Those Who Approach The New Testament Solely Through English Translations Face A Serious Linguistic Obstacle

utterly obsessed with this right now

Lines from the original composition of “A letter to an Israeli soldier,” written by Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish as they sheltered during the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Courtesy of the family of Muin Bseiso.

Moments of decolonization, in relation to the recalcitrant Palestinian case, have been occasions for jubilation. We may recall the scenes from southern Lebanon in May 2000, when the Israeli military finally withdrew from the region. Israel had been in Lebanon, with the help of its right-wing Lebanese adjuncts, since 1982, when it invaded to evict the Palestine Liberation Organization from their Beirut headquarters. That summer, the Israeli military laid siege to Beirut for more than two months, bombing the densely populated city and killing thousands. While many Lebanese died, Palestinians were the principal targets of the Israeli campaign.

Among those huddled beneath the bombs were Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish, two of Palestine’s most prominent poets. They would both later produce book-length accounts of the siege, but over the course of one evening that summer, they wrote a poem as one.

A letter to an Israeli soldier, is what they named their poem. In one stanza, the two poets address the “inhabitant of the tank.”

We write to you Before a shell ignites us or ignites you Here is a message of the last besieged to the last besieged We write from a fragment you sent … to carry you From the darkness of the “ghetto” to our bodies … We write to you

Bseiso and Darwish ask:

Can one piss in a tank? Can he read in the tank? Can a person fly pigeons in a tank? Can one fuck in a tank? Or plant trees in the tank? … How long have you been in the claws of the tank? How long have you been safe?

The poem enacts an incredible reversal: the poets, themselves confined to an apartment at the mercy of missiles and mortars, taunt the soldier besieging them. The Israeli soldier is confined by the steel that is meant to protect him. They write in their letter, “You are in a dungeon, behind bars.” Many of the poem’s stanza’s end simply with the refrain Hal anta fi aman?—meaning, Are you safe?

Meanwhile, the poets have their own refrain: our siege is long.

Our siege is long We shall bake the stone We shall knead the moon We shall finish our journey Upon this beautiful day Our siege is long

From "Our Siege is Long," article by Esmat Elhalaby (published 27 October 2023)

a thing

I just wanna know the context for this picture

Because when in doubt make a meme. Art by tia-draws-things

How do you feel about the fact that Book 1 of Unsounded written in prose would be like one or maybe two books/volumes and take much less time? I often think about stuff like that as a comic artist :o

It’s true, but it would be a different beast. Stories are so dependent on the medium. Think about how they change between books and film, between film and tv, between comics and novels! Watchmen the comic and Watchmen the film are related, but they’re third cousins at best. Are the ATLA comics really a seamless transition from the show? Does FFVII the OG game really feel like it came before Advent Children? I am sorry I only have Boomer examples

Unsounded in prose would lose all the sight gags; the moments of surprise or awe when you load a new page to see a new creature or location or sudden story turn. Reactions that are told with a heart-wrenching facial expression would instead have to be limned in words.

And words are great, words are super powerful, but words do their own thing and have their own strengths. You can paint scenes far more powerfully with words than you can with comic art, because with them, you’re painting on the infinite canvas of the reader’s imagination. But at the same time, you’re losing specificity and some potential impact. Well-done art affects us deeply. We’re drawn to it. We want to see faces.

Anyway, this has actually really been on my mind the last few nights because I’ve been listening to The Neverending Story, which I’d never read before, but I’ve always really enjoyed the movie. And though the plots are basically the same, they are SO different to me! I dislike Bastian so much in the book, and like Atreyu so much more. It was totally opposite for me in the movie. And it’s all to do with the actors.

So I don’t know, Anon, it doesn’t bug me that yes, the plot of the Unsounded could be told faster in prose, in books. Because a work is more than its plot. Webcomics in particular are this crazy modern format that let us communicate like this in-between every page. We have memes and in-jokes and can speculate on mysteries and dream and hope about upcoming pages. It’s cool!

Novels can do this too, of course, and serial fiction has been a thing for centuries. Webcomics are a pretty neat evolution of that.

Anyway, I forgot my point.

the monster beyond the veil

idk if i have posted this on here yet, but i made it back in 2022 when i spent spring equinox up in Scotland and saw the land wake up and bloom. once again been on my travels this equinox but I haven’t had time to draw yet so happy spring fellow northerners the sun is back

:-]

SISYPHUS GETS A 9 TO 5

[spoilers for all of severance season 1. words by northernlion, brain worms by me]

UV LIGHT