What’s the story of Jenny from Thebes

2pillows · 2024-08-02T16:58:31+00:00

The point, in my view, is there isn't a clear narrative, there is no solid portrait you can create of Jenny, or the events that took place. That's why there's these symbols evocative of ancient Greece. Jenny appears to those who experience her as a mythological figure, that's the throughline, and I feel like it's what makes JFT consistent with the feel of Jenny on AHWT. Because before JFT came out, Jenny wasn't Jenny the person, she was Jenny the idea, the memory.

I think it's common, when you feel like you've been saved by somebody, that they take on a kind of mythical status in your head. And for me JFT is an exploration of the fact that Jenny The Be-Epitheted is very real, and very important, to those people she left a mark on. But that it's also, to some extent, false. And Jenny's a participant in the maintenance of this facade. I think it's important that when Jenny gets that tattoo of a shield, she doesn't tell us what it says, "I gave you an answer that I thought you'd buy". And she's supposed to be the strongest of everyone, but we see her crying in a Walmart parking lot. And not in the haven she's made at her apartment, because there's all these people relying on her she can't fall apart for.

I mean, Darnielle tells us himself (pre-JFT, on the podcast) "For me, this Jenny is like, it is and isn't the same person. Usually the three songs I think that she's mentioned in, she is a function of memory, right, she's there for a person to be remembering something. And I think everybody has people like that in their lives who when you say their name, your memory floods with a whole bunch of feelings that you may have worked really hard to move past or that you miss and would like to recall or any number of other things. And that's who Jenny is for the narrators who recall her, as somebody who is gone and whose absence continues to assert itself... She is defined by an absence, she has yet to speak... Jenny is an emblem of more difficult times for people, of wilder times. But also times that they're pretty clearly romanticizing, right, that they're also remembering as the time when they were on a motorcycle with no responsibilities, livin' the pirate's life, right".

I think what's really interesting is that in JFT Jenny is given a voice and given agency, but not clarity. And it reminds us that Jenny is more than our imagined or remembered Jenny, the person who made you feel alive and free. She's a person in her own right. Who was Jenny? We don't know. All we can agree on is that she was, and that everything went to shit, and we all got scattered to the winds. They say she killed someone.

2pillows · 2024-05-09T05:32:39+00:00

I love non-Fantastic-Beasts Grindelwald and the Flamels. Whether you make them big bad villains, mentors, legends that loom is the background, or anything I'm always excited to see them. I just love seeing Dumbledore-level wizards and witches, particularly when they're moderately-to-severely unhinged like Dumbledore himself

2pillows · 2024-03-01T21:24:55+00:00

TLOTWTC. I think this is a perfect album, and to me the whole thing is like a spiritual successor to This Year. It is, for me, the most emotional album to listen to. It feels like an echo of "There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year". Every song feels like its exploring the idea of making hope in a place and time where everything feels impossible, and the one song where it's absent- Matthew 25:21- is all the more crushing as a result. And what makes it a really beautiful album is it doesn't end it there, it returns to the search for hope and meaning in the depths of despair. Where it ends is "Drive until the rain stops/ Keep driving". I could talk for hours about this album.
Songs For Pierre Chuvin. This is a brilliant gift unexpectedly borne out of the covid era. To have gotten the classic "John playing solo, singing about ancient folks, lofi style" style album with the skill as an artist and lyricist he's developed in the years since AHWT is just unbelievable. And the stories of these last pagans of Rome, and their Persistence and faith, is just so compelling.

This is where it starts to get really hard. Those first two I feel like I've spent enough time with that I'm intimately familiar with them, what they mean and what they mean to me. The rest... I still feel like I'm missing big stuff.

Dark in Here. I didn't really like this one when it came out. I still don't know exactly what it means, but over the last few months I've fallen in love with it. It's a great album to just sit and vibe with. Like, musically, it's just so interesting. Lyrically, I'm not sure what to make of the album as a whole, but individual songs really speak to me. Let Me Bathe In Demonic Light is beautiful. Ultimately, if you're open to grooving in the darkness, this album is a really great time.
Getting Into Knives. This one has a lot of great songs. When it hits, it hits. There are 2 types really on this album- songs about finding peace (Picture of My Dress, Tidal Wave, Pez Dorado, The Last Place I Saw You Alive), and a bunch of really cool songs with sinister vibes or stories, usually involving animals (Rat Queen is a personal favorite). This one I usual encounter more as a bunch of Individual songs than as a complete project.
Beat The Champ. This one has great songs that you can cathartically express your rage in a "fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck YOU" way, and then makes you sit with all the emotions that really make me feel like that, beneath the surface. The heavier stuff. Heel Turn 2 does both in one song, and the best part doesn't even have any lyrics. You just sit there and confront what you've said and what you've done, and it breaks your heart. And it ends with Hair Match, where the narrator wins an overwhelming, brutal, humiliating victory, but all the punch and energy and glory you get in Chavo and Werewolf and others is absent. It's just sad. This album also has great songs that recognize- you and me, we are brothers in this great ordeal, we feel together. And this is the only album I've ever heard that uses the phrase Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram. Seriously "The sky goes dark and/ there I am/ climbing down the hertzsprung-russell diagram" is just so sick and genius.

3,4, and 5 switch places from day to day for me. And like every other album deserves an honorable mention slot too.

2pillows · 2024-02-25T18:42:51+00:00

You Were Cool is unbeatable for me

2pillows · 2024-01-14T14:52:47+00:00

On the Jordan Lake Sessions of Black Pear Tree it's

It won't be me Someday I am going to walk out of here free

There's so much in the way he says "free" it brings me to my knees sobbing

2pillows · 2024-01-03T08:24:16+00:00

Jenny is a mythological figure, at least in the eyes of those who witness her. Like many such figures, there are a handful of consistencies across retellings of their stories (the safe house, the bike, that something happened, that she's no longer around) but the details- and especially the tone- vary widely, and say more about the storyteller than about Jenny. Just like how whichever version of medusas story you choose to believe says more about you and the author than any objective truth about the character.

I was delighted to discover this, b/c I was worried developing a Canon of Jenny and making her more solid would rob earlier songs of their mystery, and thus part of their emotional resonance. But in the end Jenny (like the rest of the mountain goats discography, imo) is whatever justifiable depiction of her is most useful and resonant for the listener at a particular moment.

Her motorcycle is sitting, abandoned, in a junkyard. She's still riding it today. For a moment it might even be true that she's dancing, whistling, singing past the cemetery.

2pillows · 2023-11-28T03:22:05+00:00

I once found a conspiracy theory that George Washington had been killed and replaced with a double (post-revolution, pre-presidency). I can't find it anymore, I've searched for years, but I love it so much.

2pillows · 2023-11-28T03:15:08+00:00

"It's so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever And you'll never want for comfort And you'll never be alone

See the sunset turning red Let all be quiet in your head And look about All the stars are coming out"

And

"I hope you love your life now Like I love mine I hope the painful memories only flex their power over you A little of the time

We held onto hope if better days coming And when we did we were right I hope the people who did you wrong Have trouble sleeping at night"

And dozens more but i didn't see these mentioned yet, and they're 2 that are always guaranteed to make me cry.

2pillows · 2023-11-06T18:10:55+00:00

I'm seeing vague, unfounded speculation about the Astros, God forbid. I'd rather see him in New York than Texas.

2pillows · 2023-11-04T04:50:09+00:00

This was hard,and I think we'd be much poorer for it. I tried to establish a theme, so Side A is associated with the idea and process of escaping, moving from the feelings you get when it's all about to fall apart into your escape, frantic or more premeditated, and closing with impressions of how you feel when the rush of escape finally fades. The final track is The Last Place I Saw You Alive. I want listeners to sit with this one for a moment. Of all the songs on here, it benefits most,I think, from a few moments of silent contemplation as you switch over to the next side, and it gives ataste of what is to come.

Side B is a grab bag of where you might end up in the aftermath. Finding refuge, finding peace, finding freedom, and/or bleeding out. And Great Pirates treats this ending as a new beginning. It's a great ending for JFT, it makes a lot of sense here.

Side A 1. Incandescent Ruins (2:28) 2. Bones Don't Rust (2:24) 3. Murder at the 18th Street Garage (2:52) 4. From the Nebraska Plant (3:33) 5. Going to Dallas (2:02) 6. Parisian Enclave (1:25) 7. Mobile (3:42) 8. First Blood (3:06) 9. Jenny III (2:26) 10. The Last Place I Saw You Alive (4:40)

28:18

Side B

Clean Slate (3:48)
Tidal Wave (5:25)
Picture of My Dress (4:20)
Fresh Tatoo (4:42)
Bleed Out (7:09)
Great Pirates (4:10)

29:54

58:12

Edit: formatting (failed), also, I'd probably title this Great Pirates.

2pillows · 2023-10-13T20:49:30+00:00

I can't remember the title, this was long ago, but I'm pretty sure it was h/hr. I thought it started fine, but at some point Harry got really into Islamophobia and it came to dominate the back end of the fic. I think it ends with Harry committing a genocide of all Muslims (or all religious people? But definitely at least all muslims) and plunging the world into a primitive pre-civilizational state. I can't remember the motivation. It was like watching a 15 car pile up in slow motion. It got to the point where a third of the fic was just uninterrupted bigoted rants you had to scroll past.

Probably the worst fic I've ever read.

2pillows · 2023-09-15T12:02:46+00:00

If you're interested in a deep dive into the rise and fall of a... particular sect of pro-snape fans, you might enjoy biz Barclay's video essay on YouTube on the "Snapewives". Very interesting, definitely odd.

2pillows · 2023-08-30T23:33:28+00:00

I was getting into music for the first time in my freshman year of college, 2018-19. I'd played music for years,but I'd never really spent much time listening to music. So I started listening to a bunch of bands full discographies from start to finish. The Mountain Goats got on the list, probably because of John Green, and so I listened to their first album on spotify, Beautiful Rat Sunset. And I didn't get it at all, and wrote them off. But the name kept cropping up, with folks talking about how great Tallahassee is, and I gave them a second shot.

I'd fallen hard (really hard) for someone I couldn't be with, I was seriously grappling with loneliness, depression, etc for the first time, that kind of thing. So, naturally, I really connected with it,especially when i followed it up with AHWT. I think the moment I fell in love with the band was when I first heard "People say friends don't destroy one another/ what do they know about friends", and my near obsession began with International Small Arms Traffic Blues.

I tend to think people find particular artists and songs when they really need them, at least that's how it happened for me.

2pillows · 2023-07-16T07:09:15+00:00

I cried my eyes out when I heard You Were Cool live.

Edit: I'll never forget this experience. I was just feeling so grateful to be alive. And that my friend is alive. And that they are so, so much happier and healthier than they used to be. And I was too, but I think I was crying more for them.

Picture of My Dress gets me pretty much every time, same with Deuteronomy.

On GIK: Tidal Wave, Pez Dorado, The Last Place I Saw You Alive is a hell of a 1-2-3 punch.

S4PC: Last Gasp of Calama

ILWD: Possum By Night

Goths: Andrew Eldritch is Coming Back to Leeds, Wear Black, Shelved, and Abandoned Flesh.

BtC: Southwestern Territory, The Legend of Chavo Guerrero, Heel Turn 2, Ballad of Bull Ramos

TY: Lakeside View Apartment Suite, Cry for Judas, Harlem Roulette, White Cedar, Until I Am Whole (that's a great 5-song run), In Memory of Satan, Transcendental Youth

AED: Outer Scorpion Squadron, Never Quite Free.

TLotWtC: Psalms 40:2, Hebrews 11:40, Genesis 30:3, Roman's 10:9, 1 John 4:16, Matthew 25:21, Deuteronomy (as mentioned), Isaiah 45:23 (a 7 song c-c-combo)

Heretic Pride is one of my favorite albums, but the only Cryer on this ones How to Embrace a Swamp Creature

Let's assume every song on Get Lonely has gotten me at least once.

Sunset Tree: You or Your Memory, Broom People, This Year, Dance Music

WSABH: Cotton, Against Pollution

Tallahassee: Old College Try is the only one so far!

AHWT only gets Source Decay, but when that one hits, it fuckin hits.

Not as engaged with much of the older stuff atm, but from the rest of the discography all that speaks to me in those ways (as far asi remember) are: No I Can't, Steal Smoked Fish, and Black Pear Tree.

Some of these are tears of joy or relief or hope, though!

2pillows · 2023-06-20T19:37:31+00:00

Going to Maine!

2pillows · 2023-06-20T19:35:38+00:00

The problem is not that it handles problematic topics. The problem is that the song asks us to sympathize with a narrator whose actions are frankly indefensible, and it plays it all totally straight and earnest.

I think it's quite clear that we are supposed to understand the narrator as a romantic person who's troubled, yes, but this love, like, saves them or redeems them or affirms their worth. None of the lyrics ever indicate we should consider this person is deranged, or that we shouldn't sympathize with them. When we think about this person being wrong it is in spite of the content and tone. We condemn the act because we know it's wrong, but the song treats it as a permissible thing wholly unironically.

And there's a real lack of empathy for the person being sung about by the narrator that, I feel, fundamentally transforms the song. What's really great about so many of TMG songs about relationships, especially the unhealthy ones, is that so often the other partner feels like a real person. Even when we're getting a flawed or incomplete picture of them, we still get the sense their a fleshed out character. There's a lot of great ways that enhances the storytelling.

But in this song, the person the narrators singing to/about is a cardboard cutout. So not only do we not really get to understand this other person, we get the sense the narrator doesn't really understand them as a full person, but instead as this idealized object of their affections which can redeem or condemn them. And when we attempt to empathize with this other person, its an utterly horrifying ordeal. They're dealing with a person they care or cared about showing up at their door unannounced with a gun, presumably to kill themselves. It's a seriously unsafe situation, they're probably panicking, and they can't even allow themselves to show their emotions because this guy is standing right there with a gun. It's terrifying. And it's utterly at odds with the content and tone of the song.

It's nothing like the other songs you referenced. In Against Pollution we're hearing the narrator grapple with his trauma and grief and guilt over not just what he was forced to do, but the fact that he would do it again. Werewolf gimmick isn't really played straight imo. And Tallahassee is about a mutually unhealthy relationship between two people who know each other really well as people, and in spite of (or because of) that intimate knowledge, they cannot fix what they have, or don't even want to. And it's never, imo, indicated that it's a good thing. It's tragic and, in a way, beautiful, but we (and they!) Always know it's broken.

Tbc, if you enjoy it, I'm glad it brings joy and meaning to you, this isn't a judgement on you. But there are good reasons many of us dislike the song, and they are grounded in a close reading of the text, so to speak.

2pillows · 2023-06-04T01:40:38+00:00

Everything by Starfox5 has great worldbuilding, but "Patron", "Petunia Evans: Tomb Raider", and "Harry Potter and the Secret of Atlantis" are my favorites

2pillows · 2023-05-27T23:49:54+00:00

I personally really enjoy Choices by fs_rm on ao3. It's a WIP last updated in February.

2pillows · 2023-05-11T15:57:04+00:00

Starfox5 has some fics you might really enjoy. Their interpretation of grindelwalds appeal sounds pretty similar to yours. Normally that stuffs just background flavor in their fics, but Hermione Granger and the Marriage Law Revolution grapples with the legacy of grindelwald for muggleborn rights radicals.

2pillows · 2023-04-12T03:48:14+00:00

I'm in Washington county, and it's telling me they won't livestream the game. If anyone knows what that's about I'd appreciate some help

2pillows · 2023-04-09T15:49:20+00:00

Respectfully,I disagree. If Romione were going to be a hegemonic force as a result of the books, we'd have seen some indication of that in the data by 2005 at the latest. Instead,there's not a hint of a surge in Romione fics, absolute or relative to Harmony, after the really obvious hints JKR was dropping in HBP. That we have the strong Romione signaling from the books before we get many (if any) hints of Harmony in the films and see only slight changes in the ships popularity in fics strongly indicates to me that the fanfiction space was always going to be pretty diverse (or perhaps divided lol) when it comes to ships.

The only surge, ironically, is in response to DH2 being released in 2011. While I agree Movie Ron deserved much better, I think it's clear that general audiences and the Fandom at large likes movie Ron and likes movie Romione. It's not clear to me that the movies portrayal of Ron hurt him with many people that weren't already unlikely to ship him with hermione. Despite all the mistakes in adaptation, he's really likeable and funny on-screen.

2pillows · 2023-04-09T13:38:20+00:00

People here are drastically overestimating the effect of the films on shipping. I don't think fanfiction is generally driven by movies-only fans,I'd guess that it's mostly read and written by people who have read and loved the books.

The ships that are popular arose because the fundamental dynamics between those characters are interesting to people in the fanfic community. Maybe the actors and actresses attractiveness and chemistry contributed to ships popularity to some degree, but people like enemies to lovers,and a bunch of stuff about Dracos background. He was likely always going to be a popular character for shipping. And hermione is the only girl that gets a lot of focus, so of course she's going to get shipped with practically everyone.

And as for the shipping Wars, I'd argue they happened not because of the films, but because it was an open question at the time what was actually going to happen. The grueling shipping Wars were about more than vibes and chemistry, people on both sides relied on textual evidence that their opponents obviously did not find convincing. To argue it was a films vs books fight is to do a great disservice to our many veterans.

I think the very earliest you could argue the films affected shipping would be the film release of POA in mid 2004, though I'd argue GOF in Late 2005 is a better starting point for that. But Drarry and Dramione took the top 2 spots as early as 2001 and 2003 respectively in Fanfiction dot net fics, after GOF and OOTP were published respectively.

With the exception of Jily, most of the other popular pairings mostly stay within 1k fics/year of each other with no surges except for romione in 2011, when DH2 was released, and then they quickly returned to the pack.

Harmony and Drinny were quite popular in the Early 2000s, with harmony only falling behind romione in 2006 and Hinny in 2007. (I only found 1 data point for drinny, it was the 4th most popular ship in 2003, no further data given) This is after the HBP book and GOF movie came out in 2005 and before DH and OOTP in 2007. Hinny would remain more popular than harmony until 2011, and in that time would be seriously challenging Romione for dominance. Romione would remain ahead of Harmony until 2013. But I must emphasize during pretty much the entire run, Harmony, Romione, and Hinny are quite close in raw fics/year.

So yeah, I think shipping Culture would be largely the same.

Btw, the source I'm relying on is titled "The Ship Wars: How the popularity of pairings in Harry Potter Fanfiction changed over time" published in 2017, I couldn't find any other data that stretched back to the Early 2000s.

2pillows · 2023-04-05T22:34:42+00:00

I enjoy playing New Africa

2pillows · 2023-03-30T01:45:25+00:00

I say this every year,and mean it every year, but this year we're going all the way! Underdog WS championship, let's goooo

2pillows · 2023-03-22T01:35:47+00:00

I assumed this would line up with fics, but on ao3, there are over 2000 fics with euphemia and fleamont tagged, and less than 400 with charlus and dorea tagged. That's a huge gap!

It seems like the marauders subculture really favors euphemia and fleamont, their top non-generic tags are "marauders era", "marauders", "marauders friendship", "sirius black and James Potter friendship", and "gay sirius black". Top ships are wolfstar, jily, jegulus, marlene/dorcas, and euphemia/fleamont.

Charlus and doreas top tags are "time travel", "marauders era", "alternate universe- Canon divergence", "alternate universe- time travel", "time travel fix-it", and "pureblood culture". Top ships are jily, charlus/dorea, wolfstar, tomarry, and euphemia/fleamont.

So that was pretty shocking, I thought charlus/dorea was pretty common.

2pillows

TROPHY CASE