#metatextual analysis

[velvetgoldie]

On Captain Jas. Hook’s timeline: a trick of narration and metatextuality

To most, Captain Hook is, and always will be, Peter Pan’s greatest foe; but that would be without taking into account James Matthew Barrie’s lifework: fleshing out what remains to be his most thorough character.

Sixteen years after the publication of the 1911 novel of Peter Pan, and twenty-three years after the first apparition of the eponymous character on stage, it was not the boy who couldn’t grow up who was chosen to be the center of Barrie’s speech at Eton; neither was it Wendy Darling - by many accounts the true hero of the story. Instead, Eton’s provost sent the following prompt to the revered author: “James Hook, the pirate captain, was a great Etonian, but not a good one”. It was the author’s role to refute this statement; which he did, and magnificently so. But what we learn from this speech seems contradictory from what had been established from the novel... Unless you study it by taking into account Barrie’s chief characteristic as an author: he is, and is remembered as, a wonderful storyteller.

Barrie’s style in Peter Pan (1911) is remarkable as he constantly steps away from his role as a narrator and reveals his hand in spinning the story as its author. For instance, in chapter 5, the narrator/author placidly remarks:

“Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook's method. Skylights will do.”

We switch from description to action as the narrator dictates; and as such, the narrator shows that he is not only narrating, but also choosing how the story goes along. This kind of storytelling is traditionally used orally; here, it feels as though the written text is alive, being spoken as we read. Funnily enough, this kind of narration isn’t confusing for children at all; instead, it reinforces the fictional aspect of it all. The children reading musn’t fear for Peter or Wendy or the Lost Boys; for it remains, after all, a story.

But is Barrie only using metatextual tools to reassure the children? A closer look at the text shows otherwise.

It’s one thing to write the story as though it were told orally; it is another to create doubt in the mind of the reader by slipping in-and-out the diegesis. Often, the author relates the events as though they had been shared with him by someone else; to keep in mind the fifth chapter of the book, we can read:

“I have been told that he [Captain Hook] was a raconteur...”

And this recurrent use of “being told”, “having heard”, etc., suddenly fleshes out this fantastical world, by connecting it to the seemingly actual life of the author. Not only does Barrie tell and shape the story to his will, but he seemingly takes elements from his friends, acquaintances, and other faceless and nameless figures that only serve to give credit to his story.

This fascinating blur between real and the fake has also been manipulated by other great authors to the destination of children: one of the most famous examples might be none other than “Lemony Snicket” of the Unfortunate Events series. And there might have been some inspiration from Barrie when writing the thirteen mystery books; for Barrie often appears as an investigator himself.

Indeed, his 1927 lecture is not only a reply to the prompt given to him a month prior, but an investigation; as Brian Till puts it in his article “The Secret History of Captain Hook”, 

“Barrie takes the tone of an investigative reporter or prosecutor-judge, dutifully presenting the facts he has found.”

In his speech, and in order to “prove his case”, Barrie presents not fiction, but facts - heard from acquaintances and friends. Barrie mentions names as one would call witnesses to the bar: Mr. Jasparin, or Hook’s Aunt Emily, provide accounts which have to be taken for granted. It becomes difficult to keep in mind it is all fiction, as James Matthew Barrie remains ambiguous of what his actual role might be: both author, narrator, investigator, and witness.

Allow us, after having presented our facts, to round them up with the actual question at hand: what is Captain Hook’s actual timeline? This question might be asked by whoever read both the novel and Barrie’s lecture. Indeed, if one takes into account the novel, Hook is a contemporary of Stevenson’s Long John Silver (the “Sea-Cook”); thus, an 18th century-pirate. However, if one takes into account the latest additions Barrie made with his Eton speech, Hook is a contemporary of Barrie; thus, a 19th century pirate. It is known that only Peter Pan remains forever young; his Lost Boys grow up and are replaced by others. Therefore, it is out of the question to consider that Hook managed to live for over a hundred years.

So while both descriptions can be considered canon, which is actually real?

The following extract is from Hook’s description in the novel:

“In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. [...] In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute. [...] A man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts...”

What transpires from this entire description are the many marks of hearsays (which have reached both Barrie’s ears and, more interestingly, Hook’s). “Of whom it is said...”, “I have been told...”, “it was said...”, “having heard it said...”; all these are proofs that none of these descriptions come from first-hand accounts.

These second-hand accounts somehow differ from the accounts given in Barrie’s lecture at Eton in 1927; in the novel, Aunt Emily or Mr. Jasparin are nowhere to be found - which also means there are no “reliable” sources for these comments on Hook’s character. In the novel, these comments remain sourceless - thus, vague and unreliable. While Barrie turns himself into an investigator for his Eton speech, his intention isn’t the same with the Peter Pan novel. The novel is destined for children, and as such, it makes sure the children feel impressed by the main foe of the novel. In order to accomplish that, it creates a villainous (and by extension, mysterious) aura to wrap around Hook’s shoulders: what can be more impressive than the man itself, if not the man’s reputation?

Therefore, while the most plausible, but perhaps not the most satisfying, reply to the question is saying that Barrie hadn’t planned to make a lecture about Hook more than twenty years after his first apparition (which explains the time difference between both descriptions), one can offer an alternative.

Captain James Hook might very well be a 19th century Etonian who happened to stumble into piracy and chose to contribute to his fearsome reputation by encouraging, if not starting himself, rumors about his encounters with fantastical 18th century pirates such as Long-John Silver. After all, isn’t Hook known to be a talented “raconteur” himself? As a storyteller, Hook has the capacity to re-invent himself; we know that even his appearance is fashioned after that of 17th century English King Charles II, blurring the timeline even further. By incarnating the very idea of a timeless pirate, deliberately mixing elements from three different centuries, Hook conceals himself from his own mortality - even if, in the end, it isn’t enough to avoid his fate.

The similarities between James Hook and James Barrie are many, and most certainly not fortuitous; these resemblances might culminate in their capacity to spin a story to their will, as Hook chooses to reshape his own image, while Barrie reshapes Hook. In the end, it is difficult to understand where one begins and where one ends; the only thing that remains certain, is that there is still many a mystery left within the intricate text that a peculiar storyteller left us with.

[thisblogwasmadeforlurkin]

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: No Fandom, Original Work, Fandom - Fandom Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Meta, metatextual analysis, Fandom Meta - Freeform Summary:

A collection of meta on what I've been thinking/feeling about fandom of late.

[prokopetz]

I mean, yes, a lot of horror media boils down to “wouldn’t it be fucked up?”, but let’s not be reductive – there are several distinct subgenres of “wouldn’t it be fucked up?”, including but not limited to:

Proposing a very improbable situation, then gesturing toward it and asking “man, wouldn’t this be fucked up?”  

Wildly exaggerating an everyday state of affairs in order to demonstrate that it was, in fact, always fucked up.  

Taking a thing that it’s broadly agreed is fucked up and making it a different kind of fucked up.  

Inventing a new type of guy, then pointing at the guy and going “this guy is fucked up.”  

Grabbing the audience by the shoulders like, no, man, the fucked up thing is, like, a metaphor. For a different thing. That is also fucked up.  

Taking a genuinely innocuous situation and through some unlikely contrivance rendering it fucked up.  

Making a thing that self-referentially gestures at itself and asks “isn’t it fucked up that this is so fucked up?”  

Framing a fantastical scenario and asking “is this fucked up? why is it fucked up? what does it mean to be fucked up? what is ‘fucked’? what is ‘up’?”

[ardentpoop]

samchuck propaganda

[cellarspider]

Since I’ve been thinking about it all morning: here. A partial introduction to my favorite villain.

In the days of yore, when I was a teenager and video game hype was almost exclusively magazine-based, I saw a kid reading a copy of Game Informer.

“Hey,” said I, “could I see that for a second?”

The kid, not knowing what they were about to unleash, handed me the magazine.

I had seen this on the cover:

I had no idea what this was, but I knew that I wanted whatever it was selling.

I found out that this was an advertisement for City of Villains, an expansion to the previously-released MMO City of Heroes. I’d never played WoW with its Alliance and Horde split, so the idea was new to me. WoW also failed to present me with anything like the vibes of the newly-introduced lead villain, Lord Recluse.

Yes, they liked this art so much they did it twice, and I’m glad they did. More below the fold on why he was so appealing for a young queer kid, for those who are intrigued.

I’ll keep this focused on a single topic for now: The intensely queer vibes that Recluse acquired over the course of the game’s plot. Keep in mind that this game came out in 2004, so the actual amount of openly queer content was very minimal. However, CoH/CoV developed a reputation as an extremely queer-friendly space, with a community Pride event becoming a semi-official yearly celebration, complete with the devs showing up as major NPCs, custom assets, and spawning in unique raids that tanked everybody’s framerate. Equivalents of this have carried over past the game's tragic shutdown in 2012, with community-run servers still staging their own Pride events.

If the art above doesn’t make it clear, Recluse had a much-beloathèd archnemesis, Statesman. If the art above doesn’t make it abundantly clear, this was always an extremely fraught relationship, with a complicated backstory that became more and more tragic the deeper you got into the game lore, eventually bordering on cosmic horror. But one thing was for certain, this was Hark A Vagrant levels of obsession over a nemesis.

The game at first seemed to backstep on that: oh, it turned out, Recluse had once been villainous life partners with a woman who went by the villain name Red Widow. She died decades ago in the collateral damage of one of Recluse’s nigh apocalyptic confrontations with Statesman, and her death left him with nothing but his obsession. So sad.

And then when Statesman died in the course of the game’s plot, Recluse spiraled into depression and nihilism that was only halted when someone managed to dig Red Widow’s soul out of storage and resurrected her.

It was always deniably presented, but the implication was very much that the two were functionally equivalent emotional anchors to his psyche, and losing both of them was something he couldn’t survive.

Also, there was that one time that the game’s Valentine’s Day event was advertised with a heart split down the middle, half Statesman’s iconography and half Recluse’s, topped with a banner that read “AMOR OMNIA VINCIT”, meaning “LOVE CONQUERS ALL”.

And that’s without getting into the first tie-in book. A prequel starting at the end of the 1920s, it was a delightfully and deliberately pulpy book, which… centered around a complicated man slowly dying of lingering health problems after his exposure to mustard gas in WWI, and his very good friend, estranged from his family for unknown reasons, who’d devoted the last ten years to caring for the protagonist, and helping him seek a cure. This has carried on year after year, even though the man’s illness has made him unresponsive to the emotional needs of others, something they both know is going to culminate one day in the two parting ways.

…And then they get superpowers, and their relationship does not get any healthier from there. But what it does gain is a surprising trans metaphor as our now-antagonist slowly metamorphoses into the spidery villain I know and love.

I completely missed this back in the day. I have no idea if it was intentional. But there’s a scene where this man looks in the mirror and sees the first signs of his oncoming physical transformation, and he likes what he sees. He has no idea where he’s going, but he’s excited for it.

…And he’s started killing people who refer to him by his former name, in the most literal case of “dead naming” I’ve ever seen.

Throughout the rest of the series, Recluse is unapologetically who he is, putting him in that category of queercoded villain that doubles as a power fantasy. He’s grown physically monstrous and loves it. He has respect from everyone around him, either legitimately for his capabilities or out of fear of what he can do to those who don’t give him his due. A new demigod who is only matched by the man he’s never stopped obsessing over. He wins just as often as he loses, and often salvages something from his defeats in ways that nobody expected.

He is terrible. And he is wonderful.

[stephen9260]

I have been thinking about the iwtv/Niebla parallels for literal weeks I cannot believe that I, black sails menace of all time, did not realise that there was a series with a literal open ending about a storyteller killing or not killing the man whose words he gave power to wATING RIGHT IN FROM OF ME

so that was embarrassing

gotta love seeing iwtv going from the Hannibal to the Black Sails end of the meta spectrum

[nekropsii]

I'm curious, what's the bigotry you see in the classpect system?/gen

Rage was very specifically made with the Makaras in mind, especially Gamzee, and the symbol is just Juggalo paint. Gamzee's religious obsession to Insane Clown Posse is a racist stereotype against Black men- specifically about their alleged "religious devotion to Hip-Hop/Rap", which was a much more popular myth back during his conception. Rage being fitted for Gamzee specifically is an excuse for Hussie to perpetuate the "Angry, Violent, Unstable, Drug-Addled Black Man" stereotypes as well, alongside several other things. It's all packaged nicely under the label of "Ragebound" to make people not think about that too hard.

Rage as an Aspect can be retrofitted into something that is not a violent Anti-Black stereotype- easily, in my opinion- but as it stands, it's pretty fucking gnarly. I know I have a whole post about the Anti-Blackness stored in the Makaras somewhere, but it's basically all of the first negative stereotypes you can think of and then some, and Rage is a vessel to perpetuate it in a way that you can brush under the rug if you're thinking of the characters and lore from an ignorant and purely Watsonian standpoint.

[walking-circles]

she hates me

[apatheticlexicographer]

psychoanalyzing the stranger things marketing team for fun and profit: “the heart”

(brainrot set in thanks to this post go read it it’s straight facts)

i think i know the strat the marketing team are using here.

in all the merch related to will’s painting and his corresponding speech they’re trying to frame it in a seemingly very platonic way. by having erica there in the new postcard design they’re basically just making it an “oh look these are the characters who play D&D, how fun” type thing. that holds up okay unless you actually watch the goddamn show, even as a GA member, because will’s painting is undeniably romance coded for TWO canon pairings (an “unrequited” pairing is still canon). with that in mind, the forcefully platonic approach in the marketing is so blatantly full of shit it’s kind of funny.

that being said, the people in charge of marketing have a pretty good reason for it, or at least a logical one. they can’t market the painting as a m’leven thing, even if that might be more profitable in the short term (i don’t even know if that’s true these days tbh), because anybody who’s seen the show knows that the entire m’leven approach to it is a straight up lie on will’s part. not even a lie to the audience, either, because we’re fully in the loop with it. it’s only mike and, by extension through his answering monologue, el who believe it. they can’t sell m’leven merchandise that centers around an unresolved lie, that just... doesn’t work. they also doubly can’t market it as a m’leven thing because after s5 people are gonna be pissed if they discover they were being conned into spending their money on merchandise for the opposite ship in the love triangle.

on the other hand, they cant market it as (romantically) byler-centric yet, because that blows the lid way too soon. considering how conservative of an approach (conservative as in moderation not as in boomer politicians) they took to directly indicating byler canon, they don’t want it being confirmed til s5. they dedicated a lot in s4 to m’leven being bones and obscuring mike’s true feelings about either of his love interests, but very little to explicit byler canon indicators (i’m not talking about deep subtext, i’m talking about the implications a GA member can pick up on after one viewing). since it’s clearly a close kept secret that they want to build up to revealing, they aren’t about to show their hand over merch of all things. this is probably both for the shock impact of the reveal and how “groundbreaking” it would be or whatever (which it would) and also to retain the maximum viewer base in the build up to the finale. regardless of how GA opinions are shifting away from m’leven, disliking mike and el doesn’t equate to liking mike and will, and though the show isn’t made for conservatives at allll (now i do mean it in the boomer politician sense lol) there are inevitably a lot of people in the audience who would throw a major tantrum and boycott s5. the duffers’ statement that they’re not going to let what the audience wants influence where they take the story is a major green flag for byler in this respect, but netflix can’t have viewer counts dipping for the finale of their flagship show.

by marketing the painting ambiguously platonically they get to keep the m’levens and homophobes placated because it doesn’t pose any direct threat to them, and keep the bylers and LGBTQ audience engaged because we see through their shit and take it as the byler dub it is.

[un-pearable]

i love learning about people’s fan-experience backstories… we shared nothing in common until we met thanks to this wacky comic. we passed each other in the hallways of the titanic disaster that was [insert fandom here]. you introduced me to my next interest and gave me recs even before i knew who half the characters were. you’re responsible for the one (1) bookmark this fandom has from me and it’s the greatest fic ever written. we’ve had the same interests for ages and it’s pure coincidence and a damn shame we’ve never interacted before now. i understand all of your tastes perfectly from knowing about [x] [y] and [z] but i have absolutely no clue how [a] fits in. what’s it about?

[demo-ness]

stop putting pro vs anti ship "discourse" on my feed. y'all literally never even discuss moral lines in media and how they might shift or have nuance, it's literally always just grandstanding about the other side

[caedogeist-rights]

on a more genuine note. yes im making three posts right after each other literally dont worry abt it. i want to dissect the art of trigun like a frog. bc to me personally trigun is always a... scary series. but while tristamp is high tension high dread high blood. the manga being monochrome B/W means you get starkly terrifying(?) gore and a lot more mood. tristamp is bloody and stressful but trimax is gorey and like..... whatever word describes your protagonist going through constant psychological torture. i dont think tristamp can achieve trimax's horror in the same way that i dont think trimax could ever do the awe-inspiring terror that makes tristamp stand out. in tristamp we don't watch a man's arms get cut off but we do hear it, and we see the blood (and the arms). but trimax.... trimax we see a lot of heads and bodies impaled. we see someone's intestines. we see plants. who are angels. who are. body horror creatures. their proportions are. so much. but.... and its so fascinating to see, in hindsight, since i started w the anime, tristamp takes the body horror out of trimax and instead replaces it with aprehension and dread and loss. something abt... the difference between terror and horror.

both are good. both are SO good. but theres just inherently a different vibe and atmosphere! the artists for stampede set out to make a very specific type of art and i think they succeeded! nightow made a manga that looks a very specific way and it's fuckin amazing! both have their problems. i am not saying one is better (oh my gd do i have my design gripes w tristamp and my composition gripes w trimax) but fuck they are just. different. theyre different. and if you want to see tristamp but More. read trimax.

[britneyshakespeare]

DEAR JOHN BY TAYLOR SWIFT REALLY HITS DIFFERENT AS AN ADULT

[indi-glo-archive]

there’s just a significant difference between fandom and English class analysis styles and when you put people doing those separate things together everyone gets pissed off and heads start exploding

[lolly-dolli]

Politically I am a hedonist and that means I think we should all work together to make the world better for everyone so we can all enjoy good food and quality bedsheets and arts and crafts and safe homes together

[starberry-skies]

james teamrocket my best friend james teamrocket