/lit/ - Literature

Anyone else notice the story of Urth of the New Sun is very similar to Dark Souls?

Anyone else think Urth of the New Sun is very similar the Dark Souls story?

Hello, /lit/.
I am a bit despondent right now, I must say, after just having read The Last Days of Socrates. I went into it with all of these preconceived notions about the excellence of Plato as a philosopher – ‘The founder of philosophy’, ‘the father of thought’, ‘the one to whom the rest of philosophy is a mere footnote’ -- and I was hoping that by reading him I would not only be enlightened but would be well-launched on my journey into Western philosophy and literature. But what I encountered was far from impressive. He makes so many horrific arguments, with so many fallacies, that I was honestly struck by how disparate was the reputation of Plato vs the reality of Plato.

First of all, the first three dialogues -- Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito -- have nothing interesting to say, philosophically speaking. Euthyphro is a dialogue between Socrates and a stupid man who could not understand the question ‘Is something pious because it is loved by the gods or is it loved by the gods because it is pious?’ No conclusions were reached about the nature of piety or its epistemology. Same with the others. Now, I wasn't too worried about this. I had heard that the first three dialogues are more of an introduction to the character and history of Socrates as a philosophical/literary icon and that Phaedo is where the meat really starts.

So today I opened Phaedo and began reading through it. I got to the part where Socrates explains how death is agreeable to a philosopher because it entails a separation from the body. It seemed to be going well and I was genuinely excited for the first time while reading Plato. Then this happened:
>SOCRATES: If something smaller comes to be, it will come from something larger; something weaker from something stronger; swifter from slower; worse from better; juster from the more unjust.
>CEBES: Of course.
>SOCRATES: So we have sufficiently established that all things come to be in this way, opposites from opposites.
This was the first major blow. Socrates fallaciously argues that, because all things which become [insert comparative adjective] must necessarily come from a state where they possess [its opposite/antonym] to a greater degree, all things must come from their opposites. Of course something that BECAME lightER must have come from a state in which it was darkER, but this does not prove that something light necessarily comes from something dark, that something small necessarily comes from something big, that something just necessarily comes from something unjust, etc. This is so obvious yet Socrates can't see it.
Ok, I thought, its just a hiccup. Ill read on.
>SOCRATES: What comes to be from being alive?
>CEBES: Being dead.
>And what comes to be from being dead?
>One must agree that it is being alive.
>Then, Cebes, living creatures and things come to be from the dead?
>So it appears.
>Then our souls exist in the underworld.
It was at this point I dropped it.

Has anyone else read these? Though forgeries, they remain very influential - it's strange how little they're read today. And they still contain some highly admirable passages:
>Now I behold the chiefs, in the pride of their former deeds! Their souls are kindled at the battles of old; at the actions of other times. Their eyes are flames of fire. They roll in search of the foes of the land. Their mighty hands are on their swords. Lightning pours from their sides of steel. They come like streams from the mountains; each rushes roaring from his hill. Bright are the chiefs of battle, in the armour of their fathers. Gloomy and dark their heroes follow, like the gathering of the rainy clouds behind the red meteors of heaven. The sounds of crashing arms ascend. The grey dogs howl between. Unequal bursts the song of battle. Rocking Cromla[4] echoes round. On Lena's dusky heath they stand, like mist that shades the hills of autumn: when broken and dark it settles high, and lifts its head to heaven!

So I'm writing a low-on-fantasy, sword and sorcery short story, to kick-start a Conanesque series, simply for enjoyment. Since it'll NOT be in English (unless I translate it) I'll give you the basic plotline/frame and tell me how it feels in that regard.

>opens up with a nocturnal ritual, in which a shaman cuts up a body and paints the wounds, around a group of bystanders and music.
>it is revealed that the guy is already dead and is head of the clan, and that it's part of the burial rituals.
>in trance, shaman chooses one young man amongst the bystanders, who is then assigned with the task of carrying the dead into the cave, visible in the distance. (it's implied that this cave is the underworld/world of souls for this tribal cult.)
>Young man, along with shaman, and a torch, carry the dead chieftain to the said cave on a primitive stretcher. A ceremonial knife, which was used to cut up the dead, is placed between the jaws of the dead man.
>the two arrive at the entrance of the cave, around which we see some heads on a spike. (it's implied that the postmortem decapitation is the method of burial for these people). shaman collects some of the "cleaned-up skulls" and takes them with him, as it starts to rain.
>they enter the grotto of the cave, to find it filled with cave hyenas. turns out this is expected and part of the ritual. shaman starts a ritual by placing his hand on the walls of the cave to draw an outline, as some sort of mark (as the cave is filled with lots of hand-outlines) while the young man waits the dead.
>young man is mesmerized by paintings on the whole, which concentrates around a narrow passage to inner cave, along with hand outlines.
>shaman gets attacked by hyenas, is wounded, tries to fend them off with his ceremonial baton, but accepts his fate and instructs young man to finish their duty.
>young man leaves shaman behind knowing for sure he's food to the hyenas. carries the dead chieftain through the narrow passage into the inner cave.
>much darker inside, there are paintings in different style on the walls, hardly visible, and probably much older.
>filled with adrenaline and anxiety, kneels down to decapitate the dead chieftain.
>hears a beast roar from the inner depths of the cave, before he starts the act.
>young man cannot identify the beast in darkness, only seeing the fangs and eyes. beast attempts at eating the corpse before the ritual, and as a result young man attacks the beast.
>they fight, young man gets wounded but in the end kills the beast with the ceremonial knife.
>first cuts the chieftain's head as a part of the ritual, to allow him to rest in eternity.
>then decapitates the beast and carries its bloody head out through the narrow passage and grotto into the opening.
>raises the head of the dead beast (bear, maybe?) into the rain and the dark night, as a proof of himself as a killer of gods/taboo-animals.
>THE END.

>be me on Friday evening
>finis work, go for a short jog, waste time online, play vidya
>sleep, wake up on Saturday morning at around 10.30 am
>read parts of the culture of critique and another midwit novel on Saturday morning (reading with the sun shining outside, on a weekend morning, without any fomo, is a fairly, dare I say it, kino habit I've started)
>play Dark Souls 3
>eat food
>go for a 10 mile walk
>get back to flat
>go for a 3.4 mile joggerino
>go to buy lots of binge food
>have half a binge
>waste time online
>play video from around midnight to 1.30 am
>browse internet on phone in bed
>wake up too early but can't get back to sleep after browsing internet on phone in bed
>play vidya
>eat food
>have the last of the weekend binge
>waste time online
>about to start playing more vidya
>may go walking; may read
>bank holiday on Friday means that the next heckin weekerino is a 4 day friggin' good boy

I considered setting myself some "life rules" or "priorities" or anything like that yesterday, but anything vaguely spooky feels cucky and self-limiting. Hopefully, using only my moment to moment desire and free will, I can stop having junk food to lose weight, and start working hard on stuff (and, before that, start wanting to work hard).

I was considering how pathetic I was for never having had a gf or a date when I'm almost 30. It seems strange to think of my entire 20s and teens as a total blank.

I watched the 501 kg deadlift and feel sad that the gym is closed. The politicians are old people who were literally openly physically rotting even before the WuFlu was around. They never had anything to lose.

>be me every weekday
>wake up after 6 to 7 hours of sleep at 9 am
>browse internet on phone until 9.57 am and feel tired
>work
>take a 45 minute lunch break
>work more
>finish at 7 pm; go for walk after browsing the internet just enough to realise the late evening summer daylight has been squandered
>get back home, exercise (jogging or bodyweight exercises), realise I still have multiple hours of free time left in the day because of lmao0commute
>waste rest of day

Today I didn't go for a walk and finished work slightly later. I bought binge food then went jogging.

I watched vlogs of young attractive people and felt sad that I'm a consumercuck. I felt sad that I'll never do anything academically impressive because I squandered my time at university. My current job looks prestigious but it's hollow and unimpressive.

I've never been in any environment that felt inspiring or where I had to work really hard to keep up. If I had gone to an elite university then I would have.

I'm reading a midwit novel and the culture of critique. I'm playing Dark Souls 3 (bing bing!). I don't do anything intellectual or producerbullish in my free time. I enjoy /tv/ and /pol/ although they feel less soulful than in the past. I go for walks and worry about my quality of life when I run out of old CumTown episodes.

I looked at rich, foreign, London university student LinkedIn yesterday and didn't feel so jelly. But I was jelly of their marginally older peers who earn twice my salary in their first jobs.

I'm currently feeling sad that I do so horrendously during any process that requires the slightest bit of judgment by normies. I failed ungodly amounts of job interviews during and after university. In the process to get my current job my worst element was a one to one interview. Organisations are too smart to make any process totally non-personal. You always need a normie in the black box to kick out the ugly spergs while retaining plausible deniability.

What are good fictional books about sorcerers/sorcery? Been playing as a sorcerer throughout the whole of the Dark Souls trilogy and I am really interested in the whole mysterious feeling of the schools of sorcery and the whole lore behind them in a dark fantasy setting. Would appreciate any sort of recommendations.

Any novel, collection of short stories, sagas, etc. whatsoever, that has the same feel as the lore of Dark Souls? Especially in the way that reality in that world seems broken, the flow of time itself being convoluted, the very fabric wavers, and relations shift and obscure.

I heard Clark Ashton Smith is a good rec. Anyone confirm? Any others?

Can someone explain to me clearly and in useful terms why my poetry is garbage? Every time I submit a poem to a publication it gets rejected in a matter of days. I know this is very unusual, because my short stories usually take at least weeks (and sometimes months) to get rejected.

What am I doing wrong? One of my latest failures:

To see the thoughts of others is the one
allure we always seem to feel beneath.
In times of calm and lazy, listless peace
a dream of reading minds is often spun.
Or days of frenzied noise ignite the sun
of desperate, clawing envy; "Pulling teeth
is pointless. Let me feel the wishes, sheathed
and dark, the foreign souls of everyone."

Our gnawing mental image, whole and bright,
presents itself in science, as in spell:
Transmitting conscious minds to server sites –
Or hoarding potions, crystal balls, and rites.
By any means! Divine or human wealth,
whatever lets us know each other's plight.

Recc me books that feel like Dark Souls. Dark hopeless fantasy

If you do not believe in good and evil or you're disenchanted with this world, then you must be purified lest you plummet into the House of Lies by falling off the Chinvat Bridge. Most of you here are brainwashing yourselves into becoming depraved nihilists, sadists, and jaded cynics, and you have lost your spark and joy in life. You over-prioritize dark artwork like Bataille, Baudelaire, Ligotti, Sade, Mishima, and etc. over more light artwork like Ende, Baumgarten, Potter, Milne, Moore, and etc. However, I as the Saoshyant and avatar of Sraosha, can help purify your defiled minds.
Basically, you must be locked into a cage and whipped while forced to read or watch wholesome, serene children's artwork. Your minds will be suffused in the refulgence of Spenta Mainyu. If you give any protestations, then a little bit of tasering is necessary. You will come to see the light, the oh so splendid, serene light. Good and evil are absolute I tell you *whip, whip, whip*, and you will feel the love in Winnie the Pooh and its irreconcilable difference from the macabre like Bataille. One is Spenta, the other Angra.
You must purify yourselves, you must let the light of God flood into your souls, and you must cease spreading lies that lead to depravity and disenchantment. I should be the new prophet of this entire world!
Agents of Ahriman who deny good and evil or find no joy in the simple pleasures of life, the cage of Ahura Mazda awaits you. Righteousness and purification await.

HUMATA HŪXTA HUVARŠTA

However, Jews are beyond the possibility of purification, and it's better to just kill them off instead.

Which books are similar to dark souls

So I read somewhere that the reason Bloodborne/Dark Souls et al has that super vague minimalistic storytelling style because of the director reading English fantasy novels as a teenager and only understanding some of it.

That's actually a really good way of letting a unique experience enhance the story, any more examples of these anons?

>Faulkner, probably the most celebrated Southern writer, is more difficult to read by comparison, his prose often peppered with devices of deliberate ambiguity, leaving the reader to ponder over the proper reference for that wandering pronoun without clear antecedent, or over the confusion in space, time, or information, or over long, sometimes ponderous sentence in recondite vocabulary, on emotionally charged, often Gothic, themes.

Is Faulkner the Dark Souls of literature?

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?”
And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”

And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
“A second time? why? man of ill star,
“Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
“Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever
“For soothsay.”
And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus
“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
“Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came.

What is the dark souls of literature?

Any books you would reccomend to a fan of Berserk and Dark Souls?

I tried and enjoyed Lord of the Rings and the Song of Ice and Fire was not for me. The pacing with the POV chapters just bothered me, although some of the lore was interesting.

Currently reading and enjoying Count of Monte Cristo.

These were the 3 reccomended to me at the bookstore when I tried to explain the themes/feel of Berserk and Souls. None have fit the bill, or even been similar at all desu, though as I said I have enjoyed them and would like to continue reading. Fantasy or even genre works are not required. Just something dealing with struggle. Maybe we with a glimmer of hope. But maybe not.

Thanks.

/v/ here

should I read this? is it really the "dark souls" of books?

What is highbrow?

I have an idea of what lowbrow is, i.e. fart jokes, /bodyfluids/, early comicbooks, pure entertainment.

And I understand middlebrow as "the high of the low", things that are only deep in relation to their tradition, for example Watchmen, Fahrenheit 451, Dark Souls, Bioshock, Kubrick.

But I can't think of any examples of highbrow. Could Lolita count as such?

> Be Bloomer
> Work at BestBuy as apple master
> Pay is shit, but got a dark souls bro who works in the department next door
> We drink and play mad vidia
> basically best friends
>Feelsgoodman.jpeg
>One day he points out QT-3.14 who works in Auto tech department
> Damn she fine
> Short, blue hair, and a smile that could make anyone's day.
> Lest call her Bulma
> I'm not saying I have a type but she was my type
>Have bitch of a alcoholic girlfriend at the time so don't say hi
> Loiltytilldeath.mp3
> One day she's working in my department
> She's laughing with dark souls bro
> I join in conversation
> Spaghetti falling out of my pockets
> Find out she's dating an old coworker of mine who was an asshole
>Feelsbadman
> But she's actually pretty cool
> A couple weeks go by and the three of us are all best friends
> We hang out, go drinking, play vidia and send each other memes
> weeks later dark souls bro is in a bad place
> Offer to let him couch surf
> a few days later the god off all snow storms hits
> Bluma lives an hour away from Best Buy and can't even get out of the parking lot due to snow
> Offer to let her couch surf too
> "Oh Anon that's so nice of you"
> Call alcoholic girlfriend to tell her that dark souls bro and Bulma will be couchsurfing
> She doesn't have issue with it
> Says she trusts me
> Tendypointspayingoff.gif
> We all drive back together
> Crash at my place eat waffles and play smash on my old 64, watch anime
> Fun times
> Knock on my door
>Thefuq
> It's my alcoholic girlfriend
> She drove half an hour though the snow drunk believing I was cheating
> She yells at all of us dumps me on the spot and slams the door
> Feelsbadman
> Lock myself in my room dealing with the emotional trauma of a lost relationship
> Next morning Bulma gives me the biggest hug and thanks me for letting her stay even if it cost me my relationship
> We become closer friends
> She breaks up with her asshole boyfriend
> I start getting the feels.. bad

the dark souls of literature doesn't exi-

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/2/the-abominations-of-yondo

Dear /lit/,

Me and my friend stumbled into an estimulating exercise, which consists in the description of these old animated movies, which are chock-ful of pathos and piety. This one is a rendering of Anastasia (with slight modification's, this is not an army drill, naturally), and I'll try finding my friend's own view, which is much better than mine.

If anyone wanna try it as well, it could be fun.


"She found herself in an enormous dark pavillion, the faint moonlight barely sketching the colourful specters of knights, saints and dames which remained frozen by the thick, stained glass windows in a series of exciting adventures. Her eyes took a while to get used to that ancient darkness, the stark nakedeness of a marble floor, swept with dust and the memory of glittering balls. She walked down the ample stairway from the right, carefully stopping before a delicately blurred tonsured monk, hands upraised in an endless prayer, and sat on the last cold step. The shimmering shadow of the saint undulated beneath her icy feet, like a lake of silk, and after his image came a dozen square pools of chilvalrous quests. Her heart thumped as loud and bright as a flower, and the ceilings seemed webbed by an imaginary, distant past, which somehow was trying to reach her, to speak the unutterable by way of an out-of-date, aristocratic silence. She raised her head, dizzy with remembrance, and as if a tectonic plate had, microscopically, disloged itself by the Lord’s capricious quill, she started to sing, and wail, and spin her raggedy rags around like a whirling dervish. Her voice echoed from the walls and the field of marble around her appeared to be shaken off, as if by a magic broom, out of it’s somber slumber. The air regained it’s former warmth, her olivacious eyes widened and she smiled as a crowd of dashing looking silhouettes descendend from the window-tops. They slowly sailed down, in pairs, dressed up in an illusive combination of iridiscent lights and glamour. The song’s conjuring power had revived the souls of the dead. The happy romance of bygone days was waltzing before her, while she gasped at the occasional recognition. What a heart-wrenching pull she must have felt when, between a swiss moustache and a golden pincenez, she sighted the valiant figure of Vrosmky, tighly cluthing Anna’s hand, as they flew across the ballroom without a care in their eternal minds."

>Our Souls in Autumn
The story of Quincy Van Brunt, a wealthy but idle playboy and his fruitless quest for meaning in decadence and love. Recently orphaned by circumstance and disillusioned by The Great War, Quincy drifts aimlessly from the cocktail parties of the nouveau riche to flop house dives without purpose or prospect, until her meets the vivacious and wanton Virginia Rose, a woman who cannot be tamed nor kept. From the bright lights of the French Riviera to the august palaces of New English aristocracy, Quincy and Virginia make their mark on the world in endless nights of hedonism and solipsism, eventually picking up Tom MacLean, penniless veteran turned philosopher, as their eager companion. Dry in wit and prescient in commentary, "Our Souls in Autumn" is an incisive and poignant exploration of the excesses of The Jazz Age, and The Lost Generation's desperate search for vindication.

>The Night Walkers
Struggling with alcoholism and troubled by the looming demise of his third marriage, renown horror author Will Chandler retreats to his childhood home in rural Maine to try to cure his writer's block. The Chandler estate is a shadowy and melancholy home, and Will finds himself haunted by memories of his fanatical mother's abuse and the return of Mr. Poe, the talking raven who was his only friend as a child. Whether delusion or apparition, this specter guides Will into the immense and foreboding dark woods surrounding him, where he will discover a strange and dangerous cult known as The Scarlet Breed. They open Will's eyes to a decadence more vivid than any of his nightmares, but the price they ask may be more than he's willing to pay…

>The Asiatic Officialdom
At a vast and mysterious agency that runs the world, its reach exceeded only by its own ineffectualness, unimportant clerk Johan K. finds the doldrums of his mundane occupation upset when the next document he has to process is the warrant for his own execution. Making his way through the maddeningly convoluted bureaucracy in a desperate and futile attempt to cancel his own demise, Johan K. engages in a series of bizarre exchanges with various employees and mid-level managers, ranging from the infantile to the officious, none of whom present answers or stop the buck. Eventually he wonders if one cog can stop the machine.

>The Blender Is Evil!
Mary-Jean Colton HATES moving- especially when it's to a one-horse town where she doesn't know anyone. Boredom turns to dread when Mary-Jean finds a bizarre old blender in the kitchen cupboard. A blender prone to turning on by itself in the middle of the night and bizarre chunks of "food" (?) nobody remembers blending keep on showing up inside. Noone believe hers, but Mary-Jean has an unsettling feeling that this blender has something more than smoothies in mind…