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sabugabr · 3 years

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Why the Clone problem in Star Wars animated media is also a Mandalorian problem, and why we have to talk about it (PART 2)

Hi! I finally finished wrapping this up, so here’s part 2 of what has already become a mini article (you can find Part 1 here, if you like!)

And for this part, it won’t be as much as a critic as part 1 was, but instead I’d like to focus more on what I consider to be a wasted potential regarding the representation of the Clones in the Star Wars animated media, from the first season of The Clone Wars till now, and why I believe it to be an extension of the Mandalorian problem I discussed in part 1 — the good old colonialism.

Sources used, as always, will be linked at the end of this post!

PART 2: THE CLONES

Cody will never know peace

So I’d like to state that I won’t focus as much on the blatantly whitewashing aspect, for I believe it to be very clear by now. If you aren’t familiar with it, I highly recommend you search around tumblr and the internet, there are a lot of interesting articles and posts about it that explain things very didactically and in detail. The only thing you need to know to get this started is that even at the first seasons of Clone Wars (when the troopers still had this somewhat darker skin complexion and all) they were still a whitewashed version of Temuera Morrison (Jango’s actor). And from then, as we all know, they only got whiter and whiter till we get where we are now, in rage.

Look at this very ambiguously non-white but still westernized men fiercely guarding their pin-up space poster

Now look at this still westernized but slightly (sarcasm) whiter men who for some reason now have different tanning levels among them (See how Rex now has a lighter skin tone? WHEN THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN KKKKKKK) Anyway you got the idea. So without further ado...

2.1 THE FANTASY METAPHOR

As I mentioned before in Part 1, one thing that has to be very clear if you want to follow my train of thought is that it’s impossible to consume something without attributing cultural meanings to it, or without making cultural associations. This things will naturally happen and it often can improve our connection to certain narratives, especially fantastic ones. Even if a story takes place in a fantastic/sci fi universe, with all fictional species and people and worlds and cultures, they never come from nowhere, and almost always they have some or a lot of basing in real people and cultures. And when done properly, this can help making these stories resonate in a very beautifull, meaningfull way. I actually believe this intrisic cultural associations are the things that make these stories work at all. As the brilliant american speculative/science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin says in the introduction (added in 1976) of her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, and that I was not able to chopp much because it’s absolutely genious and i’ll be leaving the link to the full text right here,

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future — indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level, cannot be predicted — but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

[...] “Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane —bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

[...] “ In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find — if it's a good novel — that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this within words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. [...] All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?” [1]

A metaphor for what indeed. I won’t be going into what Star Wars as a whole is a metaphor for, because I am certain that it varies from person to person, and everyone can and has the total right to take whatever they want from this story, and understand it as they see fit. That’s why it’s called the modern myth. And therefore, all I’ll be saying here is playinly my take not only on what I understand the Clones to be, but what I believe they could have meant.

2.2 SO, BOBA IS A CLONE

I don’t want to get too repetitive, but I wanted to adress it because even though I by no means intend to put Boba and the Clones in the same bag, there is one aspect about them that I find very similar and interesting, that is the persue of individuality. While the Clones have this very intrinsically connected to their narratives, in Boba’s case this appears more in his concept design. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the things the CW staff had in mind while designing the mandalorians is that they wanted to make Boba seem unique and distinguishable from them, and honestly even in the original trilogy he stands out a lot. He is unique and memorable and that’s one of the things that draws us to him.

And as we all know, both Boba and Jango and the Clones are played by Temuera Morrison — and occasionally by the wonderful Bodie Taylor and Daniel Logan. And Temuera Morrison comes from the Maori people. And differently from the mandalorian case, where we were talking about a whole planet, in this situation we’re talking about portraying one single person, so there’s nowhere to go around his appearance and phenotypes, right? I mean, you are literally representing an actual individual, so there’s no way you could alter their looks, right?

(hahahaha wrong)

And besides that, I think that is in situations like that (when we are talking about individuals) that the actor’s perspective could really have a place to shine (just the same as how Lea was mostly written by Carrie Fisher). In this very heart-warming interview for The New York Times (which you can read full signing up for their 5-free-articles-per-month policy), Temuera Morrison talks a little bit about how he incorporated his cultural background to Boba Fett in The Mandalorian:

“I come from the Maori nation of New Zealand, the Indigenous people — we’re the Down Under Polynesians — and I wanted to bring that kind of spirit and energy, which we call wairua. I’ve been trained in my cultural dance, which we call the haka. I’ve also been trained in some of our weapons, so that’s how I was able to manipulate some of the weapons in my fight scenes and work with the gaffi stick, which my character has.” [2]

The Gaffi stick (or Gaderffii), btw, is the weapon used by the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, and according to oceanic art expert Bruno Claessens it’s design was inspired by wooden Fijian war clubs called totokia. [3]

And I think is very clear how this background can influence one’s performance and approach to a character, and majorly how much more alive this character will feel like. Beyond that, having an actor from your culture to play and add elements to a character will higly improve your sense of connection with them (besides all the impact of seeying yourself on screen, and seeying yourself portrayed with respect). It would only make sense if the cultural elements that the actor brought when giving life to a fictional individual would’ve been kept and even deepened while expanding this role. And if you’re familiar with Star Wars Legends you’ll probably rememeber that in Legends Jango would train and raise all Clone troopers in the Mandalorian culture, so that the Clones would sing traditional war chants before battles, be fluent in Mando’a (Mandalore’s language) and some would proudly take mandalorian names for themselves. So why didn’t Filoni Inc. take that into account when they went to delve into the clones in The Clone Wars?

2.3 THE WHITE MINORITY

First of all I’d like to state that all this is 100% me conjecturing, and by no means at all I’m saying that this is what really happened. But while I was re-watching CW before The Bad Batch premiere, something came to my mind regarding the whitewashing of the Clones, and I’d like to leave that on the table.

So, you know this kind of recent movies and series that depicted like, fairies in this fictional world where fairies were very opressed, but there would be a lot of fairies played by white actors? Just like Bright and Carnival Row. If you’ve watched some of these and have some racial conscience, you’ll probably know where I’m going here. And the issue with it is that often this medias will portray real situations of racism and opression and prejudice, but all applied to white people. Like in Carnival Row, when going to work as a maid in a rich human house, our girl Cara Delevingne had to fight not to have her braids (which held a lot of significance in her culture) cut by her intolerant human mistress, because the braids were not “appropriate”. Got it? hahahaha what a joy

Look at her ethnic braids!!!

One of the reasons this happens might be to relieve a white audience of the burden of watching these stories and feeling what I like to call “white guilt”. Because, as we all know, white people were never very oppressed. Historically speaking, white people have always been in privileged social positions, and in an exploitative relationship between two ethnic groups, white people very usually would be the exploiters — the opressors. So while watching situations (that every minority would know to be very real) of opression in fiction, if these situations were lived by a white actor, there would be no real-life associations, because we have no historical parameter to associate this situation with anything in real life — if you are white. Thus, there is less chance that, when consuming one of these narratives, whoever is watching will question the "truthfulness" of these situations (because it's not "real racism", see, "they're just fairies"). It's easier for a person to watch without having to step out of their comfort zone, or confront the reality of real people who actually go through things like that. There's even a chance that this might diminish empathy for these people.

Once again, not saying this is specifically the case of the Clones, majorly because one of the main feelings you have when watching CW is exactly empathy for the troopers (at least for me, honestly, the galaxy could explode, I just wanted those poor men to be happy for God’s sake). But I’ll talk more about it later.

The thing is, the whole thing with the Clones, if you think about it, it’s not pretty. If you step on little tiny bit outside the bubble of “fictional fantasy”, the concept is very outrageous. They are kept in conditions analogous to slavery, to say the least. To say the more, they were literally made in an on-demand lab to serve a purpose they are personally not a part of, for which they will neither receive any reward nor share any part of the gains. On the contrary, as we saw in The Bad Batch, as soon as the war was over and the clones were no longer useful as cannonballs, they were discarded. In the (wonderful) episode 6 of the third season of (the almost flawless) Rebels, “The Last Battle”, we're even personally introduced to the analogy that there really wasn't much difference in value between clones and droids, something that was pretty clear in Clone Wars but hadn't been said explicitly yet.

In fact, technically the Separatists can be considered to be more human than the Republic. But that's just my opinion.

So, you had this whole army of pretty much slaves. I know this is a heavy term, but these were people who were originally stripped of any sense of humanity or individuality, made literally to go to war and die in it, doing so purely in exchange for food and lodging, under the false pretense that they belonged to a glorious purpose (yes, Loki me taught that term, that was the only thing I absorbed from this series). Doing all this under extremely precarious conditions from which they had no chance of getting out, actually, getting out was tantamount to the death penalty. They were slaves. In milder terms, an oppressed minority. And again, I don't know if that was the case, but I can understand why Filoni Inc would be apprehensive about representing phenotically indigenous people in this situation. Especially since we in theory should see Anakin and Obi-Wan as the good guys.

(and here I’d like to leave a little disclaimer that I believe the whole Anakin-was-a-slave-once plot was HUGELY misused (and honestly just badly done) both in the prequels and in the animeted series — maybe for the best, since he was, you know, white and all that, and I don’t know how the writers would have handled it, but ANYWAY — I believe this could have been further explored, particularly regarding his relationship with the Clones, and how it could have influenced his revolt against the Jedi, and manipulated to add to his anger and all that. I mean, we already HAD the fact that Anakin shared a deeper conection with his troopers than usual)

Yes, Rex, you have common trauma experiences to share. But anyway, backing to my track

As I was saying, we are to see them as good guys, and maybe that could’ve been tricky if we saw them hooping up on slavery practices. Like, idk, a “nice” sugar plantation owner? (I don’t know the correct word for it in english, but in portuguese they were called senhores de engenho) Like this guy from 12 Years a Slave?

You know, the slave owner who was “nice”. IDK, anyway

No one will ever watch Clone Wars and make this association (I believe not, at least), of course not. But if we were to see how CW deepened the clone arcs, and see them as phenotypically indigenous, subjected to certain situations that occur in CW (yes, like Umbara), maybe some kind of association would’ve been easier to make.

I mean, come onnnn I can’t be the only one seeing it

You see, maybe not the whole 12 Years a Slave association one, but I don’t think it’s hard to see there was something there. And maybe this could’ve been even more evident if they looked non-white. Because historically, both black peoples and indigenous peoples went through processes of slavery, from which we as a society are still impacted today. And to slave a people, the first thing you have to do is strip them from their humanity. So it might be easier to see this situation and apply it to real life. And maybe that could lead to a whole lot of other questions regarding the Clones, the Republic, the Jedi, and even how chill Obi-Wan was about all this. We might come out of it, as lady Ursula Le Guin stated in the fragment above, a bit different from what we were before we watch it.

Maybe even unconsciously, Filoni Inc thought we would be more confortable watching if they just looked white (and because of colonialism and all that, but I’m adding thoughts here).

And of course I don’t like the idea of, idk, looking at Obi-Wan and thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch in 12 Years a Slave or something like that. Of course that, if the Clones were to play the same role as they did in the prequels, to obediently serve the Jedi and quietly die for them, that would have been bad, and hurtfull, and pejorative if added to all that I said here. But the thing is that Clone Wars, consciously or not, already solved that. At least to my point of view, they already managed to approach this situation in an incredible competent way, that is giving them agency.

2.4 AGENCY AND INDIVIDUALITY

So, one of the things I love most in Clone Wars is how it really feels like it’s about the Clones. Like, we have the bigger scene of Palpatine taking over, Ahsoka’s growth arc, Anakin’s turn to The Dark Side, the dawn of the Jedi and rise of the Empire and all that, but it also has this idk, vibe, of there’s actually something going on that no one in scene is talking about? And this something is the Clones. We have these episodes spread throughout the seasons, even out of chronological order, which when watched together tell a parallel story to the war, to everything I mentioned. Which is a story about individuals. Clone Wars manages to, in a (at least to me) very touching way, make the Clones be the heros.

Can you really look me in the eye and say that Five’s story didn’t CRASH you like a full-speed train???? He may not have the same amount of screen-time as the protagonists, but his story is just as important as theirs (and to me, it might be the most meaningful one). Because he is the first to break free from the opression cicle all the Clones were trapped into.

His story can be divided into 6 phases.

1 - First, the construction of his individuality, in other words, the reclaiming of his humanity.

2 - Then the assimilation of understanding yourself as an individual of value, and then extending this to all his brothers, not as a unit, but as a set of individuals collectively having this same newly discovered value.

3 - This makes him realize that in the situation they find themselves in, they are not being recognized as such. This makes him question the reality of their situation.

4 - Freed from the illusion of his state, he seeks the truth about it.

5 - This then leads him to seek liberation not just for himself, but for all the Clones (it's basically Plato's Cave, and I'm not exaggerating here).

6 - And finally, precisely because he has assimilated his individuality and sought freedom for himself and his brothers, he is punished for it.

His story is all about agency. Agency, according to the Wikipedia page that is the first to appear if you type “agency” on Google, is that agency is “the abstract principle that autonomous beings, agents, are capable of acting by themselves” [4], and this abstract principle can be dissected in 7 segments:

Law - a person acting on behalf of another person

Religious - "the privilege of choice... introduced by God"

Moral - capacity for making moral judgments

Philosophical - the capacity of an autonomous agent to act, relating to action theory in philosophy

Psychological - the ability to recognize or attribute agency in humans and non-human animals

Sociological - the ability of social actors to make independent choices, relating to action theory in sociology

Structural - ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution

All of them apply here. And this is just the story of one Clone. We know there are many others throughout the series.

Agency is what can make the world of a difference when you are telling a story about an opressed minority. Because opressed minorities do exist, and opression exists, and if you are insecure about consuming a fictional media about opressed minorities, see if they have agency might be a good place to start. So that’s why I think that everything I said before in 2.3 falls short. Because the solution already existed, and was indeed done. Honestly, making the non-agency representation of the Clones (the one we see in the prequels) to be the one played by Temuera Morrison, and then giving them agency in the version where they appear to be white, just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

And honestly, if they were to make the Clones look like Temuera Morrison, and by that mean, take more inspiration in the Māori culture, maybe they wouldn’t even have to change much of their representation besides their facial features. As I said in part 1, I am not by any means an expert in polynesian cultures, but there was something that really got me while I was researching about it. And is the facial tattoos. More precisely, the tā moko.

2.5 TĀ MOKO

Once again I’ll be using the Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand as source, and you can find the articles used linked at the end of this post.

Etymologically speaking,

“The term moko traditionally applied to male facial tattooing, while kauae referred to moko on the chins of women. There were other specific terms for tattooing on other parts of the body. Eventually ‘moko’ came to be used for Māori tattooing in general.” [5]

So moko is the correct name for the characteristic tattoos we often see when we look for Māori culture.

These ones ^. Please also look this book up, it’s beautiful. It’s written by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. She’s wonderful.

According to the Tourism NewZealand website,

“In Māori culture, it [moko] reflects the individual's whakapapa (ancestry) and personal history. In earlier times it was an important signifier of social rank, knowledge, skill and eligibility to marry.”

“Traditionally men received moko on their faces, buttocks and thighs. Māori face tattoos are the ultimate expression of Māori identity. Māori believe the head is the most sacred part of the body, so facial tattoos have special significance.”

[...] “The main lines in a Māori tattoo are called manawa, which is the Māori word for heart.” [6]

Therefore, in the Māori culture, there’s this incredibly deep meaning attributed to the (specific of their culture) tattooing of the face. The act of tattooing the body, any part of the body, is incredibly powerful in many cultures around the globe. The adornment of the body can have different meanings for these different cultures, but all of which I've come into contact with do mean a lot. It’s one of the oldest and most beautiful human expressions of individuality and identity.

And in the Star Wars universe, the Clones are the group that has the deeper connection to, and the best narrative regarding, tattoos. In fact, besides Hera’s father, Cham Syndulla, the Clones are the only individuals to have tattooed skin, at least that I can recall of. And they do share a deep connection to it.

For the Clones, the tattoos (added to hairstyles) are the most meaningful way in which they can express themselves. Is what makes them distinguishable from each other to other people. Tattoos are one of the things that represent them as individuals.

And I’m not BY ANY MEANS sayin that the Clones facial tattoos = Moko. That’s not my point. But that’s one of the things I meant when I said earlier about the wasted potential of the representation of the Clones (in my point of view). Because maybe if it were their intention to base the culture of the clones after the polynesian culture, maybe if it were their intention to make the Clones actually look like Temuera Morrison, this could have meant a whole deal. More than it’d appear looking to it from outside this culture. Maybe if there were actual polynesian people in the team that designed the Clones and wrote them (or at least indigenous people, something), who knows what we could’ve had.

Even in Hunter’s design, I noticed that if you take for example this frame of Temuera from the movie River Queen (2005), where we can have a closer look at the design of his tā moko

Speaking purely plastically (because I don’t want to get into the movie itself, just using it as example because then I can use Temuera himself as a comparison), see the lines around the contours of his mouth? Now look at Hunter’s.

I find it interesting that they choose to design this lines coming from around his nose like that. But at this point I am stretching A LOT into plastic and semiotics, so this comparison is just a little thing that got my attention. I know that his tattoo is a skull and etc etc, I’m just poiting this out. And it even makes me a little frustrated, because they could have taken so many interesting paths in the Bad Batch designs. But instead they choose to pay homage to Rambo. And I mean, I like Rambo, I think he’s cool and all that.

Look at him doing Filipino martial arts

But then, as we say in Brasil, they had the knife and the cheese in their hands (all they had to do was cut the cheese, but they didn’t). Istead, it seems like in order to make Hunter look like Rambo, they made him even whiter???

2.6 SO...

Look, I love The Clone Wars. I’m crazy about it. I love the Clones, I love their stories and plots. They are great characters and one of the greatest addings ever made in the Star Wars universe. They even have, in my opinion, the best soundtrack piece to feature in a Star Wars media since John Williams’ wonderful score. It just feels to me as if their narrative core is full of bagage, and meanings, and associations that were just wiped under the carpet when they suddenly became white. It just feels to me as if, once again, they were trying to erase the person behing the trooper mask, and the people they were to represent, and the history they should evoke.

I don’t know why they were whitewashed. Maybe it was just the old due racism and colonialism. Maybe it was meant for us to not question the Jedi, or our good guys, or the real morality of this fictional universe where we were immersed. But then, was it meant for what?

The Clones were a metaphor for what?

(spoiler: the answer still contains colonialism)

Thank you so much for reading !!!! (and congratulations for getting this far, you are a true hero)

SOURCES USED IN THIS:

[1] Ursulla K. Le Guin, 'The Left Hand of Darkness', 14th ACE print run of June, 1977

[2] Dave Itzkoff, 'Being Boba Fett: Temuera Morrison Discusses ‘The Mandalorian’', The New York Times, published Dec. 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/television/the-mandalorian-boba-fett-temuera-morrison.html (accessed 15 September 2021)

[3] Bruno Claessens, 'George Lucas' "Star Wars" and Oceanic art' , Archived from the original on December 5, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201205114353/http://brunoclaessens.com/2015/07/george-lucas-star-wars-and-oceanic-art/#.YEiJ-p37RhF (accessed 15 September 2021)

[4] Wikipedia contributors, "Agency," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency&oldid=1037924611 (accessed September 17, 2021)

[5] Rawinia Higgins, 'Tā moko – Māori tattooing - Origins of tā moko', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ta-moko-maori-tattooing/page-1 (accessed 17 September 2021)

[6] Tourism New Zealand, ‘The meaning of tā moko, traditional Māori tattoos’, The Tourism New Zealand website, https://www.newzealand.com/us/feature/ta-moko-maori-tattoo/ (accessed 17 September 2021)

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reachexceedinggrasp · 2 years

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Seriously, THANK YOU so much for that post about themes. I always enjoy the passion in your writing and how sincerely you care about these things, but this post was especially good for me because I found it after a frustrating chat with a colleague where she described good themes in fiction as being "employment" and "power disparities". Basically that fiction should be didactic and soulless political treatises dressed in the skin of a novel, ideals and heart and empathy are for children. (1/3)

(2/3) And then she described good popular fiction as something that "subverts genre" by sneaking in consciousness-raising political messages inside filthy filthy genre fiction like - GAG - romance. I suppose to educate the dumbass plebs who actually like genre and imaginative immersion and read for pleasure or find edification in the enjoyment and empathy and in taking a story at face value. Like, the simplest escapist fairy tale for children can communicate powerful truths about injustice imho.

(3/3) Whereas a book that touches no-one is dead, no matter how ambitious or highbrow it might be. Sorry for rambling but I left that convo feeling so dejected and bitter & finding your post after was super healing and affirming because YES someone out there actually understands and cares about GOOD STORYTELLING & how that should be the aim of fiction. Hope, wonder, redemption, YESSSSSS these are timeless and can resonate with everyone. My faith is restored, the world is beautiful, thank you! <3

Man, I know I've talked about this before, but I really can't imagine what people have going on in their lives that they want to subscribe or pretend to subscribe to the idea that edification can be the only purpose of fiction. I can't help but feel it's connected to the entire 'rugged individualism' work culture coming out of the US. The 'grind' mindset, which is a new term for something that is certainly not new. The idea that you live to work and anything you're doing that isn't generating monetary profit or other material gain is frivolous and a waste of time.

The genre ghetto remains very real, unfortunately. And it's the same old shit. It's fun or fanciful or romantic and therefore not 'serious', because serious and deep art must be all about darkness, suffering, cynicism, and bleak 'reality'. That the most ambitious and edifying narratives can be ones which challenge us to imagine that healing is possible and redemption is necessary does not seem to occur to a lot of people. That a good story is timeless and more effective than a novel or 'realistic' story seems a constantly proven but thoroughly ignored fact.

But yes, exactly! The communion of a good story comes from its ability to move you! That's how a story communicates and is the very reason that storytelling is the most profound way for us to connect with each other. It doesn't matter how weighty your message is if no one wants to engage with it. Art without some kind of romance is dead. Pure didacticism will never cross the barriers that the fantastical can cross.

Anyway, thank you so much 🥰 I'm so, so glad to hear my rambles were helpful and gave you a feeling of fellowship! The very best of stories is that they tell us that we're not alone.

#writing #fandom #<3

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paradife-loft · 3 years

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james tell me what you like about beefleaf

gasp you want to hear what I like about beefleefs !!!!! ---

the ability to be ever more iteratively sillier in referring to them, constantly, for one thing

oh geez okay well the real first thing that comes to mind for me is honestly The Genders. I am very invested in the way we see aspects of their characters and relationship played out through the vehicle of gender, because it hits that extremely rare spot I like of... the gendery material being pretty integral to what’s going on with the rest of the character and story explored (not a Characteristic Just Slapped On Top For Fun Rep~!), but also not.... straightforwardly About The Thing? or didactic? (or giving me dysphoria?)

but Yeah like - Ming Yi regularly transforming with Shi Qingxuan. the way this indicates a level of closeness and trust imo certainly beyond SQX’s enthusiastic/performative yelling about Ming Yi being her best friend? (or like - the latter is certainly not meaningless, but I don’t think it’d carry the same amount of weight without being backed up in ambient details like that.) - the little bit of difference in how they both approach that, with SQX in her first appearance obviously discernible as a woman, whereas from afar Xie Lian assumes f!Ming Yi is a man? they each do this whole thing differently and I love leaning into the crunch of that, and playing it off the way they’re looking at the relationship they have from two veeerry separate and difficult-to-reconcile perspectives?

also, I love (a certain type of*) “becoming the mask” / “what the fuck is an identity” stories. and obviously that is some bread and butter of He Xuan’s whole angle on the first part of the story! - without (necessarily) falling into the trap of being “heartless angry person Actually Develops a Soft Squishy Human Side All Along UwU” trope that..... can accompany that narrative..... like eh *gestures at the variety of fanfic around* but I would argue that’s not actually the attitude one has to take to what’s going on with HX in the Black Water arc and afterward? there’s a certain... compartmentalisation, imo, to the way HX feels about SQX, and when it spills over into the rest of the Shi Wudu Must Die plot, it only fuels, I think, more justified anger and conflict because the reasons SQX is enjoyable to be around, and the reasons they piss HX off as a person when it comes to the fate-swap issue, are kind of... the same things? I really feel like I’m rambling incoherently now, so I’ll. move on.

third thing I like - the fact that what should have been the “end” of their relationship very much was not an end?! once all the dust has settled, there’s still... awkwardly dancing around one another when the possibility arises, because neither of them actually has emotional closure. and I really do like messy, unresolved, “where do we go from here” suggestions. they both hurt each other and they each understand very much where the other person was coming from, and the scars of that history, that decision that started from something neither of them chose, is going to be sitting oh so visibly in between them both for the rest of (SQX’s) life! ....you might have noticed by now that I enjoy “you did some really awful hurtful shit and it’s not really about forgiving you, it’s just that regardless of how I “should” feel, I still care a lot and I’m gonna cling to what we can still have together anyway” as a dynamic 👀👀

oh, and also/finally, a Very Important part of this whole thing: they are both Very Hot and have the most excellent Friends Who Fuck potential :33 ~ sometimes I am shallow about this, lmao 😂

#ask a James #ask memes #reverse unpopular opinions meme #Hua Cheng's ghostly down with cis bus #this feels very incomplete as an answer?? aahh they are just... very hard to describe somehow #perhaps it is just bc I have not been sufficiently immersed in enough meta about them to bounce off of #(yes this means folks should Give Me Moar Beefleaf Meta)#anyway....#veliseraptor

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letswritebangtan · 4 years

Text

Brave Tender Heart 02 | What it Means to be Human...

pairing: princess!reader x knight!jungkook

A warm evening held out its hands for y/n to take. She had been planning on this visit for weeks and there was nothing that could stop her from going. At the orphanage, y/n felt most like herself. People often tended to forget that the term ‘Princess’ was merely a title. y/n was still a girl and she found joy in being one. The little smiles and loud cries of joy that she witnessed at the home made her heart swell. In the past, she never could fathom how children who had almost nothing rejoice every single day. She had so much admiration for them and felt that she could learn a thing or two on how to be happy from them. With the children, she never felt alone. Children did not discriminate, and they were more than happy to accept y/n as part of their social group.

“Princess, please could you tell us a fairy tale?” asked Jeongsan.

Jeongsan was seven and he had a wild imagination. He loved listening to stories as much as he loved telling them, and y/n was in awe at how his little brain could come up with such fantastic stories.

“Fairy tales are boring, ~san! Princess, tell us again about the time you fought in battle!” Jisoo exclaimed.

y/n laughed, “Now, now, let’s decide on a story we all like. That sounds fair, does it not?”

The children nodded in agreement, and y/n cleared her throat preparing to tell them a story she knew they all loved.

“Father, look! I painted all of us, there’s you and ma on the big chairs. I’m over here holding Tae because he can’t walk yet.” y/n talked in her father’s lap.

“This is beautiful, y/n. Go and show it to your mother, I’m sure she would be delighted to see it.” the king smiled fondly at his daughter.

With no hesitation, y/n jumped out of her father’s lap and her little feet moved so fast as she ran to the garden where her mother sat, having her evening herbal tea. Just the scent of it was so nostalgic.

“Ma, I painted a picture.” y/n said as she skipped towards her.

“y/n, no stepping on the grass. I have reminded you endlessly to use the stone path, dear.” said the queen.

y/n ignored her words and held the painting up to her mother for examination. The queen smiled, finding her daughter’s creative imagination adorable. y/n was talented in arts ever since she was little. Her mother made it a point to frame and hang up all of her paintings.

“Well you have certainly captured your brother’s chubby cheeks.” she said smiling.

y/n giggled and placed her hand on her mother’s big, and perfectly round belly.

“I drew the new baby too.” said y/n, as she used her tiny finger to point out a small human next to her.

The queen laughed in awe, “And you have done an amazing job at that too, considering you have not seen him or her yet.”

y/n grinned and left the picture with her mother. She skipped to the pond and sat at its edge, dipping her hands into the water. Underneath, there were silhouettes of fish and frogs. Small insects roamed the top, and y/n having the curious little mind she has she dipped her hands further and further into the water until her entire body fell in with a loud splash. Her feet could not feel the ground, and her head was beneath the surface. Struggling to push herself up she inhaled a big gulp of pond water and it filled her lungs till she could not breathe. The sounds above her were muffled but she could hear the loud, worried cries of her mother and soon a blur chatter of many voices lurking above her. It was not much time before her eyes began to close and her body went rigid.

Everything else was a blur, when she woke she was sputtering large amounts of water from her mouth and she was gasping for air. They sat her up and her head felt extremely light. She felt herself being lifted and as her head hung over the arm of her helper she noticed the figure of a young boy with doe eyes and black hair. He stood alarmed and worried at the sight of the princess almost losing her life in the sacred garden. Slowly, he lifted his hand and signaled her a small thumbs up and y/n remembered his smile. The same smile she had seen not a while ago from the present, the smile that told her that she was going to be okay.

“I really thought you were going to die, princess!” one of them said.

“I knew princess y/n would survive, she’s so strong!”

y/n laughed and made them quiet down. “The moral of this story, my dear children, is that you should never be afraid to be inquisitive. Explore, search, delve and find whatever you want only because you can find it. There is so much for you to learn, and you will not be able to do it if you just sit here. Test the waters, ignite fires, go against the wind or even dig yourselves to the bottom of this Earth, and do not be afraid.” y/n whispered the last part.

The children grinned at her feeling passionate about this new adventure princess y/n had drawn up for them. It was time to call it a day and y/n bid goodbye to her friends and walked along the path to the palace. As she walked her mind drifted to that day she nearly lost her life. Had it been any different, she wondered if she would have survived. The queen was terribly paranoid that y/n would try something again and called upon the family’s most trusted servant, Sir Kim, and made him teach y/n how to swim. Surprisingly, after that terrible incident in the water y/n was not afraid to enter a large water body such as the ocean. She jumped in headfirst and her mother nearly fainted at the sight but y/n learned quickly enough that her mother never had to worry about any more drowning incidences in the future.

“Princess!” she heard from behind her.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to her side, and there emerged Sir Jeon sat on top of his horse.

She smiled brightly at him, “Sir Jeon, delighted to see you.”

“The pleasure’s mine, princess.” he grunted as he hopped off of his trusty steed.

He performed just as he did the last time, lifting her hand and placing a soft kiss on the back of it.

“Do you charm every woman you meet just like this, Sir Jeon?” y/n teased.

Sir Jeon smiled sheepishly and laughed feeling embarrassed. “Are you saying that you feel charmed as well, my princess?”

“Never answer a query with a query, defeats its purpose.” y/n said being didactic.

Sir Jeon pursed his lips and nodded in agreement, “Very well said.”

“What business did you have here?” y/n asked.

“I was merely delivering a message that the prince wanted to get to a family at town. They are in terrible need of financial support and the prince is determined to remove that burden.”

“Good to know that my brother is being helpful.”

“The prince is very kind to offer his support, he needn’t have to yet he makes it a point.” Sir Jeon said impressed.

“Well, our father always told us that humans corrupt balance at most times. Just because we were born into the throne does not mean we are deserving of it. He made us understand what it is like for the less fortunate, and whatever that we can provide, we do.” y/n said as she reminisced of that moment with her father.

“The king was a good man.” Sir Jeon agreed.

There was an inkling of sadness in y/n’s eyes, and Sir Jeon noticed it.

“What happened was certainly not your fault.” he confirmed, looking her in the eye.

She nodded, “Some people think otherwise.”

Sir Jeon did not know what to say next, and y/n sensed his awkward nature.

“I should be heading back, thank you for stopping to see me.” she said.

“Actually, princess, I was hoping to give you a ride back to the palace.” Sir Jeon said motioning to his horse.

“Oh, how very kind of you but I enjoy my walks back home. They give me peace of mind.”

“It would be no trouble at all to transport you back, princess. Are you certain?” he said concerned.

“Very much certain, Sir Jeon. You need not worry about me.” she said with a small laugh. She found it endearing how he always seemed to be concerned with her.

“Well, would you prefer an escort on your walk?” he suggested.

y/n thought for a moment, “No, I would not. However, I would love a companion.”

She held her arm out hoping that Sir Jeon would link it to hers, and when he caught her drift, he slowly interlocked one arm with y/n’s and his other hand guided his horse. Sir Jeon looked carefree, easy and happy to be there. y/n could not think of the last time she had been accompanied on her walk back to the palace.

“May I ask where you have been spending your time today, princess? You had seemed excited to leave this morning.”

You smiled as you thought back to your young friends. “I had made a trip to the orphanage. I make it a point to visit every week, however I failed to visit them last month due to certain responsibilities. It has been a while since I saw them, hence my excitement.”

Sir Jeon observed as y/n’s face lit up like a star as she talked about the children. She talked about their stories and their role-playing activities. There was an incident where her foot had landed painfully on a small, sharp rock. As she groaned in pain, the children failed to hold back their laughter, and soon y/n found herself laughing with them.

“When I am with them, it is as if all my troubles fade and I finally feel like myself.” y/n sighed.

“I understand what you mean. I have not felt like myself in what seems like ages.” Sir Jeon wondered. “It is very kind, and thoughtful of you to spend your time with them, princess. I can tell from your stories that they very much enjoy your company.”

“I can most definitely say the same for them.”

Sir Jeon admired y/n’s personality, as soon as he found out that she had one. She pursued art and was amazingly comfortable with children. There was more he wanted to know about the princess, his conscience was telling him that her traits did not end there.

“You mentioned that you do not feel like yourself, Sir Jeon? What is it that prevents you?” y/n asks.

Sir Jeon felt like he had so much to say, his entire heart to pour out to her. Yet when he tried to explain it, the words that he had rehearsed in his head to himself over years and years, suddenly found itself twisted and stuck.

“Well...it is rather difficult to explain.” Sir Jeon said confusedly.

y/n nodded, “It is not something you can quite put your finger on, isn’t it? It took me a while to figure mine out as well. My problem, Sir Jeon, is that all my life people have seen me as a princess. A girl with royal blood, a girl with power, a girl who confident and strong no matter what. Despite all that, they failed to see me as just, a girl. That is what I am, Sir Jeon, a girl, and so I try to live my life as just a girl from time to time because no matter what, I cannot throw away my title as princess. Hence, I spend my time at the orphanage with my little friends, I ride my horse on windy evenings, I pour the emotions of a girl into my art, I stare at the pond in my garden hoping to see life underneath the water, I read books because of my inquisitive nature, and I try to do what a girl would do. These things make me feel human. Most of the time, I find myself doing activities alone so that there is no space for an individual to say ‘Good morning, princess.’, ‘May I help you, princess?’, ‘Whatever you need, princess.’, none of that. The space is for me, myself, for y/n to be before anything else, an ordinary girl.”

Sir Jeon listened attentively and not only understood the words that came out of y/n’s mouth, but he understood her feelings. At such a young age, he was picked out to serve. He had scarce memories of his childhood, and what it was like to be a boy. He loved catching beetles in the garden, he enjoyed the feeling of carbon on his fingers as he sketched on paper, he relished in the warm and hearty feeling of a good lunch prepared by his mother, he missed dancing to music, singing his mother’s favourite songs, he missed laying his head in her lap and hearing her voice send him to sleep. He missed his father who told him he could achieve anything, he missed the nights he had playful sword fights with his friends and when he could dip his feet into the water and just relax. He missed being a boy.

“I must admit it is in my nature to be loyal and to guard you, princess. However, to me, you are heaps and bounds more than just a princess. I see a girl, taking her time to blossom into a beautiful woman. I see a girl with refined taste, with hobbies and interests, a girl with an enormous, brave, tender heart. No one can take that part of you away from yourself, my princess, and you must not let them. The part that makes you human is the most precious part of us all.”

Their conversation was long enough to sustain on the entire walk home. Sir Jeon felt comfort and familiarity in y/n’s feelings, and y/n felt that there was no one in this world that understood her better than Sir Jeon. As soon as y/n stepped into the palace, her handmaids were plucking her bags and items off of her and as she made eye contact with Sir Jeon, he sent her a knowing look and the two of them smiled at each other widely. They ascended the staircase together, continuing to talk about each others’ lives and their experiences.

“It is extremely questionable that we have not had many conversations before.” y/n said to him.

“I was told to stay out of your way, princess, even in the short time that I remain here. That does not mean I have not paid attention to you.”

y/n felt something warm rise up to her cheeks and she pressed the back of her hand against her skin. She realised that she was flushed in pink. Sir Jeon happened to take notice and a small, proud smirk forced its way onto his face.

“I have taken notice to you as well, mostly as a boy. I hear you were and currently are very talented in your field.” y/n said quickly trying to change the subject.

“I did the best I could for this family, and I always will.”

“And we have have always appreciated that.” y/n looked at him with a sense of gratefulness.

Sir Jeon stood staring at y/n for a few moments before she saw his eyes sparkle with admiration.

“You have gorgeous eyes princess, I remember it to be exactly like your mother’s.” Sir Jeon said softly.

y/n felt her heart melting, she looked at Sir Jeon as if she needed help because she knew not what to respond to him. She was touched, and utterly smitten. A gush of wind suddenly entered the palace blowing onto y/n’s soft face and she squinted, blinking multiple times when she realised there was something that had entered her eye. Sir Jeon looked worried and stood there not sure of how to help. A knight’s training does not prepare them for situations as such.

“Princess, may I help?” Sir Jeon asked.

“N-no need, do not fret about it.” y/n hesitated as she stood trying to rub that darned particle out of her eye.

Soon she felt her hands being removed from her face with a firm, yet gentle tug. She struggled to see with one eye, and she saw Sir Jeon in close proximity to her.

“Just try opening your eye, and when you do I am going to blow.”

“Blow?” y/n sounded confused. “Sir Jeon, really I-”

“Please listen, princess. Just do as I say.”

“I have it under control-”

“Open your eye, princess.” Sir Jeon said with a more demanding tone.

y/n faltered, and did as she was told. In a second, Sir Jeon blew quickly into her eye and the particle was carried away by his breath. y/n blinked a few times feeling a lot more comfortable. There was a tear sliding down her cheek and Sir Jeon quickly caught it with his thumb.

“You’re okay.” he mumbled as he smiled at her.

y/n looked at him for a while trying to process the events that had just occurred. In the next moment, they were giggling at each other like idiots, still maintaining the close proximity.

“Now that was something I had never experienced.” y/n said surprised.

“My mother would do it for me when I had something in my eye. It always worked.” Sir Jeon said smiling.

“Thank you, for saving my eye.” y/n laughed and Sir Jeon laughed with her.

“It was not much time, princess, but I absolutely enjoyed spending it with you.” Sir Jeon said as he took hold of her hand for the second time that day, and left a second kiss.

y/n bit her lip to control the colour on her cheeks and looked away.

“We could do this more often if you wanted to, Sir Jeon.” y/n said shamelessly.

He raised an eyebrow, amused with her proposal. y/n rolled her eyes and stomped her right foot on the ground.

“Stop making it seem like I am the only one who wants this, Sir Jeon.” y/n complained.

Sir Jeon’s eyebrows raised even higher at that and it elicited a grin from him.

“No need to get upset, princess. You know very well I would love to spend more time with you, therefore, will you join me on my morning walk at dawn tomorrow?” he said with a hopeful tone.

y/n pulled a rehearsed, contemplative expression on her face for longer than Sir Jeon desired. He felt her teasing behaviour and proceeded to mimic her actions. He stomped his right foot on the ground and crossed his arms.

“Stop making it seem like I am the only one who-alright, princess! I shall stop.” Sir Jeon laughed out loud as you playfully hit his arm. Briefly, you felt how sturdy and firm his muscles were, must have been a result from all the knight training.

“Say you’d love to join me.” Sir Jeon insisted as he took her hands in hers.

“You are definitely quite bold to be taking on such a tone with the princess.” y/n said teasingly, although she did quite like it when he was firm with her.

“I am known to be the bravest knight in town.” he playfully bragged and y/n could not hold herself back from laughing at his endearing and fun behaviour.

“What is this obstruction?” another voice questioned.

y/n and Sir Jeon tilted their heads upward seeing the prince on the top of the stairs.

“Brother.” y/n greeted.

“Your majesty.” Sir Jeon bowed.

“Have your conversation above or below, not in between. The stairs are not built as platforms for conversation.” Taehyung complained.

“My apologies, your majesty. I will be leaving soon.” Sir Jeon responded.

“Do not worry, Sir Jeon, there is no need to apologise. My brother has just woken from his short slumber and is unsurprisingly moody.” y/n spoke.

Taehyung sent her a small glare of disapproval and started ascending from the stairs.

“Sir Jeon, there is work to be done. Follow me into the main room, will you?”

“Right away, prince. My dear princess, I shall take my leave.” Sir Jeon bowed and y/n tried hard to repress her smile but it shone right through, making Sir Jeon smile back as well.

y/n mouthed a small ‘yes’ and Sir Jeon beamed at her before taking her hand for the third time that day, planting a soft kiss, and then returning to his duties. y/n was giddy and smiling to herself as she walked to her dressing room. She had known Sir Jeon for years but just within a week of speaking to one another, she realised she had grown to like him. Was he generally this polite, fun, and easy to talk to? In that case, he must have a long line of women knocking on his door. y/n did not care about them though, what mattered was that after many years, she was not alone. At the entrance of her dressing room she ran into Sir Park, he bowed in her presence and she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Please, Sir Park, you know I would always prefer to skip the formalities.”

Sir Park nodded in understanding and sighed, “I know you very well indeed, princess. I also know that you have recently acquainted with Sir Jeon?”

y/n was slightly surprised, “Ah yes, he is wonderful. It is nice to have him back, I’m sure.”

“Indeed, princess, he is liked by many here. He deserves good rest back at the palace, he serves us an awful lot out there, even if it kills him. I feel sympathy for what happened to him.” Sir Park said sadly.

“Sympathy? My god, did something terrible happen to him?”

Sir Park looked at y/n with surprise, “did Sir Kim not inform you? There was a fire in the village and Sir Jeon’s family home was subject to it. Their home burned to ashes and his family lost all their possessions, including his father’s memorabilia. It is deeply saddening. The prince has offered to help since Sir Jeon has been loyal and brave for our kingdom.”

y/n frowned upon hearing the news, and then it had occurred to her that Sir Jeon had visited town today, and he had mentioned the prince giving him some money to lessen some burden...

y/n gasped and looked at Sir Park, “But he seemed so fine-”

“A knight is supposed to be brave and strong, y/n. They should not show any sign of weakness.” Sir Park reminded her.

“But he has a tender heart, Sir Park. He does not deserve this.” y/n said sadly.

“There is only so much we can do, princess.”

“Do you think we can restore his father’s medals? I can talk to the prince.”

“That is a thoughtful idea, princess, but it won’t contain its sentimental value.”

y/n was thinking, she was determined to make Sir Jeon feel better. She knew not where this feeling came from and it was foreign to her, but it felt right.

“We could make a plaque, something to commemorate his father’s service over the years, don’t you think that holds sentimental value?” y/n suggested.

“I am sure he will be delighted. If you convince the prince, he can get it done by tomorrow.”

“Will you stand by me, Sir Park?” y/n asked hopefully.

“Always, dear princess.”

y/n knocked on the door of the main room with Sir Park next to her. Taehyung was sitting at the table, and Sir Jeon must have left since he was nowhere to be seen. Taehyung turned around and spotted his sister with her sidekick. He sighed and returned to his original position.

“Can I help you two?”

“Your majesty, the princess would like to have a word.” Sir Park bowed.

“Brother,” y/n started out slowly as she sat on the chair opposite him. “I have been informed about a recent fire in the village.”

The prince nodded, “Sir Jeon and his family have been affected. Not to worry, I have provided him with the funds to rebuild his home.”

“Yes, that is wonderful, Taehyung, however, the more pressing issue is that Sir Jeon lost his father’s medals and awards in the fire. Those were of sentimental value to him, Sir Park has confirmed it to be so. I would like to request a special plaque to be made in honour of the previous Sir Jeon and his contributions to the kingdom. I need your help to do that.”

Taehyung sighed, “y/n your idea is thoughtful however it is not really necessary.”

“If we only did things that were necessary the world would not be half as good as it is now, brother. I plead to you, I would like to get this done for their family to show my gratitude for their loyal service. It would not take much effort on our part, would it?” y/n persuaded.

The prince looked at her and then at Sir Park. He contemplated the idea for a while and then huffed.

“I can request for one, it can be done by tomorrow. But know this y/n,” Taehyung said seriously.

“I am doing this for Sir Jeon and his entire bloodline of men who have sacrificed their lives to serve us. Not at all for you.” he finished.

y/n nodded and looked down, feeling the familiar ache in her chest she stood up quickly and regained her composure. “That is more than enough, brother. Thank you.” and with that she retreated to her bedroom hoping for an even better tomorrow.

#bts x you #jungkook fics #bts fanfiction #jungkook fanfiction #bts au #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #jungkook smut #jungkook angst #romance #kim taehyung #knight!jungkook #princess!reader #short story #bts imagines #jungkook imagines #jungkook fluff

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foxymoxynoona · 3 years

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(1/3) Belle & Sasha are Exasperating anon here (BASE anon?): thanks for replying! It's so interesting to see how you view your responsibility to readers as including protecting them from perceived slights in the comments! Tbh as a reader-writer I see comments as extremely optional engagement for me let alone my readers bc that's content that is unmoderated and untagged, the wild west. But us neurodivergent folks have to get good at dealing w places far crueler than fic comment sections anyway

2/3) BASE anon: + I do think saying ‘X is annoying’ is a fine way to express frustration w a character or narrative BUT I think a fundamental difference in how we view writing stories is I don't believe fiction should be didactic or provide a how-to on recovery, and that's fine! that’s not what I’m interested in, nor do I project on Belle’s experience but clearly some of your readers do and have diff needs eg the very heated response to my last ask where I was accused of wanting JK to myself!

3/3) BASE anon: Lol maybe it needs to be said that I’m not out here thinking I’m ‘better’ than Belle (a fictional character...) for my ego or badmouthing her bc I think I'll marry JK? So in a way I do understand your pov now because there are apparently readers who have very different expectations of your fic than me. This is getting too long so I'll leave it here. Have a great one foxy!

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My engagement hasn't really been a chivalric need to protect anyone from anything. I always respond to every ask I get (unless it just feels trolling). I do like to discuss and explain the themes i write about, especially because I receive a lot of comments like "I never knew this! or this is beyond my experience! or I never thought about this before!" People want to talk to me about those things, which are often things I don't think people talk about enough, so we talk. I like critical thought and learning about other people's experiences, and readers share so much of themselves with me in response to my stories! It's incredible! I am restored when I get comments that are like "oh geez, I thought I was alone! But I really identify with this and I never see this represented!"

In most cases, I refrain from telling anyone they have misunderstood a character or misunderstood my story, because I think people can read a story however they want and take from it what they want and I only have so much power to actually get my intended message across. People read stories for different purposes, and expect different things from stories. I think all "purposes" of stories are great. I actually find it really satisfying to see when people respond differently to the same scene because human experience is so vast and it means I've (hopefully) managed to write something that has depth and emotional weight.

However I do like to clarify with readers when their expectations are not aligned with the story I'm writing, especially if they send me critical or negative remarks about how I'm writing a story that just isn't going to align with what they're looking for, because I don't want to waste their time or frankly, my own. It's emotionally draining to get negative comments from readers who have ignored tags, warnings, and author's notes and now are unhappy that you're doing the thing you said you were doing. I didn't set out to write instruction manuals about recovering from trauma, but I also didn't set out to write stories that would appeal necessarily to what media presents as "mainstream." I'm just writing what I want to read, that tackle some of the problems I am tired of seeing in the shows and books I consume.

The thing that's honestly missing from some of these comments that I wish was there is analysis. There was an early comment that said JK needed to stop apologizing for things that Isabella made up in her mind. I broke down all the apologies in the chapter trying to understand what they meant, and couldn't see it. If someone is having a negative response but doesn't really want to discuss or dig in on why/where that's coming from/etc., then I'm a bit at a loss on the response they're expecting. And if they aren't expecting a response, what was the purpose of sending me a direct message that they're unhappy? If they don't want to talk about it with me but came from ao3 to my blog to send me a message, what's the reason they did that? Maybe I should just ignore things more but I've tried to view these as opportunities for thoughtful discussion.

There are readers thinking critically about character motivations and actions and context and that is awesome, and I don't mind having difficult, loaded conversations about those. It’s not like Isabella’s behavior is being presented as happy, healthy, and final here! A lot of people send me reactions without much context and I can ignore those or I can try to tease out why they are feeling that way, so we can have a discussion about it. Maybe it makes someone think differently about something they've never understood. Maybe it makes someone decide they just don't like a character and this story is a waste of their time. Maybe there's something I've written wrong or badly or mistakenly in my story, something that didn't land the way I intended.

To your point about the wild west: It really is. I used to have to moderate social media for my job and I was so glad to stop that. Now I could definitely ignore more comments, but I feel like responding to the positive and ignoring the critical isn't what I want either, especially when I am intentionally writing challenging things I want people to think critically about. So kinda damned if I do, damned if I don't.

OKKKK sorry this was even longer than yours! Like I said... I like discussion and details!

#asks #amended #mywriting #myao3 #anonymous

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victorious-hypersnakes · 3 years

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“A negative reaction in certain quarters to The Queen’s Gambit was inevitable, given the current political atmosphere. The popular Netflix series, based on the 1983 novel with the same title, ignores identity politics in its portrayal of a young woman’s rise to the top of the chess world.

In the Washington Post, Monica Hesse—who has weighed in foully in the #MeToo witch-hunt—summed up her view in a November 25 headline: “The Queen’s Gambit, a period drama that erases sexism from 1960, is the best fantasy show of the year.” Carina Chocano in the New York Times (“I Want to Live in the Reality of The Queen’s Gambit,” December 2) also asserts that a story “in which a female character succeeds in a man’s world without being harassed, assaulted, abused, ignored, dismissed, sidelined, robbed or forgotten” is a “fantasy.”

Hostile comments from such sources are a form of high praise. More about these reviews later.

One of the aspects of The Queen’s Gambit that makes the series effective is its avoidance of a didactic approach. As we have already noted, it has no simplistic villains or caricatures. The series does not begin with a message to hammer home, but realistically allows some important themes to emerge from the narrative itself.

A self-evident theme is that of young Beth Harmon’s success in a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by chess players who are men. The Queen’ s Gambit, however, does not place the issue of gender front and center. Instead it shows Beth’s emergence, not only as a chess champion, but also, as a rounded and wiser human being.

She struggles with the tremendous psychological trauma that comes with the loss of her family, and the particular circumstances that led to her becoming an orphan. The strict Christian orphanage in which she is placed is no help. While there, however, she meets an older girl, Jolene, as well as the building janitor, Mr. Shaibel. She finds a kind of salvation in chess.

This story, unusual but very authentic, cuts across the current orthodoxy in which every subject is depicted in terms of race and gender. Beth cannot and does not achieve her goal without assistance. Her supporters include men as well as women, Russians as well as Americans, the younger as well as older generations. Jolene, who is African American, is one of Beth’s strongest advocates. In the final episode, when she insists on lending Beth the money to travel to Moscow for the world championship competition, she says, “that’s what family does.”

Then there is Mr. Shaibel, who first introduces Beth, a withdrawn and traumatized nine-year-old, to the game of chess. Again, in the final episode, the bond between the older man and the young girl is movingly expressed after Shaibel’s death, when Beth, who has completely lost touch with him over the years, finds among his belongings at the orphanage a huge batch of newspaper clippings that reveal how he followed every step in her chess career. She breaks down in tears, and later, giving a magazine interview in Moscow, she insists above all that Mr. Shaibel be remembered as the man who first taught and helped her on the road to her future.

Other support for Beth comes from a number of young men who have been chess rivals, and who have come to respect and admire her for her determination and the growing warmth and generosity beneath her sometimes gruff exterior. This also finds expression in the final episode.

One can easily imagine the gnashing of teeth in upper-middle-class circles produced by these portrayals. At the same time, while The Queen’s Gambit goes counter to some of the current trends in popular culture, it immediately struck a chord with audiences and has become the most popular streaming series on Netflix. With 62 million views within its first month, it has been widely commented on, sparked a boom in the sale of chess sets and seen wide social media identification with its protagonist.

It is in this context that the Washington Post and the New York Times have published very similar “appreciations” of The Queen’s Gambit in the last two weeks. Both writers are clearly disturbed by the show, but they disguise their antagonism. Instead, they semi-facetiously choose to reinterpret the story as fantasy—escapist entertainment that has nothing at all to do with the real world.

Hesse in the Washington Post calls the show escapist, since it has “no women in peril” and “no skeezy men.” Though she claims to welcome the escapism, her descriptions betray her actual feelings. Her depiction of Mr. Shaibel is particularly revealing: “Beth meets an odd, reclusive janitor in her orphanage’s basement. An experienced viewer wonders if he’s about to molest her; instead he introduces her to the chessboard.” Later, Hesse continues, one of Beth’s rivals loans her strategy books and another provides her with an air mattress when she stays overnight, rather than assaulting or sexually harassing her.

All this is nothing more than a flight of fancy, according to Hesse. “And it’s at least some of why—even if viewers haven’t put their fingers on it—the show is so dang satisfying. … It’s revisionist history. It would be a wonderful future.”

Chocano’s approach in her New York Times Magazine piece closely resembles Hesse’s. She too expresses astonishment that Mr. Shaibel, “rather than molest her [Beth], teaches her to play chess.” According to Chocano, the circumstances depicted in The Queen’s Gambit are “so vanishingly rare that it comes across as utopian fiction.” This critic says she welcomes it—as long as we understand it as a daydream. This type of “of meritocratic, gender-agnostic fiction is desperately needed. … Nothing could be further from our current reality, but who needs our current reality?”

The claims that the series is appreciated because it is fantasy are disingenuous, to say the least. The show has struck a chord precisely because it is not seen as utopian fiction. The book was not a fantasy novel, and neither is its adaptation for film.

In the eyes of the upper-middle-class #MeToo campaigners, the relations between the sexes simply boil down to warfare. Men are generally rapists and monsters, with a few honorable exceptions. This is not an exaggeration on our part—look at their own words. According to Hesse, “an experienced viewer” would rationally expect that an older man, working as a janitor in an orphanage, would molest a nine-year-old child—in his own workplace, no less! And it is pure fantasy, on the other hand for this “odd” worker—who perhaps has three strikes against him, being white, male and old—to be impressed with the native ability and curiosity of the girl, and to be convinced to show her the game.

What about the claim that The Queen’s Gambit is fantasy because it ignores the problems facing women? This is also false. Beth faces enormous obstacles. She is not uniformly welcomed. She faces curiosity, disbelief and some condescension when she shows up for tournaments. The problem for the Post and Times writers is that the problems Beth faces do not include sexual harassment, which, according to them, must always and everywhere top the list.

There are other ways in which The Queen’s Gambit does not ignore the real world, including the issues facing women in the 1950s and ’60s. Some of Beth’s high school classmates in Lexington, Kentucky are pressured into early motherhood, or jobs that don’t allow for their fuller development. Her adoptive mother Alma must deal with a loveless marriage, a husband who deserts her and general unhappiness that encourages a drinking problem.

Above all, The Queen’s Gambit takes in a wider view of the world, including the working class. The world of Mr. Shaibel or Jolene (who they don’t mention at all) is not one that interests our upper-middle-class critics. Nor do they take note of the Soviet chess players, or of the chess fans, mostly women, who display increasing enthusiasm as Beth exits the tournament after successive victories.

How is it possible to watch this program and not be moved by Beth’s development, especially by the closing episode, when Beth realizes the impact and the heroic character of Mr. Shaibel? This is a real turning point for the young woman, more important than her chess triumphs up to then. And it leads to and is mirrored in the closing scene, when Beth spurns the State Department and its plans to use her fame for the purposes of the Cold War, instead returning to the street to meet and fraternize with her admiring Soviet chess players, most of them past retirement age.

The Post and Times critics note that Beth faces few obstacles, but there is another part of the story that they no doubt find utopian and in a sense dangerous, even if they don’t acknowledge it, and that is the unselfishness of Beth, as well as Jolene and Mr. Shaibel.

How could Shaibel teach a little girl to play chess? How could Jolene give Beth the money to travel to Moscow? How could Beth tell the State Department chaperone she is not interested in a dinner at the White House? This aspect, the rejection of the prevailing ethos of selfishness and wealth accumulation, is bound up with the issue of identity politics, directed as it is not toward the fight for equality and against discrimination, but rather toward personal advancement and power. The upper-middle-class critics instinctively recoil from this theme, and try to ignore it as best they can.

Young people see their experiences and their hopes embodied in the characters on screen. They exhibit a growing and healthy distrust of the claims for gender and racial “diversity” even while the status quo remains firmly entrenched. We repeat, the appearance and reception of The Queen’s Gambit are indeed hopeful signs of things to come.”

...You know every so often, the WSWS spits pure fire.

#the queen's gambit

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mswyrr · 5 years

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I really liked that Mike and El are kids coping with recovering from trauma (and in El’s case extreme long-term abuse as well) and that the way they were getting on a path that could go to a weird/unhealthy place wasn’t a sign of evil or something they couldn’t work their way out of. They just needed some time with the people around them who care and love them both. Just some time to decompress, figure things out.

And that Joyce and Hopper are two adults with miles of bad road in the rearview mirror. Truly soul-wrenching horror and loss. A lot of quiet misery and endurance too.

They are not shiny people, they do not have that new car smell.

They also know each other very well by now. Some of that bad road was road they traveled together, keeping each other alive and sane. Earning each other’s trust the hard way.

So when those two people choose to express their frustration, trauma, suppressed hot pants for each, and general ARGH at the whole situation by bickering... ffs, this shit is happening in a specific context. They know each other; specifically Joyce knows Hopper and we know Joyce and that she wouldn’t react the way she does if she didn’t trust him implicitly. She would handle things very differently if she felt unsafe or like he was taking it to a place she wasn’t willing to go with him.

Sometimes I found the way Joyce was (especially in S1) like a boy’s fantasy of the endlessly devoted loving mother and not allowed much beyond that kind of sexist. Though she’s been well written throughout so I didn’t have a particular problem with it. Most moms really would move heaven and earth for their kids.

And in S2 she got a bit more. But here we got to see even more than that? She and Hop are both 40somethings with a lot of damage and they’re tired and they just want some love in life but they’re scared and it’s complicated. Hoping for love can hurt more than resigning yourself to living without it. It holds out the heartbreaking prospect that maybe you can have something good.

But it’s something you know you will inevitably lose and ache over.

They both know that having love means pain. They cannot delude themselves, at this point, into the naive belief that loss and pain won’t come along in equal or greater measure. And it’s hard sometimes to have the heart to keep going when you know that.

Which is where Joyce is at - and a place Hopper understands.

Is it all just lonely tv dinners from here on out until they put me in the ground? And, given how much loving hurts, isn’t maybe that better?

Because they both know exactly what opening your heart does to you. It brings you love. And all the pain you cannot ever separate from it, because that’s not how life works.

They both had some meaty stuff to wrestle with, beneath the humor. And Joyce got more narrative focus as herself, a person with wants and fears and a future, rather than primarily in her role to others as Mom. She and Hopper were both as much defined by their parental roles and the romance as each other (and their grief for lost loved ones)... it was cool and well balanced IMO.

And the fact that folks, including Evan Rachel Wood, have turned the media convo to some bs like a Tumblr anti irl just makes me so tired. I get that Twitter encourages that and, like, whatever, we all have our own subjective opinions. But this framing of it means that Joyce’s *full story* and Winona Ryder’s work is now going to be flattened into “Is this dynamic abusive or not abusive?”

Like women are beings who just exist in this state, like Schrodinger’s Cat, of either being Abused or Not Abused. And the point of women characters is to find out which! Like that is our only story, the only question our stories should explore... (and then answer in very flat, simple, didactic ways so everyone learns a very important, clear, so simple it’s pretty much useless lesson.)

It’s so tiresome. Making everything with women characters about whether they’re sending a bad or good message or something by what they do or other people do near them is really really limiting.

It implicitly argues that women characters exist to be moral icons rather than interesting and complicated and tell us something about what it means to be human. That their relationships exist as a didactic instruction guides rather than doing what fiction is supposed to do, which is evoke emotion and provide insight and catharsis.

This isn’t just a case of priorities being put over each other in different ways, but of one priority (a demand that all female character’s stories function as moral instruction) being antithetical to the other (complicated female characters in their own specific stories).

Joyce and Hopper went to a place that was the 40something version of the kind of “not actually bad yet, but don’t keep going this route it could get bad” stuff with El and Mike. Human beings do all kinds of imperfect, messed up stuff that thankfully doesn’t cross the line for anyone involved and is part of a bigger relationship that works for them.

And I think that’s good storytelling.

I liked that it’s a show about kids coming of age where the writers don’t forget that humans actually never stop growing and changing. And that it’s always a struggle, the constant act of becoming that is living your life - but, like Hop’s letter so beautifully said, the hurt is good. It means you’re alive and living, not trying to crawl into the grave early.

#stranger things #joyce byers #jopper #negativity cw #stranger things 3 #stranger things spoilers #my meta

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en241 · 4 years

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Wednesday, 22 April

Extra Textra

Here are your Questions & Comments on The Sweater. But first, my assignment for Friday:

Please watch The Sweater again. This time, instead of watching for the maturation plot, consider the identity problem (the adult’s recognition that they were once someone different, as well as the child’s recognition that adults are different from who they are -- and that someday they too will be an adult).

Also, try try try to look beyond the didactic reading to the subversive reading; beyond the lesson reading to the message reading. Flip the burger. What if the kid is actually the mature one? No really. The one with fresh batteries in his bullshit detector. (You’ll enjoy the story much more the second time! Have fun!)

Now, on to the comments:

I thought that by the end of the film, the kid would learn a moral lesson like what his mother told him but he didn't. It just ended with him in the church praying that his sweater got eaten by moths. It felt a bit like a letdown but I understand since kids are like that. He is very immature while the mother is the opposite. She is very mature. This makes sense, as adults are usually the mature ones. The kid acted like a typical child. He didn't care about morals he just wanted the right sweater. I think if the film extended beyond 10 minutes, we would see the child eventually mature and realize that what the mother said was correct.

This was definitely cheerier!I can appreciate how well the introduction is able to portray the overall concept despite it not being in English.Like in Treasure Island there is this idea of a role model or someone to aspire too. Where Long John Silver and Billy Bones were not necessarily healthy role models for a young boy, this hockey player seems much more innocent.Not going to lie, the part where the priest comes in to play was a little weird and kind of did not fit with the narrative in my opinion.It reminds me of the discussion we had about "Where the Wild Things Are" and the idea of teaching lessons through narrative. While WTWTA does so in a less obvious way, "The Sweater" is obvious in its message. The idea of respect and consideration comes into play when the mother explains that if the boy would not wear the blue sweater that Mr. Eaton's feelings would be hurt. The boy is punished for if he does not wear the sweater just as much as if he does which is where this story kind of loses me. The church scene comes off as a kind of easy way out.A salvation story maybe, I don't know this one was a little odd for me.

I believe that was a very good illustrated video. I really enjoyed the story line as well. My first reaction to the video was this kid is just like everyone else. They love the game and love the player. Once the video continued it seemed he was ungrateful. The player everyone looks up to actually took the time to send him something. He did not want the sweater because he did not fit in with the rest of the kids. He did not value what he received because it was not what he wanted. The kid having a blue sweater also showed a form of discrimination. They did not let him play in the game because of the color of his sweater. They did not consider who gave it to him and how much that person meant to him. In relation to our maturation plot, I feel he never made it to that second house. He got lost in the woods and is still trying to find his way.

In watching this video, that character never matured. He still in the end refused to be happy with what he had. In a way, this is what happens in many children's books. Children are never happy with what they are given and just wish everything would work out for them. This is similar to "Where the Wild Things Are." Max just got his way in the end. He was not happy about what happened and what he was given, so he left. When he come back, he was the same as before and was even given his meal after all he had done. In the end, this character is not maturing. He is staying near the very low levels on the mature-meter.

Moving onto the short story on youtube there's a lot of things happening with this boy, but I think this short story mostly relates to the secret garden because of the effect of negative thinking. I didn't come to this conclusion until he got the wrong sweater and spoke a lot of negativity into existence which brought him a lot of trouble the following time wearing the sweater like getting benched, getting a penalty, breaking his hockey stick then getting yelled at by his mom. His mom said “if you make up your mind before you try it you wont go very far in life,” and “its not what you put on your back its what you put in your head.” I’m stuck between feeling like she’s a wise lady and meant well by writing the letter and getting her son the sweater, and feeling like she noticed how unhappy he was and she could’ve written another letter so he could get the right one but if that happened then he would never learn.

"The Sweater" is a story about a young boy who started out being a part of a group of boys all wearing the same red white and blue hockey sweater. The group mentality ruled and each individual couldn't see their identity beyond the group. When the boy received the new sweater and was forced to wear it, marked a changing point in his life. He had live with the embarrassment and disgrace of not being like the rest of the group. He had to mature so that he could break away from the group mentality and find his own individual identity. The mother in the story the driving force because she refused to to return the sweater and made him wear it. You can't get angry and lose your temper. Growing up means taking what you have and learning from it. At the end this boy's efforts were symbolically rewarded by a handshake from the treasured hockey player.

Well, the video left me at a cliff hanger. I feel as if the lesson wasn't executed very well and had a very abrupt ending . I am not entirely sure what exactly the lesson was, there could've been a few such as teaching children the importance of not idolizing objects, a healthy balance between your thoughts and your friends. But I do also agree that this could teach adults a lesson, at the end of the video this big scary lady tells him to go to the church and pray for forgiveness and he prays for his shirt to be eaten up by bugs. Sometimes as adults we do a lot of finger-pointing and give a lot of chores and we don't really get that full instruction on how a child should go about it and why which creates a huge gap leading into a place for miscommunication.

(that’s actually the town priest, wearing his surplice)

After watching the short film "The Sweater" I would like to address the concept of a maturation plot in relation to the short film's storyline. The film portrayed the boy as one who is ungrateful with the gift he received from his mother. This is definitely a realistic possibility for children who do not get what they want. As the story progresses he becomes so concerned with what others will think about him because he did not maintain the socially accepted appearance. This is also a reality for many in society. Just when I thought he would go to church and realize that he was being ungrateful, he instead prayed for the sweater to be taken from him. He failed in his own maturation. This is why I do not see the story having any sort of maturation plot.

The boy did continuously look up to an adult figure as his idol however he did not act as an adult but rather maintained his childish ways. He did not display any sort of personal growth throughout the story but considering his age (10), this is expected.

The plotline of the story set the viewer up to think that after the boy went to church to pray for his sins, but then twisted it and didn't actually resolve the problem at hand. I thought this was interesting because most of the children's literature we have covered resulted in growing, maturing and/or learning some type of lesson throughout the story. I also found it interesting that throughout all of the material we have covered, the children have looked up to and admired an adult figure of some sort and aspired to be like them (coming of age/growing into an adult) and this still reigns true for this story as well (a common theme throughout each reading).

I think the short film was good and the accent was a little hard to understand in the beginning. It seems to me like someone walking into a high school, wearing a rivals team jersey then being shunned. There is a lesson in it and I caught on. I wonder why children shun others, even if it is a rival. Everyone should still talk to you, because it is your preference on what you like. No one should discourage you from something you love.

In this story, the children all wanted to be someone else. Often times children want to be someone famous and well known. This is what the children do in this story. They are looking for a form of identity that all children look for. They never understand that they are all different and that even though they can all be the same person their is nothing wrong with being different. Children look for identity and when they find it, they cling to it. This is what the main character did. The adults in the story have a form of identity but they are not fully aware of it yet. Some laugh at the child for his reaction to the sweater. It shows that even when you become an adult, you still struggle with identity. The lesson in the story at first seems to be don't be different and that children often struggle in accepting that they will grow and change. The reader would learn the lesson of how people will always try to be like others and society often ridicules people for this, but also ridicules them for being different.

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curioussubjects · 5 years

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Souls and the issue of Free Will and Morality; or, Learning How to Read with Supernatural

Ok, first off, this post is partly a lot the fault of @occamshipper and their post full of food for thought, which made me start thinking about what Supernatural is doing with the chain of meaning irt presence/absence -- soul/no soul -- good/evil -- light/dark, which all goes back to Chuck/Amara. I’m going to save you all the trouble of having to know semiotics and post-Structuralism to grasp where I’m going with this by saying that what you need to understand is as follows: binary oppositions as creators of meaning Matter (even if we dislike them), we tend to value one component of a binary over the other, meaning (signification) understood as oppositional is not as sound as understanding it as supplemental. Now, back to Supernatural. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the show is very concerned with how we create meaning, or how we read. Between the Winchester Gospels and the 200th episode, I believe that take is fairly well-established. As such, the show is interested in exploring how we interpret its core themes, and, here, I’m particularly interested in pointing out that Supernatural isn’t being didactic. We’ve seen through the seasons that the show has struggled with its own creation of meaning and how it represents its themes. For the sake of this post I’m focusing on two of those themes: free will, morality, and how those are impacted by the soul. But more than that, SPN seems to really be trying to tell us something about interpretation.

More under the cut for length.

Initially, SPN seemed to be putting forth the argument of your run-of-the-mill light/dark, good/evil, narrative via the oppositional relationship between Chuck and Amara. He’s light, she’s dark, he’s Everything, she’s Nothing, he creates (souls), she consumes. There’s an argument to be made here on the gendered implication of this particular chain of meaning, but that’s its own essay. For my purposes, I want to note that the narrative arc of season 11 is predicated on us agreeing that God and the Darkness are oppositional forces and that one is good while the other is not. In this first moment, we are supposed to agree that presence, as exemplified by God is Good and Creative, while the absence embodied by Amara is Bad and Destructive.

The narrative underscores this relationship between Chuck/Amara by returning to the idea of what happens when a person loses their soul. We remember Sam’s bout of soulessness. He became True Neutral, but he didn’t go off into murderous immorality. If anything, he was invested in ends justify the means when it came to hunting. He was still invested in some form of good vs.evil dichotomy. Likewise, we see, in season 11 different examples of what happens to people when they lose their soul: some do become violent, others are could, and others still cling to their memories of having a soul to hold on to what is Right and Good. I’m going to put a pin on this for a second, but keep it in mind.

However, the story season 11 is telling is not the story of opposition. Instead, season 11 argues that an oppositional lens is what is actually destructive. It’s not Amara who presents the danger to creation. It’s the decay of Amara and Chuck’s complementary relationship that almost causes everything to end. It’s not until Amara and Chuck come together that creation stabilizes and continues to exist. In fact, creation can no more exist without Amara than it can without Chuck, which mean that our original oppositional reading is catastrophic. Indeed, misreading the True connection between Chuck and Amara (and all adjacent values) leads to narrative death, and, if that’s so, we must reassess how we look at other binaries -- presence/absence, soul/no soul, light/dark.

It’s easy to want to look at season 11 and think it’s a matter of good vs. evil, but its point is not that, not really. In fact, if I had to give season 11 a slogan it would be “It’s not that simple!” -- and SPN has never been to keen on letting black and white thinking go ultimately unchallenged. One of the larger questions looming here is: have we been looking at a lack of souls wrong this whole time? If our show values agency and free will above destiny, then a soul appears to matter much less as a compass of moral behavior, which is super counter-intuitive, I know. So, remember earlier when I mentioned the variety of behavior we’ve seen on people without souls? Here’s why it matters: classing all those characters as "evil" is reductive. And, perhaps, as destructive as reading Amara as such, too. Even reading these characters as "voids," or emblematic of "absence" seems wrong. The best example we have that contradicts the idea of soullessness being Wrong and Evil is Donatello. His lack of a soul doesn’t negate his rational decision to be Good via his "what would Mr. Rogers do" approach to figuring out morality. It’s worth noting also that Jack, despite his behavioral shift, is still concerned with choosing good over evil. He still cares. There’s a strange undercurrent of how obvious the status of Jack’s soul is, which is driven primarily by our favorite concerned dads Sam, Dean, and Cas. But how obvious is it really? Was it obvious with Sam? With anyone else? I think they point is that it wasn’t. Season 14 is a culmination of season 11′s concern with how do we read morality and our assumptions on the value of a soul.

So, if what we end up with is not a clear marker of evilness, what do we have? What we see is that the absence of a soul leads to an urgency of one's thoughts about good deeds vs. evil deeds and what those actually are. How do we measure good? Evil? And does the lack of a soul mean one is always already in danger of evilness? Supernatural pushes against easy reading by encouraging the viewers, and its characters, to ask themselves interpretive questions. Or, rather, SPN wants us to think about how we choose to read it.

The end goal here seems to me to be, once again, the importance of choice. One of our soulless characters (I forget his name, but it’s that one guy who turned himself in because he was afraid of killing people) offers us a handy nugget (and I paraphrase severely): just because I don’t feel something is wrong doesn’t mean I don’t remember that I should feel that. The argument here is that choice and morality don’t need a soul to function. Good deeds are good because of our feelings, sure, but they are also rationally superior. To be good is the thing one should do because it simply IS. Supernatural here not only presents us with the importance of free will, but with the importance of choosing correctly.

Others, myself included, have pointed out the echoes of 6.20 in next week’s episode, and I want to note here that that comparison is actually super important for SPN’s argument. The question of morality and choice recalls the tension in season 6: is a choice made out of good intent with evil results good or evil? The answer on the surface points to evil, but, again, that’s reductive. What we actually see is that choices made with good intent that lead to harmful results are less evil than they are misguided. They are a misreading of a situation. This particular problem has been a major aspect of Cas' character (and his relationship with Dean lbr). The whole point of season 6 was that Cas chose wrong and he should've come to his true family (Dean, Sam, and Bobby), so they could figure out what the right choice was. While I focus on Cas here, we’ve seen this problem of ends justify the means mishap happen with Dean and Sam, too, and those always lead to destructive results. Again, our problem is one of interpretation as a maker of choice. Season 6 tells us it’s all about the souls, but, as we’ve seen, that statement is loaded.

Season 14 is asking if we learned our lesson. If we recognized the mistakes made in season 6, and the lesson taught in season 11. What do we interpret when looking at seemingly oppositional binaries? How do we choose to interpret them? Part of what I think the show is getting at is the value of interpretation and morality as a community effort. TFW is at it’s best when they come together to make a choice about a course of action. To go it alone leads to dissolution. Likewise, we see that dynamic embodied in Chuck and Amara (with cosmic stakes). Season 14 nails the difficulty of morality as individual effort, as a simple matter of identifying which value is good and which is evil. SPN is inviting us to look closer, to be critical, and to understand that oppositions are never as constructive as complementary or supplementary readings. Opposition has far too many potholes. In that vein, the show also encourages us to view reading, as well as being good, as a collaborative act: one that depends on togetherness rather than apartness, or presence rather than absence in the interpretive process.

#supernatural #spn #spn meta #supernatural meta #spn spoilers #my stuff #meta #OOF #idk what do you guys think

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raggedyblue · 5 years

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WILLIAM, Sherlock,Scott, OF BASKERVILLE

Accepting the fact that Sherlock BBC is, among other things, a summa and reworking of all (let's say many because all would be honestly impossible) the previous adaptations of Doyle's creature, we cannot ignore THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Defined here (x) brilliantly a medieval AU because in other way it really couldn’t be done, considering that being a novel it is indeed a work of fiction (fiction). Furthermore, we can’t ignore how Eco was a fan of the sleuth, he wrote also essays about him and also edited a collection of pieces by various authors about the deductive method of Sherlock Holmes. The book is THE SIGN OF THREE, and this should already get our attention and I think that the Moffits have paid some attention to the Italian scholar (the book is about logic and semiotics and that are not exactly my cup of tea, so I will avoid talking about it further so as not making me more ridiculous than it normally does, but you have to know that it exists). This is to say that probably Eco himself wouldn’t be too offended by being placed among fan fiction writers. But even this in the end is totally irrelevant, because as he himself says, once a book is complete, the author disappears, and the relationship that is created is between the reader and the work. The reader is free and obliged to draw his interpretations.

Obviously THE NAME OF THE ROSE is much more than a medieval transposition of Sherlock Holmes, it is a treatise on theology, philosophy and semiotics. A compendium of medieval history and an allegory of Italy in the 1970s, a set of puzzles. The readings that can be made of the book are many and this was precisely the intention of the author.

But obviously what interests us is Sherlock Holmes (always).

The protagonist of the book is called Guglielmo/William of Baskerville. The names are important, and this is a lesson that the Moffits have learned well. Stat rosa pristina nomina, nomina nuda tenemus. We may never come to know the true essence of things, the truth maybe is unknowable, but at least we have the names and possess their knowledge. William (don’t ring a bell?) as William of Ockham . There's a lot of Ockham in Holmes's method. Occam's Razor for which for the solution of a problem the simplest solution must be applied among the existing ones, it is easily applicable to the Holmesian method. Once the impossible has been eliminated (cut off like a razor) the improbable (the complicated, implausible and unlikely solutions), even if unlikely, what remains, must be the truth. And the search of truth is a constant throughout the book, the truth about the crimes of the Abbey, but above all about the Truth as an absolute concept. A truth that, as William says, is liberty (THOB), but which escapes to the point at the end we/Adso/William are doubting its existence as an absolute concept. The William in the book is blatantly Sherlockian. English in the first place, higher than the norm, but which appears even higher as he’s very thin. He has a sharp and slightly hooked nose, his face is elongated with an expression that is both acute and alert. Very agile, endowed with inexhaustible energy in moments of activity, which alternated with others of complete immobility. We see him several times completely lost in his thoughts, with his eyes closed and his mouth following inaudible speeches. He is described as being able to remain completely still on his bed, with vacant and silent eyes for long periods. Who describes him to us wonders if by chance it was not possible that this state was induced by mysterious substances, and at least once we see Guglielmo chewing mysterious leaves that help him to think. Easily inclined to give up sleep and food if the case dictates.

He has an extraordinary delicacy of touch if necessary. He is a man capable of fantasizing about a future in which boats will be faster and will go without the strength of men or sailing, a world in which flying and submarine vehicles will exist, because the things that are not there yet are not said not there will be. I would venture, not even that much, and call him a man out of his time.

A normally mild man, he can become brusque and often, to bring an interrogation to a successful end, he takes advantage of a moment of weakness for the interrogated. This is one of those traits that I don't remember being canonical but that we certainly see in Sherlock BBC.

At talking about him is his young disciple, his blogger scribe. All we know of William and the affairs of the Abbey we know thanks to a manuscript that speaks of a manuscript which is then the manuscript of William's disciple. How many holmesian pastiche use the expedient of the rediscovered manuscript? I lost the calculation. This young disciple is called wADSOn, he looks to his teacher with affection and unspeakable wonder, and with his observations that seem irrelevant leads Guglielmo on the way to solution (light conductor). He admits that once his master gives an explanation of his deductions, everything seems so clear that he regrets not having understud it alone. The function of Aso from the poetic point of view is to put a distance between the author and what is narrated. It is not the author who writes the story, but a young Benedictine from the 1300s. The narrator is young and still unaware and amazed at the things of the world, so when he tells about them he doesn't do it in a didactic tone, but as if it were something new for he as it is for us. Adso records events without completely understanding them, and this helps the less educated reader (I believe 98%) to navigate between these complex pages. If there is something he doesn't understand, it is probably something that Adso did not understud before him. This kind of trick is the same one used by Doyle that through Watson allows us to understand how the mind of Holmes works, step by step. This does not mean that wADSOn is stupid, on the contrary, only that he is learning. It doesn't even seem a coincidence that William is a monk. A man who has chosen to dedicate himself to the intellect, repressing and suppressing everything that is carnal. Adso is young, still impulsive and inexperienced, and will yield to the temptations of the flesh (once only).

A curious feature of Guglielmo is that, having now at least fifty years and presumably being presbyopic, he uses glasses, an unusual object for the time. It could be nothing but I like to read it a reference to Doyle as an ophtalmologist. And in a narrative space the glasses are lost and the monk finds himself unable to read. We can say that this is a moment in which he sees, but can't observe. William reads the signs of reality to look for possible truths. In the first moment when we meet him he deduces the existence of a horse from simple signs left in the woods, he is actually a detective. But in his life he was also an Inquisitor, a position he left. We see him in the book confronting an inquisitor Bernardo Gui and we see the difference in attitude. The inquisitor is more interested in punishing the defendants, while Guglielmo wants to discover the culprits, "unraveling a beautiful and tangled skein". The same attitude that we see in Holmes that always looks a little beyond what the police do and absolute justice does has more value than secular justice. In his search for truth, Guglielmo says that no hypothesis, even if extraordinary, should be overlooked. He himself tells that he aligns many elements that apparently have no connection and makes assumptions about them. But to arrive at a solution, he has to pretend many hypotheses, some so absurd that he is ashamed to tell them. The elimination of the impossible by staging. This sounds a lot like MInd Theater, doesn't it? Among the other references to the Canon, the most obvious is the use of a burned plant that creates visions. There is also a moment in which Guglielmo states that God must be good if he generated nature. Holmes will instead say that nature, its beauty (a rose!) Is proof of the existence of God (BRUC). The story of the novel unfolds inside an Abbey on the top of a hill. Inside the walls, barely contained, overlooking the rocks there is a construction called the Aedificium. It is divided into three parts. There is the Kitchen, the Scriptorium and the Library. An absolutely symbolic place. The kitchen is the body, it satisfies the needs, it prepares food but it is also the place where a carnal congress is consumed (food / sex metaphor). The Scriptorium is the space of intellect, of knowledge. The Library instead is conceived as a labyrinth, a place where knowledge is kept, but at the same time it is made inaccessible. Something very similar to the unconscious, which in the BBC Sherlock we see buried under the ground, while here it stands out against the sky (like a plane maybe). The curious thing is the shape of the building, built on a rigid symbolic and mathematical basis, it looks like this:

We find a similar shape both in the Mind Palace (Moriarty's cell and probably operating theater) and in Baskerville.

In the Library the books that are the sum of human, licit and illicit knowledge are jealously guarded, in fact the librarian reserves the right to keep some of them hidden. A structure that seems very similar to the human psyche, to the eternal struggle between conscious and unconscious thought, between memories and removed that in BBC Sherlock seems to be recurrent. The relationship between master and disciple is among the most platonic and there seems to be no doubt in this regard. Adso loves Guglielmo, loves his intellect but also his features, he argues in the purest way (not that the admiration imbued with sexuality cannot be pure, this is a heavy Catholic heritage from which we have not yet freed ourselves, but it is a meta for another time), but also he need to clarify unnecessarily the concept and in later life he will confess to let the gaze linger longer on the young novices.

Guglielmo on his part is never if not paternal regard to Adso. Their relationship, however, seems weaker than that between the two original characters that inspired them, but that was probably not the point of the novel. This doesn't mean that the issue of homosexuality is not treated. If we want we can also say that all the dead involved had had homosexual relations and all had somehow had had to do with a forbidden book. The story takes place inside a convent, the characters involved are all men, apart from an external exception, feminine, which will seduce Adso, even if this fact is susceptible to interpretative doubts. Being a faithful chronicle of the times, homosexual relations are doomed, but after all even heterosexual ones it's just condoned. We are talking about friars. But if heterosexual relations are tolerated, they are part of heterodoxy, homosexual ones are decidedly condemned, like heretics. It is no wonder that in so many heresies sodomy is an integral part. It falls within the fear and condemnation of the different, the different is a heretic, the homosexual is different, homosexuality is heresy. An easy syllogism. In the name of the Rose the feminine is ephemeral. There is this unique beautiful girl with whom Adso will be joining the same night he had previously had an apparently innocent encounter with a friar. We see she only for a fleeting moment. The feminine seems to be an allegory of all that is seductive. Devilishly seductive because we are among men for whom the pleasures of the flesh are a weakness.

Friar Ubertino, the one with whom Adso meets before giving in to the girl's flattery, speaks with desire of the forms of the virgin Mary, but he does so by holding the young Adso to himself. Every time a friar, which will then be indulged in homosexual pleasures, is described to us, a feminine characteristic is added to him. The feminine is not something that exists in this context, but desire, love, jealousy, in its best and worst aspects, yes. And all this is represented, but only allegorically by the feminine. Besides, Adso will tell about the girl that he didn't even know her name. One wonders if he didn't know it or maybe he just didn't dare to name it. The debate between orthodoxy and heresy runs through the whole book. It is a mainstay. And if under a pure textual meaning we can read an other, political, one (the Italian Brigate Rosse as heretics) a further level of reading is possible, halfway between the subtext and the surface. Then again the relationship between homosexuality and heresy. And heretics were burned. Adso tells that he experienced a state similar to ecstasy in witnessing the burning of an heretic, an ecstasy that reminds him the fleshly one that he will then experience firsthand. A connection that amazes the friar himself, but that tells us a lot about the real nature of what he lived.

Guglielmo's antagonist is an old blind man who will eventually lead to the destruction of the Library. Their relationship is love and hate, admiration and repulsion. Difficult not to see the Moriaty / Holmes relationship. Towards the end we see the same old man in the middle of the Library which is actually a labyrinth, a labyrinth that is described as a web. Throughout the book the two tease, provoke themselves, do a dance that has a lot of seduction. All caused by a book that the old man wanted to keep secret and when this was no longer possible the Library ended up on fire before the water managed to extinguish its flames. "Guglielmo wept". (water/emotions). The theme of the book is the laughter. It refers to a hypothetical lost Aristotle's book concerning the Comedy. In short the meaning of the book is that laughter has its own dignity, its cognitive value. Comedy, the comedian, saying things differently, ridiculing them, forces us to look at them more carefully, and we end up seeing the hidden truth. At the same time, even the most fearful things, when turned into comedy, lose their terrifying power. Laughter free from fear (and it is the main reason why it is feared) The thought is immediately at every moment when John and Sherlock are represented as homosexuals in BBC Sherlock. These are always jokes, ridiculous moments. But as we are told in the fictitious book in The Name of the Rose, laughter conceals the truth. A book in a book that talks about books, because, it is repeated several times, all books speak of other books, each book is a reference to a previous book and from obvious books it is possible to arrive at occult books. As if to say that to understand a book it is enough to have another one. London AZ for Sherlock and our still unknown book. Unknown probably because not unique. A set of books (code booKs), but just because Sherlock Holmes has left the sphere of books and has expanded himself into other media. The Name of the Rose is a book about books, a complex labyrinth of intertextual quotations, but also a use manual of books. The books are something that involves the author and the text in the first place, but once it's finished, the relationship is the one that is established between the reader and the text. And the texts are meant to be interpreted. "Books are not meant to be believed but to be subjected to investigation. In front of a book we must not ask ourselves what it says, but what it means ... the letter must be discussed even if the supersense remains good. " *I humbly apologize but I don't have a reference text in English, so this is a horrid, as usual for me, translation of the perfect Eco's Italian (sooner or later I will learn English .... maybe when I won't lose so much time on a certain author ;-P) A licence for those like us who want to go beyond the visible, the admission that a text is more of what appears, which is susceptible to generate always different readings without ever running itself out completely. And this is true for some books more than for others, because in some the subtext presses towards the surface, barely contained by metaphors, mirrors and allegories. Since ancient times methods for expressing truth. Metaphors, puzzles, word games, which sometimes seem put in a text out of pure delight, often hide truths that want to be kept silent, for various reasons, to most people. A book on books that talk about books hidden in books, books that hide the truth under layers of words. A book about a medieval Sherlock Holmes and rarely the universe is so lazy.

@sarahthecoat @possiblyimbiassed @gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @sagestreet

#the name of the rose #sherlock reference #code books

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quilandivy · 5 years

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Halo Story vs. Cinematics

Just recently I was talking with someone in a heated discussion over the original trilogy of Halo’s story vs. the ones that came after. The whole time their whole argument was completely convinced that the games after did not have the interesting storytelling the original trilogy did, and i couldn’t understand that. This basically inspired this article, in it I want to describe why I think the original trilogy doesn’t have a good story, but highlight a reason why it might’ve been viewed that it did, and talk about Halo 4’s story and how it tackles this reason.

Firstly I need to reiterate what the story of Halo consists of. Across all three games, the story of Halo is very much standard space soap opera fare, you have a clear good side (humans) and a clear bad side (The Covenant). This is the basic structure that the first game starts from. Over time, other factors are brought in: a completely eldritch abomination known as The Flood acts as another threat for the humans to fight as well as other twists and turns, like the elites turning on The Covenant after their fealty is thrown out to be substituted as the Brutes, as well as their realization that The Covenant by in large is an illusion, and that the Halo rings that they are pushing towards for their Sacred Journey will actually wipe out all life in the galaxy. It’s a very simple structure right? Humans (and then elites) good, covenant and flood bad. This is the main rub of Halo storytelling, this is all that it is. None of the characters have particularly interesting motivations or nuance to them, there’s a clear line of black/white. The Covenant is made up completely under the guise of religion creating this dumb populace. There’s no fact-checking, only serious devotion to a cause. The villains don’t have any interesting backstories or motivations, they’re one dimensional “I want to keep my power in this classist society!” For my example, I’m going to use what I’ve often heard is the best story of the trilogy, Halo 2. Halo 2’s Covenant story starts out with this literally who, the only thing you know about them, the only thing that defines him, is that he was in charge of the invasion that found the first ring and couldn’t stop the Master Chief from destroying it. He becomes the Arbiter, not for anything specific to him, but because he’s a stand-in of elite loyalty, so he decides to be one for redemption’s sake. He’s sent to kill a heretic, a person spreading “false information that could be destructive of the sacred order”, being that he knows that the Sacred Journey is a lie perpetuated to keep the power contained. He goes to stop him, but not before he shows a “oracle” that being 343 Guilty Spark who begins to explain what the purpose of the rings are before the heretic stupidly shoots at the Arbiter while his guard is down which is still probably one of the stupidest plot contrivances of his game. Literally the chance was there for the Arbiter to be convinced that the thing he is following is a lie and he dumbly decides to just shoot first, it doesn’t make sense. Anyway continuing on, he begins to doubt the Covenant internally (or at least I assume he is, because the game certainly doesn’t show it! It’s all implied), but still continues to work for the leaders of the Covenant. One twist is pushed when one of the leaders is killed, and the others decide to swap out the elites with the brutes, as they do not trust the elites to keep them safe when they failed to do so with the one killed by Master Chief. This increases the tension as the elites are angry about their loss of position despite being incredibly devout and loyal. This comes to a head where finally the Arbiter is betrayed by a Brute leader during one of his missions, and the Arbiter is then told straight up by the gravemind that the prophets are wrong and the Halo will consume all life. This is passed on, infighting happens with the Covenant, etc. etc.

The problem with this story is that it’s a tale of motivations, not characters, and those motivations are one dimensional. Everyone is a stand-in, it’s a simple tale told in an incredibly black/white manner. There’s no interesting thing being told about the elite’s blind obsession with the religious order, it’s just a very black “obsessive religion bad, second guessing what you follow good”. There’s no nuance, the arbiter’s motivation is completely flipped. I said earlier that he started to doubt the Covenant implicitly? He didn’t, in fact when talking with the Gravemind he refuses to believe what he’s saying. He’s just completely convinced in the end, there’s no fallout, no grand shock to him or the other elites, there’s just a complete motivation switch. Elites go straight from loyal to fuck you I’m joining the humans now just to stop you. Events happen with scapegoats and power struggle, no personal or interesting reasons for why anyone in the Covenant does the things that they do. The prophets see the humans and heretics as threats to their power, nothing more. The elites just want to keep their position of loyalty, and when that’s tested seek solace in a more accurate truth so that they can betray the Covenant. That’s it, that’s the story of Halo 2 with the Covenant in-fighting. This problem is endemic of Halo 1 and 3 as well, in general the whole trilogy doesn’t have any themes to share, it just has a very “epic” space soap opera with a decent structure. It has its twists and turns but in the end it’s a very simple motivation-run story for events to unfold.

If that’s the case though, why do people like it so much? That gets me into my reasoning for why, the theatrics. Bungie knows their story isn’t particularly interesting, they know that their writing isn’t very good. What makes the story stand so high up in people’s heads is the overall tone, heart, and cinematic feel the game holds. What do I mean by that? Let me give a couple examples. Let’s start with this cutscene from Halo 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlMvje_e3ko

This is from the second mission, its opening cutscene. It starts with a dramatic sting in the soundtrack as the tone is set, Master Chief is setting down in one of humanity’s hideouts on the planet as they prepare themselves to defend on their last bastion, Earth. Master Chief walks by and the injured soldiers notice that he’s here, and it gives them hope, they’re sure they’ll be alright. They walk up to Miranda Keyes, the Sergeant cracks a quick joke, there’s a heartfelt hopeful tone, with a little bit of camp off the bat. Master Chief walks down the hall while he follows Miranda, looking to the left and right noticing all the injured soldiers, a real war is hell but they’re still fighting. Miranda gives the rundown and sets the stakes, capped off by Master Chief saying with a blunt “The rings will kill us all.” Miranda talks with Lord Hood to tell MC about what they plan to do in response, when they are cut off. Complete black frame, whole power in the facility goes down for a little. Cut to the tvs, showing the Covenant’s Prophet of Truth on every single one. Creepy track plays in the background as he gives a super chilling and strong monologue, no thanks in part to the terrific voice acting by Terence Stamp, ending with “Your destruction is the will of the gods. And I? I am their instrument.” Power goes back up, sergeant makes a quip in as well as MC, before Miranda under the realization that they’re about to get hit tells the soldiers to get ready. Whole scene ends with “Squad leaders are requesting a rally point. Where should they go?” “To war.” All in all, it’s a very well done cinematic, it does a super good job selling the tone of the scene and it has a fantastic pacing. This coupled with a nice bit of camp and some solid quoteworthy lines. This is what I think people talk about when they think of Halo’s story, they don’t think of the underlying narrative, or the characters in detail. They’re thinking of how this story is told. Because despite being a super mediocre and underwhelming tale, the framing around it is well executed, Bungie is great at their craft of selling a scene.

But what about Halo 4? From the start, Halo 4 has an outright better narrative. The Didact has fully developed motivations, and the story has a theme to it, a message to take home. The Didact doesn’t want to kill humans for any sort of power struggle reason, he wants to use the humans as a tool to make an army, for him to stop the flood. It was an original plan he had before he was put into cryostasis, one he formulated around the humans because in short, he fought a war with huge amounts of losses that ended up with his children dying in the onslaught. He has no empathy for humans, he outright hates them, but he is using these humans for a greater good in his mind. As for the theme, the main concept is “letting go.” As I described above, this motivation the Didact has is one from a past now left behind him. He refuses to let go of this past, blindly continuing to follow it despite the fact he’s now in a reality where the flood threat, albeit a delayed not completely destroyed one, is no longer central and applicable. The Chief’s “letting go” is Cortana, his AI companion that he’s been venturing with for a while now that in the end, has to let go as she devolves due to rampancy. Where the Didact refuses to separate from his motivation, the Chief ends up having to give up his own, leading to a solemn ending of him overlooking the Earth he had to save while doing so. That’s great storytelling, clear theme, clear strong motivations to each character. Didact acts as a close parallel, and it leads to a satisfying conclusion. That being said, how is this story told? This is the cutscene that plays detailing the backstory of the Didact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-4r_5AE6D4 Compare this to the Halo 3 scene above, see the problem? The whole motivation behind the didact is given by a complete long exposition to the Master Chief, it’s not told naturally at all, it’s told as a backdrop to a cliche chosen one the MC becomes, being immune to the Didact’s machine’s power. All done in a TV movie like cinematic, no interesting framing or tone. The only strong framing I could even give as a benefit here is that the leitmotif of Halo 4’s soundtrack is done in the background for a minute of the scene. But overall this scene is absolutely flat and lacks any of the emotional core the series was heralded on. Now, I’m not going to say Halo 4 in general is like this, there are great scenes that do get close to the ones above, specific examples being the goodbye to Cortana, and the ending cutscene in general. But for the most part, the way the story was told took a significant hit. With that, I hope I got across a good understanding of why I think people see Halo OT’s story in the way they do. And I also don’t want to imply that Bungie doesn’t know how to do good storytelling either, 3:ODST serves as a good example of how they combine the emotion they’re so good at conveying with a more interesting story with a team of legitimate personalities and character relationships, despite also not really having a clear message to give either, other than a vague notion of “don’t just shoot everything becuz these Engineers are actually enslaved creatures guys.” Although I don’t understand at all how they fucked up Reach so badly as they did after this with its completely cardboard cutout Noble Team all wrapped up in shitty tragedy bait with an even weaker emotional core than even Halo 4. I have an axe to grind on Reach so I’ll make a write-up on the story at a later time but I just wanted to leave this with a hot take if you want to see more of this writing.

#Halo

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filipfatalattractionrblog · 6 years

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in the ’90s, most of the Hollywood entries framed gay issues from the view of straight white protagonists who were looking from a place of intense homophobia. Philadelphia used this for tension. The Birdcage used that same tension for laughs. They were subject matter we were looking at, but not representative of the way the queer community looked back at us. And sadly the ’90s boom of independent films didn’t really mean too much for characters and people who wanted to tell their own stories. For every blip like The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls In Love or Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together, there were also two dozen “outsider” films that were just more content from the white male majority. The film I think about most in terms of being ahead of its time is Jamie Babbit’s But I’m A Cheerleader (1999), which wasn’t just about representation, but actually criticized the stereotypes of who we think gay people even “are.” The film chronicles the journey of a young blonde cheerleader (the great Natasha Lyonne) who doesn’t understand how she can be gay, and is thus sent to conversion therapy. This strikes me as prescient, not just because the film constantly uses so much social language that is popular now, but because there are two films out this year about the very same subject, Boy Erased and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. The fact that Hollywood is just coming around to conversion therapy narratives 20 years later raises a key point about the media landscape. Not just that the same dire issues are still going on, but that systematic change is fucking hard. Because the pioneering outliers of the ’90s were telling us about the same exact things we’re dealing with now. They were artists trying to punch through a diamond wall of myopia. To make some dent. And hopefully inspire young people to do better in turn. You could find most of the best critical responses to their efforts in academia, especially as it started to change and foster the language of understanding that so many use now. But back in ’90s mainstream criticism? Forget about it. Most social issue movies were dealt with the same dismissive hand wave. Take the early work of John Singleton, where the intersectional aims of Higher Learning were regarded as “heavy handed.” And I specifically remember a teacher saying how he didn’t like how Boyz n the Hood stopped to talk about gentrification because it was “didactic.” Ironically, that moment was the first time someone actually taught me the meaning gentrification. The importance of these messages were getting lost on people. Just like countless films like Julie Dash’s haunting, beautiful masterpiece Daughters of the Dust was lost to people, too. Nothing that truly mattered was being supported. Mostly because everyone was too busy getting caught up in the myopic sneer of white bro superiority. The first popular mainstream way PC culture was portrayed was 1994’s PCU, where everything about it was “lampooned,” which is to say it was treated with disgust. Our frat brother heroes were out to take down all these unfunny minorities who cared about stupid things like representation and their civil rights. Looking back, it obviously feels insipid, but at the time it was absolutely the white status quo that paved the way for shows like South Park. We can say we didn’t know better, but it’s all right there, up on screen. The non-white male population was trying to talk to us and we weren’t listening. Some of it was the knee-jerk myopia, but perhaps some of it was that inner willful desire to keep the status quo. I always think about the moment in 1995’s Goldeneye, where Moneypenny chastises Bond for being a socially-irrelevant dinosaur, but in the end it’s only lip service. The movie, and the society watching it, still wanted Bond to be Bond. We were making a choice about the present and what was being told to us. And it’s still happening.

The Crippling Cultural Ignorance of ’90s Film and TV by Film Critic Hulk

#homophobia #ignorance #gentrification #culture of irrevellance #un-pc assholes #white priviledge #male priviledge #toxic masculinity #inspirations #food for thought

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thebrierpatch · 6 years

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BEING WHOLE

It was hot the whole day. The breeze that came from the mountains made early evening very pleasant at the monastery. I found the Old Man, as we affectionately called the oldest monk of the Order seated in a comfortable armchair on one of the verandas from where one had the most beautiful view of the surrounding valleys extending down from our building. I asked permission to sit next to him, and he consented with a nod. Because he has known me for quite some time, he went straight to the point: “What is the matter with you?” I told him that many times, even when I was sure I had taken the right decision, I felt some discomfort, and that was contradictory. He asked me to be more specific: “Tell me about the actual case.”

I explained that a good friend of mine had asked me to borrow money, a considerable sum. Even though I had it, I was saving it for other purposes and refused the loan. This had robbed my peace over the past few days. I mentioned I thought my own feelings odd, because if I was sure of my decision, my heart should be appeased. With his gaze wandering over the horizon, the Old Man said: “The spirit, our true, eternal identity, in its infancy, its current stage, has the ego distanced from the soul, as if we were split in two. On one hand, the ego strives for material achievements and sensory pleasures, applause and social shine. On the other, the soul rejoices with the victory of feelings over instincts, with the overcoming of hardships and transmuting its own shadows into light. The ego wants to be praised by the world; the soul wants the best it has within to emerge to the world. Ego is related to passion; soul, to love. Ego is the domain of the self; the soul thinks about us. On the journey of improvement, the Path forces us to make choices. With the being split in two, decision-making begets internal conflicts that cause imbalance at all levels.” He made a brief pause and added: “We have to align the ego to the soul, so that the wishes of the former are harmonious with the quests of the latter. Similarly, we must work on the self without leaving the “us” aside, and vice-versa. This means, we must care for the world without forgetting the self. They are parts of the same whole. Hence, the being becomes one, is freed from mundane distress, knows plenitude and peace.”

I asked if the ego should be annihilated. The monk denied: “The ego is extremely important; it just has to be educated. It presents the exercises that strengthen the soul, the precise stages that the being must overcome. Even though in its early stage the ego is connected more to appearance than essence, it is concerned with the body and the physical well-being, which are essential to the maintenance of life. We need the ego to take an interest in the mundane, so that the sacred that dwells in the soul manifests itself; one is not to suppress, but to be harmonious with the other. To the good walker, all material hardships end up strengthening the emotional, mental and spiritual musculature he or she needs to move on. Struggles, doubts, conflicts, problems, anguishes are important to make one’s self-awareness, still dormant in the core of being, emerge. By understanding him or herself, the person gains the wisdom of the world, potentiates his or her gifts and discovers the magic of virtues. Love flourishes. The ego, in its primary stage, is prone to the shadows of envy, pride, vanity, sorrow, greed and jealousy. These are terrible jails without bars. The first step is to accept the shadows and, later on, transmute them into light, on the journey of the liberation of being. Hence, thanks to its imperfections, life shows itself perfect.”

I wanted to know if anytime I thought of myself to the detriment of the other I was being selfish. The Old Man furrowed his brow and spoke seriously: “Of course not. Each one is responsible for the spring of their own lives and should pay heed so that it never dries out. To quench the thirst of other with the water that spouts from you makes us sacred. But to believe that the other has the obligation of letting us drink from his or her spring is the root of conflicts.” He turned his face to me and asked: “What is the core lesson of the Sermon of the Mount?” I answered that it is ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’. The monk moved his hands, as if words were not enough to explain the obvious, and said: “So? If you do not love yourself, you will not be able to love anyone”. He became silent for a moment, so that I had time to think about what he had just said, and asked a rhetorical question: “How is it possible to feed the other, if we do not carry bread in our baggage? How can you give what you don’t have? We must have our soul showing to the ego the joy of sowing the fields of the world to supply the barn of our heart; to harvest the wheat and turn it into bread; to eat the bread and share it with everyone.” Without waiting for my reply, he continued: “We can only share what we have. And what we do have, in fact, is only what we were already able to share. This is our true asset.” He furrowed his brow and continued, with a serious tone: “Sometimes, however, what the other actually needs may not be exactly what he asks. This is why there is ‘yes’ and ‘no.’”

I said that what my friend needed he had asked me, and I had denied him. The monk suggested: “Give the other cheek.” I said I had not understood what he meant. He explained: “Put yourself in his shoes.” I thought for a few moments and replied, embarrassed, that I was wrong in not responding to the cry for help of a dear friend.

“Maybe you were, maybe not”, the Old Man commented, much to my surprise.

In fact, those words were somewhat annoying to me, and I said he was complicating things. The monk laughed heartily and said: “This is an exercise filled with traps.” I interrupted him to say I had not understood. The Old Man calmly explained: “To face a problem with the eyes of the other does not mean to deliver exactly what the other wishes. In addition to love and generosity, one must have wisdom and sensibility; these are powerful virtues that complete one another. They will give you the precise measure of whether the other must be carried in your arms or encouraged to walk on his own legs. There are times for the former and times for the latter. One must be careful about what to do, because the limit between feeding a weak person and making a person weak is very slim”.

I said I did not understand the importance of the ego in this process. The monk explained: “The power of the ego propels us to material achievements, as it is connected to issues related to appearance and survival. This is quite important, because in these battles the spiritual values emerge, showing their importance and setting in motion the essential transformations. Victory is having the ego continue with its march, but more and more in love with the illuminated values of the soul and having the noble virtues as fighting weapons. Material achievements are not to be despised, much the opposite. However, they must be in tune with spiritual achievements. The ego can either be a mean villain or a valuable ally. The ego turns into a mighty warrior if we pay attention to which feelings drive its choices. This is essentially important. When the ego dances to the tune of the soul’s love songs, distress is appeased, the battles become sacred and the victories are consecrated into pure light.”

I insisted that it was still difficult for me to understand how the ego would show itself useful. The Old Man was didactic: “As I told you, the ego is related to ‘I’, and the soul to ‘us’. Imagine you are crossing a desert, at the verge of dehydration, and you find a canteen with fresh water. If you drink it all, those who come after will be stranded; if you don’t drink at all, you will die of thirst; to drink some then leave some to who comes after you is what makes you holy. It is the perfect integration of being; it is loving the other as thyself.”.

I became silent for a few moments. Then, I confessed I regretted having ignored, in the past, hands that asked for help. I did not want to make the same mistake again. The monk corrected me: “You should not feel guilty for not responding to requests. You must accept you did you best according to the levels of awareness you had at the time. What is important is to be committed to evolution. A commitment each one makes with themselves not to act in a way they believe is wrong. You must move on without the guilt that paralyses, but with the accountability that transforms. Remember that the most beautiful stories are those of overcoming problems. So, don’t worry. The Path will always provide a new chance for you to correct he course. And other, and another, in infinite possibilities of improvement. Try to make use of each one of them, even though you must accept that it is normal that some be wasted. Opportunities will always come, even if in different angles, according to the learning needs of the walker.”

“‘To do differently and better, always’. This is a mantra and a prayer.”

“The universe expands constantly and infinitely. We are part of it. Therefore, it is within ourselves. Hence, our chances are beyond ordinary imagination. If you do not grow up, the whole gets stuck. This makes us understand why we are essential and will never be abandoned by the universe, even though many a time we do not understand its educational method and determination in making us move forward. As we are not yet sensible to feel its infinite love and understand its immeasurable wisdom, oftentimes we question such interaction. However, you must pay heed, as there is reciprocity: even though we walk alone, we are committed to the work or the whole, it does not matter how you call it. At this stage of existence, our lessons are in the form of personal relationships, with the hardships and opportunities they provide. Each conflict may be a problem or a master, it all depends on how you look at it.”

“The Path is lonely and solidary. Independently and conjoined. In complete synchronism.”

“We are ego and soul; the part and the whole. This is the power, the grandness and beauty of the unification of being; with yourself and with the farthest star.” He turned his gaze back to the mountains that embraced us, quieted down his heart and mind for a moment, and completed his reasoning with a question: “Yoskhaz, if you carry the entire force of the universe within you, can you imagine what you are capable of?”

Kindly translated by Carlos André Oighenstein.

Other texts by the author at www.yoskhaz.com/en/

#yoskhaz in english #words #thoughts #memory #time

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rhetoricandlogic · 3 years

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THE MERCHANT AND THE ALCHEMIST'S GATE BY TED CHIANG

WILLIAM MINGIN

ISSUE: 16 JULY 2007

Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant, tells this story to the Caliph of Baghdad, perhaps in the classic "Arabian Nights" period of the Caliphate, as "a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn."

On entering a metalsmith's shop, he finds many intricate devices and "ingenious mechanisms." The experiments in alchemy of Bashaarat, the owner, possibly include electromagnetism, but most remarkable is his ability to find and expand tiny "wormholes" in reality, fixing them in metal hoops. One side of these openings precedes the other by a set interval of time. The largest is a Gate of Years, spanning two decades. Bashaarat had for many years such a gate in Cairo; each who used the gate learned something different, as Bashaarat, in stories within the main story, relates.

Ted Chiang's purpose in this brief book—actually a novelette or long short story (also to be published in the September issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction)—is explicitly didactic, and ends in a sort of moral. Its fabular nature, its marvels, and the use of stories within a story recall The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night (originally 9th c.; Richard Burton translation, 1885), which perhaps influenced the story's setting. The explicit, if gentle, didacticism and the tone also recall Indries Shah's instructive Sufi tales, both with and without the humorous Nasruddin. Despite Chiang's manner and the "exotic" setting, however, he is not far afield here from the themes of much of his earlier work, especially his best-known piece, "Story of Your Life."

From Bashaarat's tales, and Abbas's own story, we learn that some who use the Gate benefit, some don't; some learn lessons happily, some only at great cost. Along the way, we encounter temporal paradoxes, as when a rope-maker, Hassan, finds out from his older self where to find a treasure that makes his fortune. Once aged, he informs the younger one of the treasure, based on what he was told. But what was the information's original provenance? Here we get a whiff of Heinlein's 1959 story "All You Zombies—"

A story within a story (within a story) tells of Hassan's wife, Raniya, who in using the Gate discovers truths about her husband's past he himself does not know, and thereby contributes much to their (future) happiness. But Ajib, a weaver inspired by Hassan's wealth, uses the Gate in a way that results in near-catastrophe and sours the rest of his life. Ajib's story is the least compelling. His misfortune seems too arbitrary, and his inability to avoid it, despite all the talk of fate, not quite convincing.

This is the third time Chiang has dealt with the essential problems of fate, determinism, and free will. His darkest view of the subject comes in a short-short published in Nature, "What's Expected of Us," positing a device that, by undeniably demonstrating our lack of free will, leaves a third of its users in a waking coma. In The Merchant and The Alchemist's Gate, as in "Story of Your Life," (1998 in Starlight Two; collected in Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) he presents us with a more gentle, nuanced fatalism—fatalism from the inside, fatalism understood.

In Merchant, things happen according to the will of Allah, and being able to move through time changes events not at all. As Bashaarat says: "...you cannot avoid the ordeals that are assigned to you. What Allah gives you, you must accept" (p. 65).

But Abbas, suffering remorse for twenty years because his last words with his wife, before her accidental death, were harsh, can realize this only after struggling against it. As in Raniya's tale, it is not, finally, a change in events—which is impossible—that brings solace and a kind of redemption, but what he learns about the past.

The most important moment in a Chiang story is almost always a moment of understanding or perception—of a pattern, a gestalt, or an entire system with all its interworking parts, as some linguists can take in the grammar of a language new to them at a glance. Understanding is too important to be morally or emotionally neutral. It transforms the past for Abbas and frees him, despite changing nothing. For Raniya, as for Louise Banks in "Story of Your Life," it's a motive to participate in her fate. Raniya knows that her husband will live and become wealthy. But when she finds him in danger, she takes action to assure this outcome. In her thinking, to do so is to follow Allah's will, to be his instrument. It could not be Allah's will for her to do nothing. Louise Banks expresses her take on this in rhetorical questions: "What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?" (Stories of Your Life and Others, p. 163)

In devising a fictional concept that sets time out for us, future and past, as something essentially static, like the pattern in a carpet (it is perhaps no accident that almost all of those involved with the gate deal with things that must be woven or knotted), in which events can be observed, but not shifted or changed, Chiang manages to convey to us, both here and in "Story of Your Life," the world as seen from this view: an unchanging tale, already existing, past and future, that we live through, participate in, act out, and learn, like an actor learning what play he's in by saying the lines. That he has, more than once, found elegant, complex conceits for this difficult thematic territory, that not only convey understanding, but even experience, and which are also intricate, intellectually and emotionally involving fictions, is a truly remarkable achievement. It's interesting, instructive, and aesthetically pleasing to watch an artist as intelligent and sensitive as Chiang come to grips in different ways with, and develop different correlatives for, essentially the same field of experience and perception. The number of works in his small oeuvre devoted to this theme seem to indicate that, for him, this is, indeed, where we are.

But he doesn't just present this material. He also suggests how we should be and act in such a world. Within the scope of determined events he finds a kind of freedom—the freedom to accept, to participate, to join one's will to events; freedom in how to consider, or take, what happens; a freedom of understanding. Perhaps understanding is so important because, in the face of events, it's basically the best we can do.

We have to note that Chiang is treading here on the territory of the religious mystic, but either does not have the temperament for that sort of take on his materials, does not perceive here what others have, or is tacitly telling us that there is nothing like that going on, despite all the talk of "Allah," who seems something of a placeholder here for "how things are and happen." There is no hint of the paradox of the religious ecstatic, in which the greater the surrender of self-will to the will of God, the greater the sense of freedom, power, joy (even while it may lead to dissolution of the individual)—the stuff of saints' lives (St. Francis receiving the stigmata, especially in G.K. Chesterton's version, St. Francis of Assisi [1923]) and religious literature. For instance, in The Consolation of Philosophy (524), Boethius also presents all time and incident seen as one, an eternal present perceived by God; his take is that by surrendering to God's will, men become gods by participation. And in eastern traditions, the moment of enlightenment often seems to occur when the seeker says, essentially, "This is hopeless; I give up"—surrendering, finally, the last bit of willfulness to the greater will.

In an interview with Jeremy Smith (first published in Interzone #182, Sept. 2002), when Smith notes, "In stories like "Division by Zero" and "Story of Your Life," you describe these very rational, materialist characters who [...] achieve this kind of transcendence, but then don't know what to do with it," Chiang replies with seeming puzzlement: "That's an interesting perspective. I hadn't really thought of either [story] as dealing with transcendence. For me, those stories are primarily attempts to use mathematics and science as metaphors to illuminate certain aspects of human experience."

Chiang's take on dealing with a vision of unalterable destiny is remarkably close, however, to that of the classical Stoics, perfectly in keeping, for instance, with the quotations that end the Enchiridion of Epictetus (circa 135):

52. Upon all occasions we ought to have these maxims ready at hand:

"Conduct me, Jove, and you, O Destiny,

Wherever your decrees have fixed my station."

—Cleanthes

"I follow cheerfully; and, did I not,

Wicked and wretched, I must follow still

Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed

Wise among men, and knows the laws of heaven."

—Euripides, Frag. 965

It's an unemotional and essentially irreligious mysticism.

This novelette doesn't pack the punch of "Story of Your Life," but such comparisons are invidious; one story is not another. The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate is wise, thoughtful, graceful, and even enlightening, in its ability to make the nature of our predicament clearer, and at the same time, transform it from predicament to, simply, life.

#Ted Chiang #The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate #mahreviews #long post

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