#poses the question of a. an unreliable narrator

[neptunesenceladus]

endlessly fascinated by works written from the perspective of the observer.

when you’re not in control who are you to the story?

[majorshatterandhare]

I’m thinking about how the Mechs use energy, because they do things and live and therefore they *must* use energy, that’s how physics (and biology) work.

I had the idea that they are always absolutely frigid to the touch because they suck in heat from the environment like an endothermic chemical reaction.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Almost finished with the name of the rose

Smth about the unreliability of the narrator that keeps returning to my mind is this conflict between an evidently penetrating and critical intellect and an avowed fideistic quietism. On the one hand, he at least does his best to posture as a man who has seen much of the world, found it overwhelming to comprehend and demoralising to affect, and responded with a frankly abject surrender of both intellect and will in the face of the inscrutable and inexorable. He not only can no longer bring himself to believe in or stand for grand visions in theology or politics, he has sufficiently blunted his mental faculties to be too stupid to perceive connections about them standing two inches from his face. There’s one very memorable passage (I think I reblogged it earlier) where he is recollecting the (fictitious) execution of Michael of cesena, where he remarks that he is overcome with terror and confusion as he contemplates such martyr-heretics, unsure if their ethereal zeal is an expression of pride in their beliefs, for the profession of which they are willing to endure death; or pride in their dying, for the sake of which they are willing to profess beliefs. And not a full paragraph later does he quote Michael as saying he is dying “for a truth that dwells in [him], which [he] can profess only by dying.” Michael has managed to answer the very question the narrator has just posed as plainly as could be hoped, and still he at least play-acts as too stupefied by pious awe to notice as much

And the real clincher that this is irony on his part is his portrayal of his then master, William, who manages to expound at great length and in great detail precisely the sort of subversive and critical thought that the narrator is so keen to pretend he is too thick-witted (by choice) to understand, let alone endorse. Except that, even with a capacious exquisitely trained medieval memory, there is no way he would as an old man be able to recall these monologues from William in such detail purely by rote. To some extent he has to be extrapolating from his model of what William would say, which inevitably means he has to be able to frame these thoughts to himself, whatever his pretenses otherwise. He’s able to knowingly articulate these sorts of intellectual and social criticisms through the mouth of William, while making himself out at the time of the events as a bumbling naïf too young to understand what is unfolding before him and at the time of his telling as a doddering old fool too world-weary to grasp or care about the larger background against which those events took place. It’s a sort of deliberate invocation of the rule/trope that the Watson pov character is supposed to be just a little thicker than the intended reader: it’s an adoption of that pretense specifically as an ironic gesture and means of generating plausible deniability

But I think the intended mutual knowledge of these plausibly deniable and subversive messages, largely placed in the mouth of William, is supposed to iterate at least one level higher than the base. We’re not just supposed to pick up on the messages, we are supposed to pick up on the fact he intends us to pick up on the messages, despite his pretenses otherwise. Which allows the feeble old simpleton he is playing to itself become an object of satire and criticism: it’s a mockery of the kind of person he is pretending to be, and we the wary reader are supposed to smirk or sneer with him (in knowledge of his joining us) at the character he is playing, as a caricature of an intellectual incuriosity and political indifference the narrator in fact holds in contempt

[horizon-verizon]

I'm trying to figure out why people think it's literally impossible for the Nettles & Daemon relationship to be paternal. Literally, the author poses this possibility himself, through the only maester who actually saw them interacting together, which is not nothing. More than a majority of the things around them are actually easily interpretable platonically, more than romantically. People, when it comes to this relationship, seem to fall into the trap of being unreliable narrators, or conveniently forgetting that they are. Mushroom is the first source to have referred to them as lovers. Literally the least acceptable source. The others who support this version have in fact never seen Nettles & Daemon interact and are content with this testimony and the rumors in view of their prejudices on the character of Daemon. Not to mention that mostly pro-Greens, they are biased against Rhaenyra and Daemon. The writing tries to manipulate us in such a way that we lean towards the lovers' story by quoting Mysaria, or the past adventures of Daemon. However, Daemon was 23 years old at the time of these stories of brothels, whereas for the story with Nettles, he was close to 50. There is such a huge margin between the two that, no, the argument does not is not admissible. As for the supposed renewal of her relationship with Mysaria, to prove Daemon's easy infidelity, well it was actually done with Rhaenyra's consent, so no infidelity here. And yet, people completely fall into it. On the pretext that more sources say they are lovers, well they are. Never mind that they never actually saw Nettles & Daemon with their own eyes, or that they're writing this when the protagonists of the dance are dead. It doesn't matter that the only one to bring a different version is the only one to have seen them interact, because he is the only one among others to support this position. This is proof that it is wrong.

In addition, another source uses Maester Norren's testimony to corroborate the lovers' story on the pretext that Daemon spent time with Nettles and gave him gifts. This source either did not see the said interactions and interprets as it sees fit Norren's words to support the romance version. And people fall into it! No questions asked!

Once I literally ran into someone who told me Mestre Norren was a contradiction because another source says his testimony actually reinforces the romance aspect rather than contradicting it, except again it's just from a guy who took Norren's words as he pleased and who wasn't there. Norren is very clear, he called the relationship paternalistic. He never contradicted himself on this.

The whole Nettles and Daemon lovers aspect is based on the fact that more people are reporting them as lovers, although they have never actually witnessed it. Only one source says otherwise, so she's dismissed, regardless that this one actually saw Nettles and Daemon together. It's literally the highest number that wins, and that's stupid. How much history do we have of the greatest number who believe a lie VS a small number or even 2 or a person with the real truth? There are loads of them! The lack of reflection on this relationship saddens me.

Before, I appreciated the Nettles and Daemon relationship in the paternalistic context proposed by the author, and I often imagined a relationship like Ciri and Geralt, or even Joel and Ellie. Now, I admit to being a little disgusted by this relationship after everything I've seen people say about it.

Also, apparently we're being racist for not wanting Nettles to have a romance with Daemon? Apparently the fact that Nettles doesn't have a romance with Daemon robs her of her arc and without that she wouldn't make sense anymore? But do people are stupid ?!

I’m beginning to feel that one reason why some people feel that Daemon had sex with Nettles is because Daemon’s sometimes seen as “amplifier” for Rhaenyra’s character. As in he makes her better not by necessarily inspiring her with feelings of safety and confidence, but his skills and traits just make her look better for having him around or inspire awe in the reader at this picture of “perfection”.

I can’t explain it very well, but it’s similar to how some Sansa fans will ship Jon with her because of his power, his magic, etc. in order to augment or apotheosize (only slightly exaggerating) their imagined versions of Sansa’s capabilities. So with this phenomenon of shippers placing the baddass man next tot their fav girl, we get ships like these. And they aren’t always morally void/corrupt if sometimes superficial. But in the case of Daemon and Nettles....as this ask tells la-pheacienne this ship has many reasons of being not good.

BUT then there is another camp that simply wishes to see the brown/black girl (as Nettles is described as "brown”-skinned) get romantically/sexually paired with the badass male lead in general because black girls or darker skinned girls aren’t considered as desirable as lighter skinned/other raced women and girls. And then there are those who see Rhaenyra say these words:

“She is a common thing, with the stink of sorcery upon her,” the queen declared. “My prince would ne’er lay with such a low creature. You need only look at her to know she has no drop of dragon’s blood in her. It was with spells that she bound a dragon to her, and she has done the same with my lord husband.”

and a myriad of motivations lead people to sincerely build new circumstances for the Daemon and Nettles ship to sail, as an act of racial revenge and to reset the narrative towards Nettle’s uniqueness and desirability. 

In the cultural imagination of Western worlds like Enlgand and the U.S. several pseudo-sciences began developing and gained momentum. One example is phrenology, the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities. The Harvard Library’s section called “Scientific Racism” says:

In 1619, when the first enslaved people were brought to what would become the United States, justifications for their enslavement were brought here too. In the 400 years since then, as those enslaved and their descendants have continued to call this country home, the justifications for their abuse and mistreatment have stayed with us as well.

One of the most effective tactics used to justify anti-Black racism and white supremacy has been scientific racism. Through the years, scientific racism has taken many forms, all with the goal of co-opting the authority of science as objective knowledge to justify racial inequality.

Some 19th-century scientists, like Harvard’s Louis Agassiz, were proponents of “polygenism,” which posited that human races were distinct species. This theory was supported by pseudoscientific methods like craniometry, the measurement of human skulls, which supposedly proved that white people were biologically superior to Blacks. Early statistical health data was weaponized against Black Americans in the late 1800s, as it was used to claim they were predisposed to disease and destined for extinction.

And the Public Medievalist’s Race, Racism, & The Middles Ages series’ article  “ Race: the Original Sin of the Fantasy Genre” says:

But Tolkien’s conception of “race” is a huge problem. His ideas have been bred into the core of the fantasy genre—not just literature, but films and games too. Contemporary authors  have had to work hard to free the genre from this original sin.

The core of the problem is that Tolkien conflates race, culture, and ability. Hobbits, he says, are a race, and based upon a combination their hereditary traits and cultural practices, are better at being stealthy than other races.

[...]

But Tolkien wasn’t writing through this sort of scientific lens. His world has a mythological sensibility drawn, in large part, from the Germanic tradition where dwarves and elves interact with the gods (though are never referred to as “races”). His world is a fantasy: it does not play by the same rules as our own (equally on matters of dragons or genetics). But in Middle Earth, both dragons and the pseudoscience behind race are treated as real.

Tolkien basically made species have different inborn abilities and made culture a part if that inbornness, and fantasy has never truly solved this issue...unless written by black/brown/PoC persons.

Rhaenyra calling Nettles “common”, saying “look at her...no drop of dragon’s blood”, and “spells” to connote Nettles being a witch all contribute to a misgynoir (misogyny against black women) because there is blood purity in the language and the accusation of witchcraft against black women both borrows from and takes on a different significance of Otherness. A white/European woman who is a witch or accused at one point was a part of the Christian/Faith-of-Seven community and chose to depart. And in the common modern understanding, a black/African witch takes on a different foreignness, an exoticism that further dehumanizes the black woman. Since the black woman herself is already held inferior and foreign from the white/European woman. Black/African witches, magic-practicing, and even just straight up Afro religions are felt, today and from the 19th century, as “closer” to demons and magic itself because they were imagined as being the furthest race from the white “race”. as the white race was held (by white “scientists”) as being the biologically superior race. And partially because of the medieval precedence of looking at and defining magic itself: or any uncommon ability not granted and proven to be granted by God/the church is evil...since it doesn’t come from God. (And yet, ironically, medieval persons didn’t not have the same conception of race as we do today, but that’s another topic.)

Dragonriding is by far one of the most badass, fantastical elements of the ASoIaF franchise. If not the most, since dragons are culturally seen/used as forces of great, overwhelming pseudo-natural power -- usually evil in Western European ones. And GRRM is already criticized for giving European features to this prime ability and making Targ/Valyrian blood and thus the Valyrian body the site of this OG power.

So one could blame GRRM for writing in Rhaenyra with these words and making Valyrians only pale AND the fantasy genre (which always had a problem with race: Article 1-Article 2) as whole for this particular motivation.

Hated that the narrative had a white-adjacent woman distrust, target, and her darker attendant/arguably subordinate through paranoia of a perceived danger of the darker’s girl’s blood and power through her dragon. It would hit too close to home, it is part of a very real problem in many parts of the world today. That skin color was used to illustrate how Nettles couldn’t be desirable to a man like Daemon because her looks indicate that she couldn’t possibly have just earned Sheepstealer’s trust and formed a bond with him on her own (showing her determination and character), when previously Rhaenyra relied on her using said dragons for her own political advancement....well....you can see why some black and brown skinned persons would reconstruct the narrative towards Nettles’ favor. 

Even though Rhaenyra obviously was going through it, Daemon managed to save her and she and Sheepstealer both managed to escape, AND Mysaria played on her paranoia, for PoC and Black fantasy fans, it just gets mentally exhausting to see such a pattern of emphasis on blood and skin color come up again.

And you’re going to see this reason for shipping DxN amongst black/PoC persons.

All this being said, in-universe, it simply wasn’t happening (HERE & HERE) and Rhaenyra’s rule still would have been better for Westeros and its women (a reblog by @rhaenyragendereuphoria). A better start.

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a commonplace book

8pm, monday, august 15, 2022

once again writing this on my phone in the background while waiting for my turn during dnd, as god intended; nature is healing, we were the virus, etc. since i can’t do a read-more on mobile, this will just be a quick one!

reading another week finishing things— TGCF vol 2, xiran jay zhao’s iron widow, getting into the last few chapters of perdido street station. glad to have finished iron widow and been able to return the loan, it felt like an accomplishment— aside from that, it… felt like a first novel. huge vision, very pointed messages, two or three ‘plot twists’ that i either suspected or outright called well in advance. i don’t love first person narration for a novel like this, the struggle btw ‘believably unreliable’ and ‘observant / objective enough to actually provide descriptions and context’ is super hard to get right (this is also what bugged me abt the hunger games, don’t @ me). there’s one particular choice in iron widow that i did quite like (predictably, the handling of the love not-triangle), but that didn’t quite outweigh some of the stuff that made me uncomfortable (not bc they were problematic, just bc i’m very suggestible and a weeny about physical discomfort).

listening my buddy @pep-squad-lizzie dropped a link to the defector podcast ‘Normal Gossip’ in the group chat a little while ago, and i’ve just about finished both seasons. i like the host’s voice and manner, i’ve really liked most of the guests—as the question is posed each episode, i have been asking myself ‘what is my relationship to gossip? do i consider myself a gossip?’ i think what i like is the reflecting on / analyzing / sharing emotional responses on the stories, empath- or sympathizing with the participants. i like emoting about people, places, and things with people i trust not to pass on the news of how i feel about those things! i really value and respect a Cone of Silence when a friend imposes it; i live and work in communities too small not to, we need places to be candid with no fear of it getting back to the people involved. that said, we also live by sharing stories abt professors not to work with, people looking for roommates or with interesting syllabus examples to talk through— so it’s a judgement call. i like the anonymized gossip on the podcast, but i might like the guests’ editorializing and reacting best? especially when they take an unexpected stance or are willing to sympathize with someone at first. i like thinking the best of people at first, until they prove they don’t deserve it, and it’s nice when the guests do too. i quite liked the josh gondelman episode.

watching my house watched master & commander: far side of the world this week, a rewatch for all of us i think. i’m pretty much incapable of being impartial about this one, but it’s a good damn movie. the visuals, the soundtrack. i like how the plot is almost entirely character-interaction driven, despite it being a war movie; i like how the emotional beats have only gotten more real and painful as i’ve gotten older; i do actually now notice and feel irritation abt the fact that sophie and diana and any of the female characters from the books who could have been included are totally not there even in flashbacks or memories or…anyway.

playing more stardew. @leadfeathers made a post a little while ago about relaxing in the tub listening to news podcasts and playing stardew, and that was me this weekend if you make the soundtrack strangers’ gossip and also i couldn’t take my laptop in the bath i have finally expanded my cottage! ive started the mysterious qi quest! my irritation about how little the game internally does to help you out *as a person playing a video game* as opposed to a fictional farmer is balanced against my ongoing awe about how the game expands and adds elements or allows you to deepen and expand what you’re doing.

making garden pics as things start to bloom and ripen! the little leaf in the black plastic pot is a lemon seed i’m delighted to see making a go of it; the big yellow squash blossoms are probably zucchini.

[phantomato]

“I loved you more than Sirius,” Harry said. He’d never admitted this to himself before but the compulsion to do so now was so overwhelming that it felt like air trapped in his chest. It needed out.

Heartbeat

Harry, Tom, Orion Final chapter: [AO3]

Reader Reviews Are In!: "Well shit :("

1k words of navel-gazing under the cut.

Wrap-Up

How do we define an unhappy ending?

I think it’s a more difficult question than how we define a happy ending, which tend to all be happy in the same fundamental way. Forgive me for leaning on Anna Karenina; Tolstoy knew what he was saying. The multiplicity of unhappiness makes it hard to pin down, but if I constrain my domain space, I might be able to hazard a guess.

An unhappy ending for a Tom/Harry shipfic is one in which Harry is not the object of Tom’s interest or obsession.

I admit, I’m being a bit facetious. But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s a reasonable-enough statement to capture the feeling of how this ship works. (And others. It fits a mold.) The definition leaves room for darker or lighter stories, in accordance with reader taste; it doesn’t prescribe the boundaries of sexual content or violence or romance, among other controversial topics. Our main character’s centrality is tied to happiness or lack thereof.

So, it’s no secret that I write for love of Tom, not Harry. It should also not be a shock to hear me say that I find my interest in this particular ship rather limited to premises where Tom’s interest in Harry, insofar as it exists, is self-serving and conditional. Allow me to clarify: while I set out to write an “unhappy ending,” as I’ve defined above, I don’t consider it objectively so. Harry is the POV character, but he’s not the only character in this story. There are two other people whose perspectives, motivations, wants, needs are as heavily weighted, even though we don’t get to see those in direct speech or narration. And I admit that I’ve been tricky by deliberately hiding what’s going on in their minds, revealing it progressively so that you, reading it, might experience some of Harry’s betrayal. It’s tagged “unreliable narrator”—Harry’s unreliability is his optimism and narrowmindedness. He can’t conceive of Tom and Orion having some more complicated relationship than what he’s seen.

But! To unhappiness: is this an unhappy ending for Tom? For Orion?

It’s quite clearly not unhappy for Tom. He chooses to murder Harry, who he sees as posing a threat (or at least an annoyance) to him. Harry dies. He achieves his goals quite neatly. As a bonus, Orion agrees to continue to pay him for sex, under the terms Tom previously specified—those aren’t ever given in the fic, but as Tom says, they remain agreeable. Satisfactory ending.

Orion loses something in killing Harry. He’s sad to do it, and he liked having sex with Harry, who suited his tastes. So, he’s not happy. However, he doesn’t love Harry; Harry isn’t more meaningful to Orion than as his current sugar baby. Faced with Tom’s gift of disembowelment, Orion chooses to go for a clean kill, rather than attempting to get Harry to a hospital. Orion still wants to have sex with Tom, enough to pay for it, despite Tom leaving Harry in Orion’s fuck flat like a cat leaves a mouse at one’s doorstep. It’s really mild disappointment at worst, here.

I won’t call it an unhappy ending. Harry’s outcome is not the only one that matters.

—

Broadly, my current feeling on Heartbeat is that I’m glad it’s done. I wanted to write a “Harry dies at the end” Tomarry back in January; I only managed to make it stick after a failed run and some heavy revision. Though the foreshadowing, the callbacks, the thematic motifs, etc. were all as intentional as they are in any of the fics I write, I took less joy in writing and connecting together the parts of this narrative than I usually do. It is difficult to write a story that goes contrary to a ship tag’s norms. I thought I might have an easier go of it this time, since I knew what I was getting into and could anticipate the blowback, but it’s mostly just gone worse. Not socially! Aside from some heat on this final chapter, I feel much less demotivated by the reader reaction than I did when I last fought big-ship conventions. (Er, last time in a chaptered work. My prior two Tomarries don’t count; they were one-shots with very small audiences.)

Rather, despite being truly excited about the story—I promised myself I would never write Tom/Harry unless I was truly excited about the story—the journey to put it on the page was a slog. Most of my writing is not sloggish. Most of my writing, though inevitably containing a few scenes which require discipline, is the sort of thing that fills my mind between writing sessions. This was… the words came quickly and easily when I sat in front of my document, but I didn’t want to think about the project as it was ongoing. I did not enjoy the editing and rereading. I cannot tell if my prose is any good, or if I landed any of the themes and emotions I was trying to achieve.

Partly, I think that’s writing a ship I don’t ship for 23k words. That’s a lot of words for a NOTP. Partly, I think it’s that Harry’s POV was not fun in this; I had to let go of trying to achieve a “Harry voice” because my honest evaluation of Harry’s character and the voice that would best represent it is “it’s boring.” These are two things that normally drive the joy of writing, for me, and I hope I’ve learned to avoid future projects where the POV and the ship are both unappealing.

At one point, I considered writing this as a first-person narrative. I dropped the idea because the Tomarry ship tag is so utterly devoid of alternate POVs, and I was afraid to dump 20k+ words into something no one would read. Then, in my second go around, I didn’t want to rewrite so much text from a different POV. I think third person worked fine, mind. I just want to acknowledge that another choice might have made me happier, as second person POV did when I wrote Personal Assistant this month.

So I’m glad that it’s done. I have excised the idea from my brain, and I can rest happy knowing that I got the green checkmark of completion for this, even if it took another attempt. Hell, if I deleted the story now, I would still feel more accomplished as a result of having climbed that mountain. (And I do think about deleting this one. No promises either way.) I don’t see myself touching Tom/Harry again anytime soon—Assistant was a fluke, and I cannot guard against flukes, but I think I would like to return to my true interest in rarepairs and some of my old favorite pairings.

[thestingerblog]

The TV World needs more John Wilsons and Joe Peras

by Sam H.

Read on our site! 

How to with John Wilson seems like an odd standout in HBO’s portfolio of shows, and not only because it isn’t as stuffed with cuss words, graphic violence, and explicit sex scenes as most HBO shows have been known to be. Hosted by the awkward but charming John Wilson, this show explores the world from the perspective of a documentarian, searching for an answer to questions such as “How to Make Small Talk” and “How to Put Up Scaffolding”, the titles of the first two episodes. Though the questions seem mundane, the journey to answer them certainly is anything but as Wilson pieces together strange, candid moments filmed in the streets of New York and interviews with quirky strangers to craft a narrative about self-discovery and examining life’s trivialities. Despite that the show is categorized as a comedy, Wilson’s anxious but sweetly candid rambling and direct address to the viewer works with the visuals to create a relaxing and earnest vibe.

Before How to with John Wilson first aired in 2020, Adult Swim was home to Joe Pera Talks with You, which ran from 2018 until 2021. Unfortunately, it was eventually canceled in July 2022, ending with season 3. Each episode centers around a general concept (ex. “Joe Pera Takes You to Breakfast”) but in between Pera’s soft musings to the viewer, the comedian, playing a fictionalized rendition of himself, intertwines a story about his place in the world as a choir teacher in a small Michigan town appreciating life’s small pleasures that most people around him seem to ignore.  

What’s unique about both shows is the gentle structure of storytelling both use. Since Pera and Wilson both talk directly to the camera, the viewer isn’t only watching the story – they’re also part of it. This casual intimacy keeps the viewer intrigued without requiring them to actively keep up with fast-paced plot points similar to those of drama shows or purposefully timed comedic beats planted in sitcoms. This method also keeps the show grounded since the narrators have the ability to talk directly to the viewer and retain the ability to control the portrayal of their life. In other scenarios, an unreliable narrator may pose a threat, but in these shows, the narrator feels like a polite friend and the viewer doesn’t feel the need to resist the strange but smooth flow of events. Watching these shows gives viewers permission to forget about the bad eggs of the world and makes them feel a little less alone in their problems.

One TV show that comes to mind when talking about the direct address aspect of this format is Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s iconic Fleabag. The show’s structure follows that of a more traditional drama show intercut with the protagonist, and eventually, one of her love interests, breaking the fourth wall. She uses the viewer as a crutch to gain some semblance of control over her life while she’s struggling with grieving her mother’s death and sorting out her unapologetically messy life. What all three shows share in common is the ability of the narrator to confess truths that may otherwise be hard for them to see if they were not aware of a third party’s presence.

I would be amiss not to mention The Rehearsal when discussing these shows, especially since Nathan Fielder is a producer on Wilson’s show. In The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder, known for creating and starring in Nathan For You, simulates scenarios, attempting to imitate them as accurately as possible, and in the process, discovers more about the trials and tribulations of living as a human. Though The Rehearsal doesn’t have the same framework as Wilson’s and Pera’s, it’s worth mentioning as it manages to capture subtle humorous undertones that provide a good chuckle between displays of humanity’s most outlandish traits.

As much as I’m sure there are many creative series on YouTube that follow a similar format, it’s important that more shows like these are created. Creators like John Wilson and Joe Pera deserve support from networks and exposure to larger audiences. People need to know that in a world oversaturated with content, some of which is insincere and an obvious cash grab, there are still shows that provide a safe space for them, one where they can just sit back and watch as someone frets about protecting furniture from their cat’s vicious glass or writing a musical about the rat war in Alberta, Canada.

[royalreef]

@xsprxsso​ inquired: If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference? Character Development Questions - Accepting

(( Here’s the fun thing — it would be remarkably, remarkably easy to tell if someone was impersonating Miranda, to the point that they wouldn’t need to pose any singular, specific question to determine that it wasn’t her.

In fact, trying to ask her any specific question wouldn’t help at all, and would probably only confuse things further.

This is because Miranda’s already a notorious liar who presents a lot of different false images and perceptions of herself based upon what people want to see, what they want to hear. She’s already spinning a web of lies with her at the center, and half of the time, she’s not even really recognizing that she’s doing it. There’s a lot of things that Miranda will say and will swear to and insist upon with complete conviction in her voice, that are entirely untrue and she knows it.

See, you have to think of Miranda in a lot of very indirect ways. If you come at her from the front and take her at face value, you’ll get something much different than what she actually is, and that’s almost intentional. She’s Crown Princess. She has to know how to play the courts, and that includes saying things without saying them and understanding how to pacify and manipulate those around her and phrasing everything just right to not get caught. If look at her directly, that’s exactly where she wants you to be, and where she has the most control over how she comes off. It’s not just coincidence how she can command a room and keep all eyes on her effortlessly. It’s literally where she’s most in her element, and most able to obscure herself.

However, if you look at her more from the side, less of what she’ll say and more of her intentions, what she wants out of things, how she navigates the world, all of her little reactions that she won’t bring attention to — then you start getting the real picture of what Miranda is like. She’s an unreliable narrator and you have to treat her like one. All of the things she brings attention to are seldom the most important thing, and that’s why I leave so many little breadcrumbs in my writing that tie back into the bigger picture but will sit unnoticed if you don’t pick up on them being there. Miranda’s like water. She’s fluid, and has to be held in a container to take on a proper shape that can be understood.

She’s also entirely tied up in denial and a lot of complicated emotions that she’s nowhere in the right place to untangle, so she’ll entirely ignore them until there’s a quiet enough moment where she can begin to pick at them.

All of this is why Miranda can be so... much, sometimes. She’s cute and silly and kinda dumb sometimes, she’s efficient and ruthless and fully in control at other times, and she’s tragic and confused and powerless at different moments still. She’s any one of these things, and she’s all of these things, and she’s none of these things, all at once, because you have to think of her as something else that is being constantly shaped by what’s around her. It’s why she can turn on a dime, or seemingly without warning, or have wildly different reactions to the same thing. There’s a deeper core to her character, and what you see is not what you’re going to get.

So I feel like the first mistake would have been impersonating Miranda. There are much easier targets, and the fact of her inconsistency and her habit of lying actually make her all the harder to actually pull off. All it would take is simply being too consistent with Miranda, focusing too hard on any one of her singular facets, or just taking her at face value and believing she is who she says she is. She’s not contained in what she says or how she holds herself. She contained in all these tiny, wordless, thoughtless habits and trends that people who have been around her have noticed or picked up on, and if you fail at those unsaid things, then that’s a HUGE red flag that that’s not really Miranda.

[terrence-silver]

Jack Blaylock strikes me as the sort of fellow who’d smear the warm blood of his freshly killed target all over his face in a sort of ghoulish mask, grinning when he’s finished as he visualizes their blood seeping into his pores and becoming a part of him.

I mean, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Not to mention that Jack Blaylock (real name; Timothy Calloway) always gave me major serial killer vibes. Like, he is a hitman for hire, sure, and he is hired as per regular by a very powerful and shadowy clientele. He does this professionally and operates all over Asia (with his current base in Japan, so to speak), he has changed his identity at least once from what we've seen and has been in jail, as reported on by the newspapers at least once as well --- although much is left to the imagination with this man. Yet, he seems to be living with various shades and conflicting degrees of harrowing sensibilities and eerie glee alike when faced with the prospect of killing and could even be deemed an unreliable narrator as to the notion of much he actually enjoys murdering people, which I envision, is a lot when one peels away the various onion layers that are Jack. I imagine he has trophies too, yes. That he took something from every person he terminated. Their blood smeared over his face like war paint, his pores absorbing a target's essence, not unlike someone who subscribes to the almost tribal notion that killing your foe grants you his strength?

Collecting a tooth?

A finger?

A strand of their hair?

A necklace? A wedding band? Images?

Whatever he can reasonably get away without any trails leading back to him?

A full blown skull, laying around, in some password protected safe of his?

Someone's bones?

Jack Blaylock gives off the impression --- heck, not even the impression --- a full-blown series of facts that very much portray the image of someone morbidly fascinated with death. With blood. Killing. The weaponry, culture and mechanics behind it. Myths of rebirth and destiny. Murder. The borderline fetishized, romanticized art of it. He has an actual scene where he mules over a woman's corpse with his friend from the morgue and does so with avid humor, almost, even while posing as a commonplace investigator with the best of intentions at heart Like seeing a carcass is just a daily thing for him --- just a mundane fact of life (and it is) --- and in fact, something to be leered at. Which begs the question if some of Jack's victims had to disappear, as per description of his hits, and instead of merely smearing their blood of his face like war paint and ''absorbing'' them, he's taken some corpses as trophies too? We may never know for sure. What is know is that Jack Blaylock is definitely Thomas Ian Griffith's darkest and most gruesome roles to date.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 616

@wereah and I are still trying to get through Heaven’s Official Blessing. It’s just been hard to match up schedules and take out time to stream the show together. Nevermind the potential Internet problems that come within.

The two of us afterwards were talking about the last show twist, and potential unreliable narration of two of the characters. It occurred to me the next day that I couldn’t tell if our sudden jump to this idea that the characters were unreliable due to the fascinating set up the show did in the first season, or because we’re both adults who are media nerds at heart. 

Unreliable narration, whether it is from the story itself or from the characters in the story is a technique that has always been a bit touch and go. This is primarily because recognizing, or even assuming someone or something may be unreliable, requires media literacy. 

Though, in all fairness, the nature of storytelling is probably the reason why you need to teach the idea of unreliable narration rather than assume the reader will pick it up.

Because the story, movie, show, comic, etc., needs to inform the audience about the world and characters within it, most of the time the narrative and the characters will be reliable in imparting that information. They have to be, otherwise the audience doesn’t know what information to parse. As children, all our stories are painfully honest, and it’s always the assumption that the characters are reliable. 

In fact, I didn’t come across unreliable narration until I was 18, taking advanced English and Literature classes in high school. In English class, it was the story of Hamlet from Shakespheare. Hamlet himself was an unreliable narrator, still grieving the death of his father and not understanding the circumstances that led to his uncle and his mother getting married because he wasn’t there. While he paints his uncle as an usurper to the throne, let us be clear, his uncle wanted the throne so badly he would have tried killing Hamlet before he got back home, because you can’t gain the throne by marrying the old Queen. Succession does not work that way.The uncle only began plotting to kill Hamlet when he started fearing for his life.

In my Literature class, it was actually the narration itself potentially being unreliable. Though, I would argue that Margaret Atwood didn’t mean to pose it like that. For those not familiar with the Handmaid’s Tale, the tale ends both on a cliffhanger and on the reveal that the whole story the audience was reading was a series of audio tapes left behind by Offred the main character. Now, as an adult, I’m pretty sure Atwood had intended that ending to be hopeful. This idea that the country of Gilead became no more eventually, and that the story of Offred then becomes something studied by students in hopes that this would never happen again. After all Offred, was a woman, a handmaid, had Gilead still existed, the students and we the audience would have never heard her story. However, at the time my teacher pointed out to me while we spoke about the book one-on-one that the problem with knowing it was a series of audio tapes that students were listening to, means we don’t know what order the story actually happened in or what was removed. It made the narration itself unreliable. 

Unreliable narration is a fascinating story device to me, because it can spark the question of why it’s happening in the first place. Were-Ah and I had fun speculating on who was unreliable and why this might be happening, or if maybe we were wrong and everything was true. What information was withheld from us. I would like to believe Heaven’s Official Blessing took a narration device, and just did it very well. I think so anyways, but I recognize that unless you’re taught to notice it, you might not realize there is an unreliable narrator in your story.

[dereksmcgrath]

Below is practically a written script that I am using as the basis for today’s livestream, Day 7 of the non-credit American Literature I survey course, going live at 11 AM EDT today. 

Today’s livestream uses Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” and its unreliable narration and its history of publication, as a through-line for discussing a few topics: disablism, gender, nationalism, and 19th-century publishing practices. Read “Amontillado” along with us, for free and legally. Content warnings for discussions about disablism, sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.

And feel free to read along with the script below, and leave a comment or email me to join the discussion!

Video Description

Day 7 uses Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” and its unreliable narration and its history of publication, as a through-line for discussing a few topics: disablism, gender, nationalism, and 19th-century publishing practices. 

Don’t forget to write questions ahead of Thursday’s section review on Poe, Irving, Melville, and Smith! Email derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or add your questions in the comments.

The lesson plan and links from today's stream are available at https://dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com.

The scheduled reading for "The Cask of Amontillado" is available online: https://www.eapoe.org/works/reading/pt063r1.htm 

Register for the free Phillis Wheatley 250th anniversary virtual roundtable: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/phillis-wheatley-peters-at-250-tickets-419005606047 

Introductions

Okay, let’s get started: it’s 11 AM EDT on Tuesday, October 4, 2022. This is a livestream for Day 7 of the American Literature I survey, a non-credit pseudo-class hosted on YouTube and Twitch that looks at United States literature from before 1865. 

I’m Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m not on camera right now–if I was, you would see a white man with glasses and brown hair. I’m opting to instead use a slideshow presentation–while most of what I have to say is already on the slide, there are some details from the slides that I will read aloud. 

For example, this slide features a monochromatic photograph of Edgar Allan Poe, a middle-age white man, leaning back in a chair. He has wavy hair, a receding hairline and kind of curls in the back, and a small mustache, and he’s in an old-fashion suit. 

Last Time

Last Tuesday and Thursday was a discussion about Heman Melville’s 1855/1856 novella “Benito Cereno.” 

We spent Tuesday defining the allegory as a literary artform and how that makes “Benito Cereno” speak to current topics about the evils of slavery and its ongoing harmful influence on the United States, as well as asking the uncomfortable question about how this novella can be misread as a pro-slavery text. 

On Thursday we spent more time digging into actual quotations from “Benito Cereno,” including the limited dialogue, the imitation of the style of historical documents, the unreliable narration, and how influences of “Benito Cereno” pop up in Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man and the 2002 Tim Story-directed Ice Cube film Barbershop. 

Next Time: Section Review

You can catch up on that week of Melville and all previous days of the American Literature I livestream–the previous classes are available as recordings, and there’s a playlist on my channel, youtube.com/dereksmcgrath. 

And speaking of previous days of this livestream, this Thursday is the first section review of this class! I divided the reading schedule for this class into four sections, and we are about to wrap up Section 1, “Who Reads American Literature?” That question was posed by 19th-century British author Sydney Smith, and I have offered Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” as partial answers. Irving was the first American author to financially support himself off of only his writing, something that Smith seemed to think any author worth their salt should accomplish. And Melville was an author addressing the very American problem of slavery, something that Smith very much associated with America in the text we read from Smith in this livestream. Now today we will see how Poe is yet another answer to Smith’s question. 

But I want to hear from you: you have sat through these livestreams, you’ve written remarks in the comments section, you have messaged me–tell me what you think of these texts we have read! Offer any questions you have about these authors, or observations for how you see these texts overlapping and addressing similar concerns. And I’ll jump into the section review to offer some sample essay topics that you may consider if you’re teaching these authors or struggling to brainstorm a paper topic to write about if you’re taking this kind of a class right now or in the future. Drop your questions and observations about these authors in the comments section, or email me at derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com. Thank you for your consideration. 

Today

So that takes care of last time, and what’s coming up–but what are we looking at today? Today’s livestream uses Edgar Allan Poe’s 1846 short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” and its unreliable narration and its history of publication, as a through-line for discussing a few topics: disablism, gender, nationalism, and 19th-century publishing practices. Read “Amontillado” along with us, for free and legally. Content warnings for discussions about disablism, sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.

Promotions 

But before we get to Poe, let’s promote some related content–because I have another online discussion that you can sign up for, for free. 

Coming up on Tuesday, October 11, at 3 PM EDT, Cal Poly Pomona and other organizations will sponsor an online roundtable, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Phillis Wheatley’s book Poems on Various Subjects. We will be discussing Phillis Wheatley soon, so I hope watching this roundtable helps with addressing topics about Wheatley in this livestream. You can register for this roundtable on Event Brite for free; the registration link is in the description.

Questions from Last Time

With promotions out of the way, let’s jump into “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe.  

Last time, I left you with these three questions to guide today’s discussion:

We have yet another unreliable narrator. How does Poe’s Montresor differ from Melville’s limited omniscient narrator of “Benito Cereno” (who might as well be Delano himself) and Irving’s Geoffrey Crayon and Diedrich Knickerbocker? 

So far only one of these three short stories has been absolutely within the political boundaries of the United States, that being the Catskill Mountains of Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.” Why do you think Poe was so interested in setting “The Cask of Amontillado” in Italy? And does this non-American location compromise how authentic we should consider this text as an American text and not, say, an Italian text? 

We know Poe can write poetry, given what we saw in “The Raven.” How much poetry do you see in how Poe writes “The Cask of Amontillado”?

Today’s Topics: Why “The Cask of Amontillado”?

But in addition to these questions, I do have some topics I want us to get to with “Amontillado.” And I think these key terms can be useful if you’re struggling to come up with a topic for what to write about Poe, or if you are trying to teach Poe and want to see how you can connect his writing to major themes in your class and associated writers. 

These are those topics: 

Disabliam

Gender

Nationalism

And 19th-century publishing

There is overlap between those topics, and overlap of those three questions and these four topics. So, I’m listing these as much to communicate “here is what I’m trying to teach you today” as I am reminding myself, “Hey, don’t forget to talk about this stuff to try to organize your thoughts on Poe.” 

And…honestly, I have to list this stuff, because it is rough. I talked about this on the Sunday Morning Manga livestream two days ago–shameless plug–when reviewing the Edgar Allan Poe animated film Extraordinary Tales, because I’ve taught Poe so frequently, and written about him, and read him, and researched him, that I feel both overly close to the text to clearly communicate what to get out of Poe, and not researched and knowledgeable enough about Poe to provide what students, researchers, and teachers need to get to know about Poe’s writing and life. 

So, rather than try to cover every last thing I can about Poe, or his biography, let me focus on those three questions today, and those four topics, to give some form to today’s livestream. And if you have other topics you’d like to discuss, or additional questions, please drop them in the comments or email me, derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com. 

Unreliable Narrator and “Madness”

Let’s start with Question 1 and Topic 1. 

Question 1: We have yet another unreliable narrator. How does Poe’s Montresor differ from Melville’s limited omniscient narrator of “Benito Cereno” (who might as well be Delano himself) and Irving’s Geoffrey Crayon and Diedrich Knickerbocker? 

And Topic 1: Disablism. 

What do I mean by disablism? Let’s define it: it’s discriminatory, oppressive, or abusive behavior against people with disabilities. This can include stereotyping. 

For example, if we’re looking at Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado,” maybe you’re reading into his obsessiveness with Fortunato and whatever slight he committed against him. Or you compare how unreliable Montresor is as a narrator–where he can’t even tell us what exactly Fortunato did to deserve this punishment–and you try to find some reason underlying why he did so. And then you think about Poe’s other narrators and main characters who fixate on a problem–the vulture-like eye of the old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Roderick’s focus on Madeline’s presence so he can go on living in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the unnamed narrator of “Ligeia” who is so determined to resurrect his dead lover. And you take all of these characters together and lump them into one category, based on what Roderick Usher in “The House of Usher” screams at his friend: “madman!”

What is “madness”? Let’s define that term: it can refer to severe mental illness, or foolish or dangerous behavior, or just enthusiasm, or just rage. 

There is that slippage in these terms, and it complicates how we can teach Poe and his unreliable narrators–when we need to be aware how easily popular culture flattens any form of mental illness to having one core set of the same symptoms, ignoring the various forms of mental illness, the different ways they manifest and show themselves, how they are treated, how they are managed–and how few of those mental illness lead to murder. 

We are reading Poe in 2022, when he was writing in the early 1800s. This is more about qualifying how we read him now and how we should teach him now, rather than attempting to criticize him by the standards of our time in 2022.

Let’s turn to Question 1 again: how does Montresor differ from our other narrators? Let’s look at the first paragraph of “The Cask of Amontillado”: 

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled–but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.” 

Obviously we have a narrator with an actual name, and their personality is pretty clear to us early on: obsessed, murderous, full of rage, having a set of ethics that he holds to so strongly that he is willing to kill for them. And we see how careful he is to play on each part of Fortunato’s ego, goading him, getting him drunk, already having the location to shackle him ready along with the trowel and spackle there to wall him up. This is serial killer behavior. 

And it risks perpetuating these words–madness, craziness, insanity–that you have to be careful in your classroom. I wish I could speak better to this, and offer advice, and recommend readings–and I’m woefully under-read on all of this for today. I just say this as a warning for how to guide discussion with students: put in the warnings that we are talking about fiction, and while we expect fiction to be believable within its own setting, taking something from fiction as a lesson for real life is still fraught with stereotypes and misreadings. 

Okay, so how else does Montresor differ from previous narrators we had? He may be able to play Fortunato like a fiddle, but he’s not omniscient, or limited omniscient, like the narrator to Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” We get into Montresor’s thoughts–but as I’m implying, he is trying to defend his actions to the reader, so while we should know what he is thinking, I would argue he is so insistent on his justification for murder, and I hope we would see how unjustified he is in his actions, that we can understand not to take what he says as reliable. 

(Sidebar: Go back to the first paragraph: Montresor tells us, “You.” They are speaking to us. “You. who so well know the nature of my soul–” Hang on–how does this narrator think we know them? Is this Montresor being presumptive, thinking, “of course you know me, my story that follows will bear that out”? That can’t be right–the story that follows doesn’t tell us much about the nature of his soul except that, yeah, he wouldn’t give “utterance to a threat” when he can be more surreptitious and plot it out. We’ll say a bit more about this later, but one popular reading is that, given the Catholicism baked into the text, that this is Montresor desperate to confess to someone, so perhaps the person who knows his soul so well may be a priest? We’ll get back to that.)

So Montresor is not omniscient like what we got with Melville’s narrator to “Benito Cereno.” And Montresor is not a historian, which has its own type of omniscience, like Irving’s Crayon and Knickerbocker from “Rip Van Winkle.” So, we only know what Montresor sees and hears. We learn he is pretty observant of human behavior–he can predict how Fortunato is going to act, and it seems too coincidental to me that he met Fortunato during the carnival, right when he’s drunk enough. Yeah, a calendar and just guessing that people will be drunk there may be enough, but it does well us that this Montresor is more observant than, say, Delano in “Benito Cereno,” and less likely to fall for easy lies, like how easily Knickerbocker seems to believe, “Oh, yeah, sure, Rip Van Winkle disappeared for 20 years because he was sleeping, not because he abandoned his wife and only returned to town once he heard she was dead.”

Before I move onto the next point, I want to emphasize the narration again, and something I said last time about Babo in “Benito Cereno.” You can imagine Babo, in that novella, acting like an actor on a stage, winking at the audience while saying lines to emphasize the irony: that Babo insists he is so loyal to his cause, leaving it to Delano to assume that means loyalty to Cereno, when really it’s loyalty to himself and freeing himself and the other enslaved people on the ship. You can imagine Montresor doing the same. Look at the nitre scene later in the story–I’ll quote from it: 

“He [Fortunato] turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. 

“ ‘Nitre?’ he asked, at length. 

“ ‘Nitre,’ I replied. ‘How long have you had that cough?’ “

This is then followed by Fortunato making coughing sounds–which Poe writes out at length. 

“My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.”

You can hear the contempt. “My poor friend.” “How long have you had that cough?” Later Montresor even says to Fortunato, “You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed.” Maybe it’s because Fortunato is drunk that you can play this–act it out–like Montresor thinking Fortunato is too out of it to hear the tone of voice and listens only to the words, which, without the ironic tone, come off as sincere–but reading between the lines are just so sarcastic. “You are a man to be missed”--so, might as well wall you up so no one can hear you. 

I admit I’m cheating a bit, as I have heard, repeatedly, Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi play Montresor and Fortunato on Lou Reed’s album The Raven. (I’ll get to this at the end of the livestream, where I’ll talk about some possible exercises for teaching “Amontillado”--but I don’t recommend using the Dafoe/Buscemi clip, because, Lordy, Lou Reed has those two curse their heads off so much with some pretty vulgar language–which, if you’ve heard me dropping f-bombs and s-bombs in this livestream, that’s saying something.)

Masons

I’ll say one more thing while I’m on this topic, about madness and narration, and it may lead into the next topic about nationalism. And that is the reading of this text as being built around conspiracies. Poe’s writing frequently uses the conceit of codes, hidden messages, mysteries to unravel. They can be the cryptography of “The Gold-Bug,” the mystery stories featuring the character of Dupin such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” or the secrets of existence, the universe, and the cosmos as in Poe’s books Eureka or Arthur Pym. But here, it’s Freemasonry. It’s the Masons. It’s that group that has inspired so many conspiracy theories, about people working in the shadows. At the level of just this text, maybe you read that as a parallel: Montresor is hiding his secret assassination plot, just as the Masons have their secrets. Or as just a gag: Montresor walls up Fortunato, doing literal masonry work. 

But there is a deeper reading that some critics have to this text. I’m going to read a footnote from the Norton Critical Edition of The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by GR Thompson at Purdue University in 2004. This is Page 419, footnote 2: 

“Over the centuries, the Masons became an international secret society: Protestant or Deist in religious orientation and strongly opposed by the Catholic Church.”

I already said that there is the potential that Montresor is telling this story to a priest. Thompson adds other footnotes to this story to clarify the potential Protestant versus Catholic fight happening that may illuminate one potential disagreement that leads to Montresor wanting to kill Fortunato. This story takes place in Italy during the Catholic Church’s carnival. The catacombs that Montresor leads Fortunato through would have been part of Christian burials. Montresor’s family coat of arms alludes to Genesis 3:15, quoting it: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.” And finally, what Thompson writes on Page 421, footnote 5: when Fortunato screams “For the love of God” and Montresor echoes it back, Thompson writes, “Some critics have seen the repetition of this phrase as especially significant, arguing that a Protestant-Catholic conflict lies at the heart of the insult.” I’m not sure I buy that. I mean, who is the Protestand and who is the Catholic here? Fortunato can’t recognize the Masonry signal, so is he Catholic? Montresor feigns he’s like a Mason, so he is Protestant? Was this fight that led to murder over religious disagreement? I don’t know–and Thompson leaves us with just these disconnected hints that, if I had put in the time, I’m sure there are scholarly articles I could have read beforehand to clarify this point. It just seems like another conspiracy theory intended to build up suspense in the audience by looking at something exotic, from overseas, involving religious intrigue. 

Nationalism and Publishing

And that gives us a transition to Question 2: 

So far only one of these three short stories has been absolutely within the political boundaries of the United States, that being the Catskill Mountains of Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.” Why do you think Poe was so interested in setting “The Cask of Amontillado” in Italy? And does this non-American location compromise how authentic we should consider this text as an American text and not, say, an Italian text? 

And let’s talk about Topics 3 and 4, 19th-century publishing. 

And let’s tie all of that into Sydney Smith’s question about who reads American literature. 

I already hinted at how this text still functions as “American” despite its setting: it’s an American’s point of view, intending to make what to Italian, French, and otherwise European readers look familiar to them–but to Americans, looks exotic. For teaching Poe, I think it’s unavoidable to not also read the literature preceding him, and the literary criticism at his time. Poe was writing literary criticism specifying that America needed to be seen as just as viable as any other literature in the world. He is, knowingly or not, answering Sydney Smith’s question, “Who reads American literature?” by saying, “Read my literature, that is the kind you should read.” 

But notice where Poe is–literally, where he set his story. It’s in Italy. Now, think of any of Poe’s stories. Which ones actually are set in the United States? The Dupin detective stories are set in France. Even if you could pinpoint locations in Poe’s works, is there anything in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” or “The Fall of the House of Usher” that has to be in the United States? Poe repeats that he thinks the point of a good story is the desired effect that is produced–and I can’t find anything in those stories I mentioned that has to be firmly American to work. You could stage those stories in another nation, and while much will change in terms of culture, language, and people, the effect–the horror, the fear, the moral lesson learned–largely remains the same. The suspense still escalates whether the murderer in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is committing the murder in Boston or Paris, New York or London, Tokyo or Nairobi, Sao Paolo or Seoul. 

This is why you teach Poe: he shows you one avenue that American authors were struggling with in the nineteenth century, to define where American literature should be written. I mean that just as much in terms of setting to the story as where the author was located. Washington Irving wasn’t writing all of his most famous works in the United States–he wrote them while in Europe. Charles Brockden Brown, one of the forerunners of the American gothic style, argued that such gothicism had to arise by telling stories set in America, starring Americans, about American topics–in his case, representing a fear of Native Americans. Poe doesn’t take that approach. He seems to want an international stage, so he is going to set his stories anywhere to show that the value of literature from the Americas is that, whereas Syndey Smith thought it had to be American by pulling from its own land and people like raw materials, Poe could just as easily make European settings that come across as real to his American readers.

And that is what connects this focus on nations to the print culture of Poe’s time. I should clarify that phrase, print culture: when I use that phrase, I basically mean, “what was the business like in the nineteenth century in terms of printing books and publishing stories?” Poe sold because he was giving American readers tales of suspense, horror, and locations his readers may never encounter. 

That was sensationalistic storytelling. He had said (as I am making up the quotation but trying to paraphrase what he was intending), “I give you a story that focuses far more on the effect than anything else.” One critic I read, Floyd Stovall (included in the Norton Critical Edition of Poe on Page 795) talks about how Poe wrote a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne, where he objected to how much Hawthorne insists on the moral–to the point of wiping out the moral. In other words, if you insist on it too much, people don’t listen to it and are overwhelmed by it. Now, compare Poe’s writing to that of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom we’ll get to later this semester. Both authors tap into similar topics: the gothic, the past, death, mystery, the soul yearning to be forgiven for what it has done. But Hawthorne was so moralistic, as if teaching a lesson. What lesson is there to “The Cask of Amontillado”? Don’t get drunk? Don’t follow someone into the basement? You can get away with murder? This is one reason why Herman Melville was such a big fan of Hawthorne: Hawthorne is about selling you a moral lesson, Melville is about forcing so many moral lessons onto you…and Poe is about selling you entertainment. That’s not to suggest that Poe wasn’t also appreciative of morals and the spiritual: at least, again citing Floyd Stovall, Stovall thinks Poe was like that. Poe is about achieving the effect without you recognizing that you’re doing it; he doesn’t like Hawthorne making the lecturing so obvious. 

I’ll say more about the selling of entertainment over morals in a moment, but I want to conclude this part of the discussion about publishing with this detail. At the time Poe was writing “The Cask of Amontillado,” there were numerous news stories about people being buried alive. That is effectively what happens to Fortunato here–he is buried alive. There were newspapers printing story after story about caskets pulled open and people clawing their way up out of the dirt to breath again. Poe himself would write such a story for a newspaper…that is full of lies. It’s a hoax he wrote titled “The Premature Burial,” appearing in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in 1844 (“The Cask of Amontillado” came out two years later in 1846–we’ll talk in a moment where it was first published). That article, “The Premature Burial,” seems like real news…until Poe gets to the end and has the persona of the story share their own story about being buried alive. That never happened. It’s fake. Poe was selling you entertainment, not something actual, even if it is based on a real phenomenon on that time. 

Gender and Publishing

And let’s transition from this discussion about publishing to what that publishing business says about a major topic to all of Poe’s works: gender. That’s Topic 2. 

I had said I would talk about where “The Cask of Amontillado” was first published. And where he first published it is a great opportunity for you teachers listening to use Poe to address the place of gender in the nineteenth-century United States, including a discussion about who was writing, who was publishing, who owned the papers, and how people were using gender conventions to subvert expectations and try to predict demographics along gender lines in terms of what would sell to readers. 

If you already looked up where Poe published “The Cask of Amontillado,” don’t spoil it yet for everyone else. If you haven’t looked it up, think for a moment which kind of readers you think would pick up this story. Who would publish it? It’s about two men–at least, I assume Montresor is a man, I don’t remember his first-person pronouns ever hinting at a gender–who have a cool regard for each other until one kills the other. It’s pulp writing. It’s not gory, but it’s suspenseful. It’s chilling. It’s horrific. 

It appeared first in a women’s Christian journal intended for soliciting readers to be better wives and caretakers of the home. 

…What.

Godey’s Lady’s Book was a popular periodical in the mid to late nineteenth century. Its goals were to help women be better women–which, by their narrow assumptions, meant to be better wives, better mothers, and good Christians. 

And they were eating up stuff that Poe wrote. 

That is why you have to talk about gender when teaching Poe: it is relevant when knowing his client base, and it reflects how ignorant some of us are and how much we did, and still do, stereotype what we think people are reading. Maybe it’s not surprising at all that a significant portion of the horror genre is women–but maybe there are people thinking, “Oh, women back then weren’t interested in this stuff!” I don’t have numbers in front of me, but I imagine, given how tense things were between Poe and Godey’s Lady’s Book, the fact that they still published so much of his writing meant that, yes, women did like reading Poe talk about people getting killed. 

“Cask” was first published in Godey’s Lady’s Book, a women’s magazine edited by Sarah Josepha Hale. Who was Sarah Josepha Hale? She wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and is one of the reasons why we have Thanksgiving in this country, and she led a campaign to have the Bunker Hill Monument built–so, hell of an impact on US culture (for good and bad–Thanksgiving and what that has done to erasing Native American presence in this country, and don’t even get me started on some of the white supremacist hate rallies that have happened around Bunker Hill). 

But what else was Hale known for? I mean, if she edited and published Poe, they had to have gotten along, right? Well, if they did, it did have this snag: Hale previously criticized Poe’s first writing as too immature. Re-read that. Hale, or at least someone writing in Godey’s Lady’s Book, did a review of one of Poe’s first published books–and as politely as possible called his writing “feeble” and “boyish.” Damn. 

And Poe still published with them. 

Forgive me for what I’m about to do, but a lot of what follows is self-plagiarism: I’m going to read portions, condensed and paraphrased in some parts, from my dissertation chapter on Poe. 

Poe’s short story “The Assignation” first appeared in the January 1834 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Published anonymously, “The Visionary” was Poe’s first story to be made available to a wide periodical marketplace. This story, which concludes with a man and a woman ending their tumultuous love affair by assisting each other in suicide, seems hardly the subject matter for a women’s journal that was supposed to cater to genteel highbrow readers. Poe’s choice to publish such a work in Godey’s Lady’s Book, and the decisions by its owner Louis Godey and his eventual editor Sarah Josepha Hale to continue to publish such works, illustrates the complexities of gender-specific print culture before the Civil War.

Poe so enjoyed publishing in Godey’s Lady’s Book that, when he submitted something to the owner, Louis Godey, and Godey didn’t put it into the Lady’s Book and published it in one of his other periodicals, he wrote him a letter in which, perhaps as a joke, he threatened to sue Godey for not publishing it in the Lady’s Book. 

What does any of this have to do with international appeal and nationalism? I told you Poe was big on trying to present himself to an international audience. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady Book, was not. Rather than publish primarily European authors, Hale’s journal was all about uplifting new and emerging American authors, to help them build an audience. As Hale defined the principles guiding her editing of Godey’s, her goal was to give a

space for developing a uniquely United States literary voice—while drawing upon European

influences. So, Hale here is taking this story, that seems exotic enough in terms of showing the mysteries of the catacombs of Italy–and bringing that to a US audience to say, “Look at what our authors can do with inspiration from overseas. We can show those European authors we have just as much potential!”

By directing her journal to women, Hale could tap into an underserved readership, while also drawing upon many of the women writers she knew in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, who were organizing literary salons in their households that attracted male writers, Poe being an ever popular presence at many of those parlors. Like, watch the John Cusack film The Raven. One of the first scenes in the film is Poe addressing a women’s salon about his writing. That kind of stuff did happen. Now, I don’t know whether Poe was at the salon–but the salons in that time period would frequently pick up Poe’s stories and read them. They were that popular with women. 

By publishing in Godey’s Lady’s Book, Poe learned to adapt his customary tales of

mystery and murder to women readers, forcing him to mature as a writer in order to appeal to

Hale’s mission statement, which claimed that all published articles work towards the

improvement of women, as well as men, in a proper Christian culture. 

Does this mean there is indeed a moral to “The Cask of Amontillado”? I don’t think so. But I do think it shows there is greater complexity to what I imagine Godey’s Lady Book was trying to pull out of readers–and maybe they just wanted some entertainment, and if Montresor at the end is indeed asking a priest for forgiveness, maybe that is the cheat to swerve to make this a secretly moral tale. That can be useful in your teaching–maybe connect how “The Cask of Amontillado” is the nineteenth-century equivalent to horror and slasher movies today, where you want the audience to come out of this with a very conservative understanding of morality and ethics–by just scaring the bejesus out of them. 

Queer Reading

So that takes care of talking about the gender as it concerns publishing. But what else can we say about gender? Well, we could talk about homosociality–that is, the non-sexual relationships between men. And…look, if you want to read something more into Montresor and Fortunato, I think that is there. And I think our current awareness of BDSM, for all we know, could lend itself to reading a bit more into Fortunato getting chained while in a clown outfit–but that’s a loaded scenario to try to unpack, so I’m just going to leave that question in the air, and maybe we could return to that on Thursday when we get to the review section (reminder: drop your questions in the comments section or email them to derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com for anything you want to ask about the authors we have read up to this point in the class). 

But if you are interested in a queer reading, pick up Leland Person’s essay “Queer Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart of His Fiction,” published in 2008 by the journal Poe Studies. 

How to Teach

And now we reach the last question for today: 

We know Poe can write poetry, given what we saw in “The Raven.” How much poetry do you see in how Poe writes “The Cask of Amontillado”?

And…I don’t think I can answer this one. I spent so much time prepping and thinking through today’s lesson plan that I didn’t go through the short story again to hear it read aloud and consider whether anything we got out of “The Raven” would apply here. “The Raven” taught us about the uses of sounds to make the text sound somber, rhyme and in-rhyme to enhance the meter that creates a rhythm that lulls the audience into the story. But “The Cask of Amontillado” interrupts everything with an awkward coughing sentence by Fortunato–and that’s just not much poetry there. 

So, what I offer to anyone teaching this text: have students read the text aloud. I did say you can practically hear Montresor winking at the audience as he talks to Fortunato–so, get people in your class to act it out. Or, get an audience performance to act out the story–DON’T USE THE LOU REED VERSION WITH WILLEM DAFOE AND STEVE BUSCUEMI, IT’S TOO FOUL-MOUTHED, THAT STUFF WILL GET YOU IN BIGGER TROUBLE THAN THE BULLSHIT WHINING ABOUT CRITICAL RACE THEORY. 

Look, the Lou Reed iteration of “The Cask of Amontillado” is more melodic, like music, than what you get in the short story, but it draws upon so much misogynistic language that, for a classroom, you would be creating an unwelcoming atmosphere for students, and that is not appropriate. 

And, one last piece of advice for teaching “The Cask of Amontillado”: skip the memes. They were funny a year or two ago, the jokes still work, they are funny in-jokes with friends–but not all of our students, across multiple age groups, are all as online as we are. It would take too long to explain why these were a thing before. At best, it works like this: “Hey, you know those Internet memes about ‘for the love of God, Montresor!’ and ‘come down to my basement, the Amontillado is waiting’? That stuff came from this Poe short story. Neat, huh? Okay, now let’s get to today’s actual lesson…”

Next Time

I’ll wrap up there for today. Thank you for listening to today’s discussion about “The Cask of Amontillado.” What did you think of this short story? And what did you think about the topics covered? What was missing in the discussion? I would love to know–drop your questions in the comments section or email them to derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com.

And remember to send in those questions, because on Thursday is the review of Section 1 of this class, “Who Reads American Literature?” as we take a look at Poe, Irving, Melville, and Smith in their totality to try to find common themes in those texts. While I usually end these livestreams with questions to consider for next time, this is me insisting that you come up with questions to drop into the comments and in my email inbox to help guide that conversation. Again, drop comments in the chat or email me, derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com. 

And if you enjoyed this livestream, consider a monetary contribution at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath–your financial support helps keep me working in education. 

Until Thursday at 11 AM EDT, I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.

[bookshelfdreams]

Here with another Thing I Just Noticed: I can't get a decent still frame of it but if you look at the mantelpiece behind Badminton (in the shot where hallucination-Nigel turns into actual-Chauncey) in the opening of ep9 when he's questioning Stede, you can see three small framed portrait sketches I'm fairly certain are of i. Louis & Alma, ii. Stede on his own, and iii. Mary with the kids; poignant enough in and of themselves, but the way the shot is arranged, Badminton is also framed by the decorative... I think it's meant to be a trompe l'oeil window and curtains? in a very portrait-like pose and idk what but such a purposefully arranged shot is conveying Something that I'm sure others have had more coherent Meta Thoughts on before.

ooh good eye! i didn't notice that at all, unfortunately I can't provide screenshots that are hd enough to really say for certain but I think you're right?

That's definitely Alma and Louis on the left (though considerably younger than they are in the show; I think that's Louis in front and he looks no older than 3); then yes, that could be Stede in his own frame and probably Mary and the kids in theirs. (If anyone has more hd images, I'd be thankful)

It's a really nice detail! Ed's past has come back to haunt him, literally. I love how the show keeps reminding us that Stede's cardinal (and really, only) sin is abandoning his family. Or no, failing to connect to his family, his wife, in the first place. Look how Mary is presented - together with the kids, as a unit. She's not his partner, he doesn't see her as adult on her own, she's a role she fullfills in Stede's life. His wife. The mother of his children.

And I'm not calling him a misogynist here. He was clearly very deeply unhappy in his marriage, and not ever able to voice that. The only time he says as much (understated but still) - "It's not your fault! I was just uncomfortable in a married state!" - he's delirious with fever and talking to a hallucination. He can only admit this in his own head, and even then he's downplaying his own pain. To him, Mary is the embodiment of the marriage; she's not her own person, an adult he might have an adult relationship with. It never occurs to him that they could be on friendly terms, even though Mary keeps trying to reach out to him (sorry for linking my own post).

In Stede's mind, Mary is constantly linked with Badminton and his father, as just another bully, as someone who makes him feel inadequate and lacking. Even though that's clearly not what is really going on (because Stede is an unreliable narrator!), at least not consciously on her part. She actually wants to make that marriage work. It's just that Stede is so used to being made to feel that way, it's how he sees her (even in this shot; Stede and the kids look away from Badminton, Mary looks at him).

But of course! The beauty is! His family isn't actually there. It's just pictures he put there himself. He's carrying the image of them with him, but it's not necessarily who they are in real life (esp the kids - that's not the age he left them at; that's not who they are anymore). We do not see him interact with his family until ep10; until then, we only have Stede's memories. And it's not until then that we truly understand how wrong he was, about them, about his own place in their life, about the impact his loss would have.

Badminton though? (Both of them?) Yeah, we see him. We hear him speak. It's hard to empathize with him, and we're not meant to; even when he keeps reappearing with his sword through his skull, it's more absurd and a little ridiculous, than horrifying. He's an ass and continues to be an ass, even after his death. Good riddance.

The pictures though? That's what Stede really feels guilty about and what he needs to fix.

And then he does.

Poetic cinema <3

[ritualslaughter]

so I mentioned seeing a terrible take saying shigaraki was beyond saving because he willingly murdered his father, and I was gonna leave it be but actually I'm still pissed off about it so here goes nothing:

Shigaraki Tomura, Unreliable Narrator or: Why Shimura Tenko Did Not Intentionally Kill His Father

tw for talks of child abuse - physical, emotional, and psychological - below the cut

okay, so - the aforementioned flaming bad take is obviously based on these caps:

these are taken from 236, when we learn about tomura's (or rather, tenko's, because I think there needs to be a distinction between the two in this case) childhood. from the outset, this seems cut and dry - if you don't read anything other than this, I would excuse you for thinking this is just another case of "crazy kid seeks bloodlust, kills family."

I'm here to tell you why that's a load of bullshit.

okay, let's cover some bases, and talk a little bit about child psychology:

During their development between the age of two to five, children do not understand that death is irreversible. [x]

as we learn in 235, tenko is five when his quirk begins to manifest - his skin starts to dry around his eyes, he develops an itch, and we can assume shortly afterwards is when the actual decay quirk forms.

as stated above, preschool aged children do not have the same concept of death as adults; they think of death as temporary, even fixable. this is how you get children saying things like "but how can grandma breathe all the way down there?" and "did it hurt when they burned daddy?"; to a preschool aged child, death is akin to taking a trip - it is something that can be returned from. [x]

to say that tenko - a child of five years old who has already gone through abuse (a common effect - even in cases where the abuse is not physical - of which being stunted emotional growth/development, and in particular difficulty understanding the consequences of their actions [x] [x] [x]) understands the finality of death enough to comprehend the consequences of a quirk that has only just developed, immediately after the trauma of physical abuse from his father and then unwillingly causing the death of the rest of his family, is absolutely absurd.

"but he said he knew what he was doing!" you say.

now we're really getting into the meat of this, let's talk about a couple reasons as to why shigaraki tomura is an unreliable narrator.

tomura - not tenko, because it's important to remember this is shigaraki that is recounting these events to us - does say that he believes that in some way he did this on purpose.

however, I am once again going to bring our friend context back into the equation.

shigaraki tomura has undergone serious indoctrination by all for one for the majority of his life, the majority of which being in his formative years, and especially regarding this particular event. the entirety of afo's introduction in regards to tomura's origin story literally revolves around the death of his family and his "itch to kill," so let's talk about some ways in which afo might have affected tomura's perception of that day:

1. forgotten memories

this is the most out there, and the most tinhat-ty of the theories, so I'm getting it out of the way first. I think it's worth it to put in here anyway, because it does still touch on afo's overwhelming influence, but this is pretty much all speculation.

in 237, tomura mentions the memories of "that day" being repressed up until his fight with re destro when they come back to him. the theory is that these memories - and by proxy, the feelings that came with them - were placed into his head by afo as a child, and are not reflective of his actual actions/feelings.

like I said, I think this is the weakest argument in this particular context, but it would explain some of the convenient events (i.e. the grandson of shimura nana, the one person afo wants on his side, just so happening to kill his family) that lead to tenko meeting afo. it's an interesting idea, and one I like, but it's not the one we're gonna focus on for this argument.

2. a helping hand

sit back and watch me girlboss and gatekeep this shit, cause this is where we really start to talk about gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. [x]

regardless of whether afo orchestrated the death of tenko's family as posed in the above theory or not, it's irrefutable that he is the first and only person to to offer tenko support following the incident. this puts afo in a position of power and worship over tenko, which is the perfect breeding ground for this type of psychological abuse.

afo praises tenko, tells him he's powerful, and that he's proud of him, gives him his name, and assures him that it's okay to want to hurt the people who have hurt him, and not only that, but that they deserve it when he does.

afo creates an environment where tenko/tomura worships the ground he walks on, then builds the narrative that the ones who hurt us deserve to be punished. so why would tomura, who blatantly in the text says he felt immense guilt for killing his family, not try to lessen that guilt by saying they deserved it?

3. scratching the itch

"but what about the itchiness? he said it went away when he killed his father, it's obviously tied to his need to decay, he can't be saved if his instinct is to destroy!"

I'm going to pose a little theory here: tomura's itchiness is not a symptom of his quirk. it's a psychosomatic disorder caused by the abuse from his father, and then later heightened by the abuse he received at the hands of afo.

Psychosomatic disorder [is a] condition in which psychological stresses adversely affect physiological (somatic) functioning to the point of distress. [x]

tenko's itching starts near enough to the development of his quirk that it's pretty easy to see why the two might be related, it's also shown to be in DIRECT correlation with any time his father verbally or physically abuses him. the first time we see him itching, it's after his father drags him across the house. he also says in the text that it (his face) "gets itchy when I'm at home," meaning it mainly manifests in environments his father is in.

afo abuses this knowledge, and turns it into a weapon used to create the "symbol of fear" he's always wanted - he tells tomura that holding back will only intensify the itch; he has to let go if he wants it to ever truly go away. the itching stopped when he killed his father (because finally, his abuser - the stressor for this reaction - was gone), so it must be natural! it must be natural for him to want to destroy, so he should follow his heart, and that will make afo proud.

and the only thing tomura has ever wanted to do was make afo proud.

let it be known, I'm not arguing any of this to take away tomura's agency or absolve him of his crimes - he absolutely has killed people knowingly, and with full consciousness. but the idea that tomura - or any child - was "born evil" or can never be saved because of actions done under extreme stress, and tainted by further psychological abuse, is fucked up, and it just straight up is not backed up by the text.

tomura's whole character is based on the fact that if someone had been there to save him, he would not have grown up to be the way he is today. to put the blame of his character on his quirk, or his personality, or just the fact he was born fucked up shows a blatant disregard for the themes of his character, and the themes of bnha as a whole.

no one is too far gone that they can't be saved. especially not a scared little kid looking for comfort when they never had any.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello, fantastic fanfiction-finding fairy godmother! *hugs*

Could you perhaps recommend a fic like radioactive trees in a red forest but maribor_petrichor, a long (not necessarily) john-centric post-s4 slowburn? With extra pain, please. Like, I'll take a whole bottle of that pain. Just- just dollop that stuff on, it'll be fine, trust me.

Yours, anon :)

Hey Lovely!

First the fic:

Radioactive Trees In A Red Forest by Maribor_Petrichor (E, 280,251 w., 73 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-S4, Suicidal Ideations, Alcohol / Rx Drug Abuse, Coming Out / Bisexual John, Seizures, Past/Referenced/Implied Child Abuse, Hallucinations, Rehab, Celibacy, Sobriety / Relapse, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Psychological Trauma, Nice /Not Anti-Mary, John’s POV, Parentlock, First Time, Angst, Switchlock, Angst with Happy Ending) – John Watson is what happens when a man can no longer see a reason to go on. John Watson is what happens when a man starts to let go. "It is what it is." John Watson is what happens when what "it is" becomes too much to bear. This is a story of the life, death, and resurrection of John Hamish Watson.

------

Secondly, I haven't read this one, so I can't personally suggest any similar fics, but here are some of my fave angsty post S4 John fics:

Act IV by SilentAuror (E, 39,707 w., 1 Ch. || First Person POV Sherlock, HLV Fix-It, Infidelity, Angst, Drama) – After Sherlock is shot, John moves back into Baker Street. They spend the autumn together as John tries to make sense of his life and make some important decisions about both Mary and Sherlock. Canon-compliant, excerpts from His Last Vow.

The Pieces That Fall to Earth by Itsallfine (M, 49,513 w., 84 Ch. || S4 Fix-It, Epistolary, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Parentlock, Past Abuse, Coming Out, Internalized Homophobia, Questioning Sexuality, Mental Health Issues / Therapy, Angst, Happy Ending) – John and Sherlock have hit rock bottom, but with all their armor stripped away, they can finally speak honestly, seek healing, and find the truths that matter most. An epistolary post-s4 fix-it fic. Now complete. (This fic is rated T except for one very clearly marked and easily skippable chapter, which is rated M.) Part 1 of The Pieces that Fall to Earth

In the Dark Hours by hubblegleeflower (E, 51,639 w., 12 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, Unreliable Narrator, Closeted Bi John, Angst, Miscommunications, Slow Burn, First Time, John’s Blog / Epistolary, Selective Mutism) – John, wounded and silent, drifts back to Baker Street for healing...and then goes home again. He visits, gets more upbeat, chattier, smiles, jokes... and still goes home again. Sherlock wants him to move back in - it just makes sense - but John shows no signs of doing so. This is the story of how John and Sherlock learn to say what needs to be said when they're both so very, very rubbish at talking.

The Book of Silence by SilentAuror (E, 60,056 w., 2 Ch. || S4 Fix It / Post S4, Virgin Sherlock, Rosie / Parentlock, Domesticity, Fluff, Praise Kink, Sex Toys, First Person POV) – As spring blooms in London, John and Sherlock begin to take new cases and cautiously negotiate this new phase of life with John living at Baker Street again. Despite how well it's all going, John struggles to forgive himself for the way he treated Sherlock following Mary’s death as well as trying to figure out how to finally put his long-time feelings for Sherlock into words. Part 1 of The Book of Silence/Rosa Felicia

The Bells of King's College by SilentAuror (E, 64,019 w., 5 Ch. || Post-S4, Missed Opportunities, Angst with Happy Ending, Fake Relationship, Case Fic, John POV, Jealous John, John in Denial, Travelling / Holidays, Virgin Sherlock, Wedding Proposals) – It's only been two weeks since Eurus Holmes disrupted their lives when Mycroft sends John and Sherlock to Cambridge to pose as an engaged couple at a wedding show in the hopes of solving six unsolved deaths...

White Knight by DiscordantWords (M, 69,840 w., 13 Ch. || S4 Compliant/Post S4, Marriage For a Case, Jealous John, Pining John, Janine / Sherlock Fake Relationship, Serial Killers, Case Fic, Undercover as a Couple, Weddings, John is a Mess, Misunderstandings, Wedding Planning, Jealousy, Drunkenness, Love Confessions, Angst with Happy Ending) – Green. The word green was used to convey a great many things. Illness. Envy. Inexperience. Standing there amidst Janine's chattering bridesmaids, watching Sherlock furrow his brow and study fabric swatches, watching him smile and simper and flirt, John thought it a remarkably apt colour choice. Because he felt quite sick to his stomach, he feared the source of said sickness might very well be jealousy, and he had absolutely no idea at all what to do about it. Or: Sherlock needs to fake a relationship for a case. He doesn't ask John.

The Monument of Memory by J_Baillier (M, 79,663 w., 14 Ch. || Post S4 Fix It Fic / S4 is Canon, Angst, Family Drama, Guilt, Case Fic, John Loves Sherlock, Complicated Feelings, Mentalism / Hypnosis, Murder, Grieving John, Sherlock is a Bit Not Good, Team Work, Trust Issues, BAMF John, Psychological Trauma, Protective John, Autistic-Spectrum Sherlock, Parentlock, John POV) –  A genius traumatised by a past he's only beginning to recall. The psychopath sister that time forgot. A missing woman and a mentalist who may or may not be a murderer. And, in the middle of it all, stands John Watson.

The Burning Heart by May_Shepard (M, 119,150 w., 21 Ch. || Canon Divergence / Post-TRF / S3 Rewrite, John’s Sexuality, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV John Watson, Gay John) – When Sherlock dies, John Watson feels like his life is over too. He’s completely shut down, until Mark Morstan, a new nurse at John’s medical clinic, catches his attention, and helps him uncover the long buried truth of his attraction to men. Although he’s certain he’ll never get over Sherlock, John plans to move on, and build a new life with Mark, unaware that Sherlock is not quite as dead as he appears, and that Mark is hiding secrets of his own.

-----

If anyone has one they'd like to suggest, please do!

[turtle-paced]

Hi Turtle! I read the first three ASOIAF books three years ago and loved them but couldn't continue because of work. I've seen that the last book of the saga was published in 2011, so honest question: should I read the other books? Is there some great writing/characterization/plot moments to come or does it only go downhill? I'm fine getting attached to this saga again if it's worth it (even without new books for a while), but I don't want to be disappointed as well as frustrated. Bye!

AFFC and ADWD look to me like they bridge the gap between ASoS and the climax of the series. I know a couple people IRL who struggled with the pacing of AFFC in particular, as well as the lack of some of the previous PoVs; I know a few more who won't even touch a work in progress precisely because they find it frustrating to have a setup without the payoff. If you liked the pacing of the first three books, I might recommend the combined reading order, which makes the actual action of books four and five somewhat more apparent.

They're both well worth a read by themselves, though. AFFC finishes off the War of Five Kings, ADWD starts the War for the Dawn. Cersei's PoV is a real highlight of AFFC, fantastic unreliable narrator pulling her plot down around her ears. Jaime's plot is another major draw, since he deals directly with a lot of the political follow-on from ASoS and the consequences of past violence. Brienne's PoV has the "broken man" speech, Arya's PoV has a vividly drawn picture of life in another part of the setting, Arianne Martell's chapters finish with one of the most killer reveals in the series. Jon's ADWD efforts to prepare for the actual endgame remains one of my favourite storylines in the series. I don't like all the decisions about the depiction of violence in Theon's storyline, but the progression and atmosphere of his plot as he reclaims his identity is a real standout. The existence and storylines of Aegon so-called Targaryen and Quentyn Martell pose some interesting questions about genre conventions; both of them took me a bit more time to fully appreciate.

It depends what you're into, but as might be damn well apparent, I think there's plenty of good stuff in both.

[iimpavidwrites]

Benzaiten Steel and the Fragility of Perception

or: reasons why setting boundaries is important #1283

I’ve figured out a reason why Benzaiten Steel stayed with his mother instead of doing the “sensible” thing and moving out. I think that it’s possible, too, that Juno has always been aware of the answer but, in the scope of Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection, he isn’t able to face it head-on because it contradicts his black/white, either/or sense of morality.

TL;DR: Despite Juno Steel’s unreliable narration we are able to see clearly the enmeshed relationship Benzaiten had with their mother Sarah and the ways in which that unhealthy family dynamic shaped Juno Steel as a person.

Sources: 50% speculation, 20% lit crit classes, 30% my psychology degree. 

Juno’s perception of Ben is shallow and filtered through the limitations of human memory. We all know by now, too, that Juno’s an Unreliable Narrator™.  In light of this, we need to ask ourselves why it is that Juno remembers Ben as happy, supportive, and only ever gentle in the challenges he poses to Juno. Throughout the episode, Ben’s memory is clearly acting as a comforting psychopomp: he ferries Juno through the metaphorical death of his old understanding of his mother (and also himself) and into a new way of thinking. He does this through persistent-but-kind questions, never telling Juno what to do or how to do it. This role could have been played by anyone in Juno’s life (Mick and Rita come to mind first) which makes it telling that Juno’s mind chose Ben to fill this role.

Juno’s version of Ben is cheerful, endlessly patient with Juno and Sarah, and above all he is compassionate. He acts as a mediating presence between Juno and Juno’s memory of Sarah and he doesn’t ask a whole lot for himself. If this is Juno’s strongest memory/impression of Ben’s behavior and perspective, then we can draw some conclusions about the roles they each played in the Steel family unit: Juno was antagonistic to Sarah and vice versa, and Ben was relegated to the role of mediator for the both of them.

Juno: She’s just evil. Ben: That’s a big word. Juno: “Evil”? Ben: No, “Just”.

We can see in this exchange that Ben is a vehicle for the compassion Juno needs to show not only to Sarah but to himself, too, in order to move on and evolve his understanding of his childhood traumas. 

This is not necessarily an appropriate role for a sibling or a child to hold in a family unit.

In family psychology, one of the maladaptive relationship patterns that is discussed is enmeshment. Googling the term you’ll find a lot of sensational results (e.g. “emotional incest syndrome”) that aren’t necessarily accurate in describing what this dysfunction looks like in the real world. This is in part because enmeshment can present many different ways. So, in order to proceed with this analysis of Benzaiten Steel’s relationship with his mom, I need to define enmeshment. 

Enmeshment occurs when the normal boundaries of a parent-child relationship are dissolved and the parent becomes over-reliant on the child, requiring the child to cater to their emotional needs and to otherwise become a parent to the parent (or to themself and/or to other children in the family). This is easiest to spot when a parent confides in a child as if they’re a best friend, disclosing details of their romantic life, expecting the child to give them advice on coping with work stress, and similar. Once enmeshment occurs, any kind of emotional shift in one member of the enmeshed household will reverberate to the others; self-regulation and discernment (e.g. figuring out which emotions originate in the parent and which ones originate in the child) becomes extremely difficult for the effected child and parent. When an enmeshed child becomes an enmeshed adult they often have issues with self-identity and interpersonal boundaries. For example, they may struggle to define themselves without external validation and expect others to be able to intuitively divine their emotions. After all, the enmeshed adult could do this with their parent and others easily due to hypervigilance cultivated by their parent and they may not understand that such was not the typical childhood experience. These adults are often individuals to whom the advice “don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm” is often relevant and disregarded. They may perceive their own needs as superfluous to others’-- and resent others as a consequence.

Another layer of complication is added when the parent in an enmeshed relationship is an addict, as Sarah Steel was. The enmeshed child often times becomes the physical caregiver to their parent as well and must cope with all the baggage loving an addict brings: the emotional rollercoaster of the parent trying to get clean or the reality of their neglecting or stealing from their child to support their habit or their simply being emotionally absent. Enmeshment leaves children with a lot of conflicting messages about their role in the family, how to conduct relationships, and how to define themself.

We only get an outside perspective on this enmeshment in the Steel family. It’s clear in the text that Juno’s relationship with his mother was fraught. He jokes in The Case of the Murderous Mask that she didn’t kill him but “not for lack of trying”, implying that Ben’s murder wasn’t the first time Sarah Steel lashed out at Juno-- or thought she was lashing out at Juno but hurt Ben instead. During the entire tenure Juno’s trek through the underworld of his own trauma, Juno asks the specter of Benzaiten over and over, “Why did you stay?”. This is a question that Juno himself can’t answer because Ben, when he was alive, probably never gave him an answer that Juno found satisfactory. There are a few possibilities, which I can guess from experience, as to what the answer was:

Ben may never have been able to articulate that his relationship with their mother left him feeling responsible for her wellbeing. 

Or, if he ever told Juno that, Juno may have simply brushed off this concern. After all, as far as Juno was concerned, Sarah was only ever just evil. To protect himself from his mother’s neglect and codependence, Juno shut down his own ability to perspective-take and think about the nuances that might inform a person’s addiction, mental illness, abusive behavior, etc.

It is likely that Ben thought either his mother needed him to survive or, alternatively, that he couldn’t survive without her-- as if often the case with children who are enmeshed with their primary caregiver. It was natural and necessary for him, from this perspective, to stay. Enmeshment is a very real psychological trap.

It is often frustrating and hard as hell to love someone who is in an enmeshed relationship because, from the outside, the damage being done to them seems obvious. See: Juno’s assertion that Sarah was just evil. Juno is, even 19 years later, still angry about Sarah Steel and her failures as a parent and as a person. His thinking on this subject is very black-and-white. He positions Sarah as a Bad Guy in his discussions with Ben-the-psychopomp and the childhood cartoon slogan of “The Good Guys Always Win!” is repeated ad nauseum throughout Juno’s underworld journey. This mode of thinking serves two purposes:

First, it illustrates the role Juno played in the household: he was opposed to Sarah in all things and Sarah did not require any compassion or enmeshment from Juno. Juno was, quite possibly, neglected in favor of Ben which would create a deep resentment… toward both Sarah and toward Ben. This family dynamic would reinforce Juno’s shallow moral reasoning and leave him with vague, unachievable ideals to strive for like “Be One of the Good Guys” or “Don’t Be Like Mom” -- ideals that he can’t reach because he is a flawed human being and not a cartoon character, creating a feedback loop of resentment toward his mother and guilt about resenting Benzaiten. That guilt would further bolster Juno’s shallow memory of Ben as being infallibly patient, kind, loving, etc. 

Second, Juno’s black/white moral reasoning is an in-text expression of the meaning behind Juno’s name. When “Rex Glass” points out that Juno is a goddess associated with protection, Juno immediately has a witty, bitter rejoinder  ready about Juno-the-goddess killing her children. Juno was named for a deity who in some ways strongly resembles Sara Steel and he resents that he is literally being identified as his own mother. Juno-the-goddess has one hell of a temper, being the parallel to Rome’s Hera. Juno is not a goddess (detective) who forgives easily when she (he) knows that a child (Benzaiten Steel) has been harmed. This dichotomy of “venerated protector” versus “vengeful punisher”  causes psychological tension for Juno that is only partially resolved in The Monster’s Reflection. The tension is not fully resolved, however, because Juno never gets a clear answer for the question, “Why did you stay?”

The answer is there but it is one that Juno doesn’t like and so can’t articulate: Ben is enmeshed with Sarah who named him, of all things, Benzaiten and that is why he stayed. We’ve already seen that names have intentional significance in the text. Benzaiten is hypothesized to be a syncretic deity between Hinduism and Buddhism, is a goddess primarily associated with water. Syncretic deities are fusions of similar deities from different religions/cultures; their existence is the result of compromise and perspective-taking and acceptance. Water, too, is forgiving in this way: it takes the shape of whatever container you pour it into... not unlike a child who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their entire family unit. Not unlike Benzaiten Steel.

Ben stayed with his mother because his relationship with his mother was enmeshed, leaving him little choice but to stay, and this ultimately led to tragedy. Sarah Steel’s failures as a parent are many and Juno still has a lot of baggage to unpack in that regard, especially where Ben is concerned. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the same kind of “speedrunning therapy” episode again but I know that The Penumbra is committed to a certain amount of psychological realism in its character arcs so I am confident in asserting that Juno Steel isn’t finished. Recovery is a journey and he’s only taken the first steps.