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seravph · 3 years

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i didnt really get midsommar and just went downstairs to eat some cold spaghetti with my cat out of sheer confusion so i'd really like to hear your thoughts on the kiss from pelle! something about it super irked me but i simply cannot put my finger on it

I’ve definitely made posts abt midsommar but I’m too lazy to find them sooo here I go (under the cut bc this got long)

When I first watched it I enjoyed it and thought it was a good scary movie but I didn’t think about it deeper until I learned that much of the imagery used in the movie were white supremacist symbols. Then I rewatched it with that info and it was SO chilling !! A cult is scary, but a white supremacist cult that identifies itself in ways that you didn’t detect is even scarier - there’s been ‘discourse’ around the movie, where people have commented that feeling ‘proud’ of Dani at the end misses the point of the movie, and I agree, to an extent. But I also think Aster made the movie more complex than that, in that he intentionally made the ending a cathartic experience by making Christian and his friends unlikeable so that we would feel a sense of satisfaction when they got what was coming. Yet at the same time, you can’t really feel happy for Dani, which is where the ‘she did that!’ Mentality fails, because Dani has been groomed and manipulated into joining a white supremacist cult that she doesn’t even understand. Which is what makes it so chilling, because of how relevant it is (cults seem so far away, but alt right Reddit threads are in the palm of your hands!!!) Midsommar is scary because it’s not just grooming Dani, it’s grooming the audience as well. Ari Aster knows much of the white supremacist imagery would go undetected to most audiences. There’s a reason why they don’t put in subtitles for the Swedish - the audience is left as out of the know as Dani is. Of course, audiences can understand that being indoctrinated into a cult is terrifying no matter what the cult is, but finding out about the fascist nature of it makes it so much more real and horrifying. All of that being said, Pelle’s kiss with Dani, with the context, is horrifying. Dani is clearly not in the right headspace to understand what she’s gotten herself into, and it’s clear now that Pelle is using Dani’s tragic past as a tool to manipulate her, culminating in the kiss. It’s Pelle saying to Dani, “aren’t I so much better than him? Aren’t we so much better than them? Arent you happy to be here, to stay here?” It’s his own way of indoctrinating her, and yet he does so with such sincerity and tenderness that it’s shocking, it’s confusing at first, and it incites a similar feeling as the ending of the movie. The final scene should be cathartic, in that Dani should be ‘inciting revenge,’ but it’s horrifying because the cult has even worse malicious intent for her that is expressed so gently that she (and evidently some audience members) can’t detect it. And yet it’s the most blatant exploitation of her trauma at the same time, just as Pelle’s kiss is.

#it’s 3 am and this is messy srry for rambling

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elizabethrobertajones · 4 years

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Hey! Feel free to ignore this long question but it was just something I was thinking about. I’m interacting with this fandom for the first time since about mid season 12-ish, I was an avowed deancas meta reader and I’m trying to catch up on some goings on. Something that’s really been bothering me since it went canon was something I was trying to figure out since I left: what happened during the carver era? Was he setting it up to be canon, because I can’t not see that when I watch s8 and 9, but post-Charlie dying it all seemed so disorganized, and bad. He set it up perfectly then lost the thread totally. Do you have any insight on what happened there? And 2, if I couldn’t stand the first half of season 12 but really liked 15x18, do you think I’d like the rest of the dabb era? How does it compare to peak carver era? Thanks for reading and no pressure! Forgot how much I love this meta stuff and now it’s all I think about again lol

Hi there!

I think Carver era behind the scenes might end up being something we have to wait for tell-all interviews to understand... At least Dabb was there for all of it so maybe after the show is over, someone might grab him for a sit down to explain some shit and go over the old territory :P I’d guess that Carver was not committed to canon in the same way but he was open to exploring and expanding the relationships and Cas’s character just because he liked Cas and these dynamics, and definitely wasn’t adverse to at least ironically thinking of Dean n Cas in a certain way, hence the “jilted lover” thing.

I think also there was generally less of a cohesive overall voice to the show from season 8 onwards, which is not a bad thing in that it meant we began to really see each individual writer putting their talents out there (or not-talents) but does mean the interpretation of Dean n Cas or gay subtext in general was an absolute rollercoaster, depending on who was writing, because combining looser control on the creative direction per episode along with a deeper focus on character overall... Bobo could roll right up in season 9 and immediately start serving Destiel but Dabb had been writing since season 4 and it was still season 8 where he first starts flexing any what would become shipper muscles :P

Considering how Carver era fizzled out and Dabb took over with a stronger sense of what to DO with the dang show and what radical burn-it-all-down steps that involved to take it to a conclusion, including absolutely freewheeling the plot for a little while, throwing spaghetti at the wall and even letting Buckleming serve total curveballs and all, for the sake of really digging into character stuff instead, I do think the change is obvious again. I don’t even know if Dabb took over MEANING to make Destiel canon, but that he was absolutely of the mind that Cas was important and a TFW ending would be necessary. And then once he spent some time on that, the obvious answer that Destiel was integral hit at last through some sort of self-reflection on what the fuck they’d been writing all this time as it came to tying up loose ends.

Honestly the writers he picked kinda do obviously compliment Destiel but maybe it was even just having so many fresh young voices at the table all at once that LATER shifted the conversation into “why the heck wouldn’t we do this?” after they settled in.

Anyway, I’m not caught up on the current season, but I would say that Dabb era was as far as I watched, loosely written on the plot front and managing Buckleming nonsense about as deftly as a bunch of excellent writers who are trying to have a consistent vision but need to constantly work around someone lobbing bricks at the story can do. But it got better and better as it went on, because it was focussing more on the emotional stuff and the character dynamics, and taking them all seriously. Season 13 was an important shift in really taking Destiel seriously, and from the sounds of things Dabb was maybe considering Destiel by season 14 and ready to hit the ground running with 15?

I personally think that Dabb era really started to be very very good as soon as Jack was properly introduced, especially as I spent a whole hiatus dreading him and convinced this was a terrible idea (he’s buckleming spawn, from one of their worst episodes overall behind their true classics like the racist truck) but Dabb wrote the first episode with Jack and it made him instantly endearing, and his whole story was well-handled from then on, making even some of the more garbage characters at least temporarily interesting or at least relevant or to make the scenes they were in easier to endure.

So I’d say try again and power through until you’ve given Jack the 4 episodes at the beginning of season 13 they use to introduce and explore what he means to the show, and see how you’re feeling about those dynamics and storylines, as they really are where the show goes from then onwards.

I also have to admit that season 9 is my favourite Carver era season, and overall I don’t like the seasons so much as loving certain episodes, and having a whole lot I don’t like in between. Dabb’s crack team of writers demonstrated what it was like to enjoy every single writer except Buckleming, and have a much more reliable run of episodes in a row consistently so if I was comparing them, especially with hindsight, Carver era is really left in the dust for me. My only regret is that Buckleming never retired early and left the show in the hands of competent adults for a full season.

To really emphasise how much I trust the writers these days, I’m pretty much assuming without watching them that the dozen episodes I haven’t watched will be good and I’ll have a great time watching them, and that Bobo’s last episode will be amazing quite apart from the bizarre mark it left on the historical record.

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chiseler · 5 years

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The Greatest Bad Writer in America? Weird, Forgotten Harry Stephen Keeler

Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) enjoys a peculiar kind of fame as a writer. Or "paper-blackener," to quote him. The prose of his mystery novels and pulp stories, written from the 1920s into the 1960s, can be simultaneously balled up, discombobulated, lyrical, cryptic -- even going "utterly blooey" at times. This is from The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, published in 1934:

For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's "Barr-Bag" which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2163 pearl buttons; nor of--in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel--or Suing Sophie!

Viewed through the appropriate lens, Keeler's manifest flaws become avant-garde virtues, as he seems to stretch the novel towards some new form, possibly the radio play or podcast. Neil Gaiman is a fan: "My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him."

Among the various devotees keeping this "forgotten author" alive, no one has proven more steadfast than Richard Polt, who chairs the philosophy department at Xavier University in Cincinnati and founded the Harry Stephen Keeler Society. http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/

Richard, give us an introduction to Keeler and his work -- and tell us what led you to dedicate so much time and energy to keeping his name alive.

I ran across Keeler by pure accident in 1996, and from the start I was thrilled by the feeling that I was onto something truly weird and forgotten. I’ve always enjoyed digging into some corner of culture, going deep enough that I discover things that just aren’t in sight of today’s conventional wisdom, and finding connections that I would never have found otherwise. That’s exactly what the world of Harry Stephen Keeler has done for me.

Keeler (1890-1967) was a lifelong Chicagoan. His father died when Harry was an infant, and his mother married a series of other ne’er-do-wells who also kept dying on her. Meanwhile, she ran a boarding house for vaudevillians—so Harry was exposed to a wide variety of theatrical types in a city that was teeming with immigrants. He studied to be an electrical engineer and worked for a while at a steel plant, but his real passion was writing. His mom feared that he was going insane, and had him committed to the asylum at Kankakee, Illinois in 1911-1912. But he was released, and managed to make a living publishing quirky little stories with twists. In 1919 he became the editor of the pulp magazine 10 Story Book, which published short fiction and pictures of half-clothed girls. He also edited magazines such as the Chicago Ledger and America’s Humor.

Keeler’s stories began to get more convoluted, and by the late ’20s he was publishing mystery novels with Dutton in the US and Ward Lock in England, including The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro, which drew on his experience in the asylum. Things were looking up, but the Depression cut into book sales at the same time as HSK’s novels took a turn for the bizarre. He typically built his novels on the skeleton of an old short story from his youth, or several of them woven together. Sometimes his wife, Hazel Goodwin Keeler, would also contribute a chapter. This all became the occasion for gloriously implausible tales, chock-full of long-winded speeches in dialect; caricatures of every ethnic group from “Swodocks” to “Celestials”; near-future technology such as intercontinental 3D television; and, inevitably, a surprise ending that sends your synapses on a rollercoaster ride. This stuff appealed to an ever narrower audience. Finally, Dutton dropped Keeler in 1942. He was published by the bargain basement Phoenix Press from 1943 to 1948. Ward Lock cut him in 1953. Then he wrote for Spanish and Portuguese publication at $50 a title—or just for himself.

There were definitely some bitterness and frustration in Keeler’s old age, and when Hazel died in 1960, he went into a tailspin. But then he married Thelma Rinaldo, his one-time secretary from America’s Humor, and as he put it, he caught hold of “the greased pig known as the will to live.” Harry collaborated with Thelma on some late novels that have been published only in recent years.

There are two perennial questions about Keeler: Was he mentally ill? And was he a bad writer? Most people’s initial reaction is that he was a terrible writer who had mental problems. But you can also make the case that he knew what he was doing and was very good at it; it’s just that he had an eccentric sense of humor that requires a special sensibility to appreciate. I’m inclined to this latter view, although he does keep me guessing. I suspect that he had some traits that we would classify as belonging to the autistic spectrum, such as a prodigious memory for facts combined with a superficial grasp of human emotion. A Keeler story is not about interiority; it’s about a complex plot that plays games with the reader’s mind.

Describe Keeler's trademark concoction, the "webwork plot." “Web-work” or “webwork” was Keeler’s term for a highly complex plot, which weaves together a number of strands. He introduced the term in 1917 in a series of articles for The Student-Writer, which he then expanded into a fairly long treatise, "The Mechanics (And Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction" (The Author and Journalist, April-November, 1928). Keeler never claimed to have invented the term or the concept; he gave credit to now-forgotten pulp writers such as Bertram Lebhar. But he did consider himself to be a skilled practitioner, and his fans would surely agree.

What’s most delightful in HSK’s theoretical writings on webwork is the diagrams, which show graphically how various characters and objects intersect at key moments in the story. "Mechanics" distinguishes 15 types of “elemental plot combinations” and presents a mind-blowing diagram of Keeler’s 1924 The Voice of the Seven Sparrows. It’s a very tortured plate of spaghetti.

Some of Keeler’s novels (including Sing Sing Nights, Thieves’ Nights, and the series Hangman’s Nights) get their complexity from a 1001 Nights structure: a framework story embraces several stories told by characters. Other Keeler novels get their complexity from endless digressions and red herrings, or tons of factoids that may or may not turn out to be relevant to the main story. Often, the action is told or retold by an unreliable character, instead of being shown to us directly. Inevitably, there’s a big surprise at the end that makes you see the whole plot differently in retrospect.

If you take away the surprise ending, webwork looks a lot like the contemporary literary genre sometimes called “hysterical realism”—the massive, weird, convoluted stories of writers like Pynchon. Keeler pioneered the formal analysis of this kind of tale. If you have a mathematical mind, you’ll appreciate his advice for getting a webwork started:

In conceiving a story or inaugurating a plot which involves threads weaving with threads, if the thread A, or viewpoint character, should figure with the thread B in an opening incident of numerical order "n" (with respect to the incidents in the conditions precedent) there must be invented a following incident "n + 1" involving threads A and C; an incident "n + 2" involving threads A and D; an incident "n + 3" involving threads A and E; and so on up to perhaps at least "n + 4” or "n + 5"; and furthermore "n" must cause "n +1"; "n + 1" must cause "n + 2"; "n + 2” must cause "n + 3" etc.

I’ve tried it—it works!

What's it like living in and among Keelerian natterings over the long haul?

Like one of Pynchon’s paranoid plots, or like Borges’ fantasy encyclopedia that ends up colonizing reality, the Keelerian world has many unsuspected strands that create a webwork in which I am now enmeshed. I’ve read more obscure authors because they imitated Keeler (John Russell Fearn) or were friends of his (T. S. Stribling). I found out that my own great-grandfather, Wells Hastings, wrote a mystery novel that can fairly be described as webwork. And I taught myself some Dutch in order to read the 2010 novel De Sciencefictionschrijver, by Harold S. Karstens—a story about a man who becomes unhealthily obsessed with Harry Stephen Keeler and starts a correspondence with Richard Polt. Yes, Keeler’s world is absorbing—to the point where I have now been absorbed within the covers of a fictional exploration of that world, to be discovered, like Harry himself, by future eccentrics.

by Daniel Riccuito

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hellocheyenne-ashe · 5 years

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The Online Influences Of Today

The internet is a millennial. Officially born and released to the public in 1990 through the studies and efforts of Tim Burners-Lee, this unfathomable idea of an untouchable “network of networks” (Andrews) had finally become a reality. As the host of our world’s most vast and fast-paced culture, no one could have predicted the extensive influence of the internet. As of today, it is one of the world’s most prevalent and important cultures shaping the radical behavior, trends and outlook of modern society.

Despite growing from “738 million in 2000 to 3.2 billion in 2015…” (Davidson) the internet still retains a sense of community. Different social media platforms cater to different personalities but there are common threads that tie it all together, into one cohesive virtual civilization. A civilization is based on and unified by its traditions and customs and the internet is no different. Defined majorly by around-the-clock contact and instant updates from anywhere in the world with access, communication no longer has borders. Wi-fi culture has allowed this to be the most inclusive and boundless group of people yet. With translate buttons at our fingertips, language is no longer an insurmountable barrier. Because language barriers are few and far between on the internet, everything from businesses to friendships flourishes.

Cyberspace does come with its own vernacular, as does every enclave. The closest thing online dialects and communication can be compared to is abstract art and cave paintings. The slang used, the sarcastic humor and the images sent and received are all biased toward those who are aware of and relate to their context. For example, gifs are the tiny and pixelated images on a loop that move for just long enough to convey your point. If someone finds out that their friend has just been broken up with, a gif of a cat being scared and jumping straight up could convey the kind of shock that is being felt without actual dialogue or human involvement.

Common slang includes the term ‘mood’, which tends to be connected to things sporadically and means “that object/event is something that can be identified with as an emotional feeling.” If one is having a bad day and sees a picture of a child who dropped his taco, one might respond with “Mood.” Another example would be one saying “There’s tea.” which would pertain to gossip or drama. Shortened words and acronyms such as omg, brb, btw, lmao, and af are also highly popular online. For most teenagers who have well developed online presences, including multiple social media profiles, their online vernacular tends to spill over into their daily language and life. One could bump into a trash can and say “Mood.” and one’s friends might respond with “Me too.” or “Same.” even though they did not physically bump into the trash can themselves.

Internet culture would be incomplete without internet humor and some of it is quite complex. Lack of punctuation and proper capitalization is notorious among younger internet users, so when capital letters are used (see fig. 1) the context and tone are key to the delivery of what is being said. It is important to have the first sentence as a reference sentence so when the irregular capitalization is used in the second sentence it conveys a sense of mockery of what was originally being said, which is only amplified when paired with the photo below. Someone who was not aware of these unspoken grammar rules might see the same photo and only assume that Republicans have poor grammar.

Other people are the biggest influence on the internet. As opposed to the culture of a country or a city, the amount of people there are to be exposed to is almost impossible to comprehend. There are billions of people as far as the other side of the world, but also as close as just the other side of a cell phone screen. Everything is a tap, follow or like away. Online culture is having 134 million people check Instagram to see what Selena Gomez had for dinner during Fashion Week (Gomez).

Food has created its own niche in social media and online platforms. Aesthetically pleasing food pictures are a core part of successful social profiles so much so that the visual aspect of food and marketability of their trendiness has flooded real world eateries. Starbucks previously launched a Unicorn Frappuccino because the pastel color scheme of the drink made it desirable for social media. In spite of its mediocre taste, people spent their money on it. Recent online food trends have also included the infusion of squid ink in food as an anti-pastel option, making the food of choice an abnormal black color instead. Squid ink is being included in ice creams, pancakes, doughnuts and spaghetti so far. This is just the beginning of wacky and wild food trends because food is a necessity and aesthetic is marketable.

No culture is complete without honoring the ones that came before them and it is seen here through fashion. Vintage pieces become relevant and trendy again thanks to the supermodels posting their outfit of the day. Current online fashion is an art because it enforces the need to “…think nontraditionally and to be on the hunt for the next best thing” (Cummings). It is an homage to one’s parents and the trends that might have been decades prior. It is localized high fashion because getting dressed is now an art of expression. It is athletic but never sweaty, only sporty and coined as athleisure. The difference is crucial because to look too much like you actually just came from the gym would not be high fashion. The terms co-exist and serve as a balance for those who care enough to walk the line. Online is the new standard of style. Trendsetting is virtual, so fashion is the forefront.

Following closely behind fashion, however, is dance trends. Upload a 30-second video of one’s dance moves and one might go viral. Trends like Whipping, Dabbing, or Juju On That Beat flood social networking sites, being retweeted and recreated again and again. These dances become so popular that they are almost universally recognizable in style and name.

One of the most recognizable names on the internet is the folktale of Slenderman. Created via photoshop the original photo is a grainy black and white featuring Slenderman. He is characterized as having no face and abnormally long and stretched out limbs and causing death in numerous ways, shapes and forms but hardly by his own hand. The myth spread like a virus, “the legend had become so deeply embedded in the Web…that even its original creator, Victor Surge, couldn’t believe how much it had spread.” (Dewey)

In 2014, when two young girls from Wisconsin attacked their friend and left her for dead in the name of Slenderman, the world was shocked. Every town has a scary story, a boogie monster, but these girls truly believed in what they were seeing go viral. Their belief in him and his promises of immortality led them to attempt a sacrifice by stabbing their friend 17 times. The internet is not entirely to blame. It has been revealed that one of the attackers had early-onset schizophrenia. The girls were tried and convicted as adults. Most societies are susceptible to the darker influences at play, but none more so than the internet.

The internet is something that has woven itself into almost every aspect of daily life. It is only logical that the behaviors and culture that are experienced on the World Wide Web would eventually bleed into real world societies. The integration and immersive qualities of the internet only further the proof that human bonds have no limits. When limits are broken radically like so, human kind is blessed with a new complex and inclusive culture unlike before. Everyone has a place on the internet, because people are what define human culture.

- Cheyenne Ashe

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