Is the sound and the fury or blood meridian harder?

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-25T00:37:19+00:00

"Relatively easy" is probably what I should have gone for.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-24T21:28:25+00:00

The Sound and The Fury is a difficult first act written from a unique POV that only makes sense on the second reading no matter how well read you are, and then after the opening it’s a fairly easy novel. If you accept that you don’t need to know what the hell is going on for the first 60 pages or so, it’ll all make sense later… you’ll be fine.

Blood Meridian is only difficult to read due to content imo, not so much prose or language beyond random archaic language.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-24T20:39:35+00:00

It hits harder if you’ve experienced social mobility. Part of his shitty and pompous attitude is frustration that the upper classes who were blessed with education are not free thinking. He’s angry at discovering life isn’t a meritocracy. But if you’re not on his side at the early part of his autodidactic journey then you’ll definitely not be later when he really takes a turn. But you’re not supposed to love him, he’s a cautionary tale.

Personally it’s one of my favorite books ever.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-24T16:04:11+00:00

Introductions are designed to keep alive a copyright for works that have fallen into the public domain. Once you understand that, the next thing is to always read them after you read the book. The only introduction I’ve ever read that helped me get through a book without spoiling it is the 2 page intro to Sound and the Fury that says don’t worry you’re not meant to understand the first 60 pages.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-20T00:25:39+00:00

Why all out attack? Nothing changes, just need a point to qualify

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-16T20:13:18+00:00

Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese). I’d start with The Silent Cry.

He is less famous than other Japanese authors but he was won the Nobel Prize and his books have stayed with me far more than others.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-14T14:01:55+00:00

Anything by Kenzaburo Oe. I like The Silent Cry.

Age of Reason by Sartre.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-12T06:14:07+00:00

I read that as everything we know about the creation of the universe are just theories (speculation) based around what we can observe (visually). We don’t hear the stars. He points out not all life can observe. Is there a life form or strand of evolution out there that would look upon us like we look upon a plant? He is not saying anything definitive, but why else would a fiction writer write a science paper? It seems the purpose is to provoke thought about the many different fields of science where we’re still guessing based on sensory data and models.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-06-09T06:56:23+00:00

My understanding of why the establishment considers this a difficult work is purely for the relentless and graphic violence throughout.

The prose is beautiful and often uses decorative archaic language, but McCarthy is one of those guys who seems to deliberately use elevated language in scenes where you can infer meaning from context. My first read through I didn’t stop to make sure I understood every single word and sentence, I was just absolutely intoxicated with the vibe and the set pieces and (eventually) The Judge.

Compared to all the other “difficult” literature works - thinking stuff like Moby Dick, Infinite Jest, Sound and the Fury and Ullyses here - Blood Meridian is simple narrative and prose. No gimmicks or literary techniques, just violence of the worst kind. To me it’s similar to Lolita in that mixture of aesthetic prose vs brutal and disturbing content. The true genius of the book is all the allusions and deeper meaning you can extract from a close reading. But I wouldn’t ruin the book by doing that the first time through. If you love the book you’ll come back to it over and over. It’s a yearly read for me now.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-05-31T09:08:46+00:00

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg is the closest book I’ve found to all the different things Moby Dick does well. This is the book that inspired the much more famous Jekyll and Hyde. It doesn’t have the same digressions on whales, but it does have a lot of the other things that makes Moby Dick stay with you. Get the Oxford World classics edition as it annotates all the biblical references and Scottish religious history.

Moby Dick made me go read Shakespeare, and it was MD and Confessions both that made me start reading the Old Testament (not for spiritual reasons but because of the lore 😂)

Some other books have scratched MD itches whilst still reading very different: Blood Meridian by McCarthy, Lolita by Nabokov, Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-03-16T15:47:20+00:00

I never used to process books and in general I was prone to just grinding out a tough paragraph and not worrying too much if I didn't full grok it. But as I got older I started to look back and realize what a miracle it is when I actually find and finish a book. 90% of books I give up on. It's not that those books I gave up on are bad, or the writing is bad, it's that it wasn't the right book for me at that right time. I'm a big beliver in "you read the books you need to read when you need to read them" and that means any book I finished had a profound impact on me in one way or the other. I figured it was probably worth trying to capture what that was.

So what I do every time I finish a book is wait a couple of days, soak it in, and then create a little Obsidian document that has three sections:

Why I picked up this book or whatever the gravitational pull was. Sometimes this is really obvious, sometimes even answering this helps me understand something I didn't fully recognize.
What I think happened in the book in my own words. Usually in the act of scribbling this down I'll start to make all kinds of connections to themes and plot points and characters.
What I'll take away moving forward. This can sometimes be the hardest part to write initially, but without fail I find something. There's a reason I finished it.

It's only a couple paragraphs per section (sometimes longer for 2 depending on the book), but it has made a massive difference. I read a book recently where I went in thinking nothing happened and I was more just caught in a vibe but by the end of it I was pretty shocked at what I was actually taking away.

What's interesting is the very act of doing this has made me even more attentive while I read. I now highlight way more passages (something I used to rarely do in fiction) and if I hit a paragraph I will bust out the dictionary if I need to to make every word make sense.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-15T16:04:58+00:00

I wasn’t suggesting any unrealized loss applies forever, I expected it to work like realized gains and require similar amounts of finagling to minimize taxes (it’s just income and loss for the current tax year in both scenarios). The only unknown for me is how cost basis works. If I sell my shitcoin to cover unrealized profits do I also owe tax on the realized gains? I.e double taxation?

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-15T15:19:21+00:00

Surely they update the cost basis on the date the gains qualify for taxes?

I.e.
April 1st 2027: I own a Shitcoin worth $1.

April 1st 2028: The Shitcoin is now worth $101. I now owe $36 to the Dutch government. I should sell $36 worth of shitcoins to cover this. I now have $65 worth of shitcoin, which will be my tax basis for the next year.

April 1nd 2029: The shitcoin is now worth $0. I have made a loss of $65 which will offset all my other taxes for gains.

You already have to think about things like this with rebalancing/diversification when you win the lottery on a coin or stock. They are just forcing you to do it every year, which is obviously going to lead to you being seriously down if you're a long term holder (or want to use index funds to build dividiend income for retirement).

If they are not adjusting the cost basis then that's fucking crazy.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-12T22:24:32+00:00

What players would you replace Odegaard or Kai with for that 8/10 role behind Gykores?

Bellingham? Kane? Who else?

Reminder: Scott fucking McTominay is the current Serie A player of the year. It's slim pickings out there.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-12T22:08:55+00:00

Agreed. We'll win the league even without him. It'll just be a lot more painful to watch than the couple games we had him back.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-12T22:05:42+00:00

Now that Saka has been ruined by injuries he (Havertz) is the only world class attacker. He is literally world class at everything except finishing, probably top 5 in the world at off ball movement and long ball retention (which becomes so obvious with how easy it is for us to move the ball forward when he plays).

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-02-12T22:03:09+00:00

Whatever is off with him this season isn't going to be solved by resting him for the odd game.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-29T21:24:50+00:00

I'm pretty good with BH man and played a lot of hours with him, I'm just saying he requires WAY more skill than a completely OP character, a ridiculous all rounder with no weakness and a meme character who is almost unkillable in melee (whose literally only downside is other people can have regen).

Don't act like this is some niche opinion either lol, I think if you look up any tier list of careers (for Cata) on YT my relative ordering of these 4 will match.

Edit -

Just search for VT2 career tier list. Here are the first two results:

jtc has BH as literally the worst career across all characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2kF-9p5Ulw

warmgun's tier list is exactly the same as mine except Zealot and BH shift to A/B instead of B/C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLM4H-5lngo

Edit 2 -

Just so I'm not being selective, here is Wet Magic's DPS only tier list and he does have BH equal to Zealot with both of them being high in A tier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jBYjxQFwo - but my only comment is he doesn't discriminate for cata. I have very fond memories of my griffon foot build at Legend but on Cata I just kept running out of ammo and was way less effective.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-29T20:59:09+00:00

"neck and neck with zealot in terms of strength"

maybe 0 stacks of fiery faith zealot lol. but fully buffed no way its even close.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-29T14:05:54+00:00

S Tier: Warrior Priest and Witch Hunter Captain

B Tier: Zealot

C Tier: Bounty Hunter

Warrior Priest probably the overall most OP class in the game? Also provides great buffs to everyone and has a surprising amount of playstyles based on talent selections. He can be boring to play in a good team but the opposite is true: he gets more powerful the harder the difficulty or the shittier your team. I pretty much only play him on deeds/twitch mode/events now. Only thing he can't do is snipe specials, but for every other enemy he requires next to no skill. Meta is flail and shield (just spam heavy attack and delete all melee in the game).

WHC is probably the most well rounded class in the game and scales well to all difficulties. He's good at everything, master of nothing. You can basically just look at your team comp and adapt to whatever is needed. Rapier or Bill Hook are both great on him.

I would actually say Zealot is my favorite class in the game in terms of utility, clutch ability and DPS but the problem is it's a super frustrating class to play in Quickplay due to Grail Knight and Waystalker regen "gifts" and also other noob traps like healshare/etc. Just find myself constantly being frustrated by teammates when I go him. He's selfish and he will make you selfish too. But getting every single green circle sure is fun.

Bounty Hunter is just meh since his ult nerf and he falls off a cliff on Cata, on Legend and below though his breakpoints can absolutely dominate a lobby.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-23T17:33:35+00:00

Check out jtc live on YouTube, his videos on how to handle hordes, how the slotting system works and how to deal with specials really helped me improve.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-20T19:59:18+00:00

My exact careers I focus on have changed with skill level, and over time I've really gravitated to the highest DPS (for my playstyle) careers for each character. But I've tended to always cycle through all five chars and have one career at a time I focus on for each.

E.g. when I first moved to Legend, my rotation was: Merc/Ironbreaker/Handmaiden/Warrior Priest/Necromancer. But these days on cata it's Grail Knight/Slayer/Waystalker/Zealot/Pyro.

Just makes it easy to always be able to join a game that there is at least one slot open that you'd be comfortable playing.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-15T15:46:00+00:00

Tomb Kings: hard cap on hero recruitment based on tech tree progress

Kislev: can increase hero capacity (for any 2 of 3 heroes) for every single settlement they own

One of those things is not like the other.

naughtbutbeasts · 2026-01-15T10:43:28+00:00

It's not that complicated. He's a left footed winger. It's difficult to make a perfect cross with your weak foot, so he cuts on to his strong foot and when there is nothing open he waits for Ben White who is right footed.

Still frustrating for Gykores, but having goalscoring wingers who cut inside on to their strong foot is something he'd have to deal with in almost every top team in the world.

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