#most of my spare time at the moment is devoted to writing my new novel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hansensgirl · 4 years

Text

salvatore | v.

series summary. — Bucky Barnes doesn’t believe in love anymore. Especially after the tragic, unknown death of his wife, Natasha. He thinks it’s stupid and a waste of time and- oh my. Hello there, you. There you were, with your notebooks and your novels, writing your heart away. He’s hellbent on saving you from this nasty world, his elusive neighbor that has him under the stupid spell of love. You soon find yourself trapped in a tragic love story with Bluebeard, not Prince Charming.

warnings. — NONCON/DUBCON, dark themes, stalking, obsessive behaviours, anxiety, broken glass, a panic attack, talk of bucky’s past and his mental health, angst, fluff, kissing, dark!Bucky Barnes, voyeurism, cameras, mentions of cheating, violence, perving, manipulation, feelings, 18+!!!

pairings. — Dark!Bucky Barnes x Reader.

authors note. — finally another chapter! this one is kinda sad but the next chapter will be fluffier heh. i changed my mind and i will not be doing a sequel after i finish this series, i’m so sorry! please reblog, leave some feedback and enjoy yourself!

Bucky couldn’t believe his cerulean eyes. Tears filled them and one ran down his cheek, soaking into his beard that he just trimmed that morning. He so desperately wanted to return to your home and beg you, ask you, plead to you, why? He made sure the polaroid didn’t have even the slightest crease to it, and not even a speck of dust either. The room started to spin, and his chest began to tighten. Each breath he took in didn’t seem to be enough for him.

The polaroid slipped out of his hands and his grip on reality went with it as well. Bucky doubled over, his mouth falling open as he began to dry heave. The tears didn’t relent either. His head spun, vision blurry with crystal tears that fell easily. “Ekkk...” He choked out, the urge to throw up washing over him. He stumbled across the kitchen and reached the other side, a dull sunshine making its way into his home.

Leaning over the granite countertop, he peered out the window for intrusive passersby. Oh how he wished to see you on the other side of the bulletproof glass. His fumbling fingers found the handle of the drawer, sweat covering it slickly. As he yanked it open, his bionic, vibranium hand formed a tight fist and collided itself to the window. He pulled his arm back and continued to do so, punching and hitting at the glass that held the world back from him.

Under his breath, he cursed himself for getting strong windows that didn’t have any mechanisms to open it with. But Bucky had his reasons that nobody knew about. The glass soon began to crack beneath his sheer force, distorting his beautiful view of the outdoors. The window broke completely with a loud crash and fresh, cool air filled his nostrils.

He felt the tightness in his chest slowly beginning to go away, but he was still erratic. Reaching into the drawer that was for emergency purposes only, he pulled out a thick photo album. He flipped it open and smiled when he saw the photos of you, happy and relaxed. The sight of you at his hands calmed him down. He flipped through the pages and sighed at each photo, ones that he took of you himself.

Pictures of you sleeping, of you going to buy groceries, of you showering and of you at your most vulnerable moments. In his eyes, the pictures were a form of art — derived from his love and devotion for you. Clumsily, he pulled his favorite picture out from the flimsy plastic sleeve. Freshly printed, edges sharp and almost untouched — pristine and rare.

A candid of you smiling gently, reading the book he gave you as you listened to some forties songs that he had posted on his Instagram about. You clutched the book softly and hugged a teddy bear that was from your childhood. Oh how he would kill to be wrapped in your arms, to have you bring him back from the war his mind constantly went through, to whisper sweet nothings in his ears. Bucky soon regained his grasp on reality and he looked back at the polaroid that laid on the ground.

His jaw clenched with anger and a certain emptiness filled his eyes… Almost as if the Soldat had made a reappearance in him. Raged coursed through his veins and he growled like an animal. Slipping the photo back into the album, he strided to where the polaroid laid and picked it up. He glared at it for the last time and then crumpled it in his hand, the sound of it being destroyed was like music to his ear.

He squeezes, and squeezes, and squeezes until he can’t, until the rage inside him subsides. He loosened his grip and stared at the now destroyed photo. His faint reflection stared back at him and he couldn’t bring himself to feel a bit of remorse.

You’re his, and he’s yours. He’s your saviour, your salvatore.

Your sundress still hugged your body even though dusk had settled in the sky. It had ridden up to your thighs as you laid back on the couch. The fountain pen your ex-boyfriend had gifted you twiddled between your fingers. The poor posh cap of the pen fell in between one of the cushions, lost in a cluster of dust bunnies and one dollar bills.

You stared at the blank page of the overly exorbitant Ciak Notebook your fellow classmates and colleagues would rave on and on about. You sighed before finally writing a word. Curvy, looped letters flowed as smooth as water and you felt your jittering nerves slowly calming down. Sighing, you stared at the three letters as they stared back at you, almost taunting you that it wasn’t enough. Gnawing at your dry lips, you slowly began to feel proud of yourself.

The

It wasn’t much, but it was something. The guilt of not knowing what to write next ate at you. Would you have to throw the page away if your mind chose to restart? Or would you have to force yourself to continue the sentence? You looked away as you thought about what to do, laying your eyes on a nasty print. Dirt formed in the shape of a footstep tainted the floors of the kitchen and you sighed, realizing it was from Bucky. Oh, James…

The thought of him licked at your mind, like a searing flame of temptation. You reminisced about him, and those piercing eyes, as well as his captivating chuckle and elusive aura. Your heart hurted as you thought about how his eyes held a certain sadness to them. You saw the broken soldier beneath his veneers and he was tired, tired of a certain longing that never seemed to go away. You chuckled, shaking your head as you called yourself crazy for thinking about his eyes. Oh… maybe, maybe that's it!

The strange man’s sapphire eyes are piercing. The gaze they come with almost hurts, and she’s the first thing he lays his eyes on. Soft cheery ones that are the brightest things in the world are met with sad, worn down ones. He’s longing for something new, something that would finally fill the empty void that many people eroded away at, the hole in his heart growing deeper and deeper.

You smiled to yourself as soon as you added the period, finishing the last sentence. You wondered whether or not you should continue or stop right where you had left off. You just couldn’t let that sudden, amazing burst of muse and inspiration go, right? You grabbed your glass of white wine and downed it like a single mom after a long day of worries, ready to write your little heart away.

The pen glided across numerous pages, not daring to stop at all. Your eyebrows were furrowed with concentration, the only sounds that you could hear was people talking outside and your breathing. The shrill of your obnoxious doorbell pierced through the calmness that you revelled in for the past thirty minutes. You ignored it, picking up from where you had left off but the rapid knocking on your door made you bite your tongue with shame.

Hurryingly, you rushed to the door and swung it open, looking down to see one of Mrs. Carter’s grandchildren. You couldn’t recall her name, but she was adorable. “The man w- with the long hair, he broke his window!” She exclaimed, before running off to play with her equally small friends. You furrowed your eyebrows at the absurdity, but then what she said had finally dawned on you. You never ran faster in your life, not even in your physical education classes in high school that you envied with every fiber in your body.

Thick, jagged shards of glass littered the concrete, and you were careful to avoid them. “Bucky?” You called out, peering through the window that he had destroyed. Nowhere to be found. You moved to his door and rang the doorbell more time than you could count on your fingers. A certain dread settled in the pit of your stomach, and you thought about the worst. You spun around as you tried to find some place that he would keep a spare key.

Your best bet? Underneath the ‘welcome’ rug that you stood on.

You pulled a rusted key out from under it and you unlocked the door with no hassle. “Doll?” Bucky called out, voice weak and quiet. He was hunched over, tears streaking down his face as he struggled to come down from his severe panic attacks. One came after the other, insecurities and memories tumbling down onto him and he was trapped in a ruthless circle of repetition.

You grabbed his flesh hand, wincing at how it was slightly damn from his tear. Gently, you placed his hand on his heart and soothingly reached up to caress his cheek. “Buck, you gotta breathe with me, okay? Do the same as me.” You instructed, his eyes flashing to you as you knelt down on the floor with him. You slowled your breathing down for him to match, and he followed eventually.

“That’s it… There you go…” You praised, moving your hand from his face to his soft hair, threading your fingers through his locks gently. You reached up and lightly kissed his sheen-covered forehead, soft lips almost smoothing out his splintered edges. You didn’t pull away, keeping Bucky in your arms like he was going to be stolen away from you. Bucky wrapped his arms around you, swallowing your smaller frame into his.

His tears relented but his sobs stayed, deciding that maybe they were going to spend a night or two. You refused to shush him, knowing that letting him cry everything out could make it better. His tears soaked into your skin, leaving it damp. Your eyes scanned the house, a gasp falling from your lips as you looked at the aftermath of a storm.

The walls were dented in and scratched up — the once pristine paint was ruined completely. A few photo frames were broken and a poor vase was shattered into pieces that could easily pierce through anyone’s skin; even a super soldier’s. You just knew another war had taken place in his home — one between him and his emotions. You threaded your fingers through his hair, occasionally stopping to gently untangle some slightly stubborn knots.

He sighed under your touch and smiled as his breathing returned to normal. His heart still beat harshly but it wasn’t as bad as before. You took notice too, realizing that you didn’t feel his heart beating against your chest. You were proud of him, proud that he managed to fight the demons that probably had visited him before.

You guided him to his couch that was covered in pillow fluff and some shards of glass. You tried to find him a cleared out spot to sit on but you failed. You frowned and Bucky had to resist himself from the greatest temptation of kissing you. “Shit.” You cursed, gnawing on your bottom lip. Bucky was practically vibrating as he fought for self control, and he didn’t know whether to thank the Gods or not when you stopped.

You laced your fingers with his and you smiled at the size difference. “Oh! Your bed!” You exclaimed adorably before spotting his stairs. You darted up them and hauled Bucky behind — even though he’s 260 lbs and a hundred times stronger than you. You tried to recall where his room was, but the hazy memories from that night just weren’t helping you out.

Your hand slipped from his but you hung onto his pinky finger. You gnawed at your bottom lip and tried to recall whether it was the room on your left or your right. “Left, doll.” He husked quietly, his voice no more than a whisper. It was still hoarse from the crying, but it was nothing less. “Do you often have these…?” You asked him, struggling to find the word.

“Panic attacks? Sometimes, but they’re slowly getting better.” He spoke, sitting on the bed. Unlike any normal human, he wasn’t tired from his panic attack. No amount of exhaustion hauled over him. “You’re not tired?” You asked in curiosity, taking in how messy his room was. You couldn’t blame him, though. It wasn’t like your room was any better.

“No… Serum, makes everything, y’know…” He explained, struggling with his words. “Oh, right.” You smiled at him, noticing a few small cuts on his flesh hand. “You’re hurt!” You exclaimed, a gasp leaving your mouth. Bucky didn’t even notice his injuries until you pointed them out. Why would he when you’re right in front of him? “Oh… It’s nothing, doll, don’t worry.” He reassured, before ignoring the injuries.

“I don’t think so…” You countered, wanting to help him so badly. “Uh, if you want, you can help dress them for me? Only if you want to, of course! Not going to force you or anything…” He rambled, cursing himself for sounding like a complete nerve-wrecked buffoon. “Yes please, I hate seeing you — or anyone, for a matter of fact — hurt.” You smiled at him before spinning in a circle, trying to find a first aid kit.

“You see that door there? It’s in there, bottom cabinet.” He explained again, and you let out an “oh.” You walked into the bathroom and Bucky let out an exhale of air that he didn’t even know he was holding. “Found it!” You cheered. But then you grimaced. Dried blood and dirt was smeared across the white plastic of the first aid box. “Uh, that’s from past missions, before I retired.” He clarified quickly. “Oh you retired?” You asked in shock, walking back to him.

“Yeah… It’s for the best anyways.” He sheepishly replied. “May I ask why?” You questioned, popping open the box. Bucky nodded and pointed at the bandages and wipes. You picked them up and he cleared his throat. “Well, I think it’s best for everyone. Sam… I love him, but I don’t want him to be burdened by my, you know…” He clicked his tongue and pointed at his head.

“And plus, he’s Captain America, he’s capable of doing everything on his own. As for the other Avengers? Well, they’re far stronger than me, so I think they’re fine. I still keep in touch with them, but I’m not close to them.” He sighed deeply. You didn’t even start cleaning his wounds because you were too caught up in listening to Bucky speak. Your features softened at his sad tone and words.

Sympathy took over you and you hated how that was what Bucky thought of himself. “Even though Shuri took out all the stuff, I’m still not ready to go back into daily wars. I also think I deserve a break, ‘m tired of all that violence.” He sighed deeply, before grabbing the pack of wipes that you struggled to open. “But if they ever need me, I’m just a phone call away.” He added quickly, making you give him a sad smile. He tore the aluminum open for you and you thanked him.

“Before you ask, yes, I’ve tried therapy. Sam referenced me, but it just didn’t work. I guess… I guess I’m just rotten work…” He mumbled at the end, even though you heard him loud and clear. “What!? No! You, Sir, are the farthest thing from rotten work. You- you’re a survivor! You’re strong, you’re a sweetheart, you fight for this world and you deserve nothing less than happiness and everything good in the world!” You exclaimed, taking both yourself and Bucky by surprise.

“Why do you tell yourself these things, Mr. Barnes?” You asked him, cleaning up his cuts. He didn’t wince at all, but you pay no mind to that. “I… Ever since I was captured by HYDRA, that’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve thought of myself as a monster, a vile human being, a machine, the list goes on and on.” He admitted and your heart broke even more.

“They used to refer to me as ‘it,’ not a human, not a victim, not even by ‘Soldat’ and that just stuck with me.” He gulped through tears and you knew it was a sensitive subject. “Maybe you could try therapy once you’re ready? I know it may seem scary facing everything, but it’ll be worth it. You can take my advice with a grain of salt or not, but you need to know that you’re the complete opposite of any negative thing your mind comes up with. Also, fuck HYDRA.” You said with a smile on your face.

Bucky chuckled and then handed you the roll of gauze that was in his hand. “Thank you.” You whispered under your breath, before scrunching your face up in concentration. Even though you had no damn idea as to what you were doing, you were determined to bandage his wounds. Bucky’s eyes raked up and down your face and he didn’t even care if you were wrapping his wounds incorrectly.

“Uh… I know this may sound forward- but do you want to go on a second date?” Bucky asked after a few beats of silence. You choked on your spit and cursed under your breath. After a few moments, you finally calmed down. “D- date?” You questioned incredulously. “I believe that’s what I said, doll.” Bucky chuckled lightheartedly. A little “oh,” escaped your lips and you began to gnaw on your lip. Yes… yes you do have feelings for Bucky — but this is so wrong. You only left he-who-shall-not-be-named a few months ago…

But isn’t it good that you’re moving on? Your inner monologue conflicted with your entire being and Bucky can’t help but to be concerned. “Everything okay?” He asked, playing with the loose ends of the gauze. “I… Can I be honest with you, Mr. Barnes?” You asked him, wringing your hands together nervously. “Of course, doll, and it’s Bucky.” He smiled.

“Well… A few months ago I got out of a toxic relationship, and I’m still healing from it. He really destroyed me, and so did the break up. I’m ready, but I’m also not ready, if that makes sense. Uhm… Is it fine if we just take it slow? Or if you can give me some time?” You shyly toks. Bucky’s heart clenched and he slowly began to nod his head. “Of course, doll. Whatever you need you can ask me.” He reassured you, feeling the urge to caress your face.

“Thank you so much, Bucky!” You gleamed delightfully. Bucky looked at you as though you hung the stars. “No need to thank me, doll. I’m just gonna be there for you every step of the way.” He shook his head in a sort of reassuring manner. Your eyes fell to your hands and Bucky worked on fixing your bandages.

“Do… Do you think we’re moving too fast?” You asked him after a few silent pauses. “I’m not sure… I think we’re moving at the right pace.” He affirmed, flopping back into his bed. You stood up and towered over him for the first and only time ever. “I mean- I barely even know anything about you! Aside from the stuff we learned in history class and any information about you before 2016 — please don’t ask. I literally kissed you, and we only met a few days before I think? I’ve only ever been in one actually serious relationship so I wouldn’t know but-” You rambled like a mad man before Bucky cut you off by grabbing onto your hand.

“Doll, you’re rambling.” He bluntly told you. “Sorry… It’s just a habit of mine.” You apologized sheepishly, growing shy and embarrassed under his almost painful stare. “I guess you may think you’re moving fast because of your last relationship. Didn’t you take it slow, doll?” He asked you, making you purse your lips. “Yes…” You answered after some momentary hesitation. “And didn’t you say it was toxic?” He questioned you, making you slowly nod your head.

“Did you want to move slowly?” He inquired after giving you a sad smile. “Well, not really. I mean- we dated for around four years and every time I’d try to move forward in the relationship he’d always tell me that we have all the time in the world.” You explained, skipping over some details because you were sure that Bucky didn’t need to know about how your boyfriend was in his best friend’s guts.

“Do you want to move at a decent pace at least?” He asked you, and suddenly you let out a hearty sigh. “I do, I really do, Bucky. But I just don’t know what a ‘decent pace’ is! Or- or how to even be in an actually decent relationship!” You cried out in hysterics. “That’s okay! I’ll teach you, don’t worry.” He reassured you, and then you realized how worked up you were.

“Really?” You asked in shock, dealing as though you were in some sort of cheesy romcom. “Mhm! Trust me, I’ve been alive for a while, so I know quite a lot.” He said with a smile. Your face mirrored his and you felt relaxed in the presence of Bucky. For now. “Uh- Thank you so much, Bucky! You’re the best-” You thanked him cheerfully, before cutting yourself off as you noticed the time.

Bucky frowned when you let out a disappointing sigh. “Is everything okay? ‘Cause I was really enjoying all that praise.” He joked around, making you giggle. “Uh yeah- I just realized that I have a job interview in an hour and should probably go get ready.” You groaned loudly, earning a snort from Bucky. “Talk to you soon?” You asked him. “Of course, doll.” He nodded his head in a sort of Jay Gatsby way and you felt tingles across your spine.

“Bye!” You said as you pressed a chaste kiss on Bucky’s cheek. You turned and left his room, leaving Bucky a blushing fool. His hand came up to touch where you kissed him and he sighed sweetly. Bucky kept his hand there and flopped back onto his bed like a teenage girl who held a five second conversation with her crush. “Oh, doll.”

You bit your lip to hold in a childish squeal. You wanted to kiss Bucky’s cheek ever since you met him, and you finally did. But unfortunately, through the euphoric feeling that was running through your body you still felt bad. There was no job application — god, you couldn’t even find it in you to print a new resumé. You lied to James Buchanan Barnes and got away with it like you were some sort of spy. But you couldn’t just tell him what you were going to do.

No way. You skipped all the ten steps to your home and couldn’t stop smiling. Is this what it’s like to be in a romcom? If it was, then you were ready to be in one for the rest of your life. You shut the door behind you and made your way up to your bedroom. Your steps echoed behind you and you bit your lip to control your smile.

You unlocked the door to your room and sat at your dresser with a sort of heaviness weighing you down. You had procrastinated it for so long, but it was time. You opened up the bottom drawer and took out the old cigar box Steve had given you to store your stories in. Your smile faltered at the memory that used to bring you so much joy. You unlatched the box and sighed deeply at the sight of Steve’s belongings.

A few polaroids of the two of you, a watch of his, a compass with your picture, a locket with his grin plastered on it, a promise ring- so many memories. Finally, it was time to let go of him. But were you ready? Were you really ready to say goodbye to the man that taught you about love? How does one say goodbye to a man like Steve Rogers? But he told you, there’s no saying goodbye to him.

Not yet, at least.

388 notes · View notes

watch-grok-brainrot · 4 years

Text

Jin Guangyao's Violation of 忠孝仁义

So I had written about WWX and his strong sense of 忠孝仁义 last week. While I was writing it, I kept on thinking about JGY and how he managed to violate all of these virtues. I wanted to go into this characterization of him because I find it so interesting how opposite he is to WWX in the decisions he made. (Warning: i’m not nice to JGY here so if you don’t want him dragged, don’t read?)

忠- loyalty, devotion, fidelity (usually for country or monarch)

(Can I take a moment to talk about how much I LOVE THIS SHOT?! The blood of WRH on the camera lens, WRH falling over, the sudden shift to brightness that mirrors the scene in ep 50 where JGY obscures the sun in his bow (picture above the read more cut)! I can’t get over how much I LOVE the lighting and the way WRH collapses, making way for JGY to become the new sun. Foreshadowing much CQL Crew?!)

This one might be a stretch depending on how you read JGY. I fully believe he went to work for Wen Ruohan as Wen Zhuliu did -- seeking someone who will value his skills. However, WZL died for WRH and JGY just bided his time. (Note: While we know very little about Wen Zhuliu, we know he was at least 忠 and 义. He died for WRH and Wen Chao and refused to let WC desecrate Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan’s bodies. For that, I have to give him respect. He, despite everything, still had that jianghu sense of 义. Also, the man can count. And knows what a golden core feels like.)

So we know JGY gave Lan Xichen the maps, but he also lured them to Nightless City where the puppets were waiting. Had WWX not brought out the Stygian Tiger Amulet, would JGY have murdered WRH? Or would he have stayed in the shadows forever? As a viewer I have no idea what JGY is thinking, what he’s doing, or what he’s hoping for. He hides so well his intentions that there is debate about if he really was helping with the Sunshot Campaign or not! That isn’t something you can say about someone with loyalty.

What upsets me further is that Nie Mingjie, having been JGY’s superior officer, sees JGY more clearly than LXC can. NMJ has seen JGY murder and has seen the level of self-serving vindictiveness JGY is capable of. In the case of the Sunshot Campaign, this self-serving attitude made JGY become a double agent uncommitted to either side. Too bad NMJ could not convince LXC of JGY’s duplicity. I’m gonna blame those dimples.

The fact that we do not know JGY’s intent really shows his lack of 忠. If You Stand For Nothing, JGY, What Will You Fall For? (Answer: Himself and that is not 忠)

孝 - filial piety (deference to your lineage)

So for 孝, you’re supposed to respect your parents, honor your parents, and defer to your parents. What are you not supposed to do? Kill you father. That’s what.

So this should’ve been a really short section because that’s pretty cut and dry. But I want to look at what JGY says to JGS when JGY brings in Sisi and the other women.

(He’s so creepy in this picture! *shudders*)

“父亲,我给你找来了你最爱的女人. 有很多个. 你高兴吗?”

“Father, I have brought you your favorite -- women. There are many. Are you happy?”

(Translation note: you can translate the line as your favorite women or your favorite -- women. I chose to translate it as the latter due to the context.)

First of all, the tone. JGY’s voice is breathy. I can almost hear a smile. He has zero moral qualms about this. He addresses his father as father, not dad or anything close. But he does acknowledge that relationship. And then he says he’s brought JGS’s favorite. There’s a slight emphasis on the favorite there. And it’s creepy. JGY adds the next line and goose bumps start to form on my skin. He knows his father’s sins and he’s punishing his father with it. Why are you doing this JGY?! And at the end, when it asks “Are you happy?” his voice is so sinister I want to scream. JGY clearly knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly what it means to be 孝 and chooses to make a mockery of 孝, to make a mockery of his father, and to kill his father.

And then, after he watches JGS die, he tells Sisi and the other women to continue -- to desecrate JGS’s body. This is about as un-孝 as one can get! Remember, WWX and JC were willing to die to get JFM and YZY’s bodies back so they could be cremated and honored. The difference here is night and day! Yes, JGY was very good to his mother, including building a Guanyin Statue in her likeness and sparing Sisi who was a friend of his mother’s, but I cannot get over how much of an abomination he was toward JGS (even if JGS deserved an awful death).

仁 - benevolence, humanity, love of man

JGY has no 仁. Does JGY love anyone other than himself? Maybe his mom. (He might have some 仁 towards Su Sh*t She but that’s only suggested by the last couple of episodes.) That’s really it. He might have loved Jin Ling as his nephew. He might have loved LXC for LXC’s kindness and brotherhood. He might have loved Qin Su as whatever relationship he thinks they had. But when push comes to shove, JGY has zero benevolence towards anyone. He’s willing to kill Qin Su, take Jin Ling hostage, and take LXC hostage. (He also has no 义 but that’s the next section!)

And there’s ep 23. When LXC, JGS, and NMJ were discussing what to do with the Wens, JGY suggested the Wens be imprisoned at QiongQi Path. Since WRH had ordered the slaughter of multiple clans, including the Jiangs at Lotus Pier, doing the same to him would not be considered unreasonable. Ruthless, yes, but a good show of might and order. This acceptance of murder is due to the concept of 诛九族. 诛九族 (zhū jiǔ zú) is one of the most severe punishments in ancient China. The character breakdown makes it fairly self explanatory:

诛 - to execute, kill, put to death

九 - nine

族 - family, clan,ethnic group, or tribe

诛九族 condemns you and your entire family to death (Depending on the source, some say it’s you + 8 types of relatives. Some say it’s everyone related to you from 4 generations above to 4 generations below).

By suggesting the Wen remnants be imprisoned and not slaughtered, JGY presented himself as 仁. However, by turning around and slaughtering the people per JGS’s wishes, JGY knowingly chose the immoral path where blood flowed like rivers.

(Also! The way this shot pans down makes me think about how JGY is descending into a hell of his own making...)

义- righteousness and code of brotherhood

Good god, 义. I have so many feelings about 义. Let’s start with some history because CONTEXT is so important. So when you ask a chinese person on the street to give you an example of 义, I’m willing to bet one of the most common answers you will get is 桃园结义 (tao yuan jie yi, or peach garden/grove establishment of brotherhood). This is THE story of fraternal love between non-blood related men.

So quick and dirty synopsis of 桃园结义 and the three kingdoms story (I actually haven’t read it and it’s been a while since I actually tried to figure out the plot… so hopefully this is all correct!). Three men (刘备、关羽、张飞/ Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei) met on the streets, fought each other, became besties, and decided to start a rebellion. They took over one third of the country with the oldest (刘备) being the monarch and the other two working at his side (a little Yunmeng bros feel there, right? You’ll be the leader, I’ll be your right hand man). And they died for each other. 关羽 was the first to go. To seek revenge, 张飞 worked his men to the rebellion. Two of 张飞’s subordinates ultimately decapitated him while he was sleeping and brought it to their enemy. 张飞’s head and body are buried in two different cities in China (doesn’t this make you think of NMJ’s fate? Because it did when I was thinking about this and I wanted to cry. Also, 张飞 started out as a butcher. SERIOUSLY CQL/MDZS, can we pretend to be SUBTLE!?). 刘备 continued seeking revenge. Prior to 关羽’s death, the three kingdoms were in semi-equilibrium where the two smaller ones were allied against the larger. However, 关羽 being killed by their kinda-ally destroyed the delicate balance between the three kingdoms. 刘备 could’ve tried to make peace but he wasn’t going to let his sworn brother’s murder go unavenged. They all died in the end but with honor and brotherhood intact. 刘备 and 张飞’s determination to avenge 关羽’s death epitomizes the virtue of 义. They are willing to die for eachother.

In CQL the parallelism to the 桃园结义 imagery is obvious to anyone who has a cultural background that screams Romance of Three Kingdoms at you. Let’s take a look, ok?

A quick Google image search yields these images (I couldn’t choose):

You know what they look like? This (from ep 40):

You know what 桃园结义 looks like when mainland China made a live action? This:

And you know what that reminds me of in CQL (ep 23)?

Are you freaking out now about the visual parallels? Ok. Good. Because we’re moving onto a tiny bit of text comparison because i’m excited and i can.

Per Romance of Three Kingdoms (note: historically inspired novel, not history), 刘备、关羽、张飞 swore the following oath:

“念刘备、关羽、张飞，

Hope that Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei

虽然异姓，既结为兄弟，

Even though we have different last names,since we have sworn to be brothers

则同心协力，救困扶危；

Then let us unite our hearts and efforts towards helping the needy

上报国家，下安黎庶。

Repaying our country, bringing peace to the people.

不求同年同月同日生，

We do not ask to be born on the same day of the same month of the same year

只愿同年同月同日死。

But hope to die on the same day of the same month of the same year

皇天后土，实鉴此心，

Heaven and earth, verify our hearts

背义忘恩，天人共戮！”

If we turn our backs to righteousness and forget charity, may we be slaughtered by all.

Now, let’s look at the oath said by the 3zun:

“神明在上。

Brilliant gods above,

今日我兄弟三人在此立下重誓，

Today, we three brothers swear a solemn oath here

上报仙门，下安黎庶，

To repay our cultivation sects, To bring peace to the people.

天地同证，如有异心，

Heaven and earth be our witnesses. If we become disloyal,

千夫所指，天人共怒”

May a thousand men point their fingers at us and may we be incite the anger of all

Even some of the wording is verbatim. The parts I bolded are what I was excited by since they’re either parallel or verbatim.

The first set of lines: 上报国家，下安黎庶 and 上报仙门，下安黎庶 . (Remember when I guessed in my WWX post that since there are no countries, the cultivation sects are the target of 忠? This is my proof that I was right!) My hubris aside, this is the part of their oath where they swear to be both 忠 and 仁 together. The wording is verbatim except for the part that doesn’t apply to the CQL universe!

The second set of lines: 天人共戮 vs 天人共怒. The sentence/phrase format and message is identical-- betray this oath and incur wrath. (I can’t help but headcanon NMJ wanted to say 天人共戮 because it’s so much more metal but JGY was like, that’s really severe and convinced LXC to side with him to get it changed.)

Even the structure of the oaths are similar. Both oaths start with an introduction (we are three who want to be brothers), both oaths ask the heaven and earth to see them (Heaven and earth, verify our hearts & heaven and earth be our witnesses), and both oaths call upon the wrath of the people for vindication in case of betrayal. The CQL version is an abridged version of the three kingdoms oath and the writers set that up along with all the imagery because they want us to be constantly thinking about the three kingdoms bros and their amazing “even after death we’re still brothers” sense of 义. They want us to compare JGY’s 义 with that 义 and find JGY lacking.

The obvious betrayal of 义 is NMJ’s death. Not only is JGY the cause of NMJ’s death, he butchers (i’m cringing at my own pun... but it’s so accurate) NMJ’s body so that NMJ’s spirit cannot rest.

But, to me, what JGY does to LXC is betrayal on par with what he does to NMJ (and not dissimilar to what Xue Yang does to Xiao Xingchen). As we went over in the section about 仁, JGY says one thing so that LXC suggest JGY handles the matter. When everyone leaves, JGY does the un-仁 thing, essentially with LXC’s blessing. JGY kills NMJ but he does it by asking LXC to teach him how to play guqin. LXC becomes an unknowing accomplice (like XXC who becomes the killer of tongueless victims of corpse poison).

So remember in my WWX post how I said WWX took on what he perceived as JC’s debts so JC doesn’t end up 不仁不义? JGY says one thing and does another in front of LXC. He knows LXC cares deeply about being righteous and kind. He knows LXC wants to do good. And he leads LXC down a path of self doubt and regret. LXC ends up teaching JGY the techniques that kill NMJ. LXC lets JGY handle the Wen remnants. Thus, unlike WWX who tries to absolve JC, JGY intentionally puts LXC into the position of 不仁不义.

Can WWX and JGY be more diametrically opposed (foes)?

199 notes · View notes

leisurelypanda · 5 years

Note

Fantasy AU where Steve's a virginal omega who's chosen to be sacrificed to a fearsome dragon, in the hopes that his kingdom will be spared from its wrath. Even as his blood runs cold at the sight of the beast, a nightmarish thing of red and black descending upon the rock he's chained to, he keeps his head held high, choosing to face this unfair death with courage. But everyone is shocked when the dragon instead breaks the chains and carries Steve off to the distant northern mountains (1/2)

(2/2) Once they reach the beast's lair, Steve finds himself gently laid down in a pile of furs, watching in shock and confusion as the dragon slowly transforms into a naked human alpha named Thor. His movements slow and gentle, Thor kneels before Steve and pledges to be his mate, body and soul. As the weeks pass, Steve gets used to his new living situation and slowly starts to fall in love with this strange alpha, feeling warmer and more protected and loved then he can ever remember.

Okay, I love this concept, I'm weak for turning this "dragon capturing a maiden" trope on its head like this. Also, this sounds like my kind of monster fucking fic and I kinda want to write it. I kinda hate and love you for putting this idea in my head because I love it so much!

Once upon a time, Steve was wandering in the mountains. A dangerous pastime for a young boy, but his mother was the town's apothecary, and that meant Steve had to learn where to find medicinal herbs, roots, and berries. It's not exactly the most glamorous job in the world, but he enjoys it.

One day, he was looking for herbs to stock up for the winter. Every year was the same, of course. People got sick in the winter and his mother would make them medicines. There were rumors that she was a witch, but that didn't keep people from coming to her when they were sick.

On that particular day, Steve went further up the mountain than usual. He was older, nearly 12 years old. His mother said he could handle it, but to be careful. Strange things sometimes lived in the mountains and the forest that covered them. Steve heeded her words, even if he wasn't sure what exactly she was talking about. He had a bow and a quiver of arrows to protect himself and to hunt for food, should the opportunity arise. He was small and weak, but if he had the chance to shoot rabbits or fowl, he could take it.

He heard rustling in a bush and took out his bow. His pack was full, but if he could bring food home, that might be worth just as much as the herbs. When he emerged from the bush, though, what he found wasn't a rabbit or a bird, but a small, strange lizard fighting a fox. The lizard was striking; red and black swirling over its body. Steve had never seen one like it before.

Between them was the carcass of a pheasant that the lizard seemed to defending rather desperately. Without thinking, Steve drew his bow and shot an arrow into the fox's chest. The lizard squawked in shock, and growled at it caught Steve's gaze. Steve held up his hands as he approached to collect the body and his arrow. A fox wasn't good for meat, but the pelt could be used to make something warm or sold to the tanner in town so he could make use of it.

The lizard scented his hand and Steve tried his best to stay calm. It was said that an omega's scent could calm even wild animals. How much of that was true or old wives' tales, Steve had no idea, but it was worth a shot. The lizard calmed, picked up the pheasant in its jaws, and ran off faster than Steve could blink. Regardless, he bent down to pull the arrow out of the fox and put the carcass in an empty sack.

The fox made a warm hat that lasted many years. Steve never saw the lizard again, though. Two years after he found it, he went into his first heat. It was the talk of the town for more than a year afterwards. Many families made offers, especially the rich ones who thought that having a male omega would be a novel idea. Steve turned them all down. The last thing he needed was for some noble prick to take him from his work.

In time, rumors began circulating that he, too, was a witch. It didn't matter if Steve had never actually done anything more than heal the sick and turn down offers of marriage from wealthy families. It didn't even matter that his mother had, in fact, taught him actual magic in addition to his healing arts. He kept it secret and didn't practice anything where others might intrude.

Then, ten years after he met the strange lizard, his mother died. It wasn't unexpected. Her health had been failing her for years before it finally claimed her. Steve wept bitterly at the funeral. Many people turned out, but few offered comfort to Steve. His friends in the town were few, indeed, and none of them could fill the gaping hole her death left in his life.

Only months later, the dragon appeared.

The kingdom was in an uproar. Every effort to drive the beast away had been met with disaster. An army had been ravaged, fields burned, and towns pillaged. The entire town was in a state over the news. There was talk of preparing a sacrifice in the event that the dragon appeared in their region.

Steve scoffed at such talk. What kind of dragon would be placated with an omega virgin? Many of the men who made such suggestions were becoming eager to marry off their omega offspring in the hopes that someone else's child would be chosen to be offered. Steve didn't think it would really happen.

Until it did.

The powerful families of the town were increasingly anxious. Many of them were still offended that Steve had refused all offers of marriage. As the dragon entered their region, the rumors of his being a witch became louder. People stopped coming to his shop for remedies, they slammed doors in his face, some refused to do business with him. A few days after Steve consumed the last of his food, soldiers approached his door. The city council had agreed to offer him up to the dragon. Weak with hunger, Steve went willingly.

The next day he was taken out to the battlements. He was chained to the ground as the dragon approached. Steve gasped, his blood went cold at the sight. The dragon was huge! It was nearly as big as the fortress itself. The scales gleamed crimson red with black swirls, like a sunset with teeth that could set the entire town ablaze.

The head of the council shook violently as he read their declaration of offering Steve to the dragon. Steve took a deep breath and shook as the dragon sniffed him. Then, the dragon extended a huge, clawed paw and snapped the chains like they were nothing more than twigs. The dragon took Steve in its hand and flew away. Steve didn't even have the sense to scream as he watchd his town fade into the distance.

The dragon flew for what seemed like hours until it arrived in a part of the mountains Steve had never seen or heard of before. The mountains were tall and huge and covered with snow. Then, the dragon began to descend and walked into the mouth of an enormous cavern. It was decorated with lavish furs, torches, and rich furnishings. The dragon set Steve down on a pile of furs when it began to shine. A moment later, a large, very naked man stood before Steve. What's more, the man smelled very strongly of alpha. Steve had never scented one more potent. His blond hair went past his shoulders and his chest, arms, and legs were all covered in tattoos of the same red and black swirls as the dragon. Steve swallowed and backed away as the man approached.

"Well met, little one," the man---dragon--- said.

"Do I... know you?" Steve asked.

"Of course," the dragon said with a smile. "You saved me from the fox when I was a starving babe."

Steve's eyes went so wide he was surprised they didn't fall out. "That was you?!? How?"

"Dragons grow quickly when magic and food is plentiful," the dragon replied. He knelt in front of Steve. "I have been searching for you."

Steve blinked. "Why?"

"Your scent has remained with me night and day these past 15 years," the dragon said. "I have bided my time until I could return to you."

"But why me? And why did you cause so much destruction?" Steve asked.

"I did nothing that was not in self-defense," the dragon replied. "I attempted to reason with them, but they refused to listen. Knights preferred the prospect of becoming famous heroes than to help a dragon find the man he loves."

Steve blinked again. "The man you love?"

"Yes, little one," the dragon said. "I am Thor, the king of dragons, and I have searched these many months to find you. I will pledge my eternal love, service, and devotion to you, my sweet, if you will have me."

Steve reeled. He couldn't deny the attraction he felt for the still very large man, but no one had ever declared their love for him, at least, not in a way that he found convincing. Thor, though, seemed sincere.

"I didn't know the dragons had a king," Steve said. Thor smiled.

"We do, and I am he," Thor said. "I would have you be my queen, if you consent."

"And if I don't?" Steve asked.

"Then, with sorrow, I will return you to your home, or you may reside here to find another you deem worthy, or you may name the place and I will take you there and never return," Thor said. "You are free to do as you wish."

Steve considered this for a moment. His home had willingly turned him over, expecting him to be eaten. A dragon, and a king at that, had emerged as a suitor for his hand, who also happened to be the strange creature Steve had saved as a boy. It was a strange turn of events, to be sure.

He looked around the cavern. It was a surprisingly warm place for a home so high up in the mountains. The air smelled of jasmine and ginger, too, not like a den for a wild animal. Human kings and lords lived in less splendid conditions. Still, that wasn't a reason to accept such an offer.

"May I have time to consider?" Steve asked.

"Indeed you may," Thor said. "Take as much time as you require. I only have one thing to ask."

"Yes?" Steve asked.

"May I court you, in the way humans court a mate? I suspect that you would find the way dragons court a mate to be less appealing," Thor said. Steve smiled.

"I think I would like that," he said. Thor smiled, his teeth gleaming and sharp. The look made him appear wild, but also charming, in a way. He also looked excited, in a way that made Steve shiver with anticipation.

"Thank you, little one," Thor said. He bent to kiss Steve's hand, and despite the chaste gesture, Steve blushed furiously. Thor made a sound that was similar to purring, but deeper. The sound made Steve shiver again. "I promise you will enjoy your stay among us."

#ask #cinderellasfella #thundershield #dragons!#dragon!Thor #a/b/o dynamics #alpha!Thor #omega!steve #fanfic #lemon...ish?#I wanna write this so bad

46 notes · View notes

manuscripts-dontburn · 3 years

Text

Prisoner of Night and Fog

Author: Anne Blankman

First published: 2014

Pages: 432

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 5 days

Though the first part seemed aimed at younger readers and I was ready to plough through many YA clichés, this is, in fact, a really well-written, solid historical fiction. Anne Blankman has certainly done her homework and her fictional character of Gretchen Müller, her sadistic and unpredictable brother and her seemingly weak mother are woven so seamlessly among the real historical characters I actually stopped reading at one point to look them up (and confirm they are indeed fictional). True, the inevitable romance was... well... inevitable from the first chapter and personally, I thought more time and character development would have made our heroine´s journey even more interesting and suspenseful. However, the moments which are meant to be disturbing ARE disturbing, the points meant to be creepy ARE creepy and I also very much appreciate the considerable historical accuracy backing the whole plot. Also, the fact that this takes place quite a long time before WW2, merely hinting at what is to come, rather than presenting the most overused - and overwritten - conflict and horror of the past century. Definitely a book more readers should try if they are at all interested in historical fiction that is written well.

A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War

Author: Owen Davies

First published: 2019

Pages: 304

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 10 days

Fascinating in focus and yet very tight and even sparing in style, this is a very interesting book that serves well to provide yet another piece to the puzzle of the social history of the First World War. My only major critique would be this: certain parts felt like encyclopedic entries which left one "hanging" - wanting more information but either there isn´t any or the author has decided not to include it. The author himself, too, acknowledges that white Christians were far from being the only ones entangled in the fighting and does mention beliefs and superstitions of other nationalities and faiths, but half a chapter does not do them justice. In other words, this study could have - and should have - been longer, because it calls to us through the ages with everything that is human, naive, fragile and hopeful.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Author: Becky Chambers

First published: 2019

Pages: 135

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 2 days

This was both beautiful and rather depressing. Becky Chambers has impressed me before and she has managed to do it again - on 135 pages of this novella. Her talent as a writer, her imagination and her sensitive treatment of the human psyche is undisputable.

Death of a Romanov Prince

Author: Terry Bolland, Arturo E Beéche

First published: 2018

Pages: 240

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 2 days

Unfortunately, this book was a huge letdown. The Konstantinovichi branch of the Romanov family have always had a special place in my heart and I jump at every piece of literature that concerns them - there are few in the West! Arguably Prince Oleg was the most promising of the last "imperial" generation and I definitely appreciate that somebody tried to bring attention to him. Sadly, this publication suffers from the same weaknesses as any of the books published and edited by Arturo E Beéche: A great number of typos and mistakes within the text. Amateurish formating. Sometimes the original photographs were very small and they are so enlarged you cannot see anything since they are very pixelated. Information and quotes are repeated numerous times. But those technical things could be forgiven if the text had value. I am sad to say that there is very little new information - on the contrary, the book takes such a broad scope to cover various relations and palaces (without providing pictures of what is being described) that it has no time to go in-depth at all. Case in point: there is not a single reference to the homosexual tendencies of Oleg´s father and uncle, even though their sexuality greatly affected their lives. The book spends time listing German and Russian and Greek relatives and mentions Oleg´s intelligence and good character but nowhere does it present any evidence of it. This is not an insightful biography I had hoped for. It is an encyclopedic, sterile and confusingly put together attempt at.... what exactly? I don´t even know. A great opportunity wasted.

The Good Bee: A Celebration of Bees – And How to Save Them

Author: Alison Benjamin, Brian McCallum

First published: 2019

Pages: 192

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 4 days

I very much appreciate the intent with which this little book was written and it certainly holds some fascinating information and helpful tips. At the same time, the text does not flow too well and reminds one more of a textbook rather than something that would truly inspire one to take up bee-keeping. I suppose I just wanted something else out of it than what it gave..

Hesse: A Princely German Collection

Edited by: Penelope Hunter-Stiebel

First published: 2005

Pages: 287

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 2 days

A well-put together catalogue, introducing just the right amount of information and full of beautiful, high-quality photographs.

The Forsyte Saga

Author: John Galsworthy

First published: 1921

Pages: 752

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 7 days

See my full review HERE

Girls of Paper and Fire

Author: Natasha Ngan

First published: 2018

Pages: 384

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 6 days

I liked the possibilities and the setting more than the final execution and plot. Other than that I just feel like I am too old for this kind of books. So maybe the problem here is me, really.

Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon

Author: Andrea di Robiland

First published: 2008

Pages: 384

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 3 days

I have learned long ago that I am most open to gaining new knowledge through the stories of individual women. By looking through the eyes of Lucia I have finally understood the mess which was Northern Italy before, during and after Napoleonic times and I got introduced to an interesting lady. Definitely a win for me.

Pohorská vesnice

Author: Božena Němcová

First published: 1855

Pages: 181

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 4 days

Když jsem se konečně přenesla přes nářečí i slovenštinu, když jsem přestala kroutit očima nad tím, že celý příběh je o nedostatku komunikace, dokázala jsem ocenit krásný obraz českého venkova, jak jej Božena Němcová zachytila. A konec mne dojal oproti všemu očekávání.

Hitler's Hangman: The Life Of Heydrich

Author: Robert Gerwarth

First published: 2011

Pages: 433

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 5 days

Perhaps not the most exhaustive, but still very informative biography of one of the worst humans ever. The terrifying thing about him was especially the fact that he was so average and unremarkable in every single thing - and then he rode the storm and changed to always be on top. The author´s style is very readable and he manages to strike the chord between the academic and more personal tone well.

The Wife Upstairs

Author: Rachel Hawkins

First published: 2021

Pages: 290

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 2 days

I am not big into thrillers but this got me sold on "Jane Eyre inspired". It was quite good, though this type of writing does not make me crazy.

Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

Author: Anne Blankman

First published: 2015

Pages: 416

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

A sequel to Prisoner of Night and Fog, this was solid, unfortunately it was not as good as its predecessor. The first book is about a girl waking up to the world, finding cracks in what she has been taught all her life. It is about her deciding to think for herself and how this affects her life and relationships. And since it is pre-Nazi Germany, these changes in her thinking are very dangerous. This second book, on the other hand, is primarily a detective story without a pay-off, and way too many things are spoon-fed to the reader or feel convenient. I also felt that most of the book followed a theme of "we know where to find information - we go get it - Nazis get there at the same time - we somehow manage to escape." On the other hand, if something did work, it was the romance. Passionate, devoted and loyal, and yet mature and believable.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune

Author: Nghi Vo

First published: 2020

Pages: 121

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 1 day

Lovely and breathing of history and legends. Modest in length, rich in the story.

The Library of the Unwritten

Author: A.J. Hackwith

First published: 2019

Pages: 440

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 8 days

First of all, as an author who is yet to finish any of her projects, I felt RUDELY called out by this book! Second of all, this is an absolute blast. An adventure with a heart, characters you cannot help but care for and so, so witty and clever in using mythology and even Biblical stories. Brilliant work!

Mansfield Park

Author: Jane Austen

First published: 1814

Pages: 584

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 3 days

I suspect that my enjoyment of Jane Austen novels usually comes with how interesting her heroines are. And so when I was given Fanny Price, who for the first 200 pages merely breathes and observes, I was almost less than excited. But once I was willing to understand Fanny was not there to amuse me, she was there to provide a comfortable, quiet place among the bustle of feelings and happenings of others, who only later recognize how much she herself was interwoven into their lives. Mansfield Park does not have the wit and comedy of Emma or Pride and Prejudice but stands on the ground as solid as Sense and Sensibility. It was slow and perhaps even a bit too long, but I enjoyed it a lot.

#booklr #wrap up #March 2021 #trying to come up with some new format for these #no ideas so far

1 note · View note

kaylinwrites · 5 years

Text

Life of Pi, The Martian, and Man vs. Nature

[Started January 2019]

By: Somebody who firmly agrees that chemistry is a sloppy b****, and got irrationally upset when Richard Parker didn’t say goodbye. What an animal.

I’ve been out of the loop on here for a while, and I’ve got oversharing-syndrome, so I originally started this essay with a very long explanation of how reading on my phone made me suddenly into reading again. But then I was like, what, is Audible sponsoring me or something? As if.

So I’ll spare you the backstory. The short of it is, I ended up reading Life of Pi, and finished it within a few days. Reading a really good book is practically a drug, so I started a new book right away, another book everyone seemed to have read, The Martian.

I got about four chapters in before I started to think things were looking familiar.

If you haven’t read either book, you should. I’ll wait.

. . . . . . . . .

If you don’t have the time or patience for that right now, I’ll give you a quick summary of what goes on in each. If you’ve already read them and don’t care for my summaries, skip on down to the next row of dots.

Life of Pi is about an Indian guy named Pi, naturally. The first part of the book explains his childhood. Pi is the son of a zookeeper, so he knows a lot about animal behavior. When he’s sixteen, his family decides to move to Canada, so Pi, his brother, his parents, and a collection of zoo animals also headed for the Americas hop on a boat to cross the Pacific. On the journey, their boat sinks, and Pi is the sole human survivor. Other survivors and inhabitants of Pi’s 22 foot lifeboat include a zebra, a hyena, and briefly, an orangutan. (RIP Orange Juice.) Oh, and there’s also the tiger, but Pi doesn’t notice that at first because the tiger is seasick and was hiding under the tarp for the first, like, five days.

(Side note, that’s a very fun reveal, because everybody knows Life of Pi is the book with the tiger boat, so when we think the tiger isn’t there, it’s all like “Hey, where’s the tiger? I feel cheated out of a tiger”, and when the tiger shows back up, it’s all like “Oh s***, there’s the tiger.” Extremely good book.)

So the second half of the book is about Pi’s very unglamorous day-to-day life at sea. He eats raw fish and drinks turtle blood, and walks the fine tightrope of keeping the tiger happy so it won’t eat him, while also making sure the tiger knows he’s in charge, so it won’t eat him. Good thing he grew up in a zoo! Pretty stressful, constant threat of death, but a happy ending.

The Martian is a book set in, I’m assuming, the near future, wherein a group of astronauts are on a research mission to Mars. Six Sols (Mars days) in, there’s a big sandstorm, and the team has to evacuate and leave Mars altogether. Mark Watney, botanist, mechanical engineer, and all-around great guy, gets separated from the group as they make their way to their rocket (MAV, but whatever), and the team has reason to believe he’s totally dead, so they leave without him.

Surprise! Mark’s not dead, but he’s soon-to-be, because Mars is a deserted, uninhabitable, hell-planet. So, naturally, he has a crisis, but then decides he’s going to try to survive long enough for rescue. He starts growing potatoes, and tries to keep his equipment running long enough to contact NASA and tell them they messed up big time. There’s a lot of Mars shenanigans, which is to say, Mark almost dies a bunch of times, but he’s pretty smart. Good thing he’s a mechanical engineer! And botanist, I guess, but potatoes are less exciting than blowing up rocket fuel. Very stressful, constant threat of death, but a happy ending.

. . . . . . . . .

Way back in middle school, when we learned about conflicts, they taught us there were three types: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, and Man vs. Nature. I’ve heard they’ve added more now, but the only one I care about for this essay is Man vs. Nature anyways.

Man vs. Nature is all about the character(s) winning against a force of nature, be it a wild beast, a natural disaster, or even a zombie plague. Examples of Man vs. Nature stories could be anything from Lost to Jaws to Little House in the Big Woods to The Hunger Games. There’s a lot of possibilities, but the Man vs. Nature books that I’m interested in are survival stories.

More specifically, the type in which the main character is alone for most of the story. I haven’t actually seen Castaway, but I’m imagining that fits into this category. The idea is to throw a character into an unknown and hostile place, and see how they manage to survive alone.

I believe the first story of this type I read was in elementary school: Hatchet. Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem nearly as hardcore as getting stranded on Mars or being trapped in a lifeboat with a tiger, but that’s hindsight. When I was reading this at 11, it was an absolute thriller. It even had a moment of sick horror for me. I remember reading the chapter where Brian find the pilot’s decaying corpse and freaking out a little because it was the most graphic thing I’d ever read up to that point. Nevertheless, I remember that book as being adventurous, riveting, and very real.

I think one of the most interesting traits of these stories are the realism. If you’ve ever read The Martian, you know that the author definitely did his research. There’s something very cool about watching a character work out problems not with magic, or because they’re the chosen one, but with their wit and sheer determination. Life of Pi would not be nearly as fun to read if the tiger was just magically chill. Pi only survives because he knows how to work with wild animals, and while to some, that may seem convenient, I find it makes for a fascinating story.

This brings me to the first characteristic of survival stories that makes them so compelling: good old fashioned gritty problem solving. Because any problem that crops up in a survival situation has to be solved immediately or the outcome is likely death, it forces characters to find solutions. Sometimes these solutions are quite creative. Sometimes they go horribly wrong.

This connects to the second reason survival stories are so interesting: the main character is alone. They have to do everything themselves. And if it goes wrong, there’s no one there to pull them out of the s***.

The Power of Friendship is a fantastic trope. No one can deny that seeing characters band together to accomplish their goals and become closer as a result makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And exploring the way characters interact with one another and develop their relationships is interesting, sure. But isolating a character is also a goldmine of a trope. Think of the episode of a show where the rest of the team is incapacitated and the remaining team member has to save the day all on their own. It allows that character to prove themselves as a competent problem solver, and show their strengths, and in the end, they save their friends, and there’s all the more Power of Friendship.

But when the character that’s isolated doesn’t have any friends, so to say, what happens? Being indefinitely cut off from the rest of the world makes for some interesting exploration of humanity as a whole.

From a writing perspective, it’s a fascinating challenge. For one, when your main character is your only character, they have to be able to carry the story by themselves. In Life of Pi, the first half of the book is devoted to letting the reader get to know Pi, so they’ll be rooting for him, and understand his thought process a bit better. The Martian throws backstory to the wayside and tosses the reader headfirst into a catastrophe. The reader is hooked for the time being, and by the time the initial catastrophe is over, Mark has proven himself charismatic and likable, so the reader is alright with following this story through his lens.

There’s also the psychological side of things, the reflection, which is the third thing survival stories do that’s weird and awesome. The writer can decide how much focus to put on the character’s sucky situation. The Martian plays this pretty light: Mark has a few moments of existentialism, but he hangs on to his humor and general will to live throughout the entire novel. Mark’s narration never truly loses the personality that made it so likable in the first place, even if it gets a stronger undercurrent of “F*** Mars” as the story progresses. In his situation, the threat of death is looming and ever constant. Everything seems to break, potato plants die, and one misstep means suffocating in the cold wasteland that is Mars. Life of Pi has a more passive dread. Once the tiger is reasonably under control, not a lot happens. This is the classic ‘stranded in the wilderness’ type of survival story, but with even less space to do things. All Pi can really do is collect water and fish. This makes his narration more introspective, and sometimes more numb. He spends a lot of the story grappling with his faith, which is a key component of his character.

(Mark and Pi are interesting to compare in that regard: Mark is so obviously a man of science. He trusts in NASA’s work, and his own calculations. Pi has enough faith to practice three religions, and though he sometimes loses trust in God, in the end, his faith is stronger than ever.)

What I’m saying is, these stories can go one of two ways in regards to reflection. If a survival story is more immediately threatening, the story will focus more on the problems and solutions that come up and the writer will build a story more based around the events, though the main character’s personality is still important to keep the audience caring about the outcome. If a survival story is more slow moving and passively threatening, the story will focus more on introspection, and the writer will build the story around the character and how they react to their situation. Both serve the purpose of seeing how people deal with things alone, physically or mentally.

An honorary mention for things that make survival stories compelling is the lack of antagonist. Some may say the point of Man vs. Nature is that Nature is the antagonist (duh) but I would argue that it isn’t. Nature is really just doing its thing, and Man is the poor schmuck with bad luck. Despite what Mark Watney might say about Mars, it isn’t actively trying to kill him. It’s just existing and coincidentally killing him. And I know I said Life of Pi is more passive, but it might have a stronger claim to an antagonist in the tiger than The Martian does in Mars. But even then, Pi and the tiger reach a sort of understanding by the end, and there’s no longer a true threat besides starvation or one of the many other side effects of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific.

(Speaking of side effects of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific, Life of Pi absolutely had my suspension of disbelief snatched right up until the part where Pi, half dead, meets another lifeboat out in the middle of the mcfreaking Pacific ocean. There’s no way he didn’t hallucinate that. It’s probably a metaphor, but it gave me so much whiplash I couldn’t figure out what for. Still a fantastic book.)

Survival stories above all give us perspective on our place in the world. As the world grows smaller and smaller, I hope we can remember to keep telling stories like them. They remind us of things we shouldn’t forget: Nature will always be stronger than us, though we can hold out against it. Mankind has a strong will to survive-- for ourselves, for our relationships to others, for our faith, or maybe just out of pure spite. I love both Life of Pi and The Martian for their exploration of these topics, and for being so unexpectedly but delightfully similar.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go live in the woods, surviving off berries and pheasants that I’ve shot with my bow, and contemplate the nature of man.

[TL;DR What does Mars and tigers have in common? They’re both orange. And also trying to kill the main characters of two well-loved novels.]

#writing #essay #reading railroad #book report #the martian #life of pi

3 notes · View notes

shadowsong26fic · 5 years

Note

4, 6, and 9 for the writing questions.

4: what time of the day/night do you like to write?

I’m admittedly a bit all over the place for this one, lol. Uh, I’m not good at mornings just in general, so I basically never write then. I work in an office job, so I sometimes write stuff at spare moments/downtime during the day, if I have any. I used to do even more of that, back when I worked an 11-8 shift in a call center where we got much less call traffic during the last two hours of the day. Most of The Promises of Angels was written on notepads during those shifts, and typed up later.

Other than that, I write a fair amount in the evenings. Sometimes I’ll go to a coffee shop and try to just write for a couple hours, but I also do a lot when I’m technically supposed to have gone to bed. Which is why you’ll see me post stuff stupid late a lot/after midnight my time.

6: hardest/easiest character to write for?

It actually depends? And it’s changed over the years–back when I first started writing SW fic, Obi-Wan’s head was hard for me to get into, but now he flows pretty well. …in fact, I think at this point I actually write from Obi-Wan’s POV more often than anyone else’s??? Also, for Precipice, it’s sometimes hard to write Padme chapters. Not because her head/voice is hard for me to get into, but because figuring out what her plot threads should be tends to be harder than any of the others. But that’s also a pretty Precipice-specific issue, since I haven’t had that problem in other fics that feature her (i.e., Distaff, These Three Remain, The Devoted, Deja Vu, miscellaneous one-shots; etc.)

In terms of non-POV (Precipice) characters, Saw was a pain in the ass to write, which is probably part of why Arc Six took so long. I’m also anticipating Han and Lando will be difficult when I get to the point where they’re involved. Uh. Leia tends to be easier for me to write than Luke, but that might be because she’s a little more active in terms of Plot at this point in the story. Luke will have more to do in future arcs, and it’ll probably balance out a little better then. Though I’ll admit that he took longer than Vader when I was writing The Phoenix, so who knows. (Incidentally, writing Vader before he has Luke’s existence as a primary motivator has been hard for me in the past. Which is the main reason why Masks stalled, I think…)

In terms of easiest characters to write, Anakin’s always been pretty smooth going. Rex and Ahsoka, too (apart from, again, the last Precipice arc where they were mostly dealing with Saw who is a Problem for me). Oh, and Hondo. I haven’t done a whole lot with him (yet), and I don’t think I could do his POV very easily, but he is a delight and fairly easy for me to write as a secondary/non-POV character in a scene.

9: what tv shows, books, or movies inspire for this verse, if any?

…you know, leaving aside the obvious (Valdemar AU), I’m not sure that any of my SW fanfic is really inspired by any other media? At least not directly. Well, apart from Dr. Naar being loosely based on Doc Cottle from BSG, and probably some other expy characters like that. Oh, there’s that one bit in The Devoted which was basically ‘today, Ahsoka will be playing the role of Parker from Leverage’ in my head. But in terms of overall plots/concept/etc., I’m not sure that I can pinpoint to any specific inspirations for the bulk of my SW fic/AUs. Which is not to say that they’re not there, it’s just that they weren’t deliberate/I can’t specifically say ‘yeah, this was inspired by that other thing’ if that makes sense?

A lot of my original fiction started out that way, though (meaning, fanfic concepts that I then filed the serial numbers off of, so to speak). The Farglass Cycle is loosely rooted in Avatar: the Last Airbender; Lux, while not so much directly inspired by anything, draws on some concepts from Native Tongue, and given that it’s the Apocalypse in SPACE, there’s some influences there from SPN/JCS/etc.; Untitled Intrigues Story started life as basically a Supernatural/Borgias fusion/AU; and my untitled First Contact novel technically has some BSG roots (in that it started out as “hey something like 2000 people are unaccounted for and potentially got left behind on New Caprica, what happens if they managed to survive and contact was re-established with them millennia later when interstellar travel is rediscovered”), and also probably has a lot of CJ Cherryh influence (because she’s…like…first-contact and what follows is her Thing and I read a lot of her stuff).

I’ll also say that I read a fair amount of history, so there are certain characters/situations/etc. that are heavily inspired by that. In my SW fic, in other fanfic, in my original fiction…all over the place.

(Also, this is really only tangentially related, but when I was writing The Devoted, one of the things I was thinking about was how to–like, given the setup, it’s basically inevitable that there’s gonna be some parallels to and influences from Rebels, so I was kind of actively trying to make it not just ‘let’s do Rebels BUT with PT characters instead,’ and I think I did pretty well? Eh, not necessarily for me to judge XD. But, yeah, that was in my mind as I was working on it.)

Ask me writing questions!

#asked #answered #silverday

1 note · View note

tmcastandcrew · 6 years

Photo

Hollywood star Simon Baker said he had no acting ambitions at first

April 28, 2018

Thank you @YohkoTheHunter

Huge Interview ahead >>

He was working as a pool attendant at the newly opened Sanctuary Cove resort. Any spare time, any spare thought, was spent chasing waves on the Gold Coast, and crashing with his surfie mates at their fibro shack which backed on to the beach at Surfers Paradise. It was the twilight of the 1980s and Simon Baker, a carefree school graduate, had no idea, and no real cares, about what lay ahead.

“No, no, no, I didn’t have any acting dreams,” the now 48-year-old father-of-three insists when U on Sunday sits down with him at the plush QT Hotel in Surfers Paradise for a chat about his latest film, Breath, based on Tim Winton’s novel.

It’s about 30 years since Baker lived here. In the interim, his ruggedly handsome face, sharp blue eyes and self-deprecating smile have taken him all the way to Hollywood Boulevard, where he has his own star on the sidewalk; and seen him receive critical acclaim, and an adoring fan base for his movie roles (Red Planet,The Devil Wears Prada and Margin Call) and television gigs (The Guardian, and his most famous role as maverick police consultant Patrick Jane on The Mentalist).

Not surprisingly, this same natural charm led to Baker’s first acting opportunity which came by accident rather than by design. And it happened in Brisbane.

“We were going camping,” he says, setting up the story of how he and a mate were driving up from the Coast when his friend said they had to make a slight detour into Brisbane because he had an audition for a TV ad.

“My friend told me I could wait in the car or come in and hang out; so I came into the waiting room and the casting woman came in with a clipboard and said to me ‘Have you signed in’ and I said: ‘Oh no, I’m just here with a friend’, and she said, ‘why don’t you sign in and go in’.

“I had never done drama or improvisation before. I was used to knocking around with my mates – a bit of jive talk on the beach, on the streets, that’s all,’’ he laughs.

Needless to say he got the gig. Two years later he landed a job on the Australian TV soapie E Street (“I wasn’t trying for it,’’ he again insists) playing fresh-faced Constable Sam Farrell. It was on that series that he met his future wife, Gold Coast-raised actor Rebecca Rigg.

Baker apologises in advance for eating during our chat. His mop of boyish golden-curled hair and grey flecked-stubble is lit with a wide grin, and deep laugh before he proceeds to wolf down a salad wrap and some fruit pieces. He is refuelling after making the most of a rare break from promotional duties at last week’s Queensland premiere of Breath at the Gold Coast Film Festival, to catch up for “a quick paddle with the boys’’.

The boys are Samson Coulter and Ben Spence who play the lead roles of Pikelet, 13, and Loonie, 14, in the film. Baker co-wrote, co-produced and co-stars in Breath which is also his directorial debut.

As a father of two teenage boys himself, Baker has developed a strong bond with his young proteges with Coulter from Sydney and Spence from Western Australia.

Baker’s own family are never far from his mind, and, at an exclusive U on Sundayphoto shoot earlier at Burleigh Heads, he was keen to capture a shot of the stunning beach scene to show his tribe at home. He celebrates 20 years of marriage this year to Rigg and the couple has three children, Stella Breeze, 24, Claude Blue, 19, and Harry Friday, 16.

He says all of his children go for a “paddle now and then’’ but it is his youngest Harry, who has inherited his father’s passion for surfing.

“It’s a great joy in seeing him (Harry) surf and catch waves,’’ he explains. “I like seeing him gain trust and physical confidence in himself; to trust his wits in certain situations, because that is what a lot of what surfing teaches you.’’

Baker explains he tries to find the right balance between encouraging Harry and ensuring he doesn’t pressure his son to tackle challenging waves he is not yet ready for, because “you can’t push them into those things’’. He says it is important that Harry develops his surfing skills at his own pace.

This caring fatherly approach is the opposite pathway taken by his character “Sando’’ in the coming of age film Breath. The adrenaline-junkie Sando is former world professional surfing star Bill Sanderson who becomes like a “guru’’ to his “wide-eyed disciples’’ Bruce “Pikelet” Pike and best friend Ivan “Loonie” Loon.

Pikelet and Loonie, under the tutelage of Sando, learn to surf increasingly bigger and more dangerous monster waves as Sando conditions their minds and bodies to pursue the extraordinary. Pikelet’s parents, played by Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake, remain oblivious to their son’s adventures, as Sando lures, even bullies, them on his increasingly perilous missions.

Roxburgh says Baker is a natural director, and an excellent mentor to the young novice actors.

“I was attracted to working with Simon because I’ve always thought he was a lovely bloke, a terrific actor, and I thought he would work really well with the young actors,’’ he says.

Roxburgh says his role as the staid and reserved father becomes a counterpoint to Baker’s risk-taking and larger-than-life Sando.

“My character is part of the domestic backdrop, I’m often at the garden shed, being very kindly and terribly worried about my son’s wellbeing. I know something is wrong, but I cannot identify it,’’ Roxburgh says.

When Sando and Loonie go overseas on a big-wave excursion, an unsettled Pikelet starts spending unhealthy periods of time alone with Sando’s headstrong wife Eva (Elizabeth Debecki), who carries a permanent knee injury from competitive aerial skiing.

“The film is about the anguish of parenting, of being a parent and watching your son moving and shifting away, being pulled away from you in this strong current and the terrible fear that goes with that,’’ Roxburgh says.

It took Sydney-based Baker a year to cast the two leading actors after a social media call-out to competent surfers netted thousands of entries from around the country including many from Queensland’s Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.

Baker, who did much of his own surfing, is surprised that Winton envisaged him as Sando for the film version of his 2009 Miles Franklin Award winner and much-loved bestseller.

“I suppose I don’t know too many actors who surf, there’s a few that have a paddle,’’ Baker says. “I’m at that point, where it is sort of getting sad, because my body is not keeping up with what my heart and mind want to do, sometimes it’s humiliating and sometimes it’s exhilarating.’’

When producing partner Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad) gave Baker the novel to read in 2015 he was immediately smitten and secretly harboured dreams to direct a film adaptation. Baker has directed several episodes of his television shows, including The Mentalist, over the years.

“We started meeting with a few different directors and started developing the script and at one point Mark turned around and literally said ‘has it occurred to you, that you should direct this film’ and I said ‘Yes’,’’ Baker says.

He did have doubts and he worried about time constraints, but then his seven-year contract on The Mentalist ended.

He has devoted several years to bringing the film to the screen including extensive scouting of the Western Australia coast, where the novel is set, and finding the perfect locations on the southern coastline at Denmark and Ocean Beach.

Baker enlisted “colourful’’ Brisbane-based screenwriter Gerard Lee (Top of the Lake) to help with the film script.

“I knew I had to reduce it down to certain key thematic moments and hone in on those and the story, I had to let go of the book in a lot of ways,’’ he says.

Tasmanian-born Baker sees some similarities with his own childhood, growing up in Lennox Heads, on the northern NSW coast, and spending plenty of time at the beach with his surfing buddies. The former Ballina High School student admits he was more like the reserved and restrained Pikelet than the confident and thrillseeking Loonie or Sando.

“I grew up riding around with a pushbike with my mates, discovering the ocean and surfing,’’ Baker says. “There are a lot of parallels there with the book but there are obvious parallels with a lot of people who grew up in Australia.’’

Roxburgh agrees: “Tim Winton can really write about water, especially about the nature of water: what it is; what it does for us; and what it is to be with it; and to live with such a passion for it.’’

It was while growing up that Baker first developed a love for going to the movies.

“As a kid I would go to see a movie and I would be instantly transported by the story and characters. You go, ‘oh wow, I would like to do that one day’,’’ he says.

The 1957 American classic Old Yeller, about a young boy and his ill-fated dog, profoundly affected him as a Year 3 student.

“It’s funny because I watched Old Yeller with my kids 10 years ago and they were saying ‘why are you making us watch this?’,’’ he says. “It’s so heartbreaking and powerful. I can track back the emotional impact that cinema has had on me over the years to that point.

“I still get so excited about going to the movies, getting a choc-top, sitting in that dark room and letting a film take me away.’’

Baker grew up as Simon Denny – the name of his stepfather – but changed it to Simon Denny Baker after reuniting with his birth father as an adult. He later dropped the Denny part.

In 1993 he won the Logie for most popular new talent and then appeared in Home and Away (as James Hudson: 1993-1994) and Heartbreak High (as Tom Summers: 1996).

Baker and Rigg – who married in 1998 after five years of living together – decided to try their luck in the US, which became their base for 18 years.

Soon after arriving, he landed a role as troubled gay actor Matt Reynolds in the Oscar-winning LA Confidential (1998) and a couple of years later snared the key role of lawyer Nick Fallin in the television series The Guardian (2001-2004).

But it was his role as the cheeky and sharp-minded former conman Patrick Jane on The Mentalist (2008-15) which saw an astronomic popularity rise, especially among women. It was rumoured he signed a contract that delivered a payment of $US30 million for his role as Jane. Some 17 million watched the final episode of The Mentalist in the US alone.

His rising profile also led to contracts promoting prestigious French perfume house Givenchy as well as Longines watches.

“I take my hat off to Simon, and others, who have moved to America and have achieved over there,’’ Roxburgh says.

For Baker, his focus is not on the past but on the future, and that continues to look bright with the actor recently optioning Winton’s latest novel The Shepherd’s Hut.

“You should read it,’’ suggests Baker, flashing that trademark winning smile once more.

#simon baker #simonshoots #simon 2018

37 notes · View notes

flourchildwrites · 6 years

Text

Why Do You Write Fanfiction?

The first time I sat down to write fanfiction, I was 14, waiting for the next Harry Potter book to hit the shelves, and since patience was not my strong suit, I turned to fanfiction.net. To say it was mesmerizing undersells the experience. I was obsessed. I was riveted. I spent my summer vacation devouring the ideas of novices and wordsmiths alike. Their words dripped down my throat like butter, but still, I was hungry.

I needed more.

So I did the tempting thing my addictive personality craved. Blinded by the stars in my eyes, I told myself I would write too, that I could write well. I was 14 with a scant amount of life experience outside my afterschool extracurriculars and a tentative grasp of what plots were. Unsurprisingly, my stories were, in a word, atrocious. (For all I know they still might be.) But I kept at it.

I organized my thoughts. I wrote late into the evening until the sun crept over the windowsill, and my mother (an excessively early riser) began to putter around the house. I lied about my age and chatted online with other authors who agreed to beta for me. They tore my work to shreds, and I edited and rewrote and posted and waited. Every hit was a new hope. Each review – there weren’t many – felt like an Oscar.

But September came and life just got in the way. To be fair, that wasn’t a bad thing. The lines between the virtual world and my stifling high school penance of an existence began to blur. People began to notice that I suddenly knew how to use a semicolon, and I knew that plots were more than ill-conceived rambles tied together with jagged ends of uninspired conversation. What’s more, I had a style. An exceedingly metaphorical and flowery style, but a style nonetheless.

Already in honors everything (except math), my English teachers encouraged me to read more books. 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Kite Runner and a few Hemingway novels. (Fuck Hemingway. I never liked his books.) By the time the next Harry Potter book was released, I was in over my head in pre-Twilight vampire novels No 15-year-old should read as much Anne Rice as I did, if (in fact) a 15-year-old should read her at all. It left me feeling nothing short of manic, and I still find myself craving that sort of frantic experience.

I got older.

Looking back on it now, I realize that fanfiction altered the course of my life. You may think that’s an exaggeration. I assure you, it’s not. I am the person that I made myself into because I liked Harry Potter enough to peck at a keyboard until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. So it’s not so surprising that during another turning point in my life, I went back to fanfiction because, like Harry Potter, I like anime, and liking anime saw me through a very tough year.

Depression. Three cancer scares. A move from the bustling city I adored to bland suburbia in the name of “better schools.” And as I unpacked the last box a few days ago and bemoaned my lack of free time to my cat, I began to wonder why I still write fanfiction.

There’s something very raw about this art form. So few boundaries between authors and their audience. Even the best pieces I’ve read aren’t completely polished and primped by multiples layers of editing. No real commitments except the ones the author chooses to make. It’s free. Every fic is an act self-compulsion. And nothing is more bittersweet than a good fic left to mold and mildew in the dark corners of FFN or AO3.

But why do I write fanfiction?

The truth is I’m not entirely sure. At first blush, I might say I do it for the kudos, the comments and the community. But that’s not true. I’m not active in the community. I write across a few fandoms. None have particularly embraced me, and that’s surprisingly ok. It’s a combination of not fitting in, and not having enough time to devote to fitting in. I’ve stuck out like a sore thumb for most of my life; why stop now? If I were doing this for the notoriety or the friends, I’d have quit before I started all those years ago.

Am I doing this to grow as a writer? Maybe at first, but not now. I don’t pretend to be particularly well-read, and I am far from a slave to grammar. I embrace both the tautology and the dangling modifier because I like the way shit sounds sometimes. I don’t give a flying fuck about the Oxford comma, but I’m somewhat belligerent toward pronouns. My writing is what it is, and I don’t see that changing unless I’m somehow relieved of my real world responsibilities.

So, I don’t write fanfiction for profit or friends or fame or growth. I have no hard and fast expectation of reciprocity when reading and reviewing. No one has ever illustrated a scene from one of my works or lovingly made me a cover. And while it does disappoint me that I only have 18 followers, and I’m not on any “favorite authors” (or even “suggested authors”) list, I keep writing in every spare moment I have. I’d like those things, but if they don’t happen, I accept it.

Why?

I guess I do it for myself and the stories that matter to me.

For Izumi Curtis who told me it would be ok when my son didn’t cry in the operating room. (He came around.)

For Kirito who made me feel less lame for not having the will to get out of bed.

For Franken Stein who shrugged and agreed that I should probably take my meds. (But he wouldn’t tell if I didn’t.)

For Kaori Miyazono who encouraged me to pick up my instrument again, even if I’ll never be as good as I once was.

For Eren Jaeger who held my hand in the waiting room of my oncologist’s office and said, “it could be worse.”

For Madame Christmas who told me to put on my big girl panties, fix my mascara, grab a stiff drink and move like the Amestrian Military wanted to arrest me.

And so, in my own way of screaming into the void and hoping (though not holding my breath) for a response, I’ll ask you the same question: Why do you write fanfiction?

#fanfiction #why i write #anime #harry potter #question #fanfiction vs. life #flourchildwrites

5 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Insults, World-Building, and Blind Cats: An Interview with The Blacktongue Thief’s Christopher Buehlman

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This post is sponsored by

It only takes a small, insignificant moment to completely change the course of a life. It’s that premise from which The Blacktongue Thief starts. Kinch Na Shannack, working thief, is spared when a banditry gig goes south. The Spanth warrior who spares him, Galva, is on a quest—and the Taker’s Guild, for which Kinch works, assigns him to accompany her, gain her trust, and wait for further instruction. As he travels with Galva, and, soon after, a witch companion Norrigal, he begins to question just where his allegiance lies, and what he owes his newfound friends—and the world.

From the first pages of The Blacktongue Thief, this Den of Geek reviewer was hooked, in no small part because the narrative voice is quite simply a delight. Kinch welcomes readers straight into a world where humanity was nearly destroyed by goblins, and where giants are encroaching on the northern border. But besides all that, a person’s got to make a living, and Kinch has a debt to the Takers Guild he’s bound to pay off. Kinch tells the story like he’s sitting next to you at a table in the pub, sharing the worst and best moments with a lingering delight at the sheer telling of the tale. He exaggerates and lies, but lets you know he’s doing so with a wink and a nudge.

This fantasy novel invites readers to share a pint of whatever’s good, learn some colorful language from a variety of nations, and maybe even join in a song or two. If the atmosphere I just described feels a bit like a renaissance festival, it should come as no surprise. Author Christopher Buehlman, previously best known for his poetry and his horror novels (and shortly to become known as a rising star in fantasy, as well), is also Christophe the Insultor, Verbal Mercenary, a regular comedic performer at renaissance festivals.

“My career as a professional insultor on the renaissance festival circuit definitely informed Kinch’s language,” Buehlman explains. “He’s always ready to trade barbs, and he isn’t afraid to work blue.” Blue language is absolutely a highlight of the book; Kinch’s swearing is utterly inventive, and because he speaks a number of languages, the different curses reveal a lot about the cultures that created them. Kinch presents the Spanths, particularly Galva, as overly honorable and a bit uptight, something that’s not only revealed in her lack of patience for Kinch conversing with a cat he rescues, but also in the way she argues the proper conjugation of a particularly colorful swear. (You can read some dictionary-style definitions of Kinch’s curse words over at the Tor/Forge blog.)

There are linguistic connections between the curse words (and other vocabulary) in the novel and the real-world counterparts that provided inspiration. “The Galts are not unlike the Celts; I thought of them not as a direct analog to the Welsh or the Scots or the Irish, but as a lost tribe,” Buehlman shares. “There is something of the gaelic in Kinch’s poetic, artistically gifted, externally governed homeland, and his language, storytelling, and, yes, insults and doggerel, come from that. As for chodadu, it is based on Spanish jodido, and operates similarly. Jilnaedu, on the other hand, is a more original Spanth term, meaning ‘vicious idiot.’ As with Galtia and Ireland, Ispanthia is not Spain, but it and its language would snuggle in nicely between Spain, Portugal, and Catalonia. I think Spaniards will recognize Galva but also find lots of new things to discover about her and her country.”

One of the most fascinating aspects of Kinch’s world is the impact the Goblin Wars have had on the human population. The goblins came and fought in three waves; the first two were fought by men, but soon there weren’t enough men left to fight. “Women had to go under arms,” Buehlman describes. “More, they had to win. And they did. For now. The Daughters’ War wasn’t about fame or glory, or even power and wealth—it was a raw, muddy, no-holds-barred struggle for survival between two competing species, one of whom regards the other as a food source.” The win came, but at a great cost. Humans have taken a huge hit, and the majority of humans are now women, putting women in positions of power throughout all of the human territories.

In fact, the book is populated with women who hold their own against Kinch’s narrative voice. While we get Kinch’s introspection and his assessment of his own character, we see him against a company of strong female characters. Galva is a warrior, honorable, devoted, the kind of knight Don Quixote dreamed of being. Norrigal isn’t an accomplished witch yet—this is her first assignment outside her apprenticeship—but her raw power is astonishing, and her willingness to do the dirty work as needed gives her a wonderfully practical edge. Sesta, one of Kinch’s contacts with the Taker’s Guild, is a ruthless Assassin-Adept, skilled at both magic and murder, so confident that she treats Kinch more like a pest than a tool, even when insisting he follow the terms of his assignment. While there’s a bit of romance, none of the women feel put into the narrative just for the sake of being Kinch’s love interest—in fact, they all feel as though they’d do just fine without him, if it came down to it, and he’s lucky they’ve let him stick around to tell the story.

The desire to depict so many women in control of the world and the narrative came from one of Buehlman’s world-building ideas: “I wanted to present a world that would show the reader how artificial the idea of patriarchy is,” he says, “and how it could be turned on its head with a big enough catalyst.”

Buehlman’s world is both beautiful and terrible—the consequences of the Goblin Wars are present in every aspect of the book, including in the appearance of actual goblins. That looming sense of dread, that humans might not win the next time if it came down to it, lend an intensity to the world, and may remind readers that Buehlman’s previous novels fell into the horror category. “Writing horror is a bit like writing form poetry,” he describes. “With a sonnet, a villanelle, or a pantoum, you have to respect a rhyme scheme, or a repetition pattern, and/or a syllable count. With horror, you have to establish a certain tone, and you have to check in with the reader’s amygdala every so often. This isn’t exact or formulaic, as it can be in poetry, but it needs to have its own internal rhythm. You can have a long build up, but you must bake in a sense of dread–the reader will feel betrayed, and rightly so, if your premise advertises one kind of story, and they get something else entirely for 70% of the read. Horror, like comedy, is binary. It succeeds or fails viscerally.”

Making the switch to fantasy meant making some changes. “Fantasy… is much more forgiving. The reader primarily expects a sense of wonder, a sense of going someplace new. It’s more like free verse. You can do anything you like, as long as you tell a good story and fascinate,” Buehlman shares. He also identifies a few common traits between the genres: “If I took anything with me from horror to fantasy–aside from, hopefully, the universally necessary elements of character, pacing, and clear language–it was that sense of dread. We see the goblin ship coming, and there’s no way off the island. We feel the footsteps of the approaching giants, and hear their horns, but this is a strange city and we don’t know where to run. Too late—the humans on chains that they use to flush us out of our warrens have already seen us.”

The horror elements are well balanced by companionship (particularly in the form of one furry feline) and song. “Kinch has an inexhaustible supply of songs to sing or quote, and singing is of course quite popular in a world without electronic media,” Buehlman muses. “Songs are how people once got their entertainment, expressed emotions, even got their news.” The prominence of music also harkens back to Buehlman’s renaissance festival roots: “Renaissance festivals put a high standard on songs, both as stage entertainment and as something patrons can participate in. And so does Kinch’s world.”

As for that furry feline: Bully Boy appears early on in the narrative and becomes increasingly important as the story goes on. (Buehlman frequently seeds world-information so nonchalantly that when they become relevant as plot elements, this reviewer was impressed at how cleverly the book was structured to hide the significance of those details until they mattered.) When Kinch first meets Bully Boy, a blind cat, the poor creature is about to be captured by some local ruffians, who will, we’re led to believe, put the cat to death. Kinch takes pity and saves the cat—getting arrested in the process—and the two soon become fast friends. But despite what readers might assume, Buehlman was not always a cat lover. The acknowledgements at the end of the book reveal that Bully Boy was inspired by a real cat.

“Bully Boy never would have been had not a blind tabby showed up on my doorstep in 2015, as I was finishing up The Suicide Motor Club,” says Buehlman. “The antagonist of that book is a sumbitch vampire named Luther, and this poor, blind, sick street cat had the biggest fangs I’d seen on a feline outside of a smilodon exhibit. So Luther he became. But you couldn’t find two more different critters than vampire Luther and cat Luther. The latter was one of the most loving, most trusting beings I ever had the pleasure to know. I was decidedly not a cat person before he came raoing at my door—I was a dog man from way back. But when a creature delivers its life into your hands and starts to follow you everywhere you go, clearly loving you and wanting nothing as much as to live purring in your lap or on your chest, it wears you down. If you’ve got feelings, I mean. And I had some. I now recognize canines and felines as equally deserving of our love and companionship, even if we don’t always deserve theirs.”

While The Blacktongue Thief completes a story, the ending leaves several loose threads that readers will be glad to know Buehlman is working on tying up in the sequel. “I’m still in planning and world-building, which is a massive part of writing a fantasy novel with sufficient layers to feel credible,” he reveals. “Let’s just say we’ve got mountains to cross, more and different giants to meet, and one very nasty book to drag secrets out of. Also, look for a more comprehensive telling of Galva’s experiences as a young soldier in the Daughters’ War.”

In the meantime, Buehlman is also digging into the rules for the card game Kinch plays (sometimes with good luck and sometimes bad): Towers. “I wanted a game that would showcase Kinch’s luck-gift, and to occupy the same place in this world as poker does in ours,” Buehlman says of its development. “There are definitely elements of poker in Towers; but you’ll also find traces of Stratego, that simple kids’ card game War, chess, and Magic. I and others have found it to be addictive, but also delightfully complex. There are lots of ways to win, and lose, and strategy is a huge component–nearly as important as luck. And yes, I believe lots of blood would be drawn over this game if it were played for money in rougher parts of town.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Whether sitting over a game or sitting around a table, sharing a drink and a song and exchanging insults, Kinch and Buehlman both use storytelling flare to keep readers deeply engaged in the story and the world. And the swearing, songs, and story will stick with readers long after they turn the last page.

The Blacktongue Thief hits bookshelves on May 25th, 2021. Find out more here.

The post Insults, World-Building, and Blind Cats: An Interview with The Blacktongue Thief’s Christopher Buehlman appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/34bKaK1

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

thebastardofgloucester · 7 years

Text

all the posts collating reactions to The Empire Strikes Back or writing mock Rotten Tomatoes reviews to imply that the criticisms of this film aren’t worth paying attention to are just…so missing the point

exactly two works that said what ‘Star Wars’ was existed at the time of Empire’s release in 1980: Star Wars (not yet renamed ‘A New Hope’) and Alan Dean Foster’s 'Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’ (a sequel written in case Star Wars was a flop that could be filmed on a shoestring budget and without Harrison Ford. It’s Wild and puts the lie to the idea that Lucas had any idea where the Skywalker story was going; highly recommend)

in the year of our Lord 2017, The Last Jedi was released as the third film in a revival of a six film, single creative vision franchise, with the added baggage of over two decades of novels, comics, video games, and other media (the only thing ever fully expelled from canon was the infamous holiday special, which, honestly, had greater creative merit than some of the stuff that got to stay)

what’s the point? Expectations. No, not people who didn’t want anything to change and are Mad About It or whatever facile narrative the authors of those blog posts and reviews are using to explain why this film is probably more divisive than the goddamn prequels. The problem is that not only does The Last Jedi clash with decades of fandom, it is even at loggerheads with its sister films in this particular revival. and it doesn’t get the same benefit of the doubt that ESB got because that’s not how franchises and fandoms actually work. you don’t get to ignore everything that came before to tell your own story. they have to work together.

Sure, not everybody read the EU (and trust me some of them are better off for it). But almost everybody saw The Force Awakens, most of them saw Rogue One, and a fair number of them, old and young fans alike, eagerly consumed the New EU content that offered glimpses into how the events of The Force Awakens came about and what mysteries were set up in what was effectively a reboot rather than a sequel. Generally, you know, regardless of how much you hate 'puzzleboxes,’ it is reasonable to expect that what one film sets up will have a payoff in the next, particularly when the first film takes such care to be sensitive to what the fans want (as JJ and Kasden did with TFA) - because while this is a money faucet for Disney, sure, there’s no point in bringing this franchise back without those fans (and of course, their kids) - and what they got from Rian and the Lucasfilm story team was…a confirmation that they had been wasting their time. It’s all well and good to pull the rug out from under the audience (as this film does incessantly) but it’s cynical bullshit to basically bait them with promo material and the preceding canon and then to deliver on basically nothing and expect everyone to just be okay with it. This film effectively penalizes the people who cared the most and spent the most time engaging with The Force Awakens and rewards people who may not have really been here for what Lucas was selling to begin with. As one review put it, it ‘does not care what you think about Star Wars’.

But when you set expectations as deliberately as Kennedy and the Lucasfilm Story Group did in JJ and Kasden’s TFA, it’s not great writing to blow them to pieces mid-narrative. It’s just lazy. the idea that Rey has no connection to the Skywalker line? a good idea, potentially, but clumsily executed, as it is played out less as an important revelation and more an excuse to not actually give any kind of answer to how Rey came to be Ben’s equal on the Light (or why she even is ‘Light’ honestly; I love Angry Rey but there’s seemingly no danger in her temptation) or where she got a skill set rivaled in this franchise only by literal Space Jesus Anakin Skywalker. Snoke is a one-noted villain; having him be betrayed by Kylo in the midst of his own villain arc? a very good idea. it belongs as the climax of the film, not the end of act 2 so there is no time for anything to breathe, just more never-ending crises and hardship.

Like, spare me the 'force visions are unreliable’ (Rey’s was unlike anything we had seen before, it wasn’t Anakin’s nightmare or Luke on Dagobah) bs; the film didn’t say that what Rey saw was wrong for x reason, it just pretended that it never happened and Rey didn’t say anything about it); spare me ‘our heroes have to fail and sometimes all the plans don’t work out’ we know that, we live in the real world of 2017 but while making your clever point you have wasted the presence of three extremely talented actors of color, and let down the audiences waiting for a chance to see people who look like them be the heroes for once. instead it turns out they didn’t actually matter all that much, but maybe next film!

It’s not clever. It’s not visionary. It’s cheap, it’s cowardly, and it isn’t actually that original because the film leaves us exactly where we expected. Poe is the leader and Leia’s heir to command, Finn is a newly-committed Rebel brimming with unrealized potential, Rey is a Jedi character (amorphously defined) who we know exactly as much about as we started, Luke is gone, even if he went out in pretty spectacular fashion, Carrie’s death means that Leia will be leaving us soon, and Kyle Ben has become the big bad. That’s the only real development - Snoke’s death and Ben’s rejection of his redemption - and it’s buried under Rey, our erstwhile heroine, being a vehicle for the villain’s character development. The only character this film particularly cares about is a white fascist who gets every chance to be redeemed and rejects them while the film expects us to keep caring.

So, yeah. People are mad. Not because of the same ‘the series is changed forever now’ shit that the haters of ESB were on about. Because the real changes? Ben being the real villain, the smallfolk of the galaxy being the source of light and conduits of the Force? I don’t see anyone complaining all that hard about them.

the complaints are about the damage done to beloved characters for…not all that much of a payoff. the misuse and marginalization of the characters of color. the disdain with which the script treats the nostalgia of the Force Awakens. the unrelenting pace of the film that just grinds the Resistance (and the audience) down and just tells them to trust us, even as more and more and more is taken away. Rey’s parentage isn’t the only thing cast aside - promises of developments in Finn’s story - his identity, his potential to cause a revolt in the First Order, even his force sensitivity (you want a force user from nothing? how about a child soldier from a nameless family who as we are continually reminded used to be on sanitation crew) - are broken. Rey has her dream of family taken away…and replaced with…well the film doesn’t really bother to say because she’s a plot device for most of act 3. We don’t get to see her reject Ren and leave him. Because this isn’t her story; it’s his. Kylo is unconscious, so the scene is over. Tell me how that is a satisfying arc for our erstwhile protagonist? Poe’s character is completely uprooted from what we’ve seen before to make him an obnoxious hotheaded menace whose emotions threaten the survival of the Resistance if two old white women aren’t able to keep him in check. Rose says a lot and gets to do almost nothing. Luke…Luke is torn down to justify the fall of Ben Solo, never given the chance to establish a meaningful bond with his erstwhile successor, and is only given the chance to atone by acting as a diversion to give the others time to escape. he dies alone, a failure, even if he is at peace with how things turned out.

last year we were shown a movie in the wake of one of the more traumatic political events in the life of the people on this website where a diverse and sympathetic cast fight hard and are entirely wiped out. But their deaths come in a spectacular and charged finale that carries the desperation and grief and pathos through into the beginning of the story we know and love. it all feels worth something. Rogue One has its flaws as a film but it comes together in a way that The Last Jedi does not. In the end, what Jyn and Cassian and the others do is just enough to get the plans away, to start the sequence of events that will lead to the Empire’s destruction.

Here?

there’s just not enough left. not enough of the Resistance, not enough story, not enough hope.

to have that hope repeatedly stripped away and cynically exploited through a narrative that drags the characters from crisis to crisis without bothering to justify itself or its role in the story (while retreading the highlights of Episodes V and VI without the emotional depth to back them up), and in so doing wears down the audience as much as the characters is not why I have devoted so much of my life and emotional energy to this series about space wizards and their galaxy-destroying family squabbles and eventual chance for redemption. for all his many, many faults, George Lucas understood that.

you can’t just talk about hope. sooner or later you have to see it. You have to feel that what you are suffering will be worth it. The text needs to tell you as much. it’s clumsy and cliched and it is necessary. In the Empire Strikes Back, after Han is captured and Luke is beaten, the turning point is Lando. Lando changes the course of the movie, rescuing Leia and Chewie, who rescue Luke. They live to fight another day, and at the end they are wounded but among friends.

the moment in The Last Jedi where that could have happened was when Leia’s signal went out. How terrific would it have been if after being betrayed by a scoundrel the original scoundrel with a heart of gold, Lando Calrissian, arrives at the head of a fleet made up of all the alien races so inexplicably missing from the sequel trilogy so far, fending off the First Order long enough for the Resistance to escape with most of the survivors on Crait?

But Rian had to have one last twist of the knife. so nobody came. only Luke, and only as a distraction to buy time that ultimately cost him his life and reduced his legacy to giving everything to atone for his past sins. there is no Lando moment. there is no turning point, no moment where a larger victory is hinted at. and no, a single stable boy far, far away from the war is not the same thing. It makes an interesting point about the force and the metanarrative of Star Wars. It is not what this film needed after everything it put its characters and audience through.

and so at the end I’m not hopeful. I’m just tired. So, very tired. And I miss what made me fall in love with this series about space wizards and the Skywalker family in the first place

#martinus watches the last jedi #the last jedi spoilers #tlj spoilers #tlj negativity #rian does not love star wars like I love star wars #I'm just so. tired.#I need to watch Rebels or ROTJ and remember Star Wars can be like fun

30 notes · View notes

finallyindigo · 4 years

Text

“The Snare” Captures How Women Internalize Trauma

About two thirds of the way through The Snare, Elizabeth Spencer’s seventh novel, the protagonist, Julia Garrett, has the following exchange with her uncle, Maurice (who speaks first):

“Don’t let the past pile up, darling. It’s bad, but it’s gone and we can’t help it. Think of the wake of the boat.”

“Oh, no, that won’t work . . . it’s all around . . . around. . . .”

The line is quintessential Julia, whose every word seems matched not just to the present moment but to a personal inquiry or revelation. In this scene, she is specifically grieving the sudden death of her former lover, a wealthy (and married) Mississippi man named Martin. More broadly, though, she is articulating the root of her existential problem—the thing that, in the course of 400 pages, carries her to the brink of self-destruction—which is that Julia cannot, perhaps does not want to, escape her traumatic past.

Spencer’s gift for characterization reaches enviable depth in The Snare. On the surface, Julia Garrett is a society girl who pursues fulfillment in the seedy underbelly of post-war New Orleans. But this overarching plotline is anchored by the protagonist’s interior turmoil, which is both nebulous and rife with conflict. We spend a lot of time in Julia’s head, reflecting on her past and watching her cobble together abusive events with survivalist instincts. Chief among her preoccupations—what prompts her routine flashbacks and uncertain streams of consciousness—are her abandonment by her father and her relationship with her great-uncle and Maurice’s father, Henri “Dev” Devigny.

Though long dead at the start of the book, Dev is the subject of Julia’s love and revulsion, the figure who inspires her to consider herself both a vibrant, sensual “creature” and a whore. For Julia, Dev is “a constant heavy sun along the horizon of her spirit self,” both illuminating and blinding, comforting and oppressive. The implication is that Dev sexually manipulated Julia from the age of six, but Spencer never states this explicitly. Rather, she hews to the intimate third-person perspective that dominates the novel, an authorial choice that creates narrative tension and feels authentic to the way many women process sexual trauma. Julia cannot name what happened to her, so Spencer resists rendering it in categorical terms.

Spencer, who died in December, at age 98, had a penchant for writing characters who are concerned with their pasts. Frequently, they conduct themselves within their own historical contexts, recalling family sagas and ancient grievances amid ordinary affairs—an engagement party, a Christmas pageant, a vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Often, they are Southern, reflecting Spencer’s own heritage as a native Mississippian, and as a person who, like me, was born into a cultural obsession with bearing and unravelling legacies. Early in her career, critics likened her to Faulkner, though she resisted the comparison, citing her subject as the sole similarity. In 1989, she told The Paris Review, “If my material seems like his, as I say, it must be that we are both looking at the same society.”

Read it: Ekosistem Digital

When she left the South—for Italy and, later, Canada—her fictional landscapes shifted, too, though her interest in familial burdens and societal constraints remained constant. For some readers, it was this focus that cemented her as a next-generation Faulkner. Others saw glimmers of Henry James in her tales about Americans abroad. As I make my way through her astonishing body of work, I find myself thinking most often of her friend Alice Munro, so penetrating is her insight into female experiences of complex class structures and rigid social mores.

And yet, despite the fact that her name often appears in grand company, and despite her prize-winning canon that includes nine novels, a memoir, and six collections of short stories, Spencer is largely overlooked in contemporary literary circles. Her best-known work is The Light in the Piazza, a novella she published in 1960 and later called her albatross. “It probably is the real thing,” she said. “But it only took me, all told, about a month to write, whereas some of my other novels—the longer ones—took years.”

Her trauma exists in the backdrop of her quest for self-actualization, an honest reflection of how many women move through their lives.

The Snare is one such novel. It was published nearly five decades ago, but I first encountered it late last August, while entrenched in a reading cycle that seemed pulled from a graduate seminar in #MeToo-era literature. Piled with books like Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth, my desk signaled my devotion to contemporary examinations of gender and power. In this sense, I was primed to appreciate The Snare as a significant book, one that explores female identity with nuanced precision, and one that captures the messy and prolonged impact of sexual trauma. Immediately, I was drawn to Spencer’s deep exploration of Julia Garrett’s psyche and the way she wields narrative ambiguity to convey the detachment and confusion with which many women internalize abusive events. For all the broadening of conversations around sexual violence that has occurred over the past two years—for all the brilliant books I’ve consumed that deal explicitly and painfully with the subject—I am aware that navigating the aftermath of such a trauma is confusing and, often, intensely private. As she considers the qualities that separate her from her upper-crust society and propel her toward an electric yet dangerous and ultimately violent lifestyle, Julia Garrett struggles in isolation to understand her past. It is not surprising that Dev finds his way into her tortuous musings. “What was it Dev, the old man, had said?” she thinks, at one point. “‘Passion is what you’ve either got or haven’t got. . . .’ Out of such scraps she had stuck her own truth together.”

In many ways, The Snare is a feminist novel, far ahead of its time in its handling of female sexuality and desire, as well as the influence of early and unwanted experiences. Among works aimed at deepening mainstream discussions about sexual exploitation, it becomes essential reading; but one cannot claim the subject as the book’s central concern. Probably, this is why I like it so much. What occurred between Dev and Julia slinks through her mind, never revealing itself as a certain memory and yet never receding completely. Her trauma exists in the backdrop of her quest for self-actualization, which strikes me as an honest reflection of how many women move through their lives.

It is worth noting that what is so potent to the contemporary reader barely registered with the book’s initial critics. One needs only a cursory grasp of cultural history to imagine why. The Snare was first published in 1972, a year before the term “domestic violence” entered the American lexicon, and two years before Barnes v. Train attempted to tackle workplace power dynamics. Issues of child sexual abuse hardly resonated in the public consciousness and would not garner substantial legal attention until the enactment of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, in 1974. Spencer’s novel incorporates these themes to varying degrees, usually with the type of subtle probing that suits the introspective Julia. Specifically, Spencer’s deliberate blurring of Julia’s past trauma elicited confusion among reviewers in an era when Americans had, at best, an inchoate appreciation for the sexual autonomy of women and girls.

The novel received a lackluster review in the New York Times and a misogynistic one in Kirkus Reviews. (What the Times described as narrative complexity Kirkus labeled as melodrama, declaring that The Snare was not far removed from “Southern belle lettres.”) The Georgia Review picked up on the necessity of Spencer’s painstaking attention to her protagonist’s history and interiority—elements the Times alternatively described as “the novel’s most damaging flaw”—but determined that the structure was too elevated for the book’s thematic content. This, too, has a sexist ring, considering the great extent to which female desire propels the storyline.

The blurring of Julia’s past trauma elicited confusion in an era when Americans had an inchoate appreciation for the sexual autonomy of women and girls.

Among these pieces of criticism, what was largely agreed upon was the plot. In great or spare detail, each described the events of the book in a similar fashion: Julia Garrett, the adopted niece of Maurice and Isabel Devigny, a respectable New Orleans couple, is tired of her well-bred lifestyle. She seeks excitement with Jake Springland, an aspiring musician and somewhat ambivalent disciple of a religious zealot. With Jake, Julia enters a world of late-night jazz shows and drug dealers and, soon, murder. The novel begins in the 1950s and spans at least a decade, thrusting a clash of societal standards into the backdrop of Julia’s experience. (Her roommate, Edie, a girl from “some dusty little dried-up town,” is her prudish foil.) Julia is, as the book’s title suggests, resisting the snare of the stifling and polite realm in which she was raised; but she is caught nonetheless by a confluence of her own impulses.

The preeminent Spencer scholar, Peggy Prenshaw, further elucidated the central themes of The Snare in 1993, when she wrote an introduction to the book on the occasion of its paperback release. “Julia Garrett,” Prenshaw writes, “seems a misfit, a woman enlivened by sexual experience and nearly destroyed by it, a woman bored by status-seeking and acquisitiveness, whose indifference brings her to the edge of hunger and homelessness.” She goes on to explain that the novel’s setting in New Orleans mirrors Julia’s seductive power and dueling instincts. Like Julia, Prenshaw says, the city is steeped in manners and tradition, but beneath its glossy exterior it is an exotic, indulgent place.

Prenshaw also references the novel’s mixed critical reception, noting the issues reviewers had with narrative ambiguity, but she does not fully explore the resonance of this authorial choice with the book’s violent plot points. Spencer’s rendering of Julia’s darkest moments is frenetic and fragmentary, allowing certain mysteries to rest in the reader’s mind as uncomfortably as they do in Julia’s. In these scenes, the events are clear, but their details are often foggy, punctuated by an image here, a sensation there. We see, for example, the flash of a blade held to Julia’s neck and glimpse, through euphemistic language, the shame she associates with what follows. As in, “After that . . .” and “I’m just going to call it an awful headache.” For Julia, what is contained in the words that and it is unspeakable, even as it holds dominion over her identity.

Crucially, vagueness distinguishes Julia’s memories of her relationship with Dev. Speaking of her protagonist in 1990, Spencer said, “Her early experience with her guardian mentor, . . . a French Cajun man who may or may not have seduced her, had a profound effect on her.” Prenshaw interprets this effect decisively. “The indisputable fact seems to be that Julia does not regard the relationship with Dev as injurious. If corrupting, it was a necessary and inevitable introduction to the ‘crooked world.’” This statement aligns imperfectly with my own impression, because it ignores the yearning that is so critical to Julia’s idea of herself. She does not want to regard the relationship with Dev as injurious. She wants to imagine it as inevitable.

Spencer makes clear that, for Julia, it is easier to live with a terrible thing when it is remembered indistinctly. Julia’s past with Dev haunts the novel because it is essential to how she views herself, and yet she is unable to define it. Violence and sexual exploitation pervade her adult life, too, and yet she never names it as such. Rather, she absorbs it all with a pronounced detachment, as though each experience is the logical conclusion of who she is in the world. After the doctor for whom she briefly works as a receptionist chases her around the office, she thinks: “. . . life was more peaceful than not with him, now that he’d made his pass.” After Jake Springland, her musician boyfriend, rapes and beats her, she thinks: “Why didn’t I find somebody good?” and then concludes that “she hadn’t because she hadn’t wanted to.” She is kidnapped twice, thanks to her association with Jake, and subjected to torture. After the first time, she thinks: “It was something in me . . . Something that wanted to go down forever, to hit the absolute muddy bottom where there’s nothing but old beer cans, fishhooks and garbage.” After the second time, she thinks: “She would gladly live like an animal, simply, instinctively, for the day only.”

For Julia, it is easier to live with a terrible thing when it is remembered indistinctly.

Julia’s enthusiasm for New Orleans and its various vices—her sensual and subversive nature—is palpable and seemingly within her control. From the start she is an intelligent woman who knows her sexual power. But as we navigate the conflicting aspects of her mentality, we learn that her empowerment is marked by shame. At times, she reduces herself to her sexuality. Dressing for a courtroom gallery: “Might as well try to de-sex herself, she thought, as stamp out her natural looks.” Her early sexualization by Dev forms a critical aspect of her identity and self-worth, convincing her that she is incongruous with anything virtuous. She thinks, “The idea of goodness beckons forever to those who can’t have it, but once they catch up to it by luck or accident, they immediately feel uneasy, restless, miserable.”

This vivid interiority is what is largely missing from any summary or critical analysis of The Snare. How Julia decodes her own experiences is a vital aspect of the novel that seems only to have puzzled reviewers in 1972 and failed to thoroughly engage scholars in the following decades. I only learned of the book because several people recommended it to me. Each had read my work and assumed I would appreciate Spencer’s meticulous characterization of Julia Garrett. But at some early point in my first reading, Julia began to resonate as more than a technical feat. We are wildly different people, and yet I identify with her tendency toward self-examination through imperfect recollections. I possess the kind of memory that blurs even the recent past. It recalls the worst things dimly and everything else with rosy nostalgia. This has the effect of making me suspicious of my negative or painful emotions. I am unskilled at relaying the detailed origins of my deepest wounds without a large amount of ambiguity. Spencer captures this deficiency, too. After Jake assaults and abandons her, Julia says, “I don’t think I was even born a virgin.” Her effort to make sense into the plainly nonsensical seems to me like an inherited impulse, something derived from generations of cultural stagnation around gender-based violence.

Months before her death, I spoke with Elizabeth Spencer over the phone. She talked about the months she spent in New Orleans, researching the novel’s setting, and recalled her use of narrative ambiguity as the deliberate choice I had assumed it was. And yet, I absorbed from her a sense that her fixation on Julia’s past diverged from my own. “I don’t spend too much time psychoanalyzing,” she said. I felt somewhat disappointed by her answer, at first. So much of Julia’s persona appears drawn from an intellectual understanding of the functional ways in which human beings process trauma. But maybe Spencer’s more intuitive approach is what accounts for her novel’s brilliance. Perhaps her resistance to determining direct cause and effect is what allowed her to craft such a complicated and authentic character. Julia is not whittled into a particular set of psychiatric ailments, and her interior current is rich and evolving, never cyclical, never wholly diminishing. Spencer allows her protagonist a limitless quality, that of a woman constantly interpreting and reinterpreting her place in the world through her experiences. Who among us isn’t?

About the Author Caroline McCoy’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Lit Hub, The Bitter Southerner and others. She has received residencies and fellowships from Crosstown Arts, in Memphis, and Emerson College, where she earned her MFA in 2019.

Source: electricliterature.com/the-past-is-present-in-the-snare/

0 notes

kasisnotofimport · 7 years

Note

81. Terumob.. plz.. +points if theyre older and not quite together but together ;u; LOVE U KASI

Coming right up! Also how many points are we talking here for ‘not quite together, but together ’?

I’m still doing these, by the way: Writing Prompts

It had been a long time since Teruki had last gotten caught in the rain, longer still since he had gotten caught without an umbrella. He would have felt foolish at any other time; he had no excuse, after all. Teruki was almost always prepared, rain or shine, for any outcome. The storm had not come without warning either, having been predicted that morning at almost the exact time that the clouds clustered in. Today is different, however, today he has Shigeo with him.

When they were younger, this would not have been so monumental. Despite Shigeo’s club activities and his part time job with Reigen, he still had plenty of spare time to spend with Teruki. Yet, as they grew older, the academically easy, but psychically chaotic days of middle school faded away and high school brought with it new challenges of a less supernatural nature. There was less time spent exorcising and more spent studying. It always felt as if there was no time for anything besides obligations and just like the need for their shared psychic abilities, Shigeo and Teruki’s relationship began to decay. Teruki could feel their connection slipping through his fingers like sand and for a time, he did nothing about it.

Now with graduation and university looming, Teruki is regretful and desperate to rekindle that connection with Shigeo. Teruki knows that the transition between highschool and college is when close friends become acquaintances again and Teruki is loathe to lose all the ground he gained with Shigeo. He never wants to return to a time when he doesn’t know Shigeo. He finds that he treasures that warmth fiercer than he does anything else, not his reputation, nor his studies. They all pale in comparison to this hard won prize.

Luckily, Teruki has been successful thus far. If only he had known at the beginning that Shigeo’s time is his if only he asks for it. The knowledge that the relationship deteriorated due to Teruki’s own inaction serves to feed the anxiety in his chest, but it also fuels him to once again begin to selfishly, shamelessly fill Shigeo’s free time with himself.

Once again they are spending time together like they had in their youth, snatching moments between applying for universities, studying, and still working for Spirits and Such to grab a snack and chat. It is perhaps more difficult, but worth every ounce of effort spent. Shigeo is more than happy for the excuse to procrastinate on the stressful decisions of the future, and Teruki is glad for the opportunity to spend more time with his friend. Though even with the return to old times, there is still an odd, foreign distance between them. It is a small stretch, but one that no matter how Teruki tries, he cannot step over. He wants to pull Shigeo back to him, recapture that familiarity they had, but it feels like even an eternity couldn’t bridge the gap. Though Teruki devoted every afternoon to shattering it, there is still a wall, paper thin, but frustratingly elastic.

Today, in his eagerness to make the most of his time with Shigeo, however, it seems Teruki has inadvertently cut their time short. They are sitting in the grass at a park like they had countless times as children, watching the clouds roll by. Shigeo is sitting so close, yet so terribly far away, and Teruki has been wracking his brain for an explanation for the longing in his chest. Today is the day he will broach the subject, if only he could find a smooth way to do so. His thoughts are put on hold and the anxiety in his gut grows when Teruki sees the clouds gradually darkening, blocking out the sun and banishing the ardor in his heart. At the first drops of rain, Teruki sighs, knowing without even checking his bag that he has left his umbrella on his desk at the school in his hasty departure. He thinks they will be able to linger for just a moment longer, but then the clouds open up fully and dump what must be gallons of water on them all at once. Once again, Teruki will be left wrestling with the barrier between himself and Shigeo, unable to address it.

He puts up his own barrier, a protective one to stave off the rain for a little while longer. Eventually though, the grass around them will become slick and their shoes will sink into the now loamy earth. Without thinking much of it, Teruki grabs Shigeo’s hand and pulls him up. He spots a covered bus stop just down the hill from them and although the jog will be perilous in slick grass, Teruki is willing to risk it to save Shigeo the burden of wet socks, muddy shoes and a possible cold. He tugs Shigeo down the hill, making quick, but careful progress as Shigeo silently trails behind him. They are almost there when there is a flash of lightning so bright it nearly blinds Teruki followed quickly by a roll of thunder that shakes the ground and has Teruki’s ears ringing. He pauses for a only a moment, then readies to keep trekking down the hill, however, when he tugs on Shigeo’s hand, he receives more resistance than he thinks he ought. For a moment, his chest fills with dread. Has Shigeo developed a new fear in the time that Teruki had not been as close? Had Teruki inadvertently exposed him to it by forcing him out when there was threat of a storm?

He turns his gaze reluctantly to Shigeo, expecting to seem him scared, perhaps cowering away from the bangs of thunder and flashes of lightning. However, what Teruki finds is almost the opposite. Shigeo is serene, eyes turned towards the sky, uncaring against the pouring down on them. He brings one hand up, the one Teruki is not clasping and pokes it out from under Teruki’s barrier. “Teru,” he says quietly. Teruki snaps to attention, chest clenching with how much his heart swells at the familiar name. “Can you take your barrier down?” Shigeo asks politely, still not turning his face from the sky.

“Ka-” Teruki begins, but pauses and backtracks. Shigeo had just used his name, did that not also mean he could use Shigeo’s? He decides to try, less due to courage and more because Shigeo might not hear him in the rain pounding unforgivingly against the earth. “Shigeo, it’s pouring. You’ll get soaked,” Teruki says.

Shigeo nods in understanding. Teruki just tilts his head, wondering at his reasoning. “It’s been awhile since I’ve stood out in the rain,” he says by way of explanation.

“We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm… and you want to stop and feel the rain?” Teruki asks. It should hardly be surprising. Shigeo is like this, slow, careful, thoughtful and sometimes horrendously irrational. He places value in odd things like change, and now, apparently thunderstorms.

“Please, Teru,” he says softly. He gives Teruki a little smile, just a slight quirking of his lips, and Teruki doesn’t take his barrier down so much as drop it in a psychic facsimile of fumbling. Once the barrier is gone, the rain hits them as if someone has overturned a bucket on them.

It is shockingly chill, sliding down Teruki’s neck and sending a shiver up his spine. Shigeo only sighs in relief, tilting his head back and letting the rain patter on the pale skin of his face. His grip tightens around Teruki’s hand, ensuring that their hold on each other won’t falter even as rain slick as their hands are. His eyes are now delicately closed against the rain, dark lashes holding droplets of water on their spiky ends. His hair, already jet black, sticks against his face, looking much like someone had come at him with an ink heavy paint brush. With the rain misting around him, he looks almost like a Muromachi painting, monochrome and precise. Teruki stands, sopping, and just takes it in. Despite the cold of the rain, Teruki can feel something rising in his chest, filling him with warmth from his core to the tips of his fingers and toes.

“You’re using my name,” Shigeo says after a few moments. His eyes open to slits, his dark irises turning to peek at him behind his lashes. That smile is still there, just a gentle line tilting ever so slightly upward. It is so inherently Shigeo’s smile, yet looks so new on his face.

“You’re using mine too,” Teruki says dumbly. There is a questioning lilt to his voice that he can’t help. Shigeo is such a conundrum sometimes, and he never fails to stump Teruki. He is always changing, yet so stubbornly himself at his core. He wonders if Shigeo would be happy to hear that from him.

He is so caught up in his thoughts that he does not realize that Shigeo is now startling close to him, nearly nose to nose. This kind of nearness is nothing new to their relationship. With Shigeo, most kinds of physical contact were entirely allowed with Teruki. Holding hands, leaning against each other, even now Teruki could wrap his arms around Shigeo’s shoulders and he knows it would be allowed. This seems novel, however, standing face to face and toe to toe with Shigeo. He realizes distantly that he and Shigeo are the same height now, or perhaps Shigeo is a little taller. Shigeo holds his gaze unflinchingly, and his other hand seeks out Teruki’s so that they are both clasped. He holds so tightly, as if Teruki might slip away from him like the rain sliding off the blades of grass at their feet. Teruki returns the grip, feeling as if he is reaching forward and dragging Shigeo back to him, close the physical distance as well as the emotional one.

“You’ve seemed really far away lately,” Shigeo says, “I’m glad we started spending time together again.”

Though it isn’t an accusation, Teruki still feels guilty. “I got caught up, I suppose,” he says, by way of apology, “But… I did some reassessing and I remembered what was important.”

Shigeo’s head tilts to the side, his bangs sliding sideways with the movement. “What is that?” he asks, genuinely perplexed.

“Friendship,” Teruki says, looking down at their clasped hands, “Ours, specifically.” He doesn’t want to admit that Shigeo and his friends are really the only people Teruki has remained close to after all this time. “I realized that no matter what happens, I don’t want us to grow any farther apart,” he admits, then turns his gaze back up to Shigeo’s. He is shocked by Shigeo’s calm, but earnest gaze, fighting the urge to take a step back. He chuckles nervously, a smirk curving his lips, but he knows it won’t reach his eyes, he can still feel the furrow between his brows and the tension threatening to pull his mouth back down. “Us… us espers have to stick together, after all!” he says, his voice high.

Shigeo takes a step forward, coming impossibly closer. Teruki can feel that phantom barrier pulling, stretching, still holding them apart despite being so close together. “Even if we weren’t espers,” Shigeo says, “Or you weren’t an esper and I was, or if the opposite were true… I’d still want us to stay… like this.” He nods towards their hands, and Teruki swallows. His heart stutters and he blinks harshly as the rain gets in his eyes.

“Do you get it, Teru?” Shigeo asks after a pause.

Teruki stares at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He can taste the rain on his tongue and feel the heat of Shigeo’s skin against the palms of his hands. He takes a harsh breath. “I–”

Another flash and another boom of thunder rockets Teruki away from Shigeo and sends him sprawling in the mud. Shigeo isn’t far behind, falling forward before Teruki catches him, saving him from the same fate. They slide the rest of the way down the hill, coming to rest where the water is pooling by the sidewalk. Teruki sighs and rest his head in the muddy water, hands bracing Shigeo’s sides where he has tumbled overtop of him. “Bad timing,” Teruki breathes, shutting his eyes and feeling the clammy water soak into his hair.

“Sorry,” Shigeo apologizes automatically, “Maybe I should have waited.” He stays where he is, braced over Teruki, shielding him, but also dripping water from his hair onto Teruki’s face.

Teruki wonders what Shigeo is talking about, but his mouth moves before he is consciously aware of what he is saying. “No, don’t apologize,” he says. He sits up, careful not to slide Shigeo off of him. Despite all of Teruki’s efforts to keep him from getting muddy, the knees of Shigeo’s uniform pants are smeared brown and green from their slide down the hill and his hands are filthy from where they were braced by Teruki’s head. “Well, we’re a mess,” he says.

Shigeo nods, but there is that smile still on his face. It still makes Teruki’s heart flutter and he wonders at it, wonders at what Shigeo meant before the thunder sent them tumbling. “Why don’t you… why don’t you come to my apartment?” Teruki asks, an unneeded nervous fluttering jumping in his chest, “I’ll lend you some clothes and we can wait out the storm there.”

Shigeo nods, standing from where he was leant over Teruki’s legs and offering him a hand. Teruki takes it, and Shigeo pulls him up easily despite the muddy ground slipping under their feet. “You can also…” Teruki begins once he has stood up. He doesn’t bother wiping the dirt from his pants. They are a lost cause and something to be dealt with later. “You can also explain to me what you meant by what you said earlier,” he suggests, peeking at Shigeo through the corner of his eye, “I don’t think I got the whole meaning… and I want to.”

Shigeo nods in understanding. “Master Reigen says when I try to be subtle, I am just very vague, so I understand,” he says ponderously, “That… explains a lot. I’m sorry… I’ll be more direct this time… from now on.”

“I– what?” Teruki asks, but Shigeo is already taking his hand and leading him in the direction of his apartment.

“I’ll tell you once we get there,” he promises. For now, that is enough for Teruki.

#I set a time limit on this #so I hope the ending isn't too abrupt #my fics #friends #minimal editing too #toeing a fine line #silvervictory #mp100 #mob psycho 100 #mp100 fics

11 notes · View notes

themanofonebook · 7 years

Text

—Okay here is that promised Enjolras and Javert meta that I was talking about. @pontificalandwarlike and I were having this discussion a while ago and I don’t remember what she said but I can guess based on the context and below the cut is the response which I sent to her and also an added bit from myself with more on the subject read at will I do this because I love it. There’s some stuff in there about Hugo and Christianity and blah blah it’s long because I’m dumb.

“Oh I can tell you why people laud Enjolras and decry Javert very simply, though it says a bit about how we, as humans, think of ourselves and our souls — and also just a bit about Hugo and Christianity, which was basically his purpose in writing the book if we’re going to be totally honest.

Yes Javert and Enjolras are basically the same character, it’s true; they are both “terrible”, they are both obsessively devoted to their cause with the supposed exclusion of all else (though Enjolras has his friends and Javert has his snuff and flair for the dramatic), they both value their own perception of justice above everything else in the known world; in their minds, “the right” is the most important thing and anything you offer up pales in comparison to their idea of a perfect world, Enjolras’s being a democracy bordering on Marxist ideas which would not be born for quite some time, Javert’s being a country where all criminality is stamped out and the bourgeois are petted and protected because they are born good and have the smallest chance of falling to evil.

Their character arcs parallel — introduction in which they are, in reality, a powerful, marble backdrop for the main characters at the time; Enjolras is the lover of liberty whom we compare Marius and Les Amis to, Javert is the staunch supporter of the law and Valjean’s twin and contrast. They go through their own personal development, delved into with a touch of detail, but their greatest moments are their deaths; the very ends of the developmental stages and their subsequent demises are what changes perception of their places in the story, Enjolras being an angel and stand-in for Saint Michael, Javert being closer to the musical’s “Lucifer” and falling from the grace that is his own righteousness because he cannot comprehend goodness — and there’s the point.

Enjolras, while beginning as a bit of a pigheaded arse, if I might be so bold, has the benefits of Combeferre, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, etc., and Marius on the barricade. Being there, fighting, killing others, brings out in him that shred of humanity, but his focus, his Justice, can allow for the deaths of others for the greater good. Then there is his death, and this is important in regards to what I said about this entire novel being Hugo’s prompt to return to religion (Christianity, the Christian God) and seek goodness there. Up until this point, Enjolras has killed, derided; he’s floated on his own cloud of aloof angelic righteousness, which is why he is Saint Michael; but Grantaire, lowly, non-believing Grantaire, extends his hand to him; Enjolras, touched by Combeferre’s humanity, touched by the deaths of his friends, touched by the pure goodness and all-too poignant mortal sorrow of those going to die on the barricades, takes this offering and raises Grantaire to his level (in a way, maybe not entirely), and dies with him. He is redeemed enough, as a human being, to stand with someone “lesser” than himself, to accept and to love them, and to die with them; he now relates to the very people whom he was fighting to aid with his revolution. It’s this admission of humanity which reinforces one of the most basic beliefs of Christianity. And all of this religious spew that I’m doing right now is coming from a non-Christian so there’s that, haha. Enjolras, in the end, embraced Grantaire, embraced Heaven, embraced human love, perhaps even embraced Jesus, and that, in and of itself, earns him his redemption and shifts him from “marble bastard of unfeeling harsh murderous justice and rebellion” to “sympathetic golden symbol of a new dawn”.

Javert, though he goes through a lot of development as a person, does not do so as a symbol. He becomes looser, we see that he is snarky, etc. etc., but he is still the same supporter of the law and the corrupt system as always, up until the moment of his death — in fact, his death itself is a reflection of how deeply Javert is rooted in his beliefs concerning the French justice system. Valjean, poor, suffering Valjean who has made something good of himself, who has learnt love as well as kindness and therefore raised himself up just as Enjolras did, lowers — yes, lowers — his hand to Javert, who has never grown past this point because who in France would spare an inspector, who would extend kindness their way? He offers Javert his life, and then offers himself; in conceding to go with Javert to the station and then to prison, he lowers himself to Javert’s level; it is a clear stepping down, and even Javert recognizes this, therefore he recognizes himself as low; low, in his mind, does not register as “loveless”, or lacking in morality, because he has no sense of either of these things; in Javert’s perfectly flawed world, “low” means “criminal”. Valjean is stepping down to him, bowing to his demands; Valjean had and gave up the high ground to him. Whom has Valjean served in such a way in the past? The poor. He lowers himself to them, to the destitute, to those who have nothing, to those outside of society,but not to policemen, not to Javert. Javert knew that he was not a member of society, but there was always that line; he was of the law, therefore he was right, if not good; now, Valjean extends a hand to him, bows to him, offers himself, and Javert has no choice but to consider himself a criminal… and to see Valjean as a superior once more, a vicious slap in the face giving the events of M.sur.M and what that must have done to him mentally. Javert does not take it well.

He doesn’t accept the offered hand as Enjolras did, he doesn’t lower himself to lift himself up, he hardly recognizes the change in himself — rather, he knows that something is different, but does not know what that something is, and is afraid; the system is capable of change, for Javert represents the system, but the system is required to fall to change, and Javert is only a human. He is a person. He cannot process goodness within himself, refuses to be on par with Valjean, though he concedes, in the end, to let him go, because he cannot bear to see that man die. He knows that it would be wrong. He knows! Already, his perception of right and wrong is changing! He has a chance.

…and he does not take it. He kills himself, with one foot out and one foot in, still trapped by the law which consumed his life; he must apologize, for not returning this man to jail, even though he couldn’t, for the sake of love — not romantic love, but basic, moral goodness. He couldn’t do it. And he couldn’t handle the change which Valjean prompted in him. And he fell.

A lot of people say that Javert’s death shocked them, and I don’t think it’s just because a strong man like that died so quickly; it’s because he was given the option to change, the transformation was initiated, and we as readers were so used to these being successful (Valjean, Marius, Enjolras), that when Javert cannot take it and derails before his shift is complete, it shocks us. It’s Hugo’s last jab at the system which Javert did and did not represent; it’s a snatching away of hope — hope for Javert, hope for change. Hugo wanted to see that system go down so badly that Javert died. At the same time, Javert’s death is clearly made out to be an apology to God; this is the only way he knows, now, having failed in his duties as a human being beneath Heaven, inspector aside; the last time he apologized (to Madeleine), he resigned. The only way to resign to God is… well. But Hugo leaves it semi-ambiguous as to whether or not Javert was ultimately forgiven for his sins in lacking goodness and kindness. We don’t know. That ambiguity is the only hope for the system. By taking apart what we have, can we really make it better? There’s a chance, and we have to try.

But to us mere mortals, to know that Enjolras had his chance at redemption and seized Grantaire’s hand and held tight, and that Javert was given the same chance and instead made to apologize by dying, we opt for the more hopeful, and praise Enjolras for being so good and abhor Javert for failing and falling, because we should all like to be like Enjolras, and have the hope of redemption that Enjolras has and Javert ultimately denied in dying — yes, he may have had redemption after death (I mean look at ghostverse that’s what I’m sayin’), but what can we, as living humans, do with that? We don’t want to die! We want to rise up and change and be good and loving and loved, and that is what Enjolras’s death is, and Javert’s is not.

And an addition here with a tiny note:

I think it’s important that we judge Enjolras on the same scale as we do Javert, or we’re being just as unfair as the system of law which the book was so against and so for altering. Enjolras willingly takes his friends out into the streets, builds a barricade which he must know is going to fall, fights with the army of France (made up of French citizens; note how Enjolras seems willing enough to exclude them from the people he wants to save, and, while admittedly some of them were rich and also reaping the benefits of having work and such that’s still a dick move and his redeeming point comes with the whole “he is my brother tear down the marble cheek” bit which I love), and ultimately ends up dying with his compatriots and accomplishing nothing he missed becoming historic men like Enjolras who are willing to have this brilliant moving moral suicide are not the future lovers like Marius Pontmercy who acknowledge the corruption in society and accept different points of view (see “my mother is the republic” Combeferre singing about Caesar on his way out the door his willingness to take in his father’s beliefs about Napoleon but also to go to the barricade and fight against the monarchy with his friends because that is what he truly believes to be wrong that is his opinion which he has formed after listening to others) are the future they will see the future while people like Enjolras and Courfeyrac and Combeferre will not bless them they burn out so fast.

If we’re going to judge Javert on the basis that the ends do not justify the means and that his letter to the Préfecture and his suicide do not excuse his actions then we must also judge Enjolras in the same way instead of raising him up onto this unrealistic pedestal which has been created for him he is not Apollo he is not a god he is not even marble he is a man just as flawed as any other man in this book.

#tbt.

3 notes · View notes

nofomoartworld · 7 years

Text

Hyperallergic: How Not to Look at Pictures

When the late Christopher Middleton published a translation of Robert Walser’s selected stories in 1988, the Swiss-German writer was practically unknown in the English-speaking world. Since then, his reputation has snowballed. Now readers are familiar not only with Walser’s writings, which were appreciated in his time by the likes of Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, but also his life story: after producing an enormous quantity of stories, unclassifiable feuilletons, and a half a dozen novels over the course of the first three decades of the 20th century, he subsequently spent the years from 1929 through his death in 1956 in mental asylums, eventually ceasing to publish. “I am not here to write, but to be mad,” he explained.

In the past few years, English-language publications of Walser have been appearing at an ever-faster rate, to the joy of his admirers but also at times to their frustration: Walser’s voluminous production includes, as it turns out, some pretty thin stuff alongside such masterpieces as “Kleist in Thun” or “The Walk,” to name a couple of the most memorable stories in Middleton’s 1988 selection. Among the recent contributions to this mass of translations is Looking at Pictures, both nonfiction and fiction about painting and painters, fluently translated by several hands, primarily Susan Bernofsky (who for some time now has been Walser’s main translator) but also in a couple of cases by Lydia Davis, the renowned writer who is also known for her translations from the French (but not previously from the German, to my knowledge); also reprinted here are two of Middleton’s previously published translations.

But as for looking at pictures, there’s little evidence of it here, despite the volume’s title. Rather, Walser was more likely to find in images a reason to look into his own fervent imagination. In fact, Looking at Pictures could serve as a convenient object lesson in how not to write about painting. Rule one: If the painting is not an illustration of an existing story, your task is to resist inventing a story to which the painting could have served as an illustration. To do otherwise is more a way of looking away from the painting than of looking at it. And it’s almost as bad as breaking rule two: Don’t use the painting as an excuse to free-associate.

But Walser was one of the great literary free-associators. One of the wonderful things about his writing is that by the time you get to the bottom of a page you realize that his thought has wandered somewhere you’d never have predicted from what you read at the top. It’s marvelous and inimitable, and it’s aptly summed up in the first sentence of a piece in this collection called, simply, “Watteau”: “Knowing little about him, I shall nonetheless promptly make my way, as if rambling across meadows, into the task of describing his life, as if stepping into an attractive, prettily wallpapered little house, this being a life devoted to gaiety, that is to art, in other words to a certain delight in one’s own person.”

The writer’s manifest modesty (“knowing little about him”) and the “rambling” nature of his thought are Walser’s style in a nutshell. And it’s charming. But that art is conceived as essentially a form of self-indulgence (“delight in one’s own person”) is a problem — if only because it puts the writer’s art of self-indulgence at cross-purposes with any attempt to focus attention on the painter’s. And so Walser eloquently calls attention to the obvious, such as (still of Watteau) that “all the romanticism that dwelled within him possessed, as it were, excellent manners,” without being able to enlighten us further about the matter. It’s frustrating, and might have been less so had Walser devoted his verbal ramble to an imaginary oeuvre by an imaginary artist — or simply pretended that he was doing so — sparing the reader of the feeling that much of what could have been grasped about the artist had escaped the writer’s notice.

In an essay on Van Gogh’s “L’Arlesienne” (1888), Walser offers a fine evocation of the woman we see portrayed in the painting: “These hard features were once soft, and these cold, almost malicious eyes were friendly and innocent…. She no doubt often went to church, or to dances. How often must her hands have opened a window, or pressed shut a door. These are the sort of acts you and I perform daily, are they not, and in this circumstance resides a certain pettiness, but also a grandeur. Can she not have had a lover, and known joys, and many sorrows? She listened to the ringing of bells, and with her eyes perceived the beauty of branches in blossom. Months and years passed for her, summer passed, winter. Is this not terribly simple. Her life was filled with toil.”

At a moment such as this, one feels how much more a great narrator such as Walser can give to a picture than the dry enumerations of an art historian or critic would allow. But then when he summarizes by saying, “He paints her just as she is, plain and true,” it’s impossible not to wish that he had looked more closely at the picture in order to begin to explain to us how in the world Van Gogh went about doing that. What it would mean to paint a human being “just as she is,” and what is the technique that would allow such a thing to happen? — that’s what one is desperate to know. Walser leaves us without a clue.

Robert Walser’s Looking at Pictures (2015), translated by Susan Bernofsky and others, is published by New Directions and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

The post How Not to Look at Pictures appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2r7FGz5 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic

1 note · View note