This year I decided to show Bernd a look of the literature side of the Revolution and War of Independence of 1848-49. Not at the whole thing just one work. It's The Baron's Sons by Jókai Mór, a historical novel.
Epub related, Bernd also can read it here if he is curious, not too long but not short either:
https://www.literaturebase.com/ebook-34674-The-Barons-Sons-A-Romance-of-the-Hungarian-Revolution-of-1848/

The author (in his full name: Ásvai Jókay Móric) is one of our great writers, his works are studied during school years by every Hungarian, and recognized on international level too. He not just had first hand experience of the Revolution but was among the central figures of it for a while, then he was a chief editor of a main political newspaper. For this book he also used a historical work and articles of the press as a source.
The Barons's Sons was first published in Hungarian in 1869, and the first English edition in 1900. Both romanticist and realist features mingling in this work.
The personal involvement of Jókai in the Revolution makes it unavoidable to view his own side as good and his idealistic leaning makes him paint the morality of his characters dual, black and white, and themselves are stereotyped, tho vacillating supporting characters are also present. The events are grandiose and cataclysmic, in general this is especially true to his battle scenes which are the tales of heroism.
The realism manifests in his genre scenes, the way he presents the everyday life of the characters, especially on the folksier side.
The story runs on several threads with several central figures. Jókai favors much action and movement during the acts, and uses a few plot twists to make things more complicated and exciting. He doesn't treat the antagonists with contempt if it need be he can show the human side of some (tho it is usually a tool to emphasize on the quality of the heroes) but every bad guy/gul meets his/her well deserved fate.
The subject matter, the Revolution and War of Independence is viewed through a fictional family's struggle during the events. And now some spoilers are coming, tho it can be think of it as a teaser too since I this won't be complete.
The baron, the head of the aristocrat Baradlay family, in the title is a "stone hearted man" and he is dying in the beginning of the story due some heart failure. His testament he tries to arrange the future of his wife and three sons in such heartless, very rational and calculating way that after his pass his wife disobeys him and do everything in reverse. While the family has estates on the Hungary they spend part of their life in Wien (since they are aristocrats close to the Court) and the Austrian revolution of 13th March finds them there. Through hardships and adventures they find their way home.
The youngest brother however fell in love an Austrian lady (not sure anymore if she's an aristocrat as well or from a wealthy patrician family). A very rotten one. Her family is close to the Baradlays too and she plays a cruel game with the revolutionaries, while serves the Court purposes. To make matters more difficult the second son is a hussar officer who leads his unit home, but also he was considered a suitor by the lady and now is pursued by the previous suitor who is a cavalry officer in the Habsburg army.
Nevertheless they arrive back home safely, the Hungarian revolution turns into a war of independence. The two older sons participate actively. They participate in a friendly "duel" during the retake of the Buda castle, they lead their own units and race against each other to reach a certain target.
The war fails, the Habsburgs are back, retribution is coming, the responsibles has to be punished, the two older sons' future looks grim. Then the youngest steps up and with his sacrifice he saves his brothers.
At the end the story jumps twenty years and look at the characters of the story how their lives turned out.

A movie adaptation was made in 1965.

>>40836
Yah forgot to reply to yourself bernd

>>40835
>Those stories are fascinating which show the same event from the view of several participants, from different sides (or just one, whatever).

I can think of liek 2 things that are similar. One would be "Pulp Fiction". made by Quentin Tarantino. It's one story viewed through the eyes of 3 different people on different timelines. It's really hard to describe unless you see it from beginning to end. Gud film btw

The other would be a gba game called "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories". Once you beat the game, you get an option to do a new game with a character you never expect and play the same story in a somewhat different timeline. And the story really unfolds afterwards. I can't really give too many details without spoiling it. You'd have to play it from beginning to end to get it.

Currently reading a chilling and very unnerving book titled "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H.G. Wells. It involves a shipwrecked British man washing up on an island owned by a manic scientist that engages in vivisection to splice animals together to make them "act and appear human". The book was created during a time when animal vivisection was an heated debate in the UK. I think this was the author's way of expressing how he felt about everything. It's a really skin turning story in the way it makes a reader feel about everything. Maybe don't read it if you have a weak stomach.

I think the anime called "Full Metal Alchemist" had a character that was similar to him IIRC

>>44775
I'm about halfway in that book. Again the style I find clumsy and cumbersome (the recitation of the events by itself too, but ugh, all those town and street and place names..., maybe I could follow it on a map), the story is engaging however. I'm familiar with at least the Tom Cruise movie from all of its adaptations.
It is sprinkled with nice details, like how they searched for the brigadier general's HQ but they couldn't find it in the chaos, or the machinists of the trains did not want to risk returning to London. He also has a great imagination with the "Heat Ray" (laser? the book was written in 1897), or with the walker which was recycled in later works like Star Wars (and even maybe was an inspiration for mechs). The "space ship" of the martian is very Verne-like, they are shot here from a giant gun.
So what's in the book I like it very much, how it is presented, it's a bit of pain. Maybe the Hungarian translation is different, I might check that out.
Just by a search we can see many nice re-imagination of the essence of the book.

>>45088
At one point Wells mentions the "unspeakable" nature of the martians. Did he inspired Lovecraft with the Cephalopod looks of the Martians?

>>40842
>Most likely never gonna play with Kingdom Hearts, so feel free to spoiler it (or not, maybe someone out there would play it).

Might as well reply to this 2 year old post now

The basic gist of the game is altering your memories so you remember something, some events and somebody who never existed. The main baddies of the game do that to the main protagonist by making him think he knew someone from their childhood who's actually a witch altering the main protagonists name with the intent of making the protagonist an empty husk/puppet that the main baddies can use as their weapon to own the world. The main baddies even go so far as making your childhood friend hate you and want to kill you constantly during the game but he's actually a replica of your friend because your friend is gone to the dark zone or something like that. That's never clear until near the end of the game. Throughout the story, the plot unravels in such a way that's honestly pretty mature for a GBA game. With so much betrayal, heartbreak and deception that it sometimes feels like a mature adult novel instead of a regular video game.


It's definitely a game that's better played and enjoyed slowly instead of being told the main plot twists of the game. Story wise, it's the peak of the series in terms of pacing, atmosphere, music and setting. KHII was good, but not so good story wise. The game series takes a nose dive story wise IMHO. It's the only game that reminds me of the movie Memento iirc.

It's also one of the most advanced and high production inside the entire GBA. Highly recommend if you have a few weeks to finish it, because it's also somewhat long for a GBA game.

Late frosts and snows always reminding me a specific Hungarian folk tale, The Little Pig and the Wolves. Folk tales are literature, so here we go.
I give Bernd a story in writing and in vid then explain the context.
One day when the pig was cooking at home the wolf asked to let him in into his house because it was freezing outside. The pig was smarter and denied the wolf. So this tried to trick the pig asking if he could put only his hind leg through the door. Then he slowly moved backwards more and more. The pig put some water to boil, and grabbed a bag which he led the wolves into gradually. Then when the wolf was all in, he scalded him with the boiling water, and fled up to a tree. The wolves got his pals and since they couldn't climb trees they stood into each others' neck, the hairless one standing on the ground. They almost reached him, when the pig screamed: "boiling water upon the bald one!" which made that scared and run away collapsing the whole bunch. The little pig lived until he died.

The main charters of the story are the pig and the wolf. These are two of 28 lunar houses (or as the Chinese calls em: xiu, the Twenty-Eight Mansions, or the Hindis: nakshatras), he pig is the first one in the Taurus zodiac (~April 20 - May 20), the wolf is the second (between the dog and the griffin) in the Aries (~March 20 - April 20) - ofc both in Chinese and Hindi, and probably Arabic and Western and whatever traditions all stations have their own names. Have to note, the lunar houses don't cover each zodiac by the day if we want to go by calendar, from the simple fact that they are ~14 days long, and zodiacs 30. For example Aries has 3 houses (the griffin is still belonging to that), but Taurus only two, so they hang into each others' parent zodiac here and there.
Here's a mosaic work of a handicraft/industrial art artist.
So the lunar houses follow each other like this in chronological order: dog, wolf, griffin, pig (and then pigeon/dove - isn't featuring now).

>>50081
>>50075
>>50074
Intradesting

Imma contribute some content to this thread. Here's a collection of fairy tales from around the world.

https://www.worldoftales.com/index.html

And some copies of the Grimm fairy tales

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/old/grimm10.pdf

https://www.worldoftales.com/fairy_tales/Grimm_fairy_tales.html

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/

Also a copy of some Epic tales from Europe

r8

What are bernd's opinions on the "Evil devouring mother" archetype? It's a common theme in movies, stories, short novels, fairy tales, and films.

And it's not just something that appears in films and movies. I've seen and lived with these type of people during the years I've been alive. Maybe all of these stories and fairy tales are based on real people and real life experiences that the author has been through.

Here's a good example of the archetype, Full Metal Alchemist. Main villain is literally every thing related to the archetype.

And here's her main theme: Dante's theme

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=EpAbJCzmDBk

Provide serious discussions over this topic. And personal anecdotes over it.

>>50358
Here's the book about the goddesses, and I post the one about the Gods too to complement it.
I started to browse the chapter about Hera, I might write about what I found. But yeah, she is the jealous wife (not unfounded jealousy...) who often strikes out - not onto her husband, but at her rivals, rivals' kids, and innocent bystanders. She's not all that, way more to her, but one characteristic side.

So Hera vs. "Evil Devouring Mother"

First let's take a look at the case of Snow White.
She's the daughter of a royal couple, her mom dies, and her father takes another (young?) women as wife. She gets jealous and wants Snow White killed. The rest of the story isn't much interesting in our case.
The same thing happens in Cinderella to some extent. Her mother dies, her father marries again and her step-mom shits on her on every occasion she gets. No murder attempt this time, but she suffers.
To me it's quite clear that in both cases the step-mom, the new wife considers the heroin a competition. She is a reminder of the late wife - whom possible the pater familias very much loved. She is also viewed by the new wife as a distraction for her husband, who has to divide his attention between the new wife and the daughter.
I'm reading in Wikipee that in some version of Snow White, no new wife appears, but the actual mother is the one who gets jealous of her and wants to get rid of her.

>>50460
Forgot to include at least one pic.

Just read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Really dark book about Belgian expansion on African countries during the Scramble for Africa.

This book actually inspired most of the scenes and content from the movie "Apocalypse Now"

The Horror! line actually comes from this book.