#not to get parasocial but like. you can lose a lot of people in 30 years and i can Feel those years of grief in the show's version | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silverview · 2 months

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alright i’m shifting back into tlw mode. i'm finally writing a fic from chas's POV and it's sticking a little bit. i know i can never actually do justice to him but the attempt is being made and i have a lot of thoughts, i'm just going to throw them all down in one place

chas might be my all-time favourite in9 character. reece has described the performance as being basically the same as he gives in sardines, which is a fair comparison honestly – the difference isn’t really in the performance or the character as much as in the circumstances. as in, stuart doesn’t do much relatively speaking and he never really has to shift gears onscreen. whereas chas is what you’d get if that character went through literally the full spectrum of human emotion onscreen in the space of half an hour, including an extended closeup on him experiencing the most extreme betrayal and mortal terror it’s possible to imagine, while covered in gunk and immobilised from the neck down. it's an extreme exercise in humanising/complicating a stock character, and it's an extraordinary performance. chas’s vulnerability and humour and courage carry the entire episode. and his little dancey dance. i love him for his defence mechanisms and the pain and heart that's underneath when he lets them drop. i love him for losing his dream, and coping with it terribly, and being forced to rebuild his life and his sense of self. i love him for being a bad person and a good person

and YES i love him for being camp!!!! i watched the original boys in the band recently and recognised so much of chas in some of those characters, especially emory, both as written + performed. crucially the humanising/complicating of a comedy stock character for pathos. tlw is only two seasons out from how do you plead and i think that contributed to some negative reactions about reece's camp performances being too exaggerated and/or too frequent. i don't think many people really noticed that urban explicitly, intentionally speaks & acts that way as part of his job. he is a man who is explicitly playing a character for most of his screentime. why exactly he does it in that particular way is not clear to me. i am desperate to understand that episode & character better, partly because i feel like unlocking it would also provide a key to better understanding their overall handling of gay characters & themes

i've talked before about chas and simon being linked by the experience of death by parasocial rejection. lately i've been thinking about how this strand of rejection (in a less fatal but still tragic form) also runs through reece's characters in merrily merrily and plodding on. "i never responded in kind" = *suffocates you with a pillow* = "move on" = "i don't even know if we are friends anymore." why is he always the one who loves too much, discovering that his feelings are not reciprocated? and why is this tendency punished so much more violently in episodes where it's figured as explicitly gay, hmm? if you read the end of plodding on as resolving the rift in that episode, then it's also resolving this long-running meta arc; if you read it as unresolved then it is also leaving the meta arc unresolved

anyway here's my tlw timeline. i have joe & chas being born in 1965 + 1975 respectively. that puts chas in his early 20s in the late 90s when atlantic 5 was active, 30 when olivia attempted suicide, 39 when he met joe, and 48 when he died. if you listen to the audio described version it literally does differentiate them as being "the younger one" / "the older one," even though that's not explicit in the episode. they do need a bit of an age gap to make the backstory work. idk, i know they have a small age gap irl – it's just funny to me that they managed to turn that into a more noticeable/significant age gap through sheer looks and vibes

and here is my tlw playlist and here is my dedicated chas playlist, which has some overlap and is still evolving and is a mix of songs about him + pure vibes. i get really emo thinking about him listening to eternal flame as a sad teenager and dreaming of finding love someday :/

#in9 #inside no 9 #the last weekend

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jcmorrigan · 3 years

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Do you support anti-harassment and pro-shipping?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: This is an issue I’ve been monitoring and grappling with for a long time, and I feel like while my core philosophy has been the same for a while now, the nuances I’ve held shift every so often. I don’t identify as an anti. I just don’t. I think shipping things - be it incest, adult/minor, or one of the many flavors of abusive - is an ENTIRELY separate issue from wanting to do that IRL. I think sometimes people just want to write taboo topics for various reasons. Because the topics themselves are taboo and that’s interesting, because they offer methods of coping, even because some people are kinda into projecting upon the person on the losing end of the power dynamic and being dominated and kicked around, since that’s not something you should really chase in real life (unless it’s during a roleplay with a network of safewords).

There are many ships I think are gross, but I don’t want people to stop shipping them because I don’t like them. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 13 with anyone over 18. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 18 with anyone over 30. (Aging up is a whole different matter; if you write the younger character older and legitimately have them behave the way you think they would as an adult, it’s all good.) I REALLY don’t like ships where a character is either confirmed homosexual or only shown onscreen to be attracted to the same gender in a big-deal reveal sort of way (if the character has crushes on many genders or the creator uses Word of God to say they’re bi/pan, it’s fine) and the ship involves putting them with someone of the opposite gender (shipping them with enbies is fine). And no, I don’t think it’s a double standard that I sometimes like to do same-sex ships for characters who are coded very very straight. But this is all to do with my tastes and beliefs, not with what I think the rest of you all should do. If you like something that falls in my personal no-no category, then go ahead and do it. I’ll decide how much I want to interact with you, and that says more about our potential chemistry as a unit than it does about you as a person. And if you have boundaries yourself - if age-gap ships skeeve you out - then that doesn’t make you a bad person or even an anti! Just block as needed, talk to friends if you feel betrayed by them, and recognize what it is you don’t like and that you don’t have to like it.

Selfshipping? Do what you want. Again, I might personally have reservations about shipping with somebody too young (I actually perceived my own main f/o as in his twenties when I first watched his source, then saw Word of God say he was NINETEEN actually, even though that invalidates many many jokes about how he’s bad at adulting, so I just said “fuck it” and he’s at least 24 to me because that makes more sense and is more of my comfort zone). But what I like shouldn’t dictate what YOU do. I might give you a little side-eye if you’re shipping with somebody young, but I don’t know your reasons for doing so and I don’t have the right to judge. I might distance myself from certain situations if I’m feeling skeeved out. Or I might not feel skeeved out depending on how it’s handled. I also again would raise a brow if you’re selfshipping with an opposite-gender gay character, but same principle: you have your reasons, you shouldn’t stop because some rando (me) has an issue with your ship, and if I have a problem with how you handle it, I’ll just peace out on my end and not make a deal out of it.

A lot of this comes from the fact that I have mega OCD and I already try to moralize everything I do and hyper-analyze my choices to make sure I am being a Good Person. If I try to follow the “rules” to make my ships palatable to everyone, then I start worrying that any deviation makes me unforgivable. The vast majority of ships in my deck are squeaky-clean and have no problems, but sometimes I’ll get, like...Ventus/Papyrus, where Ven is 15, and Papyrus is in age limbo but I always thought he was at least 18, and then I don’t want to spiral into a moral crisis because I really think it would be cute to put the anime boy with the skeleton and I think they’re both asexual anyway. Or when I aged up Zevon from Descendants in order to make him make more sense as Yzma’s son, and then I had to give him a ship with an adult and I found one I really like (Kamdor from Power Rangers). And this is not even scratching the very complex issue of “The writers of this piece of fiction were ACTUALLY horny for incest and I can see the subtext for it and now I gotta figure out what to do with this mess because I like the series and I do want the characters to have partners who will treat them right.”

That said...up until recently, I looked up to the more extreme proship community, even so far as to kinda be more of an “anti-anti.” But as time went on, that...didn’t seem to fit. I’ve unfollowed a few of those blogs now because first of all, proshipping as a “political party” seems to come with some things I don’t believe in, such as forming a parasocial relationship with AO3 or saying that freedom of fans to ship what they want means the creators of mainstream media should be allowed to portray whatever they want and that being “critical of media you consume” is an automatic dogwhistle for bullies. More importantly: I have at least one friend who I know leans more anti, and I value her a lot and I think it’s valid for her to have her boundaries. After a while, the things that anti-antis did to protect themselves from bullying started to feel a little bit like bullying right back. I can’t really call myself a traditional proshipper anymore, even though I’m definitely not an anti. But I don’t want to be an “anti-anti” either. Because actually, I USED to be an anti on a different social media platform long before Tumblr, and though I can’t tell you exactly why I was that way, I can understand what it’s like to feel that strongly about things that gross you out and want to get them out of your face. I don’t want to say I’m against a whole bunch of people who are probably as varied in intensity as proshippers are.

At the end of the day, what I want is for us all to CHILL OUT. Can we please, PLEASE just focus on having fun in whatever way that comes - problematic ships or no - so long as people IRL aren’t getting hurt? Can we respect that there are probably a LOT of people with OCD on social media who spiral easily if shamed too much (which is probably how the anti movement rose in the first place - I’m sure my anti phase was fueled by my secular scrupulosity)? Can we not assume that people who ship weird age gaps are Actual Pedophiles, which is an entirely separate issue? (Listen...I grew up in the Age of AkuRoku. I hated AkuRoku. But if all the AkuRoku shippers turned out to be pedos, well, the news sure didn’t cover it. I’m saying the majority of them didn’t. And it’s been a decade.) Can we not spread the fear of being cancelled or that having a certain fictional preference will ruin a budding friendship? Can we communicate with one another in private if a friend says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, such as shipping something that makes you question their moral stance? Can actual legitimate creators of media not take sides in the goddamn pro/anti war, thereby making groups of their fans feel alienated from being welcomed by the source? Can we just have fun PLEASE?

Also, just...stop fighting about Reylo. That’s the dumbest thing to fight over and we managed to somehow get the actual SW crew in on that dumbass fight. Some people like Reylo and some people hate Reylo and THAT’S IT. WE’RE DONE HERE.

It sure says something that I worry, before hitting the Post button, that this might ruin some of the relationships I have or inspire a mass exodus of the followers whose names I come to like seeing in my notifications. But it’s ultimately better for all of us if I’m honest.

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withteeths · 4 years

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Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable.

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again.

#videogames #games preservation #scott pilgrim #rambling #post

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fullregalia · 4 years

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20/20.

This year, in hindsight, was a real write-off. I had grand plans for it, and while I ushered it in in a very low-key manner since I was recovering from the flu, I’d expected things to look up. Well, you know what they say about plans (RIP, my trip to Europe). I got very, very sick in early February, and I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t COVID. Since March, the days have been a carousel of monotony: coffee, run, work, cook, yoga, existential spiral, sleep. My Own Private Year of Rest and Relaxation, if you will. Of course, life has a way of breaking through regardless; I attended protests, completed my thesis, graduated from grad school, took a couple of road trips upstate, and celebrated the accomplishments and birthdays of friends and family from a safe social distance. It was all a bit of a blur, and not ideal circumstances to re-enter the real world, or whatever this COVID-present is.

Throughout it all, in lieu of happy hours, coffee dates, and panel discussions, I’ve turned even more to culture and cuisine to fill the the negative space on my calendar where my social life once resided. However, since a global pandemic ought not to disrupt every tradition, here’s my year-end round up of what made this terrible one slightly more tolerable.

After an ascetic fall semester abstaining from TV in 2019 (save for my beloved Succession), I allowed myself to watch more as the year wore on, and especially after graduation. I caught up on some cultural blind spots by finally getting around to The Sopranos, Ramy, Search Party, and Girlfriends. I wasn’t alone in bingeing Sopranos, it absolutely lived up to the hype and then some; this Jersey Girl can’t get enough gabagool-adjacent content, pizzeria culture is my culture!

Speaking of my culture, there was also a disproportionate amount of UK and European shows in my queue. Nothing like being in social isolation and watching the horny Irish teens in Normal People brood. I’m partial to it because I share a surname with the showrunner, so I have to embrace blind loyalty even though there was, in my opinion, a Marianne problem in the casting. Speaking of charming Irish characters with limited emotional vocabularies, I belatedly discovered This Way Up a 2019 show from Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan. And while Connell and Marianne are actually exceptional students, I found the real normal people on GBBO to bring me a bit more joy. Baking was abundantly therapeutic for me this year, and watching charming people drink loads of tea and fret over soggy bottoms was a comfort. I also discovered the Great Pottery Throw Down, and as a lifelong ceramics enthusiast, I cannot recommend it highly enough if you care about things like slips, coils, and glazing techniques. GPTD embraces wabi sabi in a way that GBBO eschews flaws in favor of perfection, and in a time of uncertainty, the former reminded me why I miss getting my hands in the mud as a coping mechanism (hence all the baking). Speaking of coping mechanisms, like everybody else with two eyes and an HBO password, I loved Michaela Cole’s I May Destroy You; though we’ve all had enough distress this year for a lifetime, watching Cole’s Arabella process her assault and search for meaning, justice, and closure was a compelling portrait of grief and purpose in the aftermath of trauma. Arabella’s creative and patient friends Kwame and Terry steal the show throughout, as they deal with their own setbacks and emotional turmoil. Where I May Destroy You provides catharsis, Ted Lasso presents British eccentricity in all its stereotypical glory. At first I was skeptical of the show’s hype on Twitter, but once I gave in it charmed me, if only for Roy Kent’s emotional trajectory and extolling the restorative powers of shortbread. For a more accurate depiction of life in London, Steve McQueen’s series Small Axe provides a visually lush and politically clear-eyed depiction of the lives of British West Indians in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Lastly, how could I get through a recap of my year in tv if I don’t mention The Crown. Normal People may have needed an intimacy coordinator, but the number of Barbours at Balmoral was the real phonographic content for me.

Turning my attention across the Channel, after the trainwreck that was Emily in Paris, I started watching a proper French show, Call My Agent! It’s truly delightful, and unlike the binge-worthy format of "ambient shows” I have been really relishing taking an hour each week to watch CMA, subtitles, cigarettes, and all.

Honorable mention: The Last Dance for its in-depth look at many notable former Chicago residents; High Fidelity for reminding me of the years in college when my brother and I would drive around listening to Beta Band; and Big Mouth.

Music

My Spotify wrapped this year was a bit odd. I don‘t think “Chromatica II into 911″ is technically a song, so it revealed other things about my listening habits this year, which turned out to remain very much stuck in the last, sonically. I listened to a lot more podcasts than new music this year, but there were some records that found their way into heavy rotation. While I listened to a lot of classics both old and new to write my thesis (Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Prokofiev, and Bach) the soundtrack to my coursework, runs, walks, and editing was more contemporary. Standouts include:

Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee, which makes me feel like I’m breathing fresh air even when I’m stuck inside all day

La Bella Vita by Niia, which was there for me when I walked past my ex on 7th avenue (twice!) and he pretended that I didn’t exist

Fetch the Bolt Cutters by THEE Fiona Apple, because Fiona, our social distancing queen, has always been my Talmud, her songs shimmering, evolving, and living with me every year

Shore by Fleet Foxes, for the long drive to the Catskills

Women in Music, Pt. III by HAIM, because these days, these days...

Musicians have been reckoning with tumult this year as much as the rest of us, and the industry has dealt with loss on all fronts. I’d be remiss not to talk about how the passing of John Prine brought his music into my life, and McCoy Tyner, who has been a companion through good and bad over the years.

Honorable mention to: græ by Moses Sumney; The Main Thing by Real Estate; on the tender spot of every calloused moment by Ambrose Akinmusire; Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers; folklore by you know who; and songs by Adrianne Lenker.

Reading

What would this overlong blob be without a list of the best things I read this year? While I left publishing temporarily, books, the news, and newsletters still took up a majority of my attention (duh and/or doomscrolling by any other name). I can’t be comprehensive, and frankly, there are already great roundups of the best longform this year out there, so this is mostly books and praising random writers.

Last year I wrote about peak newsletter. Apparently, my prediction was a bit premature as this year saw an even bigger Substack Boom. But two new newsletters in particular have delighted me: Aminatou Sow’s Crème de la Crème and Hunter Harris’ Hung Up (her ”this one line” series is true force of chaotic good on Blue Ivy’s internet). Relatedly, Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship was gifted to me by a dear friend and another bff and I are going to read it in tandem next week.

On the “Barack Obama published a 700+ page memoir, crippling the printing industry’s supply chains” front, grad school severely hamstrung my ability to read for pleasure, but I managed to get through almost 30 books this year, some old (Master and Margarita), most new-ish (Say Nothing, Nickel Boys). Four 2020 books in particular enthralled me:

Uncanny Valley: Anna Wiener’s memoir has been buzzed about since n+1 published her essay of the same name in 2016. Her ability to see, clear-eyed, the industry for both its foibles and allure captured that era when the excess and solipsism of the Valley seemed more of a cultural quirk than the harbinger of societal schism.

Transcendent Kingdom: Yaa Gyasi’s novel about faith, family, loss, and--naturally--grad school was deeply empathetic, relatable, and moving. I think this was my favorite book of the year. Following the life of a Ghanaian family that settles in Alabama, it captured the kind of emotional ennui that comes from having one foot in the belief of childhood and one foot in the bewilderment that comes from losing faith in the aftermath of tragedy.

Vanishing Half: Similarly to Transcendent Kingdom, Brit Bennett’s novel about siblings who are separated; it’s also about the ways that colorism can be internalized and the ways chosen family can (and cannot) replace your real kin. It was a compassionate story that captured the pain of abuse and abandonment in two pages in a way that Hanya Yanagihara couldn’t do in 720.

Dessert Person: Ok, so this is a cookbook, but it’s a good read, and the recipes are approachable and delicious. After all the BA Test Kitchen chaos this summer, it’s nice we didn’t have to cancel Claire. Make the thrice baked rye cookies!!!! You will thank me later.

Honorable mention goes to: Leave The World Behind for hitting the Severance/Station Eleven dystopian apocalypse novel sweet spot; Exciting Times for reminding me why I liked Sally Rooney; and Summer by Ali Smith, which wasn’t the strongest of the seasonal quartet, but was a series I enjoyed for two years.

Podcasts

I’m saving my most enthusiastic section for last: ever since 2018, I’ve been listening to an embarrassing amount of podcasts. Moving into a studio apartment will do that to you, as will grad school, add a pandemic to that equation and there’s a lot of time to fill with what has sort of become white noise to me (or, in one case, nice white parents noise). In addition to the shows that I’ve written about before (Still Processing, Popcast, Who? Weekly, and Why is This Happening?), these are the shows I started listening to this year that fueled my parasocial fire:

You’re Wrong About: If you like history, hate patriarchy, and are a millennial, you’ll love Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes’ deep dives into the most notable stories of the past few decades (think Enron and Princess Diana) and also some other cultural flashpoints that briefly but memorably shaped the national discourse (think Terri Schiavo, Elian González, and the Duke Lacrosse rape case).

Home Cooking: This mini series started (and ended) during the pandemic. As someone who stress baked her way through the past nine months, Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway’s show is filled with warmth, banter, and useful advice. Home Cooking has been a reassuring companion in the kitchen, and even though it will be a time capsule once we’re all vaccinated and close talking again, it’s still worth a listen for tips and inspiration while we’re hunkered down for the time being.

How Long Gone: I don’t really know how to explain this other than saying that media twitter broke my brain and enjoying Chris Black and Jason Stewart’s ridiculous banter is the price I pay for it.

Blank Check: Blank Check is like the GBBO of podcasts--Griffin Newman and David Sims’ enthusiasm for and encyclopedic knowledge of film, combined with their hilarious guests and inevitable cultural tangents is always a welcome distraction. Exploring a different film from a director’s oeuvre each week over the course of months, the podcast delves into careers and creative decisions with the passion of completists who want to honor the filmmaking process even when the finished products end up falling short. The Nancy Meyers and Norah Ephron series were favorites because I’d seen most of the movies, but I also have been enjoying the Robert Zemeckis episodes they’re doing right now. The possibility of Soderbergh comes up often (The Big Picture just did a nice episode about/with him), and I’d love to hear them talk about his movies or Spike Lee (or, obviously, Martin Scorsese).

Odds & Ends

If you’re still reading this, you’re a real one, so let’s get into the fun stuff. This was a horrible way to start a new decade, but at least we ended our long national nightmare. We got an excellent dumb twitter meme. I obviously made banana bread, got into home made nut butters, and baked an obscene amount of granola as I try to manifest a future where I own a Subaru Outback. Amanda Mull answered every question I had about Why [Insert Quarantine Trend] Happens. My brother started an organization that is working to eliminate food insecurity in LA. Discovering the Down Dog app allowed me to stay moderately sane, despite busting both of my knees in separate stupid falls on the criminally messed up sidewalks and streets of Philadelphia. I can’t stop burning these candles. Jim Carrey confused us all. We have a Jewish Second Gentleman! Grub Street Diets continued to spark joy. Dolly Parton remains America’s Sweetheart (and possible vaccine savior). And, last, but certainly not least: no one still knows how to pronounce X Æ A-12 Boucher-Musk.

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btsorpheus · 5 years

Photo

(Kate Greenaway (British illustrator, 1846-1901). The Pied Piper of Hamelin, illustrations, pp. 40-41. 1888. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AMCADIG_10310847749.)

II. PIED PIPER

If you were on Twitter in the early months of 2020, it’s almost inevitable that you would have bumped into a user with a superscript “7” attached to the end of their name.

(Screenshots from the following list on a K-pop humor Twitter account on March 9, 2020. Twitter handles have been blurred for the users’ privacy.)

This was originally for BTS fans, collectively known as ARMY, to show their support for the new album, Map of the Soul: 7. It has since become a way for individual ARMYs to quickly display their fan status to other users--as well as demonstrate how overwhelmingly numerous they are.

It’s almost insane how much influence BTS holds over Twitter. Though they have only 24.3 million followers as of March 9, 2020 (compared to Justin Bieber, who has 110.3 million, and Katy Perry, who has 108.4 million), four of their tweets are on Wikipedia’s list of the Top 30 Most Retweeted Tweets.

For another comparison, Barack Obama is on that list four times, as well. Neither Justin Bieber nor Katy Perry have made it as of March 9, 2020.

What have BTS done to have accumulated such a devoted fanbase?

Listening to their song “Pied Piper,” it’s clear that BTS are aware of the power they hold over their fans. Like Orpheus, it’s unclear whether their music is ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Jimin and Jungkook put it best when they sing, “It’s a bit dangerous but I’m so sweet / I’m here to save you, I’m here to ruin you.”

In Ovid's version of the myth, as recounted in the last section, Orpheus’s music both soothes nature and causes it to break into violence. Though he technically uses it for what appears to be a good purpose (i.e. saving his wife), Orpheus is also a transgressor--living beings aren’t meant to enter the Underworld, nor are they meant to bring the dead back to life. By doing so, Orpheus has crossed what should’ve been an uncrossable line.

Furthermore, Virgil’s Georgics uses him as essentially a bad example. At odds with the typical view of Orpheus as a great hero, Orpheus is portrayed as a failure compared to Aristaeus, an agricultural god who follows the gods’ exact instructions and succeeds in his task while Orpheus inevitably loses Eurydice.

It’s interesting that BTS choose to identify with the Pied Piper of Hamelin in their music. The Pied Piper, after all, is the antagonist of his story. According to Robert Browning’s poem, “The Pied Piper,” when the Mayor of Hamelin is unable to pay him for ridding their city of their rat infestation, the Piper kidnaps all of Hamelin’s children and holds them hostage until he gets his reward. This is not typical heroic behavior.

Similarly, BTS paints themselves as tempters. Like how the Pied Piper lured children out of the city, RM is aware of how their music can cause obsession that distracts fans from their day-to-day responsibilities. He raps, “Now stop watching and study for your test / Your parents and boss hate me,” with ‘watching’ referring to the content BTS are constantly churning out (“video clips, pictures, tweets”).

Like Virgil’s Orpheus, BTS disrupt social order with their musical prowess. They don’t even seem to be certain whether they want this or not. Obviously, the more people streaming their music, the more money they make. But some fans take this to another level--trending hashtags and getting views on music videos is what they feel is their job.

(Screenshot taken from the YouTube comments section on BTS’ “ON” music video on March 10, 2020. The spelling of “buzz words” (ex: streaming (“st34m1ng”), YouTube (“y0utube”), deleting (“d373ting”), view (“v13w”)) have been altered so that YouTube’s algorithms don’t mark the comment as spam and delete it. Notably, this comment has approximately 4,800 likes.)

This is when the obsession becomes dangerous. When the experience of listening to music is no longer about enjoying it for what it is, an essential part of why the work exists has been removed. For the music industry, the only reason music is produced is to make money--similarly, using music for profit seems to be the only reason the Pied Piper plays his songs.

The K-pop idol industry tends to fall into this category of mercenary music. A lot of K-pop acts feel “manufactured” as a result of “artists being too managed by the agencies,” as CedarBough Saeji, a visiting Korean studies assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington, notes in a Wall Street Journal article on BTS’s growing popularity in the United States.

Every aspect of an idol’s personality is tailored to appeal to fans. Doing “aegyo” (Korean for “cuteness”), or a coquettish display of affection, is purely fan service, just like how agencies impose a dating ban on their idols to ensure they can appeal to fans as available sex icons. (When a member of the boy group EXO announced his marriage, his “fans” immediately turned on him, declaring him a traitor and calling for his blood.)

BTS appear to have the authenticity and intimacy that other K-pop groups lack. Because they’re allowed to sing about their genuine feelings--as they do in “Pied Piper,” despite how morally dubious the lyrics are--their fans feel a deeper connection with them. This is likely key to why they have sky-rocketed to worldwide fame while other K-pop groups, who sing almost exclusively about partying, monetary success, and vague ideas of love (typically kept carefully PG-13), have stalled.

Jin’s most recent solo song, “Moon,” is specifically about the parasocial relationship between BTS and ARMY. It almost feels like a love song from him to their fans, with its upbeat, poppy tune and gentle promises (“I will stay by your side / I will become your light”).

But the guiding metaphor through the song is Jin (and by extension, BTS) as the moon and ARMY as the Earth, with Jin orbiting but never reaching them. There’s an essential distance between the group and their fans that can never be breached. No matter how many vlogs and selfies BTS put out, the vast majority of their fans has never actually befriended or even met them. They can’t know who they really are. Even if BTS appear authentic by comparison to other K-pop groups, at the end of the day, they’re still performers.

This doesn’t stop fans from taking BTS’s professed affection at face-value.

(Screenshot taken of a BTS fan’s tweet after RM’s (Kim Namjoon’s) V Live livestream on March 9, 2020. The user’s Twitter name and handle have been blurred for privacy.)

It’s a weird relationship that brings into question exactly what kind of love this is, and maybe even blurs its boundaries. But it becomes clear that their music isn’t the only factor in what draws their fanbase in.

Like Ovid’s Orpheus, BTS have a rhetorical power that functions as transactional. Orpheus’s song to Hades and Persephone to convince them to release Eurydice from the Underworld is a business proposal that clearly states how both parties would benefit in the exchange of Eurydice, describing her as a “loan.” Any element of romance remains absent as Orpheus instead attempts flattery, calling Hades’s kingdom “vast” and noting that he holds “longest dominion over humankind,” referring to a soul’s infinite inhabitation in the Underworld after a temporary mortal life.

Who is the fanbase in the Orphic scenario? If BTS are the serenading Orpheus, then,

The fans must be either Nature, which listens to Orpheus’s song and weeps with him,

Or the rulers of the Underworld, who listen to Orpheus’s song, weep with him, then give him Eurydice as payment.

In the well-oiled K-pop idol industry, where award shows and fan service loom around every corner, support (whether financial or social) is always expected in return for content--a Eurydice for every song.

And at the end of the day, BTS are still an idol group and a commodity. Just because they appear more authentic than other groups doesn’t mean they can give up their whole, genuine selves. As Pitchfork notes in their review of Map of the Soul: 7, though the album follows “philosophical, Jungian blueprints,” it lacks the “kind of candor and complication” that should feature on an “album about the dark side of the psyche and the BTS journey.”

I showed this review to my roommate, a more passionate BTS fan than I am. Though she agreed to an extent, she added that, “If they actually came out and said something like, ‘Our fans are insane,’ they’d lose all of them in an instant.” And with the fans, their income.

Jin’s “Moon” is, itself, an Orphic song. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, the moon and the Earth can never be together. The moon is fated to orbit the Earth forever, looking back longingly as Orpheus does at Eurydice, but never able to reach her.

Maybe “Moon” is a genuine love song. Maybe Jin does feel a loving connection between him and ARMY, and he wanted to share a piece of that.

Or maybe “Moon” is a sweet, safe song in the midst of an album about being swallowed by your stage persona (Suga’s “Interlude : Shadow”) and losing your passion for art (“Black Swan”)--one that lures fans in and will get them emotional, streaming, and, ultimately, generating revenue.

(Screenshot from a Twitter fan account dedicated to encouraging other fans to listen to BTS’s music more often not out of fondness for the songs but to get their numbers higher, taken March 10, 2020.)

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missrosienorris · 5 years

Text

The Election that is Bad, Part 3

CW: lots of politics, mentions of ableism, a hint of racism and abusive behaviour, also a little corona at the end

Statement of potential privileges and biases: Translucently white. Finnish, and thus less directly affected by US elections, although I’d argue the whole world should be concerned about them. AFAB enby. Probably a gray ace with no gender preference, but frankly I’m not quite sure wtf I am. Rather far left but haven’t found an appropriate ideological label. University educated. Middle class. Young-ish (is 30 still young?) My mental health is ass.

So, I’ve already made a few posts about the US presidential election and the shit it’s stirring up, which is why I’m now giving the series a name. In this post I’m going to lengthily bitch about some arguments between Biden and Sanders supporters that I’m currently seeing a lot, and I’m already planning another post that’ll be a more personal rant about how I’ve had to make a purge in my parasocial relationships because so so so many of the people I follow have morphed into dicks during this election season (or perhaps revealed themselves to be dicks, I can’t assess which one from afar).

In this post I won’t be discussing Biden or Sanders themselves or their policies all that much, but I will summarize where my allegiances lie here for the record, not that my opinion is likely to surprise anyone who’s read any of my stuff before:

I think Biden’s policies suck, albeit not as much as Trump’s but that’s a low bar to clear. I think he’s a neoliberal and a sleazeball, I don’t like his incoherent speaking style or his proneness to temper tantrums and were I American, I’m not sure I could bring myself to vote for him in the general even for harm reduction purposes (but to make it crystal clear, I would never vote Trump either, it would be third party or blank in that case). I think he will lose to Trump if he is the nominee.

I have a soft spot for Sanders despite being way to the left of him, he’s a socdem at best and I’ve never voted for a socdem in my life. However, in a US context, he would be a major step to the left, his policies are alright, and he’s way more coherent than Biden. Some people on the left flanks say he’s too nice and that’s probably true, socdems tend to be like that, but my lizard brain finds the niceness endearing even though I think it’s politically not ideal. I would vote for him in a heartbeat and I have given him money (funneled through a clothing vendor, so yeah I’m a foreign interference Russian bot). I think his chances to beat Trump would be better than Biden’s. Not great, mind you, Trump has quite an advantage going into the general and I’m not sure he’s beatable, although I sure hope he is.

Alright, now then, onto my long-ass rant about bad political arguments.

So, at the time I’m writing this, it sure looks like Biden will be the Democratic nominee, the race isn’t called yet but it’s looking pretty hopeless for the Sanders campaign. Consequently, the Bidenists are looking for everyone to rally around Biden and the Berners are pissed and/or discouraged and many of them are considering not voting or voting third party (and I guess some are considering voting Trump, but I genuinely think that group is real small and I’m ignoring them because fuck anyone who would do that).

Now, there are arguments for both of these stances that I find understandable. Like, I get the Bidenist argument that Trump is worse and therefore a vote for Biden is harm reduction, and I get the concern for the supreme court. I’m not convinced by these arguments, but I get them. On the flip side, I'm very sympathetic to the arguments that Biden is corrupt and awful, and that while Trump may be worse in the short term, voting for Biden will tell the Democratic party that they can keep putting up shitty status quo nominees and progressives will just take it, and thus the party won’t change and more people will be hurt by that in the long run. This is probably the position I’d take if I were in the US, as stated above.

Either way, these types of arguments from either side are pretty reasonable, but they’re not really the ones I’m hearing the most, at least not on the ol’ internet. What I’m hearing is a lot of crap, and I’m now going to list said crap and bitch about it.

1. Biden has dementia and keeping him in the race is elder abuse.

I want to get this real oof one out of the way first, because I drag Biden a bunch and will continue to do so, but this I don’t like. Yeah, the guy is incoherent when he speaks and lashes out a lot, but we shouldn’t be armchair diagnosing him or accusing anyone of abuse without proper evidence of that. I think it’s fair to criticize him for the way he behaves and to point out that Trump will definitely use that against him, but leave health assessments to professionals. Also, I get that a presidential candidate must be scrutinized more than the general public, but some of the stuff y'all are writing about people with cognitive disabilities is like super ableist and not cool. Don’t call people soup brains, for example, that’s trash behaviour.

2. Not voting in the general/voting third party is a vote for Trump.

Hey fuck off, no it’s fucking not. A vote for Trump is a vote for Trump. I get voting strategically, I really do, but the people who choose not to vote strategically are not voting for Trump. Doesn’t matter what the reason is, if you don’t vote for Trump you don’t vote for Trump and are not to blame for Trump. It’s unbelievably shitty to accuse people of being equal to Trump supporters if they don’t line up behind a particular other candidate.

3. Sanders supporters who won’t vote for Biden in the general are making that choice out of pettiness and/or childishness.

This is some ad hominem bullshit and also kinda contrary to the whole “unite the party behind Biden” thing, you don’t typically woo voters by calling them pissbabies. Especially young people don’t tend to respond well to frumpy people condescendingly telling them to grow up. Also it’s usually not true. Most people I know of that aren’t voting for Biden have well rounded reasons why, typically that they think voting for Biden would make things worse in the end. And unless someone tells you why they’re not voting for Biden, you don’t really know their reasons, so assuming “petty and childish” reflects more on you than it does on them.

4. Anyone who WOULD vote for Biden in the general is either a not a real progressive or a “low information” voter.

Shut up about that. Trump is a nightmare and many feel that four more years of him would be so disastrous that they’d rather take four years of Biden as the lesser of two evils. Being super scared of Trump and going the harm reduction route is not a sign that you’re uninformed or not progressive enough, I may disagree with it but not for that reason. The “low information” thing also seems to be directed at minorities a lot, which is kinda gross. Talk about voter suppression and try to reach out to people, absolutely, but sort of implying that minorities are ignorant is not a good look to have.

5. I was for Warren and now I’m for Biden because Sanders supporters are abusive.

I don’t have as strong an opinion on this one as the other ones, I just feel like it’s a super weird take to jump from supporting (relatively) progressive policies to supporting whatever it is Biden’s got going on because some of the Bernie crowd are kinda dicks (which I’m not denying by the way, I’ve seen them, I just feel like policy is more important). As I stated above, I’m not about to start accusing anyone of being a fake progressive or whatever, I’m just saying it’s a little weird and if there are any Warrenites out there who would like to explain it to me that would be swell. Preferably explain it civilly, since many of the #WarrenToBiden types I’ve seen have been surprisingly abusive themselves considering their stance on the whole Bernie bro thing.

6. Not voting for Biden in the general is a sign that you’re privileged and aren’t that affected by the vote, and that you don’t really care if minorities suffer another four years of Trump. Or the converse, voting for Biden in the general is a sign that you’re privileged and aren’t that affected by a continuation of the status quo, and that you don’t care if minorities suffer in the long run.

This argument can just fuck off whatever side it comes from. It’s another ad hominem attack and super reductive, both the people rallying behind Biden and the #NeverBiden people are a diverse bunch. Some are privileged, some are not, and this generalization helps no one. Especially cringe is when someone who is decidedly not part of a minority of any kind makes this argument, which I’m seeing A LOT of. I’m all for identity politics, but this ain’t it.

7. Sanders has said he will support Biden if Biden is the nominee, so you should too.

Why? Sanders isn’t flippin’ Jesus, it’s completely possible to support him and still disagree with him on occasion. I’m not quite satisfied with his explanations considering his record on guns, for example, nor do I think he should co-opt the term “democratic socialist” when he’s really just a socdem (although it is admittedly very funny to see conservative Americans freaking out over the mention of socialism). It’s not weird to not be a sycophant, personality cults are not a good thing.

You know, I’ll probably come up with like 100 more bad arguments I’ve seen floating around once i press the “Post” button, but it’s 3 AM and this post is already dragging even by my standards so maybe I’ll release another one of these at a later date. Until then, please wash your hands, stay safe if you belong to a risk group, and if you don’t belong to a risk group, don’t be a fuckface and hoard the supplies they need or endanger them by not following recommendations to limit the spread. I’ve had a probably-just-a-cold this week and you bet your ass I haven’t left my apartment even once just in case it wasn’t just a cold and I ended up murdering a grandma. Just don’t be pricks.

#politics #democratic primaries #Joe Biden #bernie sanders #rant

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