/lit/ - Literature

This is going to be an odd question, but: does anyone know the origin of tingles spreading out from the spine, across the back and shoulders?

I realize that's kind of a broad term, but it's a weird sensation I've always gotten from certain experiences. It usually happens when I'm thinking or feeling in a very strong way. It's often triggered by being deep in prayer, or by listening to particularly powerful music, or by a particularly sublime moment in something I'm reading or watching.

It's almost like it's a physical signifier that I'm being deeply moved by something, based on my long experience with it. But what is it, actually? Does anyone else ever get this feeling? I can't be the only one who gets it.

The ultimate "redpill" is that 4chan is filled with some of the sanest, most mentally sound people on the planet. These people seem "crazy," "mentally ill," "broken" to the vast majority of the outside world. But the ultimate reality is that our world, the world of the 21st century, is broken. Something is fundamentally rotten and wicked and evil about the world of the modern West, and increasingly the world outside the modern West, too. So to rebel against it, to realize that the world as a whole has turned nasty and ugly and crazy, is to GO insane, to BE depressed. And this is what leads you to 4chan.

Remember the immortal words of Saint Anthony the Great:

"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'"

>>15987199
Not quite sure. It's different for every person.

For me, I'm extremely religious, a very devout Catholic, so when I feel at a loss I often find myself praying, praying directly to God or praying for the intercession of the saints, all on the subject of inspiration and what I am going to write.

In general, I would suggest just thinking, but not forcing. THINK first, don't jump into writing. It sounds like that's kind of your problem, that you have your big scenes and you barge forward overtly to try to link them all up into an overall story. It sounds like you don't do enough thinking, not enough just sitting around or walking around or pondering during the day-to-day of your life. Think more. THINK more.

>>15705760
>if it's your first work

It's not. I've had several poems and several short stories published already. I'm not some big shot with a huge following but it wouldn't be the first thing I've ever gotten published. I've been writing in some form or fashion since I was 15 years old, and this year I'm 33. This project first came into my mind, in its early stages, when I was almost ready to graduate from high school, so it's been a long time coming.

But it will absolutely be a difficult sell to any mainstream agent or publisher. I'm already prepared for that. I don't care. I'm not writing this for them. And I have faith in this work.

>What's the story itself about?

Thousands of years in the past, a nuclear war wiped out human civilization. But then, human civilization was rebuilt, restored, by a cabal of scientists that hid underground and rode out the nuclear war. The planet was restored and civilization was reestablished, but then the rebuilt civilization turned on their scientist masters. It seemed that they were defeated, but they merely retreated back underground, and where the scientists had controlled the world overtly, immediately after the war, they now controlled it from the shadows, maintaining all of their previous power.

That backstory is millennia in the past of my story. That cabal of scientists evolves into a quasi-religious order, a secret society of scientist-monks that wields incalculable power, possessing free energy and technology that rivals the most advanced sci-fi civilization. Their science and technology is so powerful that they can even influence reality on a metaphysical level. So, with this all-powerful technology, and guided by a strange text written by an AI, they have created four artificial humans with immense metaphysical power, power over the created order itself.

And those four creations are actually the protagonists of the story. They are only teenagers when we meet them, and they have no idea what they are. But the story follows their journey, their rise into maturity, and the bend of the entire arc of history, far in the future, from what they are like and what they will do. For all the lore and plotting I do, the story has actually become extremely character-driven. The four protagonists are the fulcrum, the pivot, around which the entire story turns. They are the most important things in it, not just as plot devices but as human beings whose lives and natures we come to know.

This story is also actually a deeply religious work, a work of Christian, specifically Catholic art. Christianity is embedded into this story like it is in works like C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and A Canticle For Leibowitz. I want this work to glorify God, to be true, and good, and beautiful in a way that brings grandeur to God and turns the eyes of its readers towards the Almighty.

OP I would recommend getting a companion book if you want to understand Ulysses. I read it in an academic context and I'm not sure I would have fully appreciated it otherwise. Joyce is doing a lot in the book that has to do with not only great literary sources (like Hamlet, which is definitely in there), he's also responding to a lot of 19th and early 20th century trends in literature, psychology, and the history of the novel, and you will not properly appreciate these if they're not pointed out to you. At least, not if you're not already some kind of academic with prior knowledge.

What are some times in your life when literature fundamentally altered you? Altered your identity, your sense of self, your ideas about the world?

The biggest example of this in my own life was when I was an undergrad in an Ancient Great Books class and I read Plato's Republic for the first time. I went to a pretty standard public school in Texas, not a private school, so while I was in some advanced classes I was not really exposed to broader world literature, and I was definitely not exposed to philosophy. So to read the Republic, with its discussions about what justice is, what the ideal political situation is for humans, what the fundamental metaphysics that undergird reality are, was one of the most profound things that has ever happened in my life. I felt like I had been in a small house my entire life, and finally I'd stepped outside of it, and a whole huge world that I'd never known of before was out there waiting for me.