Hi! We love a niche topic, and this is proving to be a bit of a challenge…
Our best result is a journal article from 1995, “MirĂł’s Mystical Mollusks” by Corinne Mandel, viewable for those with JSTOR access. A preview of the text:
“Claudius Aelian considered the snail to be astute by dint of its ability to slither in and out of its shell, and in this way to evade birds bent on the kill. In the Old Testament, conversely, those creatures who slither on their stomachs, including the snail, were listed as forbidden foods. Such was not the case with the ancient Romans, whose gastronomic art led them to devise rather sophisticated methods of fattening land snails, one of their favored foods. Delightful though the snail may have been to the taste, it was thought to be altogether too paranoic on account of its insistence on carrying its house everywhere it went. The snail accordingly came to signify mistrust and deception” (pg. 117).
Probably not the precise thing you’re looking for, but interesting stuff nonetheless!
I think I may have solved a mystery that I didnât even know was one.
So. In Peter Pan, the novel, this is the first mention of Captain Hook:
âWho is captain now?â
âHook,â answered Peter, and his face became very stern as he said that hated word.
âJas. Hook?â
âAy.â
Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could speak in gulps only, for they knew Hookâs reputation.
âHe was Blackbeardâs boâsun,â John whispered huskily. âHe is the worst of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue was afraid.â
Later, we learn this:
Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date
set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must
already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions
still clung to him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned.
âBarbecueâ is Long John Silver from Treasure Island. Jas. is short for James, but in âCaptain Hook at Eton,â heâs also called Jacobus. The biblical figure Jacob was renamed Israel.
Blackbeardâs historical boatswain, and also a character in Treasure Island, was Israel Hands.
Iâm just saying, if I got a hand chopped off and my last name was Hands⌠I might want to change it.
Many kudos to OP, Iâm still processing Captain Hook = Israel Hands. Because of this post, I stumbled upon this 2020 article. It is a fascinating and bittersweet read about Barrie, Stevenson, and the Peter Pan+Treasure Island connections.
Now, the letters of JM Barrie to Robert Louis Stevenson â presumed to be lost by several key Barrie biographers for over 70 years – will be published for the first time in a forthcoming book. The letters reveal how ardently the young Barrie both adored and admired Stevenson, who was an older and more established writer. A year into their friendship, which was initiated by Stevenson, Barrie wrote to him: âTo be blunt I have discovered (have suspected it for some time) that I love you, and if you had been a womanâŚâ He leaves the sentence unfinished.
and
Barrie has a real desire to incorporate Stevenson and his affection for Stevenson in his works, he believes. âI think what Barrie is saying is: if I can never meet Stevenson, because he has unfortunately died, then I want to create the opportunity for our characters to meet.
âI think he liked that idea that they could occupy the same world, and could potentially bump into each other.â
If your CEO is so inconsequential to the success of your company that he can be gunned down in the street like a dog and it has absolutely no impact on your company whatsoever, maybe he doesn’t actually need to be paid several hundred times as much as your median employee.
Maybe you could get away with, like, ten to fifteen times and spend the extra tens of millions of dollars you save on something else.
the concept and idea of âyou can always start trying to be a better personâ is extremely important to me both in media and irl and i continue to be deeply deeply disturbed by the trend on this site pushing that these ideas in media are bad writing or even morally reprehensible
because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better personÂ
from a compassionate point of view itâs deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view itâs outright frustrating
itâs fucked up.Â
What is the most important step a man can take?
The next.
I think part of the pushback about this is the idea that, to âredeemâ bad people, their victims must first forgive them for unforgivable acts.
This is false. No one is obligated to forgive you. You can learn from your mistakes and become the best, kindest person on earth, and the
people youâve hurt still wonât forgive you, and youâll have to accept that. And that doesnât mean you arenât allowed to grow. Because we arenât just âpureâ or âsinfulâ, weâre complex.
Sometimes the bridge is just burnt. Sometimes what your victim needs to recover from the way you treated them isnât your atonement. Itâs your absence. They just want to live a life without you in it.
I think thatâs an important piece of nuance that gets lost in media, due to the conflation of redemption with forgiveness. Sometimes you will not be forgiven. You will not get to have the relationship back. No matter how much you work on yourself, you have to go away now. You are not welcome here. You never will be again.
And thatâs okay. Victims shouldnât be under obligation to forgive, and attaining forgiveness shouldnât be the goal of working on yourself. Itâs okay to let bridges be burnt. If someone needs your absence, itâs okay to give it to them. And itâs okay to take the better version of you that youâve become, and move on with your life.
Because I promise you, there is something else out there waiting for the better you to find it.
you never know what someone is going through. for instance i didnt know i was going through anything until about 2 years later. i thought i was just chilling
it is genuinely bewildering to me that adult human beings do not know this but if you are mean to people they will not like you. like tbh they are probably also not going to like you if you are mean to other people but they are definitely not going to like you if you are mean to them. it doesnât matter if you are funny or if you can use r/aita rules to prove that you are in the right. people simply so not enjoy being treated like shit.
amhrancas 