I love when a dog gets too hot under the covers and they frantically drag themself back up to the surface panting and gasping and looking at you all betrayed like you soft-boiled them with your body heat on purpose
Teachers have tried this and are amazed when their classes don’t go feral like in the book. It’s almost as if the book was supposed to be satire and not a treaty on the nature of humanity.
there’s a timeskip
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!
IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH
AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because
THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING
AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA
BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM
HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -
IT DIDN’T HAPPEN THAT WAY IN LORD OF THE FLIES EITHER YOU JUST HAVEN’T READ IT SINCE HIGH SCHOOL IF EVER AND DON’T REMEMBER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE GODDAMN BOOK
yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.
i read about this in rutger bregman’s human kind, a book i cannot recommend highly enough, but if you don’t want to go and read a whole book about the inherent goodness of humanity (which again, you really should) then the relevant excerpt can be found here.
Hey @phillipfancypants I am intrigued, go ahead and lay out your argument
Okay
so basically this all started in 10th grade when my English teacher
(idk if this context is needed but she grew up in Yugoslavia in the ‘80s
before moving to the US as a teen and she has a VERY thick accent.
She’s about 6’4” and has huge black hair that sticks out all around her
head. She’s the human embodiment of a corvid bird. Truly such a fascinating
person) anyway she was talking about Lord of the Flies in class and
mentioned that a few years ago some students of hers tried to convince
her that the book couldn’t have taken place during WWII and that she
didn’t believe them because “there have been no atomic bombs except
during World War Two” and an atomic bomb is referenced as the inciting
factor for why the boys were flying over a deserted island in the first
place.
But
the thing is, if you actually look at all the throwaway historical
context details in the book, there is no logical way that it could have
taken place in WWII. I realized that all clues point towards an
alternate timeline where the Cold War turned hot. About halfway through
the book I started bookmarking any scrap of information related the time
period and it was getting to the point where each chapter took me twice
as long to read because I would continually need to check various
articles and Wikipedia pages to cross reference.
Eventually, I ended up writing a 5 -page paper picking the book apart for details which you can read here but I’ll also give you the individual points (a mixture of historical details and borderline headcanon):
Early
on in the book, the boys mention that there are probably maps in “the
Queen’s library” that show where they are—this was one of the first
things that stuck out to me, as Elizabeth II didn’t become Queen until
1952, and WWII ended in 1945
Ralph
mentions watching something on television at home. His dad, although a
naval officer, would almost certainly not be able to afford a TV in
1945, BUT televisions were already popularized around the time of Lizzy
2’s coronation (or at the very earliest the 1948 London Olympics) and
it’s believable that Ralph could have had one at home. There’s also some
mentions around space travel/putting a man on Mars that would make more
sense during the Cold War
I found Piggy’s character to be very interesting. For one thing, he’s introduced as
being fat due to his Aunt owning a candy store (his parents are both
dead). If you know anything about the sugar ration during WWII, you’d
know that candy stores would have been non-operational and Piggy would
probably not have had access to an excess of sweets.
Continuing
with Piggy, I’d place his distinctive accent as either London Cockney
or London Estuary. If Piggy was from London, he would have been
evacuated to the British countryside via train (the same evacuations in
which the Pevensies stay with their uncle in Narnia) long before the
dropping of the atomic bombs. Here’s where the headcanon comes in: I’d
be willing to bet that Piggy was evacuated to the countryside as a baby
during WWII and both his parents were among the 27,000 killed in the
London Blitz, hence why he now lives with his aunt. By assuming the
years leading up to the book are peacetime instead of wartime, there’s
no issue around the candy store.
And
finally, the most compelling argument imo…WHY WOULD BRITISH BOYS BE
EVACUATED AFTER VE DAY??? In the book, it’s very clear that the LOTF
boys are being evacuated from their boarding school after an atomic bomb
was dropped. Victory in Europe was May 8th, 1945. The bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. In what world would British boys
be evacuated by a plane traveling over tropical airspace (historically
child evacuations in the UK were domestic and carried out by train) to
protect them from a bomb dropped in Japan four months after the end of
the war in Europe?? The only plausible explanation would be that the
USSR dropped a bomb on an Allied power and the boys are being evacuated
from Briton all together to avoid nuclear fallout and/or future
bombings.
Final
note, at one point the boys consider building a new plane and decide
against the idea because they “might get shot down by the Reds” even
though the soviets were literally allies with Britain during WWII. Do
you know when they most certainly weren’t allies? The Cold War.
Anyway,
I end up giving her this essay which she reads and then promptly says
“these are all very interesting points, but there was STILL no nuclear
bomb besides the ones dropped on Japan in World War 2” and I’m like
“Yes!! I know this!! And I’m saying it’s an alternate future!!” But she
never really seemed to understand what I was saying.
Anyway
a few weeks ago I was at my job (I’ve been working IT some summers at
my high school after I graduated) and I ran into her and she says “I was
going through my desk and I found that essay you wrote on LOTF! I read
it again and it was a really good argument piece, especially for a 10th
grader.”
So of course I ask her “oh really? Well, were you finally convinced?”
I started using Head and Shoulders ten years ago for itchy scalp and dandruff, and then for ten years I have not had itchy scalp and dandruff, so I thought “why do I still buy shampoo to combat itchy scalp and dandruff when I do not have itchy scalp and dandruff,” so I stopped buying the shampoo for itchy scalp and dandruff and can you guess I have now? Can you predict what currently afflicts me? It’s alright if you can’t because apparently I fuckin couldn’t either
Cutting something out of your life because you think you don’t need it any more only to realize that it was in fact working as intended and preventing a problem that will return should you stop doing this is a good experiment to run periodically with something small like dandruff shampoo, lest you start to think it would be a good idea to do this with like let’s say public health and the social safety net and vaccines
I had a liver transplant when I was 14 and like six months later I was chatting with my surgeon and he said “there’s gonna come a time, probably when you’re a teenager, where you’re gonna think, ‘I feel great, why am I still taking all this medication? I haven’t needed it in years.’ and you’re gonna want to stop taking all this medication. Guess what’s gonna happen then? You’re gonna go into rejection and your liver is gonna start failing, and you’re gonna be dying again, and we’re gonna have to find you another liver. So don’t do that.” And I said “why the fuck would anyone do that?” and he said “people are stupid.”
every once in a while when I get annoyed by a pharmacy or don’t wanna get out of bed to do my drugs I think “ugh, this is dumb, why do I do this?” and that conversation slams into me like a truck and I remember that I am, in fact, stupid
truly dads with new born babies v dads with children are two completely different people this man used to strap this child to his chest with a double chest wrap because he was terrified of giving her shaken baby syndrome and now he just kinda hucks her , I’ll be sitting on the bed and all of a sudden my child just comes soaring towards me
Everybody needs to listen to Gustav Holst’s The Planets, not for hoity-toity nerd reasons, but because literally every epic sci-fi movie soundtrack for the past hundred years has been directly lifting shit from this one specific collection of pieces, and you deserve to hear your favourite motif in its native environment.
I’ve recently been made aware that if you are thinking of switching to Linux or want to switch but don’t know how there’s a great website made just to help people migrating from Windows to Linux.
The website has a long list of supporters, so if you really know nothing and / or are afraid of trying it and messing something up you will be able to get professional help from this website.
There’s even a list of places where you can go physically to get help. All over the world, not just in the USA by the way.
Say goodbye to Microsoft treating you like you don’t own your PC. Say goodbye to intrusive features you didn’t ask for. Say goodbye to ads on the OS you paid for.
Save your PCs from joining the massive amount of e-waste caused by Microsoft’s unnecessary requirements.
Yep. It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime. One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility.
Gas companies are still so mad at him he’s “unknown scientist”, know his name
Daily reminder that health and safety standards like these are what politicians mean when they talk about “deregulation.”
Patterson died 5 December 1995.
Petition to make his date of death a Tumblr holiday celebrated by talking about cool shit the gas and petroleum industries don’t want us to know about, and fighting to continue his work.