#meaning making

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”

-- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

[fanhackers]

The Classics of Fan Studies: John Fiske - Television Culture

For our first look at the classics of fan studies, I want to talk about a book that isn’t a work of fan studies per se but laid the groundwork for most of the research that came after it. In Television Culture, John Fiske talks about how meanings are made in TV series and how they are read by the viewers:

An essential characteristic of television is its polysemy, or multiplicity of meanings. A program provides a potential of meanings which may be realized, or made into actually experienced meanings, by socially situated viewers in the process of reading. This polysemic potential is neither boundless nor structureless: the text delineates the terrain within which meanings may be made and proffers some meanings more vigorously than others. (14)

In this passage, he explains that many different potential meanings can be read from a TV show and, while each text is produced with the intention of pushing some meanings over others, they can be read in different ways by different viewers. The book focuses mostly on the variety of codes used to insert meaning into TV shows and which are then decoded by the audience in a way that is influenced by their personal history.

As you can guess, this concept is central to fan studies! Fiske pushed the idea that a show can be interpreted in many different ways and that different viewers can have varying interpretations of the same elements. This explains why somebody’s favorite heterosexual comedy might be read as an epic gay love story by others. Keeping Fiske’s work in mind when we witness those conflicting readings helps us to see them as equally valid and simply different interpretations of the codes of this show. Many fan studies scholars use this idea as a starting point in their work!

While his style can be difficult to understand if you’re not used to academic language, Fiske’s book is an interesting read to learn more about how television works and how different interpretations can stem from one TV show.

[swamp-milkweed]

jarod k. anderson, from "sentry," in field guide to the haunted forest

[bettsfic]

craft essay a day #10

i can't believe my highlighter ran out of ink. anyway, back to the sweet safety of a beginner essay.

“Research in Fiction” by Angela Barrett, The Writer’s Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass 

filed under: process, research, meaning making

summary

Barrett begins the essay by recounting a situation she seems to think is widely experienced but has never once happened to me: falling so far down a well of research for a story that you lose sight of the project and/or fill the story with all the research you learned, neglecting the characters.

but i do know there are plenty of writers out there who basically live in research wells so i definitely get what she's saying.

"I hate how dangerous research can be for our work. It's always easier, and often more fun, to dive into books and photos and the shark-filled depths of the online world than to write."

again, i do not find research easier than writing. i would always rather be writing than researching. so, this essay is probably not for me, although i would love to read an essay whose point is "maybe at least read the wikipedia article? you fool?"

the very big point she is making (and a great point it is) is that when you research for fiction, you're not invoking the facts of a time or place or trade, but translating those facts into a lived experience that will shape and affect your characters.

"What is the research for? Think about it like this: research is simply a way of understanding what our characters understand."

she goes on to point out that Tolstoy started writing War and Peace when he was thirty-five. today, many of us assume he was writing about his own time, but actually he was writing from several decades later. Barrett points out that for those of us around his age, it would be like writing about World War II.

she concludes with an amendment to writing what you know:

"A more generous, more useful interpretation of the phrase ['write what you know'] is that we should write about what we know, however we come to know it, whether by vision or sensual experience or reading or conversation or passionate imagining."

why did the editor bother keeping the Johnston essay, when Barrett more or less said what he was trying to say in a single paragraph, and more cogently?

my thoughts

when it comes to research for fiction, the most helpful thing i can suggest is developing the skill to name what you don't yet know, but know could be known.

let's take banking, for example. because i worked at a bank for ten years, i know a lot about finance and therefore i know what kinds of conflicts can develop for characters in that setting, and how it might inform their perspectives or identities or choices. i know things that can't be researched because trade secret agreements keep anyone from writing nonfiction on the inner workings of a financial institution.

because i know banking so well, i can apply the framework of my knowledge to other topics and use that framework to begin my research.

for example:

at the bank, every morning i had to run the daily insufficient funds report. the NSF report exists to decide whether or not the bank will pay or bounce checks for funds that aren't available in someone's account. hence, insufficient funds report. when you write a check and you don't have enough money in your account to pay it, a real human person decides what to do about it.

twenty bucks? not a problem. you pay it, you move on. but i was in business and that meant i was paying sometimes thousands of payroll checks for a company that didn't have the funds to pay them. paying insufficient funds means giving the customer a line of credit that has no promissory note or collateral to secure it, which means there's no guarantee the bank will get back its funds.

and yet, if i don't pay it, thousands of people won't get their paycheck.

that's an external conflict that can only happen in this setting, with internal repercussions and potentially personal consequences for your character. (in reality, i had to obtain a lot of approvals, but that's less of an interesting conflict; fictionalizing means fudging things sometimes for the sake of being interesting.)

this has other implications, too. when you make a debit card transaction, for example, the process of the bank choosing to pay or not pay must happen automatically, without a real human person making that decision. before 2013ish, most banks had a policy that debit card transactions would always be paid, regardless of how much money was in the account.

this was a perfect storm: customers could either overdraw their account and accumulate a massive number of fees ($38 at the time for a single overdraw, even one penny over), or they could open an overdraft line of credit. most people don't have good enough credit to open an overdraft line of credit, which meant people had to overdraft. a few banks had the courtesy of allowing you to dip into your savings for overdrafting. but not many.

and banks could say this was a good thing: you'll never get your card declined! we'll pay any purchase! (evil laughter)

then during the Obama administration, somebody finally decided that was super shitty and developed Reg E which forced banks to allow customers to opt in or out of overdrafting on debit card transactions. so finally you could go into a bank and say, "i want to opt out of overdraft," which means that on one hand, if you don't have the funds in your account, your card will get declined, potentially leaving you in a bad situation with whatever you're trying to purchase; but you'll never have to pay $38 for overdrawing your account by a nickel.

whew. okay. so here, as myself, i have an annoying daily situation which has greater historical and social context. and as a researcher writing about, say, a mechanic, i can begin my research by asking, what's a mechanic's equivalent NSF report? what's the annoying thing they have to do every morning when they clock in? and maybe also, what's something they have to do that has greater personal, social, and maybe political consequences? a mechanic works on your car, and that means your safety as a driver is in their hands. that means there are regulations to consider, the history of the safety of motor vehicles and the ways cars have changed. how do all those much bigger things influence the work of your character? are they the type of mechanic who keeps that in mind, or maybe they used to but they're only going through the motions, allowing for the potential for error and therefore danger? or do they just not give a shit about that kind of thing?

i once gave a writer feedback on their story about a clown. and my question was, but what about the clown's clown friends? the writer didn't know what to say to that. i said, well i know clowns are very much about community. clowns are generally pretty proud of being clowns. so this clown would likely be affected by his status in the community of clowns in his area. he would either be in his community, and that would create a certain conflict; or he'd be an outsider of his community, and that would create a different conflict. but the point is, you the writer acknowledge an understanding of the greater life of clowns.

Barrett assumes an approach: a writer does research and then applies that research to the experience of their characters. i'm suggesting an alternative: a writer begins with the consideration of their characters and tailors their research to that experience.

good research begins with the understanding that the foundation of the human experience is that we are inwardly affected by our outward reality, and by acknowledging that, you can develop a framework in which to fill in the gaps of your knowledge by targeting what you know you don't know.

or, to put it more simply, you can always begin research with one question: what's the most annoying part of your character's day?

craft essay a day tag | cross-posted on AO3 | ask me something

[shallowseeker]

Devastation: Metatron calling Chuck out on his nihilism, SPN 11x20 "Don't Call Me Shirley"

///

METATRON: It wasn't just the saps who were praying to you. The angels prayed, too. And so did I – every day. CHUCK: I know. METATRON: You want to sell the best-selling autobiography of all time? You explain to me – Tell me why you abandoned me. Us. CHUCK: Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me. METATRON: (Stands up and looks at CHUCK with wet eyes.) No, look. I know I'm a disappointment, but you're wrong about humanity. They are your greatest creation because they're better than you are. (CHUCK starts to look more guilty as he looks at METATRON.) METATRON: Yeah, sure, they're weak and they cheat and steal and...destroy and disappoint. But they also give and create and they sing and dance and love. And above all, they never give up! But, you do! (CHUCK looks devastated. METATRON continues to look at CHUCK with a tear rolling down his cheek. CHUCK puts on his glasses, clears his throat, and starts typing with determination in his eyes. METATRON looks heart-broken.)

(CHUCK starts to look more guilty as he looks at METATRON.)

[lovedaisy02]

Ok so my hair is falling out and thinning and I have a bald spot on the top of my head now (haven't figured out why yet) but you know it's ok because I'd totally rock a shaved head and I can buy cool hats and scarves. I already have a collection of bandanas. I can get a tattoo under my ear and across (ok maybe not).

Anyway, basically this is an example of what psychology calls Mean Making or benefit finding (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263854699_Meaning_making_and_the_art_of_grief_therapy) .

Despite our circumstances we as humans can find a narrative that will find some meaning in the suffering. Legend of Korra and ATLA actually mentions and utilizes this theory in both Korra and Aang.

I made a previous post praising Korras speech to her abuser, Zaheer, and I want to mention it here again.

Korra asks Katara why this happened to her? Katara responds with a story about Aangs suffering. At first the two seem unrelated (to me) but Katara closes it with

"he chose to find meaning in his suffering and eventually found peace" (LoK book 4 ep 1)

After Korra confronts Zaheer she says, " I am finally able to accept what happened and I think that's gonna make me stronger." (LoK book 4ep 9)

She eventually comes to the conclusion that being poisoned had to happen to her so she would be able to become more compassionate to others. This is another way of mean making in the face of an ambiguous loss (ambiguous loss is anything that isn't tangible when something that should be there is just gone but there is no finality to it such as missing person, sudden death without a body, divorce etc).

What Aang is depicted to go through is a large ambiguous loss. At the air temples grappling with what he lost, he has reminders and remnants of his people, he may even find the few remains such as Monk Gyatso, but his gap in time and memory will leave it ambiguous to him. An ambiguous loss is very difficult because there is no finality. You can't be shown a 'proof' that the piece of your life is missing. When Aang is at any of the air temples this loss hurts him the most because the scenery is filled with things that should be familiar that aren't just right and he didn't witness the event that made it happen which makes it ambiguous and difficult to process.

It's possible it's easier for him traveling the world because he doesn't expect to see any airbenders but when he visits his home or other temples to find the memory distorted it can cause a lot of anguish which is a real life phenomena related to ambiguous loss (example: a new divorcee living in the same house they used to share with their spouse. Their spouse should be there in their mind but they are not. The spouse is not dead but they aren't there either so the loss is ambiguous).

One of the healing strategies for this loss is mean making and benefit finding.

Katara and his other friends try to give Aang the tools to find meaning. Since Aang is a character who isn't written as overly stubborn or argumentative, he is the type to listen to others and hear the message, he is able to find it quickly with what he is shown. His monk teachings also aided him, which is another tool in psychology to use spirituality to find meaning. Katara tells him "it was meant to be" that he ran away or else he would've been killed with all the other airbenders.

Teo reminds Aang that the present always has parts of the past referencing to the animal wildlife but also to the spirit of an Airbender that Teo found within himself.

When Aang looks at the new creatures and he comes to understand it was meant to be that he survived, and that time moving on isn't something to resent anymore. He is also able to bring his mind comfort that these refugees are able to use the temple as a home (until all hell breaks loose later) and he is able to heal.

I didn't expect this to turn into an Avatar love post, or a mini essay, but it's true. The older I get the more I see real life examples reflected in ATLA and LoK. The more I grow to love them both.

[wordgoods]

punctum | ˈpəNG(k)təm [photography / philosophy]

punctum: that moment captured in a photograph that means something slightly different to everyone, and that challenges you, making it difficult to understand why it’s so moving.

The punctum points to those features of a photograph that seem to produce or convey a meaning without invoking any recognizable symbolic system. This kind of meaning is unique to the response of the individual viewer of the image. [...Roland] Barthes insists that the punctum is not simply the sum of desires projected into the photograph. Instead, it arises from details that are unintended or uncontrolled by the photographer. Photography can be distinguished from painting or drawing in that its apparatus visualizes the world automatically rather than being wholly informed by the interventions of the photographer. The theory of the punctum speaks the indexical nature of the photographic medium. It also accounts for the importance of emotion and subjectivity in interacting with photographs. [source.] 

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[daincrediblegg]

OK THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL EVERYONE FUCKING REPEAT AFTER ME. THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL DO WHEN YOU WATCH MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL THIS YEAR:

You will navigate to the page on disney plus (and it has to be here. Unless someone has actually uploaded the REAL movie anywhere else you cannot get it elsewhere)

BUT YOU WILL NOT HIT PLAY. You won’t do it. Because it’s NOT THE REAL VERSION OF THE FILM AND DISNEY IS FUCKING LYING TO YOU AS IT ALWAYS DOES

You will scroll down HERE. To EXTRAS instead. You MUST GO HERE. This is non -negotiable

THEN YOU WILL SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EXTRAS AND YOU WILL THEN HIT PLAY ON THIS BAD BOY: THE FULL LENGTH VERSION

And you will watch it. And you will thank me for having been so blind and led astray by that stupid fucking mouse. You’re welcome.

[auckie]

https://x.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1765391777580912958?s=20

PLEASE GD IF YOU LOVE AND WANT TRAINS

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“To claim your life would have no meaning if it weren’t for God is to say your own existence, and your family and friends have no worth in their own right.”

There’s an entire existent universe out there that means nothing to you, because you need the intangible, undetectable and imaginary?

[hell0mega]

people are drawing Steamboat Willie Mickey doing all this crazy shit and whatnot, but you could always do that. you can do that now, with current Mickey, just fine. it's fanart and it's legally protected. hell you could take Disney-drawn Mickey and put a caption about unions or whatever on it and it would still be protected under free speech and sometimes even parody law.

what is special about public domain is that you can SELL him. you could take a screenshot and sell it on a tshirt. you can use him to advertise your plumbing business. people have already uploaded and monetized the original film.

you could always have Mickey say what you want, but now you can profit off it.

[bettsfic]

craft essay a day #7

i was just talking with @volturialice about comedy writing, so it's something that's been on my mind, and i've never really written about it. so consider this an early draft of a future essay that's far more coherent.

"Funny Is the New Deep: An Exploration of the Comic Impulse" by Steve Almond, The Writer's Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass 

filed under: comedy, meaning making

key terms: comic impulse (his), comic intention (mine)

summary

i was hesitant to read this essay because comedy is very important to me. i can handle bad craft essays but i'm not sure i can handle bad craft essays on comedy. but, i thought, if you're writing a craft essay on comedy, you're probably pretty funny. that's the thing about comedy: it's not usually inspected by the unfunny.

Almond opens with Aristotle's four modes of literature: the tragic, the epic, the lyric, and the comic. he disagrees with the common belief that tragedy and comedy are working in opposition to one another.

"In fact, the comic impulse almost always arises directly from our efforts to contend with tragedy. It is the safest and most reliable way to acknowledge our circumstances without being crushed by them."

he talks about how Aristophanes is the father of comedy, and goes on to discuss the history of comedy in literature, focusing mainly on Vonnegut who tried to write about the bombing of Dresden seriously before eventually, twenty years later, succumbing to his comic instinct and writing the very darkly comedic Slaughterhouse Five.

"...comedy is produced by determined confrontation with a set of feeling states that are essentially tragic in nature: grief, shame, disappointment, physical discomfort, anxiety, moral outrage. It is not about pleasing the reader. It's about purging the writer...Another way of saying this would be that the best comedy is rooted in the capacity to face unbearable emotions and to offer, by means of laughter, a dividend of forgiveness."

Almond asserts that humor is the result of being able to look at understand the wider picture, and that's why comedy can be so rooted in politics and current events. he acknowledges that what's funny is not objective, and concludes by saying,

"The real question isn't whether you can or should try to be funny in your work, but whether you're going to get yourself and your characters into enough danger to invoke the comic impulse. Literary artists don't write funny to produce laughter...but to apprehend and endure the astonishing sorrow of the examined life."

my thoughts are centered around the practicality of comedy writing, by which i mean to answer the question, but how do you be funny? and talk about what i'm calling "comic intention." (note, i came up with it just now and so i'm still Thinking on it, and my thoughts may be half-baked.)

my thoughts

this essay put me through all five stages of grief. i feel very personally called out in a paragraph about how, in a story when the stakes get too high, or as Almond says, "reaches a point of unbearable heaviness" the comic impulse is to make it funny. and i do that. and i'm so delighted by how clever and hilarious i am (sarcasm. see? he's right), and i value comedy so highly, that i'm always hesitant (or i even straight-out refuse) to change it. and he's right also, ultimately, that the impulse comes from a place of trauma, of habitually defusing. once, i was dating a guy who pulled a knife on me, and i said, "if you get my blood everywhere you're not going to get our security deposit back."

i read a certain sentiment by comedic literary authors over and over again: early in their careers, they stifled their own comic impulse in an effort to be taken seriously. they were inspired by hemingway and wanted to write dry prose of the very sober, somber variety. Almond admits this in the essay, and says the same of Vonnegut, and once i went to a lecture by George Saunders who said literally the same thing. and i'm like, what is wrong with you people? why in god's name would you ever take yourselves seriously enough to want to be taken seriously?

for me it was the inverse. it took me years to even want to take my work seriously, to think of it as anything other than fucking around and finding out. and i also take umbrage a little at the idea that comedy writing is fundamentally unserious. but then again, i revere comedy. to me being funny is the highest ideal. i believe if you can do comedy and do it well, you can do anything. comedic actors can almost always do drama, but not all dramatic actors can do comedy. one of the reasons breaking bad and better call saul are so successful is that they play on the charisma, wit, and insanely funny talent of two comic actors (Cranston and Odenkirk). they're the most serious shows you could ever watch, but they're still funny.

there's a difference i think between being serious and taking yourself seriously. the gravest creative sin, to me, is taking a story too seriously. if it's apparent the writer can't see the inherent potential humor of all things, even if that humor isn't played upon, even if no one's laughing, i am immediately ejected from a story. comedy is a wider breadth of understanding than the material offers. Almond makes this point too, and uses conservatives as an example, saying that Republicans aren't funny and that's a sign that they don't understand jackshit about anything.

i don't believe everything should be funny. but everything should acknowledge its own potential for humor.

okay so here's my big thought:

my reaction to this essay is a huge "yes, but..." i agree with Almond on nearly everything he says, except there are the nuts and bolts of joke-making to consider. and that happens in only two possible places: on the line level, the setup and the punchline; or the situational level, the concept of a story. a sitcom is a situational comedy, which means that the premise of the story itself must in some way be comedic. when writing comedy, these are the only two tools you've got. sentence and concept. that's it.

the show Barry (HBO) is, to me, the greatest example of comedy writing i've ever seen. situationally, it's hilarious: a hitman wants to be a famous actor. and on a smaller level, what it does exceptionally well is acknowledge that every character no matter how frightening or serious or tragic can be the comedic relief. this blew my mind and changed my entire understanding of character. and with that understanding, my work has become a lot funnier. my characters (i like to think) are more interesting and complicated, because any of them at any point can do either the setup or the punchline. when you have serious characters and a comedic relief, the serious characters can only do the setup, and the comedic relief does the punchline. and i believed that for a long time. i would look at the cast of characters in a given story and think, who's the funny one? and now, they're all given the power of comedic relief.

i guess if i had to define my "yes, but" response to this essay, i would say that yes, there's comic instinct, but there's also comic intention. it's having the guts to be outside the joke looking in, to consciously and at the risk of ruining the joke for yourself, engineer the funny thing. i would say comic intention begins with instinct. you have to understand the rhythm and cadence of a setup, the right timing and pacing of the punchline. in your first draft you have to see where your setups have naturally been built and in your second draft you nail the punchline.

when i edit comedic stories, that's all i do. i pay attention to the rhythm of the piece and i find where the setups are or could be, and i make a little margin note that says "punchline here."

comedy writing, to me, is basically math. and that's the least funny thing there is. but if i don't acknowledge it, if i don't approach it with intention, i never get to the punchline. and intention itself is delicate--people expect comedy to seem effortless, so if you look like you're trying to be funny, you're not funny.

all comedy is about expectation. the basic setup of a joke is setting an expectation, and the punchline is doing something with that expectation. if you want to get funnier, start thinking about the unexpected. start thinking of details in pairs. your character is standing in an elderly woman's kitchen. situationally, this might be funny. maybe your character is a deadly assassin, and the elderly woman has invited him in for a coffee. or, at the line level, what's the most unexpected thing to be in that kitchen, based on the collective knowledge of what an elderly woman's kitchen looks like? your character opens the cutlery drawer and finds a glock. or a dildo. or a human molar. what's important is acknowledging that the elderly woman's kitchen is the setup of a potential punchline. the task is pivoting the punchline against the expectations of her kitchen.

even if you don't do this comedically, the practice of finding these pockets of potential will improve your writing, because what's in that woman's cutlery drawer can help us understand who she is as a character. what does it say about her if her junk drawer is a mess versus if it's meticulously organized? if she has thirteen owl-themed clocks? a wall of harley-davidson paraphernalia? what will your evil assassin character do if her dentures are in a cup and the cat is about to paw the cup off the table?

for those who also want to become better editors, one of the greatest skills you can learn is to read something and see what's not there, instead of just what is.

overall, i really admire Almond for writing earnestly on this topic, when sincerity can often threaten comedy. he acknowledges that insecurity is at the heart of every joke (the drive and the need to make someone laugh) and so the greatest fear of a funny person is to ruin the joke.

craft essay a day tag | cross-posted on AO3 | ask me something

[bardofavon]

not to be controversial bc I know this is like…not in line with shifting opinions on fanfic comment culture but if there’s a glaring typo in my work I will NOT be offended by pointing it out. if ao3 fucks up the formatting…I will also not be offended by having this pointed out…

‘looking forward to the next update’ and ‘I hope you update soon!’ are different vibes than a demand, and should be read in good faith because a reader is finding their way to tell you how much they love it. I will not be mad at this.

‘I don’t usually like this ship but this fic made me feel something’ is also incredibly high praise. I’m not going to get mad at this.

even ‘I love this fic but I’m curious about why you made [x] choice’ is just another way a reader is engaging in and putting thought into your work.

I just feel like a lot of authors take any comment that’s not perfectly articulated glowing praise in the exact manner they’re hoping to receive it in bad faith.

fic engagement has been dropping across the board over the last several years, and yes it’s frustrating but it isn’t as though I can’t see how it happens. comment anxiety can be a real thing. the last thing anyone wants to do is offend an author they love, and that means sometimes people default to silence.

idk where I’m going with this I guess aside from saying unless a comment is outright attacking me I’m never going to get mad at it, and I think a lot of authors should feel the same way. ESPECIALLY TYPOS PLZ GOD POINT OUT MY TYPOS.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

strange that "skinny" means thin. it should mean...skinny. characterized by skin. possessing or characterized by an above average amount of skin. more skin rather than less skin. but somehow it means less skin? preposterous

[ytvideoseo]

Meaning-Making, Beliefs and Attachment Styles

Meaning-making, Beliefs, and Attachment Styles intertwine to shape our perception of the world and our relationships. Meaning-making refers to the process of creating significance from our experiences, while beliefs influence our interpretations and actions. Attachment styles, rooted in early relationships, dictate how we connect with others emotionally. Understanding these constructs sheds light…