/test/ - ;^)

fdfdfd

[t]fhffyhff[/t]

modtard

QuickNote
https://www.google.co.id/search?q=bunga+jelitha&safe=strict&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZjbOck6voAhUp7HMBHdy6CGYQ_AUoAXoECBgQAw&biw=1366&bih=636

modfaggot

bjb

Testing if I can post files directly from a zipped encrypted folder.

Nope…

>>5213
Now testing if I can post files from here

Yup, this works. Cool!

Hahahah

>>5215
What's so funny?

discord. gg/2DJSwf

test

>>5288
ok, that one was unexpected and kind of cool.

test

>>5312
It works!

fdsfdsf

Test

~~Y~~

>>5340
–loser–

>>5341
Stop bullying test

It's the Nut shack
It's the Nutshack

It took me a month but I finally finished to read The Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights as it's originally called. What a journey wizzies. This was my second attempt to read through it. First one was about 10 years ago and I failed it pretty badly. I wasn’t ready for it I guess. This time though I have so much to talk about, let's hope I manage to give you a hint of how interesting of a journey it was. The book itself has so much history that it becomes a whole source of entertainment on itself. This is going to be a very long post, I'll try not to mess it up too bad.

So the book is called One Thousand and One Nights but for the longest time it only had about 300 nights in it. This "core" Nights stories had been circulating apparently since 8th century or so, maybe it’s even older. As time went on, the title served as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, as people began to feel like the content should match with the title, and so scribes from all around the Arab world began to insert stories from other books in an attempt to complete it. This went on for hundred of years, each scribe coming up with their own collection of Nights. Versions by Egyptian scribes have more stories about Egyptian kings and cities for example. Those in Baghdad usually would try to include stories about the Abbasid Caliphate, and so on. By the 18th century the book came to the attention of a guy called Antoine Galland, who translated it from a Syrian manuscript (the oldest, core stories) and made his own selection from Egyptian manuscripts, and even picked up some stories from a Maronite storyteller he met in Paris called Hanna Diab. Interestingly, two of the most famous stories we know, Alladin and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves are from Diab and are not found in any manuscripts. Galland published his version in 12 volumes from 1704 to 1717 and that became sort of the “canon” version of the work. I’m just giving you the ultra short version of the history behind it really, each surviving manuscript has a whole record and paper trail behind it, you will likely find all about it in the introduction or preface to the book itself. I checked several versions, from Burton’s to the recent Penguin version, and all of them have a lot of pages dedicated to the history of the text.

Now for the stories themselves, as you might expect from a book that took centuries to be compiled without a particular goal other than trying to get enough stories to reach 1001 nights, they’re all over the place in theme, passing, length and literary quality. First thing that surprised me is how many stories have no fantastical elements at all. If you’re like me, the first thing you think about when you think about the Arabian Nights are the Jinns and the Ghouls and the magic lamps (only one), magic swords (there’s none!), magic rings (a couple) and so on. Well, many, many stories don’t have any of that. A lot of them are long comedy sketches. There’s a lot of stories that are simply funny stories. There’s also plenty of wisdom literature type of stories, sayings, short jokes and so on. The deeper you go into the book the clearer you can see the stitching of the scribes picking these stories whatever they could find and inserting it in the book. I went in not expecting the chaos this book is but somehow it actually works on its favor. Once you’re past the Syrian core, you never know what you’re going to get.

It took me a month but I finally finished to read The Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights as it's originally called. What a journey wizzies. This was my second attempt to read through it. First one was about 10 years ago and I failed it pretty badly. I wasn’t ready for it I guess. This time though I have so much to talk about, let's hope I manage to give you a hint of how interesting of a journey it was. The book itself has so much history that it becomes a whole source of entertainment on itself. This is going to be a very long post, I'll try not to mess it up too bad.

So the book is called One Thousand and One Nights but for the longest time it only had about 300 nights in it. This "core" Nights stories had been circulating apparently since 8th century or so, maybe it’s even older. As time went on, the title served as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, as people began to feel like the content should match with the title, and so scribes from all around the Arab world began to insert stories from other books in an attempt to complete it. This went on for hundred of years, each scribe coming up with their own collection of Nights. Versions by Egyptian scribes have more stories about Egyptian kings and cities for example. Those in Baghdad usually would try to include stories about the Abbasid Caliphate, and so on. By the 18th century the book came to the attention of a guy called Antoine Galland, who translated it from a Syrian manuscript (the oldest, core stories) and made his own selection from Egyptian manuscripts, and even picked up some stories from a Maronite storyteller he met in Paris called Hanna Diab. Interestingly, two of the most famous stories we know, Alladin and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves are from Diab and are not found in any manuscripts. Galland published his version in 12 volumes from 1704 to 1717 and that became sort of the “canon” version of the work. I’m just giving you the ultra short version of the history behind it really, each surviving manuscript has a whole record and paper trail behind it, you will likely find all about it in the introduction or preface to the book itself. I checked several versions, from Burton’s to the recent Penguin version, and all of them have a lot of pages dedicated to the history of the text.

Now for the stories themselves, as you might expect from a book that took centuries to be compiled without a particular goal other than trying to get enough stories to reach 1001 nights, they’re all over the place in theme, passing, length and literary quality. First thing that surprised me is how many stories have no fantastical elements at all. If you’re like me, the first thing you think about when you think about the Arabian Nights are the Jinns and the Ghouls and the magic lamps (only one), magic swords (there’s none!), magic rings (a couple) and so on. Well, many, many stories don’t have any of that. A lot of them are long comedy sketches. There’s a lot of stories that are simply funny stories. There’s also plenty of wisdom literature type of stories, sayings, short jokes and so on. The deeper you go into the book the clearer you can see the stitching of the scribes picking these stories whatever they could find and inserting it in the book. I went in not expecting the chaos this book is but somehow it actually works on its favor. Once you’re past the Syrian core, you never know what you’re going to get.

Speaking of not knowing what you’re gonna get, let me tell you a little bit about the heroes of the Arabian Nights, because they were the biggest obstacle for me to get used to. These men and succubi are, for the most part, not the type of people you would like to be friends with. To put it bluntly, many of those heroes are complete pieces of shit. They’re not nice, not good, a lot of times not even neutral. A bunch of them are even worse than the old Greek heroes, like Hercules. If you ever read about Hercules, you know we call him a hero not because of how nice of a guy he is. In fact he’s a murderer and a rapist. He’s a hero because he’s a demigod capable of great deeds. Superman is a hero because he’s capable of great deeds, but also he’s the lawful good guy. The upstanding, self-sacrificing Christ figure. The main character in most Nights tales though? They’re awful. Let’s just say their moral compass would lead them to be in prison today. They go out of their way to be cruel to their servants. They kill, berate, maim and rape and don’t think much of it. To illustrate this, let me tell you what one typical prince in the Nights, I think his name is Sayf, Barzad or something else (get used not remembering the names, there are hundreds of characters and the names are all complicated and barely mentioned, you get their names once and the rest of the story he/she is called by profession or rank. The prince, the merchant, the porter and so on.) Anyway, this typical prince character gets really drunk one night, see a female slave walking by and decides to have sex with her. She tries to run away but he overpowers her and when she refuses, he rapes and accidentally kills her. When he sees the blood he sobers up a little bit and realize this succubus is actually the favorite concubine of the Sultan, his father. Upon realising he fucked up big time, he flees the palace and hides in the desert. While in a cave, he laments the fate God gave him. He’s sorry, but not because he’s the cause of a person dying in a very cruel fashion, not because he’s a vicious murderer. No, he’s sorry because he killed a favorite of the Sultan and now he’s on the run. This is not that uncommon. Often you’ll see main protagonists in those tales showing the worst humanity has to offer and many times, they get the happy endings anyways, when there’s one.

I find this fascinating, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The behaviour and morality of a lot of those characters really challenged me on a personal level. I could feel my mind trying to put them into pre-made hero categories or whatever, but they refuse to be classified to my modern standards. I found myself not wanting to follow this awful person around. I’m not talking about these characters being anti-heroes or even villains. They’re not the charming, ultimately redeemable people you see nowadays in fantasy. Once I stopped and just read it for what it is, it became a wild, fascinating read. You never know what those bastards are going to do. They’re like really wild, really cruel teenagers sometimes. You know when you read Tolkien and Tolkien clones and you already know exactly what a character will be? They’re clear as day to you because you and the writer share the same standards on morality most times. You know how an anti-hero reacts, you know how a hero reacts. You know everything about the villain before he’s even there. You probably know the wise old man’s advice before he says it. No here though. The old man might advise the merchant to cheat the Sultan, the wise vizir might advise the Sultan to throw the innocent man down the well to avoid his honor to be tainted. They’re crude, they’re harsh and they’re fascinating. A hero will be all tough and courageous at one time but once he realizes the tide turns against him, he will throw himself onto the ground and cry like a little succubus, pounding on his chest with sorrow. It’s just very different from what you’re used to. Can you even imagine Aragorn pulling his hair and crying like a child by the gates of Mordor? This is the type of stuff you’ll be getting here. A lot of times those characters find themselves going through great adventures, stuff of legend that only heroes go through, but here the guy is just not a hero and he’ll be shitting his pants. It’s not that he wanted any of this, it happened by accident. And this is another interesting aspect of it

They happen to be in the situation they find themselves in by fate and accident. A lot of times the main characters are victims of forces beyond their control, because this is the world they live in, they’re often staunch fatalists. Often you’ll hear them say “There’s no power nor strength except with Allah”, which really is something you say when things are beyond your control. The peoples in the Nights will find themselves in such situations all the time. And I mean ALL the time. Often they’re saved by accident, coincidence or luck, it really gives the full force of pre-determination and fatalism of those stories. If you ever read Lovecraft, you probably have some idea what I’m talking about. In Lovecraft, humanity is nothing but a little, hopeless thing in a very terrible, old, mysterious universe. In the Nights you have a much more profound realization of this. In the Nights, the universe has an agenda, and it’s against all living creatures. You’re powerless. You’re powerless against the thief that kills you. The thief is powerless against the Mamluk soldier, who kills him in his sleep. The Mamluk is powerless against the Sultan who cuts his head off. The Sultan is powerless against the Angel of Death, who comes and takes all his male heirs and himself. They’re all dragged by the hands of fate and there’s nothing they can do but cry, and they will cry. There are so many tears in this book. If I may say so, it’s a much more effective horror than Lovecraft’s, who seems naive by comparison. Lovecraft is an immediate thing, you look at the abomination and go crazy. In the Nights the abomination slowly eats you away and make you watch as it slowly rots everything you love. No wonder they keep throwing themselves at the mercy of God all the time.

Fear is very present. The moments of fear far surpasses the moments of courage, understandably. This is another very interesting aspect of several of those stories. Because the world is beyond your control, because the world and men and demons are cruel, fear is ever present. There’s no defense against it. Several stories you see men trying to avoid a disgraceful event just to see all the meaninglessess of their efforts. It’s in vain. A King is told by geomancers his daughter will be his doom. He builds a palace for her far away, in the middle of the desert. Fate happens and she really is his doom. Another king is told by prophets his son is going to die at an young age by the hands of a man from kingdom such and such. So he builds an underground vault in the middle of an abandoned, forgotten island. The son still dies at an young age by the hands of a man from kingdom such and such. And the guy didn’t wanted to kill him, it was a total accident. An accident written long ago as fate. You know how fate and luck favours the brave in a lot of western stories? Here it often favours no one, and even when it does, the writer reminds you that they had their happy moments but soon came the Angel of Death, “the ender of communities, the destroyer of delights, the builder of tombs”.

The world is beyond your grasp and anything can happen. You spit a seed out of your mouth, it kills the son of a powerful Jinn, who wants revenge. Three old men passing by delights the Jinn with weird tales and let you go. It’s almost fairy tale logic, but not quite. It’s just your death or salvation really is up to fate and you just have to hope it’s not your day yet. Not even devils and demons themselves are beyond this, often they’re victims of these forces pretty much like humans are.

For every aspect that I mentioned here, there will be stories that goes against the trend. There are heroic characters that solves situations, there are men and succubi who hold to their courage and prevail against all odds, etc. Like I said, it’s a lot of stories. Let’s talk a little bit about that. The amount of stories and how badly organized they are. You probably know the Nights are all within a frame narrative. That’s the one character everybody knows. Scheherazade, the wise vizir’s daughter that every night tells a haunting tale to her husband, the king Shahryar. So far so good, but she’s not the only one telling the tales. Often she’s telling a story of a merchant that’s telling a story to someone else. You can already see how this can get very confusing. Sometimes you get Scheherazade telling a story of a merchant telling a story about a king telling a story about a porter, telling a story about his adventures at sea. It’s almost like it’s on purpose. You’ll get lost at some point and it’s a weird feeling to be drowning deep inside all those storytellers and their tales. It gives you an almost physical relief when you manage to reach the other side of it. It’s ocean deep and it’s really interesting.

It will take you a while to get out. The latest translation released by Penguin a few years ago is about 2600 pages long. If you ask me it’s a very worthy read though. You’ll be bored at times, at times you’ll find yourself reading a story that has the same tropes with a story you already read 800 pages ago, but all in all, it’s a very interesting 2600 pages. I vouch for every story. I really learned something with this, I’m not sure exactly what yet, but it was quite an experience. Instead of picking up some Tolkien clone, try this for a change. More or less the same amount of pages. If anything, it will be a very different read. I could go on but I’ll contain myself for when some wiz give this one a try and post about it.