Poogona

You give a man a fish, you feed him for a day--you give a man a rat, and you satisfy his rat desire

Very tall Bart isnt just the best leftist ytp channel, it's the best overall

My brain keeps a permanent spot for "Dennis Prager: Hated by many, loved by few"

There are probably lots of historical records that were written by people operating on too many layers of irony to truly interpret accurately

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that early humans and neanderthals coexisted and even cohabitated and it makes me happy to imagine it being not just circumstantial but enthusiastic cohabitation (not even horny)

Like the period of coexistence lasted for estimates of thousands of years. You're gonna tell me there were no cross-species duos getting up to mischief? Not one puny human kid who teamed up with the big neanderthal kid because they were both getting bullied? No Last Kingdom scenarios in which a child who was raised by the other group feels torn between these identities? Please

My cargo shorts are the garb of an artist, disheveled and prophetic

The books set in Bas-Lag by China Meiville fit this and also happen to have based politics (and cactus people)

The Gormenghast books spend a lot of time satirizing fantasy royalty with a ghoulish atmosphere of "decaying hateful weirdos with well-rehearsed manners" over it, and passing attention to the real but impoverished life outside the castle

Malazan has some of what you are after but it deconstructs like every trope throughout its enormous wordcount so I imagine it's too broad

(My book has it too but it's more of a backdrop, likely too distant for what you want)

Honestly I think it might be why expression is something people (or at least I) seem to need. Bundling up the way I feel into a little "scene" to be distributed to others means that I have turned my grim ass emotions into something more solid that I can maybe pick apart and recontextualize. The cloud of death becomes something I can point to and moan about, maybe even joke about, instead of being my reality that I am stuck with.

edit: What plants are you growing?

The grief hurts but I think the part that has me particularly fucked up is the constant presence of death in my home now. Two pretty old parents and the remnants of many absent pets means it feels like everywhere I look I am reminded of mortality, and that's without mentioning the awareness of genocide in the wider backdrop.

I gotta get started back up writing something bigger than little practice exercises soon I think, it's the only method I know for processing this type of mental sewage

Man I lost like 3 pets this year and I'm feeling lonely as fuck and I can't really complain to my friends about it because they are dealing with much bigger problems right now, this sucks

Yeah yeah, your marriage is struggling, okay yeah you are making a lot of extra suicide jokes lately, yes yes I am happy you're recovering from your gender reassignment surgery

I happen to miss my dog and I reserve the right to be sad today

I kinda want to defend cumtown but also I don't think cumtown wants to be defended so I won't

At least I remember Nick Mullen making jokes about IDF soldiers bravely requesting APCs to clear out orphanages back in like 2017

Who doesn't love a bit of class betrayal?

I often think of Quixote and Sancho being an example of two people becoming "proletarians" (for lack of a better term) from opposite directions. Quixote's madness makes him become more of a genuine person who takes part in the world around him for a change while Sancho's exposure to such madness carves away at his more selfish lumpen tendencies as he realizes how the madness of his companion reflects upon him in the eyes of others. See also: Julian and Ricky from trailer park boys

I feel like I have seen this done but still miss the point, you know? Like there's the classic duo of sheltered princess and gritty merc, but in my experience it usually it winds up being about the sheltered person proving they are actually very "with it" in their own way and the gritty guy learning that royals are actually cool and fine.

To really capture the literary significance of a Quixotic figure, I think they must be in many ways pitiable and ridiculous to the point of frustration, with the pragmatist coming off as a bit of a user since Sancho at first is planning to just let this rich weirdo self-destruct as long as he gets paid along the way. This could still be done with the sort of beautified anime style, but in a sense I almost feel like it's a dynamic that works best with people who are maybe a little bit uglier.

I don't think it's a shortcut to being compelling but it breaks the mold of the usual "opposites who learn to like each other" buddy dynamic.

(Also don't let me deflate any ideas of yours I'm just discovering with these posts how much I apparently care about a book from the 16th century)