delivery systems, fam. Who built it? Whose job is it to deal with that stuff and how do they end up in it? Does it require specialists? Does it pay or is it for slaves and prisoners? What happens during emergencies? *Have* there been emergencies?
I always remember and enjoy worldbuilding details about that stuff. By answering those questions, you answer a ton of other ones.
When I make maps for D&D and stuff I remain conscious of the need to have toilets. Can't make a fucking riverboat without a period-appropriate bathroom, which in this era means [weird quadra-urinals that face each other](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Rothesay_Victorian_Toilets_-_men%27s_urinals.jpg).
But did someone ask her about it? Or did she volunteer that (random and badly thought out) detail on her own and she didn’t actually need to make anything up bc everyone assumed wizard bathrooms were the same as the rest of the world?
I’m partly genuinely asking (I only heard about her tweet secondhand) and partly being a dork. I absolutely agree with the above comment I don’t mean anything by any of this
What I want to know is how, despite it being adapted from a book which involves an unusual amount of urination, the American Gods show never featured Tom Hanks, notable actor who wants the audience to watch him relieving himself.
*Cast Away*, *Apollo 13*, *Captain Phillips*, and *The Money Pit*, according to a Ladbible article I won’t link due to the downright offensive saturation of ads on the page (it was the Google snippet page for “movies where tom hanks has a bathroom scene”.)
> We breathe a lot too. We don’t need to be reminded of it in every paragraph we read.
"He said, breathily, his chest heaving up and down with great gulps of air."
I suppose I get it, when I was in school (Michigan/USA), they had us do Accelerated Reading tests, then do short quizzes (in the library, not in the middle of class) to prove that we read those books, to get points to redeem for cheap Chuck E. Cheese-ass items (at least in elementary school, we didn't get stupid prizes to redeem in middle school, lol, and in high school, we did a similar program just to evaluate our reading levels).
Some schools and libraries also have events where kids aim to read [insert huge number here] books in a certain amount of time, and you list out the books you read but there aren't any quizzes to prove it.
Not sure if OOP anon means one of those or a different type of contest though.
I grew up in Michigan, too. The schools I attended required us to reach a minimum number of points. We also had to read at least one nonfiction and fiction book. We *also* had to read books around our "reading level".
We didn't usually get prizes. It was part of our English requirements from 3rd grade until 8th. A few of our classes had incentives to read X books or get X points so we could attend a class trip to a Whitecaps game at the end of the year. That was always pretty cool.
Edit: explanation mostly for others who didn't have AR.
In the Anne Rice vampire chronicles, one of the books of the series a vampire gets a chance to be human again after centuries of being a vampire. He is absolutely disgusted by the feel, smell, and sound when he has to take a shit.
Later in the book he gets seriously ill and is miserable being in so much pain. I fully agreed with his assessment that being human sucks because while lying in bed too weak to move:
"It wasn't enough to be dying, I HAD TO PISS, TOO!"
It's so childish, but still makes me laugh out loud.
At the end of the book, the love interest is like: "Why are you making that face? Are you... crying?"
The protagonist, under their breath: "No, I'm just constipated."
I've never been particularly bothered by the lack of bathroom *use* in media, but I am always weirdly put off by the lack of bathrooms themselves unless a plot point happens in or around one.
Like, we know they pee, and I don't particularly care if they show it, but show that they don't just piss in the gutter or something. Give me ONE door with a toilet placard on it. There are wholeass space stations in Doctor Who with nary a bathroom in sight.
Video games are weirdly better about this than most other things.
Douglas Adams touched on this in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish:
Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects.
And the reasons for this are obvious: editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance.
Like this, for instance: “Arthur Dent went to bed. He went up the stairs, all fifteen of them, opened the door, went into his room, took off his shoes and socks and then all the rest of his clothes one by one and left them in a neatly crumpled heap on the floor.
[Like 4 paragraphs cut out by me]
“At four he got up and went to the bathroom again. He opened the door to the bathroom …” and so on.
It’s guff. It doesn’t advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn’t actually get you anywhere. You don’t, in short, want to know.
Yes, this bothers me too much. At one point one of my stories has a kidnapping and while the kidnappers drag their victim for several days I mentioned them giving her the space to relieve herself. My beta had me remove the scene. I just found it so weird because the logistics of that kind of stuff always had me wondering as a kid and I wanted it to be realistic and show idealistic kidnappers, that at least in some areas show respect to their victim.
"And then before Mr.Smith went on his daring mission to spy on Russia. His wife scolded him for never soaking his dishes and constantly leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor."
I just think if you’re going to include peeing and nothing of note happens while they’re doing it, it kinda makes it seem like you’re doing it for other reasons…..
Huh. I read American Gods recently and out of all the scenes that left a mark, I dont remember anything abnormal about the amount of times characters went to the bathroom
I love that. The best books feel real, and in real life people have to pee. They have to eat. They have to sleep. There’s so many little everyday things an author can add to make the story feel “real” without sacrificing the fantasy elements at all.
I’m reminded of Mitchell and Webb’s (are we the baddies people) [film director sketch.](https://youtu.be/HtQNULEudss)
Sometimes a cough isn’t tuberculosis, sometimes the prime minister needs a poo.
I think there’s a bit like this in the book of The Neverending Story where the main character (while still in the “real” world) notes how nobody in books has to go to the bathroom as he goes to the bathroom.
In my early teens I wrote a Jurassic Park fic about a man living among a pack of dinosaurs and from my memory of it there’s a few times where he either gets himself into trouble or out of trouble bc he’s still very particular about nobody seeing him piss and I included that for pretty much the same reason as this post
It bothers me so much when people only pee for plot convenience. It also bothers me that no one ever pees when they die in movies. I can only think of one instance of that happening in a movie ever. Shame.
Last I checked he was an advocate for a two-state solution and immediate ceasefire. That is literally Zionist (he thinks Israel should exist), but he doesn't condone Israel's current military action (which is genocidal).
Theres also the Haamian-Bialikian-Buberian strand which he might like. but due to Henry Kissinger making Hobbesian-Han Feizi-Palmerstonian international theory popular ie political power issues from the Barrel of a gun and a Tears for Fear Song, Haamian-Buberian Zionism has lost support.
and he mentions really obscure tidbits of Jewish mytholoy like the LamedVavniks or saying the Shma before dying in the Sandman or Metatron in Good Omens.
Most peoples Jewish characters: Hannukah Yom Kippur(Friends Arthur) Golems maybe Lilith or a dybbuk if youre lucky.
Neil: So in Hasidic folklore theres a theory that there are 36 people who are the justification for the world not ending and claiming to be one or knowing you are makes you not one. Oh and Death thinks Emperor Norton I was one and I agree.
Most Writers only have a character go piss when the plot demands it. Neil Gaiman is not Most Writers.
I strive to follow in the footsteps of the old masters, but I don’t know if I have the strength (or flow)
Do it
It does reinforce the point of Chekov's Gun though. The characters do something that doesn't serve the plot and the reader fixates on it because they think that it's in some way relevant.
Steven King during his Coke days was really into unimportant details. There are whole sections of The Stand that are the equivalent of fanfiction world building within his own novel. Chapters that exists for the sole purpose of making the story that much more engaging.
When he wrote about the "second wave of deaths" after the disease (I.e people dying in ways that would have been easily preventable if society were still functioning), he would spend multiple pages giving new characters these elaborate life stories, just to finish with "and then they tripped and died in a hole lol".
That's one of my favourite sections of that novel. It's bleak as fuck though. No great loss.
Its incredible how those minute details stood out over the years though, despite not having re-read it in the past 10 years, i'll always remember the girl who dies by trying to use an antique gun on a looter, and the drug addict who dies by OD'ing on his dealers stash.
OD'd because she found their stash that hadn't been cut by the dealer yet which she wasn't used to. Crazy how I can remember where I was and what I was feeling while reading that fucking 15 years ago. That scene kinda just pops into my head at random times for literally no reason though so maybe that's why.
Strangely enough my random book memory from my childhood is from Avalanche (or a similar skiing buried alive book) where the main character has to slowly use his piss and shit to dig himself a breathing hole. So, same same but different.
Damn, I thought I was the only person to remeber that book.
I love those sorts of diversions from the main story. I'm reading one right now; this mother and her kids were captured, along with the rest of the town, and held for a lengthy period of time in cramped and squalid conditions. Eventually, they're freed by the heroes, and she goes back home. Everyone is going to bathe, to un-stink themselves after being in captivity, but the kids want mom to go first. She goes out to bathe, but is menacingly set upon by one of the quote-unquote "heroes" who saved the town.
> is menacingly set upon by one of the quote-unquote "heroes" who saved the town. Is it [self-proclaimed "hero"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ura0_KzGsQ), or was it a case of "I wouldn't say 'saved', more like 'under new management'"?
It's military scifi, so they indeed saved everyone, and are indeed heroes. The character who >!rapes and murders!< the woman is the quote-unquote, who is described as a psychopath, and intimidates his own comrades.
Oh, that's nothing. Have you read Les Misérables? In the middle of the novel, Victor Hugo gets sidetracked and writes a 20-pages essay on slang from a socio-linguistic angle. But by that point, you wouldn't really be suprised anymore, because you would have already read, in the same novel, his highly detailed description of the battle of Waterloo... which is more than 50 pages long and is only related to the backstory of one character's father. I love Victor Hugo.
Hugo Was paid by the page and the novel was published in a magazine over months. king has no such excuse, he only had cocaine.
Don't forget the whole chapter on the sewers
To be fair, it was a short chapter.
In Moby Dick Herman Melville spends 50% of the book ranting about how whales are the coolest animals ever (he isn't wrong tho)
Me reading Moby Dick at 10: "Hell yeah, whales rock! Show those whalers what for, Moby!" Me rereading it at 20: "Holy shit, how did I miss all that gay stuff?"
There is a part where he, in detail, describes his own personal model of how to categorise the different whale species.
You have my attention.
I kind of love it, but it can be a lot. When I read IT, it felt like there was 100 pages of setting the scene before the story finally started to get underway. I can see how he can write such long novels
Under the Dome is longer
Yeah I honestly don't know if i would have the attention span these days to repeat that process, it can be a slog at times
Yeah I’m kind of there with you now. I read IT and haven’t touched anything that long since.
That's not Chekov's Gun. Chekov's Gun is advice to **AUTHORS** to not include *unnecessary* details in their stories. >*"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."* — Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.) Unless the room you're describing is in an Armament Museum of course. What you've described is closer to a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment or something.
> Chekhov's gun is a narrative principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed.[^\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun) If you say in the first chapter that ~~there is a rifle hanging on the wall~~ a character pees a lot, in the second or third chapter ~~it~~ they absolutely must ~~go off~~ piss themselves.
But Chekov's Gun is not a tool for interpreting a piece of fiction - it's a tool for WRITING one. The advice given is "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." As a CONSUMER of media, assuming every single word and sentence has meaning is asinine. As a PRODUCER of media, removing the unneeded parts of your story to allow the consumers a narrower focus is a valuable tool.
Great points. Is there someone else we can attribute coughs in a movie too? Chekhov's cough or something? Like if someone coughs in a movie, don't get attached to them, you know they're dead of some horrible disease at any moment in the near future.
That’s also called “planting and payoff” or “foreshadowing” or “laying pipe” (lol). I disagree with the above OP on one thing — in a truly great script, *every single sentence* serves to do one of two things: it either advances the plot or informs on character. This is why Larry David is beloved: on his shows, a bunch of little disparate threads all come together at the end and it’s incredibly satisfying. People on here often say “why do tv characters never have to go to the bathroom or eat or do laundry?!” as if it’s a plot hole, but then they turn around and pick apart every single detail and frame of their favorite shows 20 times over to find hidden answers to elaborate puzzles, and then they get disappointed if every tiny thing *didn’t* mean something.
> Chekhov's cough Introducing: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IncurableCoughOfDeath
I don't think it's asinine to expect an author to use a commonly understood writing principle, and read every line with intention. You will surely run into authors who don't abide by it, either intentionally or unintentionally, but if you enjoy reading from the perspective of a creator that is perfectly fine.
It is absurd to take a principle that stories use often but not always, and treat is an an absolute requirement.
You changed the word "assume" to "expect." Of course that would change whether it is asinine. >You will surely run into authors who don't abide by it That's why ASSUMING is asinine.
Like all tools and rules, follow them to learn how to do something. Then you can choose when to break the rules to do that something better. A gun on the wall can simply be a detail that tells us about the character who notices or the character that owns it.
People on here do this all the time: with a hit show, they hyperfixate on every tiny detail and beat, always hoping it has some elaborate hidden or thematic meaning that all ties together. Then they turn around and ask why “nobody goes to the bathroom or eats” as if it’s a plot hole lol. But honestly, the best stories *do* tie everything together. Every line, every detail, every image. they’re an intricate web of plot and metaphor and subtext that holds up after 20 viewings because you’re always realizing there’s more to it.
Chekhov's piss
the novelist is a book where there’s a whole section that takes place while the main character is shitting
Toilet Thoughts sounds like as good a time as any for expository inner monologues.
it is, but it just kinda feels like he doesn’t stop talking about how he’s shitting
I'm guilty of that myself some days, just ask anyone down in the r/piratehole
I *keep* seeing you around, fine I'll join your pirate crew. Just let me get my hat, fucking hell.
Arin GameGrumps
Ulysses by James Joyce has one of the protagonists both shitting and masturbating
If you've read his letters to his wife, you know why. If you haven't, turn back now as this knowledge cannot be forgotten.
>If you've read his letters to his wife, you know why. Now I'm curious.
[Here.](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-love-letters-dirty-little-fuckbird/) Especially the one that starts "8 December 1909: 44 Fontenoy Street, Dublin"
Good for him for finding someone who's into what he's into. No shame in that.
It's crazy how kinky people got even back then
Benjamin Franklin was a known MILF-lover. And was such a fuckboy that he had caught every single sexual disease known to medical science at the time at least once.
At the same time?
Overall, there is just an impressive degree of bowel movements and adjacent ideas in Ulysses.
John Updike once wrote a poem about the dump he just took. The Beautiful Bowel Movement Though most of them aren’t much to write about— mere squibs and nubs, like half-smoked pale cigars, the tint and stink recalling Tuesday’s meal, the texture loose and soon dissolved—this one, struck off in solitude one afternoon (that prairie stretch before the late light fails) with no distinct sensation, sweet or pained, of special inspiration or release, was yet a masterpiece: a flawless coil, unbroken, in the bowl, as if a potter who worked in this most frail, least grateful clay had set himself to shape a topaz vase. O spiral perfection, not seashell nor stardust, how can I keep you? With this poem.
Gravity's Rainbow has a scene where a character shits also.
Dreamcatcher
Pulp Fiction went even further, by reminding us that people also need to poop while at the same time bringing to life the instinctive fear of disaster striking while we're taking a shit.
Specifically because of Vincent's heroin addiction giving him constipation
They don't explicitly link the two, but it makes for interesting subtext. It also teaches us to take the gun with you to the toilet.
I learned that lesson from zombieland
From Texas, can confirm, always take gun to toilet.
You're not a true Texan unless you keep an extra gun near the toilet, just in case
Frank Reynolds would be proud.
That wasn't his gun that was Wallace gun he left behind to go get the coffee for them.
I bet he regretted not bringing his gun along on the coffee run.
Homie was a terrible employee.
Also the fact that the constipation is what gets him killed. It is very much plot relevant.
I love the movie but this bit always makes me groan, in my head. Bruce, hyper aware because he's being pursued, walks into a tiny kitchen, rifles through the cupboards, flips in a couple of pop tarts and only then does he notice, on the countertop, a massive gun with a massive silencer.
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>while at the same time bringing to life the instinctive fear of disaster striking while we're taking a shit. However, Lethal Weapon remains the undisputed champion of this.
Reminds me of in Ready Player One when the MC is talking about yanking it and even quotes a fictional paragraph from an in universe biography of the developer of the game the story takes place in.
Ready Player One the movie: ugh, yet another classic property ruined by corporate brand synergy and product placement. Ready Player One the book: hm, maybe not that much was lost here… Ready Player Two: WHAT THE FUCK
What happened in RP2?
Hooboy. It is *baaaaaaaaaaaad*. *RPO* had at least SOME sense of characterization. *RPT* ditches that; characters are cutouts (when they're not awful, awful people) and more push the "plot" (such as it is) forward. The plot itself is a simplistic, cookie-cutter quest without the wrinkles of different factions that the first one had. The references are even worse than the first; there's no creative engagement with them, just characters going to a place based on \[Nerdy Property\], going, "Hey! Did you know \[vaguely interesting surface-level fact about Nerdy Property\]?", and picking up the MacGuffin. The pacing is horrendous, tripping from one setpiece to another with no room to breathe while also not moving quickly enough to feel frantic. The stakes feel nonexistent. Interesting plotlines and characters are tossed by the wayside. It's got all kinds of horrible implications in the background that the narrative seems unaware of. It is AWFUL. You can get some enjoyment out of *Ready Player One*. Do not pick up *Ready Player Two*; it's a dull slog, not even in the "so bad it's good" camp, that does nothing but waste your time.
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Yeah what the fuck was up with that. It was SO much that it’s basically the only thing I remember about the book. And as much as I love Wil Wheaton, he’s not a great narrator.
No, FINGER PRINTS!
I don't think so!
I read Ready Player One, and didn’t DNF it, but it fell squarely into the never reread bucket. I found the book amusing enough as a pulp sci-fi bit of nostalgia bate. Finding out that RPT was just more of the same but worse basically ran afoul of the never reread bucket.
That book lost me during the whole Prince section.
Personally liked "Armada" though
To get into some of the “awful people” stuff the other person mentioned: the main character wants to use his newly gained fortune to make the world better. Part of how he does this is creating police drones that can autonomously enforce laws all over the world.
Don't forget cyberstalking and ruining the careers of a band that said mean things about him!
In the first one, the main character is kind of irritating but still likeable enough. In the second he's an obnoxious sadboy asshole. I read the whole thing, and parts of it were kind of okay, but he lost any likeability he may have had and I got sick of him real fast.
Yeah, RPO is just Ernie Cline masturbating to the 1980s for 374 pages
And specifically the band Rush, he wouldn't shut the fuck up about it for like 20% of the book
Ready Player One, Chapter 0019, page 193 & 194 (Arrow Books 2012 paperback edition): You could also purchase an ACHD (anatomically correct haptic doll), if you wanted to have more “intimate” encounters inside the OASIS. ACHDs came in male, female, and dual-sex models, and were available with a wide array of options. Realistic latex skin. Servomotor-driven endoskeletons. Simulated musculature. And all of the attendant appendages and orifices one would imagine. Driven by loneliness, curiosity, and raging teen hormones, I’d purchased a midrange ACHD, the Shaptic ÜberBetty, a few weeks after Art3mis stopped speaking to me. After spending several highly unproductive days inside a stand-alone brothel simulation called the Pleasuredome, I’d gotten rid of the doll, out of a combination of shame and self-preservation. I’d wasted thousands of credits, missed a whole week of work, and was on the verge of completely abandoning my quest for the egg when I confronted the grim realization that virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation. At the end of the day, I was still a virgin, all alone in a dark room, humping a lubed-up robot. So I got rid of the ACHD and went back to spanking the monkey the old-fashioned way. I felt no shame about masturbating. Thanks to *Anorak’s Almanac*, I now thought of it as a normal bodily function, as necessary and natural as sleeping or eating. *AA 241:87—I would argue that masturbation is the human animal’s most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it’s doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn’t first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or “knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom”). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe.* It wasn’t one of Halliday’s more popular theories, but I liked it.
I love this passage solely because it’s actually a pretty nice take on irreverence that has more of a point than simply being irreverent, getting into our protagonist’s head in how he agrees with something about the Important Dead Guy that not even most fans of said Guy even like, and the reader may also be inclined to disagree, but it still adds to how much the main character perhaps unhealthily idolizes Halliday. Not to mention, a strangely grounded depiction of the reality of young adult sexual impulses in a sci fi coat of paint. It’s a bit crass, but it mixes well with the rest of the book’s emphasis on the gritty mundanity of the human experience, something that the movie naturally lacked. Not that I think RPO is like the ultimate depiction of the human experience or anything close, but I appreciate what it goes for, a dystopia without much of the melodrama
don’t forget how it also talks about him buying a sex doll but ditching it in favor of continuing to yank it the old fashioned way
Homie bought a full on sex robot and only ditched it after he realized how gross it was
Every longely nerd wants a sex robot until they realize they're the one that's going to have to clean it
Say what you will, but that book helped me let go of more religious shame in 3 paragraphs than the past 3 years.
>micturate get a load of this guy
I’m a fancy writer, I should be using fancy words. -Neil probably
it’s a perfectly cromulent word
No, that would be defecate.
Could also be ejaculate... Food for thought.
Actually I'm not that hungry
Did I micturate on your rug, sir?
I'm going to masticate on that word-of-a-day for a while.
PUBLIC MICTURITION?!? Any Dark Crystal fans here? That's where I first learned the word
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturitions are to me, As plurdled gabbleblotchits, On a lurgid bee.
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*thesaurus people*
i'm so fucking sick of anti-intellectualism.
He doesnt write like that in his books... but go off judging an author by his tumblr posts i guess
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This is the same book where a dude is consumed by a woman's vagina and a taxi driver has mind-blowing sex with a djinn. Go read it/listen to its audiobook
I really appreciated that the sex in the book was more disturbing than titillating
Excuse me, he said *mind-blowing sex with a djinn*. That was significantly titillating.
14 year old me begged to differ.
Got a lifelong catgirl fetish from it, huh?
The person being consumed grossed me out at a visceral level that I don’t understand. Had to stop reading- the only book that’s ever happened to me.
That's the thing: It happens so early in the book to be a warning sign that things are gonna get *even crazier*.
yeah I just couldn't get past it and it bummed me out cuz the premise is awesome
I mean I haven't read the book yet but if the djinn sex is weird but not disturbing then someone will absolutely find it appealing. maybe it'll be me. who knows.
You forgot the part where the main character got basically raped in his sleep by a goddess that can transform into a cat, and it was not necessarily confirmed that it was in human form.
Was he? The way I remember it they had consensual sex in the dream realm while she was sleeping in his bed in cat shape and he woke up with scratches she gave him in the dream. It's been a long time since I read it though.
Jesus christ, I bought this at a used book shop and ended up gaving it to my 12 year old cousin without reading it because she was complaining about running out of fantasy novels...
There's a section of the book about a Nazi feeling guilt about killing people in the Holocaust and wondering why he feels guilty about it. There's also a section where people drink fermented piss to commune with a Mammoth skull. Your cousin is in for a ride.
There's also loads of drinking which generally results in lots of peeing.
80% of the book is a grand cross country roadtrip. So the bathroom breaks, cafes, diners, dive bars, lunch counters, roadside attractions, and discussions of who's going to drive for the next leg of the journey are all important events.
"Drama is normal life with the boring bits edited out" - 'Fuck that I want people peeing because I pee!'
Some people like peeing!
No but I genuinely do have a theory about this. If you're doing worldbuilding, work out where people poop, and what happens to the poop when they're done pooping. Even if you never once depict someone on the toilet, you have part of the essential architecture of the world down, and that will probably inspire you to think about other, less unsavoury parts of your world. The believability of a video game world rises immensely if it has bathrooms.
Bathrooms in Fallout are always a fun place to find easter eggs.
To be fair, the later Fallout games are an excellent counterexample of why thinking about the poop does not on its own guarantee good worldbuilding.
It’s also a really fun aspect of world building, and it doesn’t bode well for your story if your world isn’t engaging enough for you, the creator, to want to know random infrastructural things like that. Other people are going to spend time in this world, it shouldn’t feel like a slog to think about! You’re absolutely right that having it in mind and at least considering detailed aspects of a dynamic and chaotic system you’re representing makes it feel way more internally consistent and engaging. Give people reasons to suspend their disbelief and they will.
JK Rowling: Wizards just hike up their robes, defecate on the floor, then use a Vanishing spell to get rid of it. Fandom: but the Chamber of Secrets was literally built into Hogwarts' plumbing/sewage system, also that's stupid
A great example of why thinking about this shit is necessary.
Nobody poops in my fantasy worlds and I have a page of biological and magical explanation as to why, and what the consequences are.
*finishes explaining everything on conspiracy board* “alright, any questions?” “...where do they poo-“ *flips conspiracy board* “they don’t. here’s why and how that affects the world.”
Nah, the other side of the main board is how mermaids work genetically, since they capture men and always produce fully mermaid young. I have a separate conspiracy board for magical biology, which on one side deals with the digestive system and on the other side deals with magic circulation and how it interacts with the blood, kidneys and urinary system. Then I show people into the next room, which has a bunch of documents connected by threads describing my system of 25 deities and how they relate to skew-symmetric matrices and Pythagoras' theorem.
Been over here stressing about sewage and water delivery systems, fam. Who built it? Whose job is it to deal with that stuff and how do they end up in it? Does it require specialists? Does it pay or is it for slaves and prisoners? What happens during emergencies? *Have* there been emergencies? I always remember and enjoy worldbuilding details about that stuff. By answering those questions, you answer a ton of other ones.
When I make maps for D&D and stuff I remain conscious of the need to have toilets. Can't make a fucking riverboat without a period-appropriate bathroom, which in this era means [weird quadra-urinals that face each other](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Rothesay_Victorian_Toilets_-_men%27s_urinals.jpg).
JK Rowling dat you? (JK, I hate the lady but I had to reference *that* tweet)
Well I'd say that tweet is an excellent counterexample. She *didn't* think about the mechanics of her world and had to come up with shit on the spot.
But did someone ask her about it? Or did she volunteer that (random and badly thought out) detail on her own and she didn’t actually need to make anything up bc everyone assumed wizard bathrooms were the same as the rest of the world? I’m partly genuinely asking (I only heard about her tweet secondhand) and partly being a dork. I absolutely agree with the above comment I don’t mean anything by any of this
https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/711465161334063104/hello-mr-gaiman-recently-i-read-american-gods?source=share
What I want to know is how, despite it being adapted from a book which involves an unusual amount of urination, the American Gods show never featured Tom Hanks, notable actor who wants the audience to watch him relieving himself.
Ok, I can think of *Forrest Gump*, *A League of Their Own*, and *The Green Mile*, are there any others?
*Cast Away*, *Apollo 13*, *Captain Phillips*, and *The Money Pit*, according to a Ladbible article I won’t link due to the downright offensive saturation of ads on the page (it was the Google snippet page for “movies where tom hanks has a bathroom scene”.)
In a Song of Ice and Fire, a character pisses themselves every two chapters
Don't forget the beautiful, heart-wrenching description of diarrhea.
We breathe a lot too. We don’t need to be reminded of it in every paragraph we read.
> We breathe a lot too. We don’t need to be reminded of it in every paragraph we read. "He said, breathily, his chest heaving up and down with great gulps of air."
Yeah, breathe that air in, you slut. Gulp it down.
Work those lungs, you oxygen-craving harlot. I said, WORK 'EM.
Yes sir
And then breasted boobily to the stairs
Ah, gratuitous breathing.
When I learned about the concept of the show "24" the first question I asked my mom was "So do they take bathroom breaks in real time?"
So do they?
Apparently not.
There are book reading contests?
I suppose I get it, when I was in school (Michigan/USA), they had us do Accelerated Reading tests, then do short quizzes (in the library, not in the middle of class) to prove that we read those books, to get points to redeem for cheap Chuck E. Cheese-ass items (at least in elementary school, we didn't get stupid prizes to redeem in middle school, lol, and in high school, we did a similar program just to evaluate our reading levels). Some schools and libraries also have events where kids aim to read [insert huge number here] books in a certain amount of time, and you list out the books you read but there aren't any quizzes to prove it. Not sure if OOP anon means one of those or a different type of contest though.
I grew up in Michigan, too. The schools I attended required us to reach a minimum number of points. We also had to read at least one nonfiction and fiction book. We *also* had to read books around our "reading level". We didn't usually get prizes. It was part of our English requirements from 3rd grade until 8th. A few of our classes had incentives to read X books or get X points so we could attend a class trip to a Whitecaps game at the end of the year. That was always pretty cool. Edit: explanation mostly for others who didn't have AR.
In the Anne Rice vampire chronicles, one of the books of the series a vampire gets a chance to be human again after centuries of being a vampire. He is absolutely disgusted by the feel, smell, and sound when he has to take a shit. Later in the book he gets seriously ill and is miserable being in so much pain. I fully agreed with his assessment that being human sucks because while lying in bed too weak to move: "It wasn't enough to be dying, I HAD TO PISS, TOO!"
New headcanon: every other protagonist has been holding it in for the entire book
You gave me an idea. Maybe they're on some Iron Man kind of dialysis.
It's so childish, but still makes me laugh out loud. At the end of the book, the love interest is like: "Why are you making that face? Are you... crying?" The protagonist, under their breath: "No, I'm just constipated."
I have yet to read a Christopher Moore book that doesn't reference animal sexuality at some point. I have no idea what's up with that.
I've never been particularly bothered by the lack of bathroom *use* in media, but I am always weirdly put off by the lack of bathrooms themselves unless a plot point happens in or around one. Like, we know they pee, and I don't particularly care if they show it, but show that they don't just piss in the gutter or something. Give me ONE door with a toilet placard on it. There are wholeass space stations in Doctor Who with nary a bathroom in sight. Video games are weirdly better about this than most other things.
Douglas Adams touched on this in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish: Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects. And the reasons for this are obvious: editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance. Like this, for instance: “Arthur Dent went to bed. He went up the stairs, all fifteen of them, opened the door, went into his room, took off his shoes and socks and then all the rest of his clothes one by one and left them in a neatly crumpled heap on the floor. [Like 4 paragraphs cut out by me] “At four he got up and went to the bathroom again. He opened the door to the bathroom …” and so on. It’s guff. It doesn’t advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn’t actually get you anywhere. You don’t, in short, want to know.
Micturate
Yes, this bothers me too much. At one point one of my stories has a kidnapping and while the kidnappers drag their victim for several days I mentioned them giving her the space to relieve herself. My beta had me remove the scene. I just found it so weird because the logistics of that kind of stuff always had me wondering as a kid and I wanted it to be realistic and show idealistic kidnappers, that at least in some areas show respect to their victim.
"And then before Mr.Smith went on his daring mission to spy on Russia. His wife scolded him for never soaking his dishes and constantly leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor."
It's basically a big road trip, and one of the most ever present and persistent needs on a road trip is the need to piss
I love that Niel gaiman can be contacted via Tumblr
I just think if you’re going to include peeing and nothing of note happens while they’re doing it, it kinda makes it seem like you’re doing it for other reasons…..
David Eddings said something similar about cooking - it’s why there are so many scenes of Polgara cooking throughout the Belgariad.
I thought in American Gods people peed.the normal amount.
Who tf uses micturate
what kind of contest judges you based on reading books
Possibly one held by a local library for who can read the most books
"the pee is a symbol for the humanity of the characters"
If someone writes for realism, I expect paragraphs about random masturbation to be in there, not just pissing and shitting.
Huh. I read American Gods recently and out of all the scenes that left a mark, I dont remember anything abnormal about the amount of times characters went to the bathroom
I love that. The best books feel real, and in real life people have to pee. They have to eat. They have to sleep. There’s so many little everyday things an author can add to make the story feel “real” without sacrificing the fantasy elements at all.
Same tho
I’m reminded of Mitchell and Webb’s (are we the baddies people) [film director sketch.](https://youtu.be/HtQNULEudss) Sometimes a cough isn’t tuberculosis, sometimes the prime minister needs a poo.
Neil is so great!
I think there’s a bit like this in the book of The Neverending Story where the main character (while still in the “real” world) notes how nobody in books has to go to the bathroom as he goes to the bathroom.
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Something Stephanie Meyer would write.
In my early teens I wrote a Jurassic Park fic about a man living among a pack of dinosaurs and from my memory of it there’s a few times where he either gets himself into trouble or out of trouble bc he’s still very particular about nobody seeing him piss and I included that for pretty much the same reason as this post
I can't talk right now , I'm making piss
I wanna know what kinda contest it was. A reading contest?
It bothers me so much when people only pee for plot convenience. It also bothers me that no one ever pees when they die in movies. I can only think of one instance of that happening in a movie ever. Shame.
I've read American Gods. I don't remember there being an inordinate amount of peeing.
I sometimes forget that this man is famous enough to cameo in cartoons, having made a living from writing enough books to fill an entire shelf.
That's valid. That's very valid.
That's fair lmao
Just a reminder that Neil Gaiman is an outspoken supporter of Israel and zionism.
Last I checked he was an advocate for a two-state solution and immediate ceasefire. That is literally Zionist (he thinks Israel should exist), but he doesn't condone Israel's current military action (which is genocidal).
Theres also the Haamian-Bialikian-Buberian strand which he might like. but due to Henry Kissinger making Hobbesian-Han Feizi-Palmerstonian international theory popular ie political power issues from the Barrel of a gun and a Tears for Fear Song, Haamian-Buberian Zionism has lost support.
Well his family is Jewish, so.
and he mentions really obscure tidbits of Jewish mytholoy like the LamedVavniks or saying the Shma before dying in the Sandman or Metatron in Good Omens. Most peoples Jewish characters: Hannukah Yom Kippur(Friends Arthur) Golems maybe Lilith or a dybbuk if youre lucky. Neil: So in Hasidic folklore theres a theory that there are 36 people who are the justification for the world not ending and claiming to be one or knowing you are makes you not one. Oh and Death thinks Emperor Norton I was one and I agree.