#also how his character stories are based on extracts from texts in the library

[pearsandrust]

mydei having a library is absolutely heartbreaking symbolism. it's a running gag that the kremnoan language doesn't have many words; there's no word for flee, no word for fear, even no word for love. i know the library was his family's, but still -- it is such a distinct symbol of how mydei wants to break kremnoan tradition. how he openly rejects the idea that violence is the only valid form of communication. how he always dismisses the baseless rumours surrounding his abilities, proving that he values truth over glory. we see mydei try to talk his people into reason. we see him apologize to tribbie for being rude. we even see him (begrudgingly) admit to phainon that he knows how to interpret poetry. time and time again, mydei chooses language -- and truth -- over violence. so when he invites phainon to visit his library in the next life, he's not just expressing hope -- he's asking phainon to remember him by what he really believes in. even if i become the avatar of strife, he's saying, even if you have to kill me one day -- in the next life, please see me as the person i've tried to become.

mydei knows the power of a name, perhaps because his language has so few of them. and that makes it doubly ironic that he personally has so many titles: son of gorgo. the patricidal crown prince. kingslayer. godslayer. the undying. but as krateros points out, the name he prefers is the one he uses with the chrysos heirs. and although mydei doesn't talk much, all his actions seem to say the same thing.

remember me as mydei, not mydeimos.

[semper-legens]

178. Spirited, by Julie Cohen

Owned?: No, library Page count: 343 My summary: Viola, newly bereaved following her father’s passing, marries her childhood sweetheart Jonah, but all is not well. He is haunted by what he has seen in India - slaughter of people in the streets. When the spirit medium Henriette comes to town, both of them seek answers with her. And both will find more than they thought when Viola discovers a talent for spirit photography. My rating: 5/5   My commentary: 

Well, this one took me by surprise. When I picked it up, I was thinking of it as sort of throwaway - I read a lot of mediocre historical fiction just because it’s historical - but this one gripped me for a lot of reasons. Spiritualism, grief, people who are haunted by the past as well as spirits, and a binding thread of love that winds through it all. This is an excellent, well-told story, and I’m very glad I read it.

Viola is our first narrator character - she’s trying to be the wife of a man who is clearly in pain from his experiences overseas, though exactly what happened to him isn’t known through much of the book. She’s doing her best to be a wife despite little experience, and carrying the burden of her own grief. She’s also exactly the kind of character I really like in historical fiction; not that unusual woman aren’t interesting, but I find myself drawn to women who don’t rock the boat, who try to live within the bounds of their society, ordinary women who are just trying to make the best of what they have. She’s a regular person, who could have existed in reality - and Cohen plays with this, presenting extracts between the chapters of (fictional) biographical information about Viola. Even with her disclaimer at the start of the book that this is a work of fiction, I could almost believe that this was based on a real woman, such is the depth of Cohen’s characterisation.

Henriette is a completely different kettle of fish. She’s the opposite of Viola in a lot of ways, a loud and cunning woman, careful about the image she presents to the world, and ready to play on that image for her own gain. She’s almost the textbook unusual woman, and yet there’s so much about her story that rings true. Her background is deprived, and she wants to drag herself out of that however she can, even if it means lying to people and scamming them. She doesn’t believe in Spiritualism, she’s a definite fraud. And yet, the friendship she strikes up with Viola is completely genuine. While she is going behind her back to take money for Viola’s photography, we understand why she’s doing it, and her relationship with Viola is deep and sweet and full of love. And when push comes to shove, she does the right thing to protect the woman she loves, even if it means her own ruin. It’s a beautiful little love story. And that’s three books I’ve read from this library trip that had surprise lesbians in them. A very welcome accident!

Jonah has his own subplot - he was in India during May 1857 Indian Rebellion, and is haunted by what happened. Exactly what that is remains a mystery for most of the novel. We know he rescued a young English girl, and that he was ill and recovering for a while before returning to England. Yet, he doesn’t have the same racist nationalism as a lot of the English characters, refusing to condemn the Indian people as a whole or speak of them in racist terms. Turns out he was in love with an Indian person named Pavan - I say person, because Pavan was designated female at birth and is living as a man. Exactly how Pavan would identify is not clear, though notably Pavan states that they identify more with their chosen name than their (unrevealed in the text) birth name. Pavan is passing as male to study at university, and while Jonah is in India they fall in love. It’s an interesting subplot, I always like potential historical trans characters, and this depiction isn’t the worst I’ve seen. I’m a little iffy about Pavan’s birth identity being revealed through Jonah seeing menstrual blood on their clothes, though it’s less gross than him seeing them naked, as it often goes in such narratives. It’s also notable that Pavan isn’t the reason Jonah isn’t a raging racist - rather, it’s because he’s not that he got to strike up a relationship with Pavan. The tone overall is still a little Noble White Guy, but the events are presented more as a tragedy, people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, rising tensions born from exploitation. The novel never really condemns the rebels, just explores Jonah’s grief at those he lost.

Spiritualism itself is such an interesting topic. Loss and grief hang heavy over this book, and we get to see all of its faces - Jonah’s silent despair over India, Viola’s subdued mourning for her father, Henriette’s search for someone she loved in her past, one of Viola’s clients’ complete blasé attitude to the death of her husband, the list goes on. While Henriette is exploiting people’s grief for her owen gain, it is shown that she is also giving some comfort, and Viola is much the same when she starts her spirit photography. It shows the positives and negatives of the practice, that despite its falseness it can have some benefit. It’s an interesting perspective.

Anyway, that’s all for this post - join me next time for a trip to the circus!

[stolligaseptember]

Sorry if I'm bothering you, but I just want to ask: how accurate do you think Matpat's theory on Article 13 is? A lot of people have been panicking about it (including me), but now that I've seen your posts on the subject, I'm really starting to doubt if there is anything to be afraid of. It's just hard to focus on looking for facts when the entire website is panicking, so I hope you can kind of clear this up for me (and a lot of others). Again, I hope I'm not bothering you! Have a nice day!

It’s no bother at all! I said I was here to answer all of your questions, so that’s what I’m going to do!!

But. Oh god. This whole mess started with a YouTube video, so I guess it was only inevitable that it would finally circle back to another one.

Okay so. I’ll be honest, it took me about 3 hours to get through this video. 18, if you count the fact that I started it before I went to bed last night. And like. He’s not wrong about a lot of things. But he’s not a lawyer, or a law-maker. And he’s definitely not a European one. Which you kind of need to be to understand what the hell is going on here.

He’s just misinterpreting a lot of things. And he’s misunderstanding how the entire EU-law system, and Europe's law tradition in general, works. Which, like, he’s an American, and not even an American lawyer, so no one can really blame him for that. But what frustrates me, and what actually makes me really fucking angry, is that he’s somehow claiming that he does understand this and that he somehow holds the authority to explain it to others. Which he clearly doesn’t.

So okay. What is going on in MatPat’s video. A lot of shit.

What first struck me is that he misses the bots. Like, his entire fear mongering tactic is based in this idea that all media platform would have to develop content ID bots. And that would indeed be a bad thing. But what he forgets to mention is that the bots have been removed from the new draft text. The draft that he, by the way, quotes himself. So I don’t know if he forgot to read the entire article, of if he just forgot to mention it. That’s very unclear.

But what really struck my nerves, and what made me so upset that I actually couldn’t fall asleep last night, was that he claims that the term “good faith” is somehow too vague and is because of that bad legal writing. And I’m not going to lie, that got my goat.

“Good faith” is like the least undefined term within all of European law doctrine. It’s about the most important principle we have. Bona fide, anyone? YEAH. That’s good faith. Trust me when I say that all lawyers, and everyone that has even gotten close to working with rights, know what “good faith” means. God, we have over 400 000 books and articles on “good faith” just in my uni library. “Good faith” is so far from an undefined term.

And no, “good faith” doesn’t somehow mean that copyright holders will have the final say in what will and won’t constitute as a copyright infringement. What “good faith” means, very simply put, is that you have to have trust in each others good faith while dealing with each other. You must be able to trust that the copyright holder is indeed the copyright holder, and that the media platform is indeed able to fulfill the obligations that’s put on them. When the directive says that they should cooperate in good faith, it means that they must cooperate in a way that the legal barrier for good faith is reached. I get that this is all sounding very weird, but that is kind of what you have lawyers for. We’re supposed to have read those 400 000 and more books to be able to conclude if something has been conducted in good faith or not. But no, this writing does not in any way open up for an arbitrary interpretation of copyright law. It does make things a lot more legal-technical, but that’s the way copyright law is looking right now.

And then. I don’t know what happens next honestly. He somehow manages to connect the “good faith” requirement and the conclusion that content ID bots will somehow stop content from being uploaded??? That’s a mental jump that I really can’t follow, but okay. 

First of all, because the bots are no longer on the table. Second of all, because dealing in good faith has nothing to do with the bots. But if we forget all about the bots altogether, good faith will still never give copyright holders the right to file unfounded copyright infringement claims. Either something is copyright infringement, or it isn’t, and the copyright holders and media platforms should cooperate in good faith to make sure that copyright infringement doesn’t happen, and you always have the legal framework in the back to make sure that unfounded claims of copyright infringement doesn’t happen, and that the requirement of good faith is met.

And this is complicated, I get that, but that’s what I’ve been trying to say all along. Copyright law is weird and complicated as fuck.

He also can’t make up his mind if content ID recognition is a good or bad thing. Like first he says that if they had kept the bots in the text (and that’s where he says that the bots have been removed from the text, but he doesn’t clarify that further) then everything would have been a-okay, but then like 5 minutes later he says that the content ID (which!! Isn’t even in question anymore!!!!!!!) is the work of the devil. And I’m sorry, but I’m on a bit of a personal vendetta against YouTube right now, and this is exactly the stance that YouTube themselves have taken. They’re going “oh, article 13 is literally hell brought to life!!!!” but then in the next breath they go “BUT BOTS ARE A GOOD IDEA”, and I’m getting whiplash just trying to keep up with them. It’s contradictory as hell, and I can’t even figure out what people are really worried about or not these days.

I think a lot of people are just screaming because they want to scream, but that’s another story.

He also says that the directive will be “implemented by the end of this year” which is just an outright lie. Even if you’re generous and stretch that to the end of 2019, it’s still an outright lie. The next round of votes happens in early 2019, and EU bureaucracy is a literal hellscape, so that’s just not happening.

He also compares this to GDPR, but I’ve already explained why can’t do that. Regulations and directives are completely different legal documents, and unlike regulations, directives have to be actually implemented into each member state’s national law system. And you always have an implementing period of at least 2 years for this. But like, that’s the lower bar. You can push the high bar pretty goddamn far. It’s not unusual to see member states take up to 5-6 years to implement directives, and the commission can’t really do anything about it, as long as the member state can prove that they’re working on it.

Like, I don’t remember just what it was we were supposed to regulate, but I remember we studied this one directive that Sweden took like 7, if not 8 years to implement. And we where honest to god just stalling, because we didn’t really want to regulate what the directive said that we should regulate, and we needed the time to find a way to work our way around it. So when the commission came knocking to check if we had implemented the goddamn directive yet, our government was all like “oh no, you see, this is very foreign to our law system, and we have a very hard time seeing where it could fit in, but look at all these reports we’re writing and at all these experts we’ve hired to try and work it out”, and as soon as the commission had left again, seeing how we were at least giving the impression of trying to solve it, they were all like “OKAY BACK TO STALLING”. So depending on your member state’s outlook on this directive, there’s really no telling on how long it will take before it’s implemented.

The claim that the European copyright has a narrower definition of “fair use” is also just an outright lie. This is the exceptions and limitations to copyright that the InfoSec directive allows;

(a) use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research, as long as the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, unless this turns out to be impossible and to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose to be achieved;

(b) uses, for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and of a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability;

© reproduction by the press, communication to the public or making available of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subject-matter of the same character, in cases where such use is not expressly reserved, and as long as the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, or use of works or other subject-matter in connection with the reporting of current events, to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and as long as the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, unless this turns out to be impossible;

(d) quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, provided that they relate to a work or other subject-matter which has already been lawfully made available to the public, that, unless this turns out to be impossible, the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, and that their use is in accordance with fair practice, and to the extent required by the specific purpose;

(e) use for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings;

(f) use of political speeches as well as extracts of public lectures or similar works or subject-matter to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and provided that the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, except where this turns out to be impossible;

(g) use during religious celebrations or official celebrations organised by a public authority;

(h) use of works, such as works of architecture or sculpture, made to be located permanently in public places;

(i) incidental inclusion of a work or other subject-matter in other material;

(j) use for the purpose of advertising the public exhibition or sale of artistic works, to the extent necessary to promote the event, excluding any other commercial use;

(k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche;

(l) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment;

(m) use of an artistic work in the form of a building or a drawing or plan of a building for the purposes of reconstructing the building;

(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2© of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;

(o) use in certain other cases of minor importance where exceptions or limitations already exist under national law, provided that they only concern analogue uses and do not affect the free circulation of goods and services within the Community, without prejudice to the other exceptions and limitations contained in this Article.

That’s way more than the few exceptions that MatPat lists. And he’s also completely incorrect in European copyright law not somehow being flexible? Like, we’re not idiots, c’mon.

EU law isn’t stagnant; they’re living instruments, and we always interpret them in the light of the contemporary time. This is a skill all European lawyers are mercilessly trained in. EU law documents are worded “vaguely” and openly because we need the space to be able to make different interpretations depending on the situation. Like, the claim that point k, that lists caricatures, parodies and pastiches is somehow narrow? No?? This is where memes, and all other forms of parodies and caricatures and pastiches falls in. But just because you call something a meme doesn’t mean that it can’t be copyright infringement. You still have to make an evaluation of the actual situation. And that’s where lawyers and judges in every single member state come in; lawyers and judges who have been trained in both copyright law and EU law, and who knows how to interpret both the national law and the directive.

Because, once again, this isn’t aiming at making Europe into one coherent law system. It’s aiming at harmonizing the European law systems, but at the end of the day, it’s still always up to each and every member state of how they want to implement the directive.

Then there was the safe harbor issue. In this he actually is correct. The very aim of article 13 is to remove the safe harbor and to put a share of the responsibility of the copyright infringement on the media platform. Like, that’s the entire idea behind the article. So, once again, if you think that this is a bad idea, then yeah, go ahead and keep fighting article 13. And I’m not here to get political, but just why is the idea of removing the safe harbor such an egregiously bad idea? You as an individual is not going to be affected by it. It’s these big, multi-billion companies that will have to pay content creators their fair share of illegal copyright infringement. And why is that bad for you? Just food for thought.

And as usual, I have no idea how understandable this whole mess is, so don’t be afraid to ask me follow up questions, or anything else that you’re wondering over, and I’ll try to answer as best as I can!

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Haggard Art, Paperbacks, David Drake, Lankhmar RPG

Books (Wasteland & Sky): The common Joe was abandoned for fandom. Unfortunately for them, pocket paperbacks is the key to reaching the largest possible audience. This was part of the secret to the form’s success. Pocket paperbacks were meant for normal people. Abandoning the masses is never a smart idea.

D&D (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): New school games typically give the players latitude to play whatever type of character they want. This ranges from GURPS where classes and levels are dispensed with and every conceivable character ability is broken down into point values all the way up to recent editions of D&D where there are a bewildering range of races, classes, feats, and so on. The newest of new school games emphasize elaborate player character backstories that the Dungeon Master is expected to somehow tap into in his campaign story.

Art (DMR Books): “The collector who commissioned it was a Haggard fan with a Haggard room. He had several well-known illustrators do paintings for his room, i.e. Jeff Jones, Michael Whelan, etc. A few years ago he decided to give it all up and sold all of his books and paintings.”

Guides (Pulp Net): A pulp magazine price guide? Yup. Bookery’s Guide to Pulps & Related Magazines by Tim Cottrill is the second edition of this work and came out in 2020 from Heritage Auctions via Ivy Press. The first edition came out in 2005, which was actually an update of The Ultimate Guide to the Pulps from 2001. Tim Cottrill owns a book/collectibles store called Bookery Fantasy in Ohio, hence the name.

Pulps (Michael May): So was Planet Stories all that bad? Certainly it featured plenty of space opera and sword-and-planet action. Many of the best of Leigh Brackett’s stories appeared in Planet Stories, including her classic Eric John Stark tales of Mars. In fact, she was instrumental in carrying on the vision of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars as a world of strange wonders. This in turn gave Ray Bradbury a place to grow his Martian Chronicles with stories like “The Million Year Picnic,” “Rocket Summer,” and “Mars is Heaven,” standard texts in classrooms and libraries as serious literature.

Book Review (Scifi Movie Page): When the first Assassin’s Creed game was released back in 2007 it became one of those landmark games that you purchased a game system (in this case the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360) just to play. This massive, oversized, 256 page hard cover book covers the complex history, storylines, and characters that have made Assassins Creed one of the most successful videogame franchises of all-time.

RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Lankhmar is one of the definitive cities of the Fantasy genre.  Created as a backdrop to match leading characters Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Fritz Leiber gave us a marvelous playground for the imagination.  Like Leiber’s stories, the city has inspired many in the tabletop RPG hobby over the years. From the City State of the Invincible Overlord to Waterdeep and beyond, it is the proto-urban setting for Fantasy games, and it’s been made and remade by various companies over the years.  The latest is Goodman Games, who’ve produced an impressive set of resources to help guide characters into the world of Nehwon and the city of Lankhmar.

Culture Wars (Kairos): You probably have a favorite movie franchise, TV show, or comic book series that hooked you as a kid. It’s a good bet that many of your fondest childhood memories are associated with that franchise. Compared to the fun, uplifting IPs of yesteryear, the new versions run the gamut from pale imitations to brazen impostors. The magic is missing, but you can’t put your finger on what happened to it. Is something wrong with the product itself, or is it just you getting older? It’s not just you.

Science fiction (M Porcius): If you type “Barry Malzberg” into the search field at the indispensable internet archive one of the things that comes up is The Mammoth Book of Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and published in 1994. There are also offerings from Anne Rice and Clive Barker, in whom I have little interest, and Robert Silverberg, Ramsey Campbell, and Samuel R. Delany, writers whose work does interest me and about which I have written several times at this little old website of mine.

Cinema (Red Planet on Film): Devil Girl From Mars (1954). I love this movie. If I had to choose a dozen movies to take to a desert island for the rest of my life, this would be one of them. Many will find this a disturbing admission. “How,” some people would wonder, “could a sane man, a competent author, say such a thing about this movie … in public even?” Those who are familiar with this film will remember that the story seems to revolve around the kidnapping of earthmen to take to Mars for breeding purposes—which nearly all the summaries of the film focus on right from the outset.

Fantasy (Sorcerers Skull): What would Middle-earth be if presented in a more pulp fantasy (not just Robert E. Howard) sort of way? You could do a really comprehensive overall, sure, where maybe only the names remain the same, but I think a few tweaks here and there would make a big difference. Just take a look at things that are already pretty pulpy: 1) a fallen age following the sinking of a “Atlantis”; (2) Orders of beings with some more advanced and others more degenerate than others; (3) a lot of ruins strewn about.

D&D (CBR.com): Dungeons & Dragons is one the oldest, most beloved traditional gaming series in history. For over forty years, gamers have taken on the roles of human barbarians, elven druids, dwarf paladins and half-orc bards — or whatever other brilliant mix of races, classes and personality traits they could conceive. It is a game perpetually limited only by the players’ and dungeon master’s imaginations. However, when Gary Gygax created the game, he didn’t come up with everything from scratch. Rather, he read the most popular books in the fantasy genre at the time — and many underrated books that have since faded into obscurity — and picked the elements of fantasy best suited to springboard off of.

Art (DMR Books): Artist Tom Gianni died on March 30, aged sixty years old, from cancer. His day job was working as the top courtroom sketch artist for several Chicago TV stations. However, what he did off the clock falls squarely in DMR Blog territory. First, though, let’s look at that courtroom job–believe me, it has relevance. This is what Tom’s own website says: “He has drawn Mafiosos, corrupt politicians and serial killers. He recently covered three high profile trials: the trial of Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, the Jennifer Hudson family murder trial, and the trial of the notorious Drew Petersen.”

Science Fiction (Free Beacon): David Drake’s books always seem to carry a blurb from the Chicago Sun-Times—a line extracted from an old review that claims Drake has a “prose as cold and hard as the metal alloy of a tank.” He “rivals Crane and Remarque” as a writer of military fiction. And there you have it: The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) are joined by Drake’s tale of intergalactic mercenaries, Hammer’s Slammers (1979).

D&D (Skulls in the Stars): The Dragonlance Game (1988), by Michael S. Dobson, Scott Haring and Warren Spector.  Here’s a boardgame that was a huuuuge deal when it came out, but I was somehow unaware of until I saw a used copy come by recently! It probably wasn’t on my mind when I was a teen, as I was into RPGs, not board games. The board game is based on the hugely successful Dragonlance novels and D&D modules that started in 1984 with the released of Dragons of Despair, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Weird Western (David J. West): I’ve got a short weird western tale in the newly released A Mighty Fortress anthology. It is a Porter Rockwell short titled, The Tears of Nephi. Its a little light on steampunk, but I put in a little – the collection as a whole has the unexpected grouping of being Mormon Steampunk tales, and was initially inspired by the incredibly awesome Dave Butler.

Sensor Sweep: Haggard Art, Paperbacks, David Drake, Lankhmar RPG published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[paradoxofpraxis]

20/3 writing

So it might seem pointless to continue with a blog format, having not continuously written posts during the research and ideation phases of the project. But I’m not sure this is the case. The last time I worked on such a large project with this level of focus and blogged it I wasn’t researching as intensively, and so I found the problem of explaining ideas as I begin to understand them wasn’t so difficult. These days, dealing with heavy duty philosophy books and writing about it real time seems to be something of an impossibility for me – I need to mull the ideas over for a while. In this case I had the essay to deal with too which ended up being a bit of a nightmare for me, and also the New York trip – so I got to forming and planning my ideas out so that the project wouldn’t be left too late. But I think blogging’s strength is in the practice, which I have only just started on – it’s a great way of reflecting on how the work develops as it is made. As I am working very physically this time, I’m going to pick up blogging for the last ‘execution’ stint of the project, and write reflectively about the research up to this point, now the ideas are more fully formed in my mind.

So the best start to the blogging would be for me to explain where I am up to now. Basically, the thinking about the project started off with me watching Blade Runner at Christmas and just generally being inspired by it – it gave me a number of concepts which I wanted to explore. From that – I really focussed on thinking about perspective, drawing from the narrative style and characters of neo-noir cinema in general, and especially the Esper machine scene in Blade Runner. I started doing some research into that and drew out another interest in the way neo-noir deals with architecture, which made me consider my ‘aesthetic relationship’ with modernist architecture. It also made me go back to some ideas I had touched on last year when I was reading about cybercultural theory, in which the concept of perspective is critical (especially in Neuromancer). Through looking at different cybercultural theorists I came across Don Ihde, who is noted as the writer of the first American philosophy of technology book (Technics and Praxis). The only book of his in the library was a book called Experimental Phenomenology, which ended up being crucial for my understanding of the ideas I was having. It is a basic primer on how to practice a phenomenology – how to see from a phenomenological view. In that I discovered a lot about how our perspective on the world is structured, and had the realisation that all the ideas I was having were dealing with that. This book ended up providing the major backing for my essay and it has taken me a hell of a long time to digest fully, during which time I had a lot of ideas for pieces I could make, and artists and films I could look at.

In digesting all this research, I ended up with three areas I wanted to explore with the project that are all interlinked, but distinct subject wise. They are three elaborations of the basic line of thought of the project at different tiers of extraction. To use more scientific terminology – primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The primary level of the project is philosophical – the phenomenological level. This has me thinking of the basic terms of phenomenology and how I can make a work that will tackle ideas like, say, the intention of perspective. More specifically, this has ended with me being inspired by the sculptural-photographic hybrid works of Darren Harvey-Regan, and conceptualising a photograph with a sculpture of the photographed object emerging from it. In this case the basic plan is to life-cast a hand, then photograph an opposing hand as if it were touching the cast hand, the actually attach the cast hand to the print. How specifically I end up doing this is going to grow as the project develops though.

The secondary level of the project is the architectural aspect. I am particularly interested aesthetically in modernist architecture because of how it is such a prominently intentioned form that seems to encapsulate the world view of the time it emerged from – and as that world view has kind of died out in a sense, this becomes a kind of surreal phenomenon. It gives these buildings a somewhat ghostly feeling, and I feel this comes back down to a lot of the phenomenological concepts about how visual thinking is so informed by individual perspectives and points of view in time. This aspect of the project I ended up hashing out quite quickly, because I had the idea to photograph a specific building I have been interested in for a long time which happened to be near New York, so I sorted the idea out in my head before we went on the trip there. The building is the Bell Labs building in Murray Hill, New Jersey, which is notable for being the birthplace of a huge amount of modern technology, especially the transistor. The building itself, in this way, is evocative of the world view that was that technological one that took place inside it – it’s always been a visually fascinating place to me. I ended up getting the shots I wanted, long story short, but I’ll write about that separately.

The tertiary level of the project is the filmic aspect – which combines the prior two but adds the way narrative and character operate thorough mechanisms mediated by perspective. This is a very big, broad, ‘felt’ idea in my mind that I feel will only really be explained by my work – it’s an understanding of a style of film through the philosophy of phenomenology basically. I feel that film noir characters are very multistable – they can equally be approached in different ways; key noir characters are the flawed protagonist and the femme fatale which in a way operate as ‘contradictions that make sense’. The visual illusions used to describe how phenomenology looks at the structure of experience that I saw in Don Ihde’s text are the exact same thing, and I figured, what a metastable Necker cube is to a basic experience of seeing lines on a page, a femme fatale is to a complex interpersonal narrative. It’s a very abstract connection – but that is the point, to illustrate a hierarchy of how experience of reality might be structured. The idea in mind for this project is the least developed, but I want in essence to stage a photograph with a narrative hidden in the details – one that you have to discover through zooming in, like how the narrative in Blade Runner unfolds with the Esper machine scene. Again though, I’m not specifically sure how I am going to play this idea out – right now I am focussing on just trying to experiment with images. I have a specific location in mind that incorporates the architectural ideas

I intend to draw these three ideas into framed pieces that I can compose into a salon type installation on a wall – a wall based composition based upon the links between the pieces in a similar way to Darren Harvey-Regan’s more recent work. Obviously a large amount of technical work will be required to do this and that will be captured on the blog. But I intend to keep reading and developing the ideas as I go along, and will retrospectively write about the major concepts and research behind the project.

[y0url0calmushr00m]

Thank you for the analysis your contribution is amazing cuz my dumbass couldn't figure this out 😔✊omg why I am I seeing this only now??? Heartbreaking just HEARTBREAKING 💔

I hate fiction man

mydei having a library is absolutely heartbreaking symbolism. it's a running gag that the kremnoan language doesn't have many words; there's no word for flee, no word for fear, even no word for love. i know the library was his family's, but still -- it is such a distinct symbol of how mydei wants to break kremnoan tradition. how he openly rejects the idea that violence is the only valid form of communication. how he always dismisses the baseless rumours surrounding his abilities, proving that he values truth over glory. we see mydei try to talk his people into reason. we see him apologize to tribbie for being rude. we even see him (begrudgingly) admit to phainon that he knows how to interpret poetry. time and time again, mydei chooses language -- and truth -- over violence. so when he invites phainon to visit his library in the next life, he's not just expressing hope -- he's asking phainon to remember him by what he really believes in. even if i become the avatar of strife, he's saying, even if you have to kill me one day -- in the next life, please see me as the person i've tried to become.

mydei knows the power of a name, perhaps because his language has so few of them. and that makes it doubly ironic that he personally has so many titles: son of gorgo. the patricidal crown prince. kingslayer. godslayer. the undying. but as krateros points out, the name he prefers is the one he uses with the chrysos heirs. and although mydei doesn't talk much, all his actions seem to say the same thing.

remember me as mydei, not mydeimos.

[kabobroaster]

It’s also so soft and homosexual because Mydei does try to also be a strong kremnoan he wants to embody his people’s ideals but also wants to break away from the things that brought the kremnoans down. He constantly grumbles and grunts seems annoyed but we see in his interaction with Phainon post strife trial that he desperately wants to reach out and communicate, he wants so much to let himself be soft and comforting.

That’s what makes him becoming the avatar of strife so heartbreaking, he doesn’t want it, he wants to be a quiet book worm and play house with children and bake bread and drink pink pomegranate juice. He wants to be soft and to be comforted, he doesn’t want to struggle and suffer and fight. That’s why when he says he is the agony the world needs he is pouring out all his despair and anger. Because he has to sacrifice all his dreams and hopes to defend the flame chase. So all he wants is to be remembered as Mydei, not as the god of Strife. It’s so heartbreaking too because you can find a letter from Gorgo written to Mydei in castrum Kremnos in the past, it’s the full version of the tablet you can bring Mydei in 3.0. And she basically says that she doesn’t care if Mydei wants to be king or a god or a warrior, all she wants is for him to be happy.

So Mydei shares his last wishes with the person who he trusts and cares for most, he wants the last memories of him to be as Mydei the man and not Mydeimos the god.

mydei having a library is absolutely heartbreaking symbolism. it's a running gag that the kremnoan language doesn't have many words; there's no word for flee, no word for fear, even no word for love. i know the library was his family's, but still -- it is such a distinct symbol of how mydei wants to break kremnoan tradition. how he openly rejects the idea that violence is the only valid form of communication. how he always dismisses the baseless rumours surrounding his abilities, proving that he values truth over glory. we see mydei try to talk his people into reason. we see him apologize to tribbie for being rude. we even see him (begrudgingly) admit to phainon that he knows how to interpret poetry. time and time again, mydei chooses language -- and truth -- over violence. so when he invites phainon to visit his library in the next life, he's not just expressing hope -- he's asking phainon to remember him by what he really believes in. even if i become the avatar of strife, he's saying, even if you have to kill me one day -- in the next life, please see me as the person i've tried to become.

mydei knows the power of a name, perhaps because his language has so few of them. and that makes it doubly ironic that he personally has so many titles: son of gorgo. the patricidal crown prince. kingslayer. godslayer. the undying. but as krateros points out, the name he prefers is the one he uses with the chrysos heirs. and although mydei doesn't talk much, all his actions seem to say the same thing.

remember me as mydei, not mydeimos.