#read work critically... enjoy it and connect with it and analyze it.. that makes writer's SO happy

[oh-katsuki]

some of y’all gravely misunderstood what i said last night about fanfiction and the way people tend to be incredibly critical of it in a way that feels almost disrespectful. 

i was not saying in any way, shape, or form that fanfiction cannot be criticized / should not be criticized. it’s an art form worthy of being acknowledged the way any other art form is. it’s a learned skill, as with any creative craft, and criticism of it is absolutely valid. 

that being said, i was referring very specifically to a certain genre of criticism on here that is not constructive nor proper criticism, but rather an expression of opinion that cannot be properly articulated into actual criticism. i was referring specifically to a certain ideology prevalent on here that feels almost pretentious and often conflates personal opinion with objective good and bad. 

fanfiction, like any other creative pursuit, is an art form, which means that good and bad is relatively subjective if grammar, sentence structure, and writing prose are used properly. it also means that there is a correct way to critique and an incorrect way to critique that is directly correlated to being able to improve upon hearing it. if someone comes and says “this writing style is bad” and offers no other commentary, it’s not proper criticism, it’s a personal opinion and a disrespectful way to critique someone’s work. 

i work a lot with art, so critique and criticism is something that i’ve had a lot of experience with since it’s something that the art community does a lot in order to improve. i enjoy getting better at writing and improving upon what i wrote the day before. i regularly ask people to beta-read fics for me because i can learn from that experience and from their comments.

that being said, not everyone is like me. not everyone wants to get better even if it means hearing unsavory things about their work and that is completely fine and valid even if i don’t understand it. what is not fine is shouting an opinion that is often rude or vague from the rooftops about someone else’s work, disguising it as a critique, and disregarding the effort they already put in. 

part of criticism, at least from a creative improvement perspective, is acknowledging the process and work put in and saying something that will allow someone to improve off of it. the internet is a public place. if you are posting your work, it comes hand in hand with the idea that you will receive criticism. my argument is not that you should not think critically about fanfiction (partially because i think that doing that does a disservice to the author, but also because fanfic is still a valid form of writing in every sense). my argument is simply that critique in a fanfiction sphere should be offered respectfully and with the acknowledgement that most people do this for fun. 

this is obviously different within a professional sphere, but most of us are not professionals (yet at least) and that’s okay. some people do this for fun and that’s totally cool. making comments that make an entire community feel shitty is just not a cool thing to do and im not sure why that’s a topic of debate. 

i guess all im saying is that critique of fanfiction and fanficition trends are valid, but it’s important to remain respectful and still respect the craft itself and the time/effort someone put into it. 

[anikablog2]

Analyze precisely: Criticism of Denny Ja's selected work 27: Your tears

In the world of literature, criticism of literary works is common. One of the selected works that we will analyze is "Denny JA 27: Your Tears Mother". In this article, we will analyze precisely about the work and provide professional criticism. 1. Introduction "Denny JA 27: Your Tears Mother" is one of the chosen works from Denny JA who has received considerable attention. Denny JA is known as a writer who is able to present an emotional story and captivate his readers. However, there is no perfect work, and in this article we will discuss some criticism of the work. 2. Writing Style One of the things that should be criticized in this work is the style of writing Denny Ja. Although the story is emotional and washed away, the writing style used is sometimes too complicated and difficult to understand. This can make it difficult for readers to fully enjoy the story delivered. 3. Character development In "Denny Ja 27: Your Tears Mother", there are several characters introduced. However, character development in this work feels inadequate. Some characters just seem to a glance and do not get enough space to develop. This makes it difficult for the reader to connect emotionally with the characters in the story. 4. Plot and storyline The plot and storyline in this work also need to be given criticism. Although the story has a great potential, some parts feel too slow and do not provide an attractive surprise or conflict. The reader may feel bored or lose interest when reading some parts of the story that is too long and monotonous. 5. Use of themes In "Denny Ja 27: Your Tears Mother", Denny Ja raised the theme of family life, love, and sacrifice. However, the use of this theme feels less original and cliché. Denny Ja does not provide a new approach or a unique perspective on these themes. This makes this work less fresh and less able to impress the reader. 6. CLOSING "Denny Ja 27: Your Tears Mother" is one of the chosen works from Denny Ja who has great potential. However, in analyzing precisely this work, we find some criticism that needs to be given. Complicated writing styles, inadequate character development, less interesting plot and story lines, as well as the use of cliché themes into several criticisms that can be conveyed to this work. Nevertheless, this work still has values and potentials that should be appreciated. Hopefully these criticisms can be taken into consideration for Denny Ja in his next works. 

Check more: Analyze appropriately: Criticism of Denny JA Elected Work 27: Your Tears Mother

[nurhayatiblog]

In -depth Analysis: Professional Review of Denny Ja Chosen Work 24: Trilile Birds

In the world of Indonesian literature, the name Denny Ja has been known as one of the productive writers and has high quality writing. One of his works that deserves attention is the "trilile bird". In this article, we will provide an in -depth analysis of Denny JA 24: Trilili. We will discuss the themes, writing styles, characteristics of characters, and messages to be conveyed by the author. The theme raised in the trilile is about the life journey of a young man who tries to find his identity in the midst of political and social upheaval in Indonesia at that time. Denny JA succeeded in describing the anxiety and turmoil experienced by the main character, trilile, through a strong and detailed portrayal. In this work, the author also succeeded in criticizing the social norms that existed at that time, as well as exploring the conflicts that occurred in society. Denny JA's writing style in trililes can be said to be very typical and unique. He uses simple language but full of meaning. The use of a straightforward language allows the reader to easily understand the message the author wants to convey. In addition, the use of rich imagination and detailed descriptions makes the story alive and captivate the reader. Such a writing style makes trililes one of the literary works that can be enjoyed by readers from various circles. The main characters in the trillions, trililes, are described as young people who are full of enthusiasm and struggle. He tried to find his identity in his life journey. Denny Ja succeeded in describing the inner conflict experienced by Trilili very well. This figure is not only described as a strong individual, but also as a manifestation of the struggle and anxiety of many people at that time. The characteristics of such a deep and complex character allows the reader to be connected to the story more emotionally and in depth. In addition, trililes also contain the messages that Denny Ja wants to convey to the reader. One message that can be taken from this work is the importance of finding self-identity and upholding the values of justice and truth. In this story, Trilili is not only looking for his identity, but also struggles for justice and truth. Messages like this make trililes a literary work that is not only entertaining, but also provides inspiration and thoughts to its readers. In conclusion, trililes are one of the chosen works from Denny Ja who deserves high appreciation. With a strong theme, typical writing style, deep characteristics of characters, and messages conveyed, this work becomes one of the literary works that is worth reading and analyzed. For fans of Indonesian literature, trililes are a clear evidence of Denny Ja's expertise in creating a charming and memorable work. 

Check more: In -depth Analysis: Professional Reviews of Denny JA Selected Work 24: Trilile Birds

[thehighwaytothestars]

BRIEF PERSONALITY ANALYSIS - YEONJUN TXT

Libra Moon:

Interested in fine arts, and debates about all kinds of subjects.

But, always keep the poise and never being aggressive, or trying to make their point of view to rule over the other person.

Harmony is very important here, and usually libra moons hate fights, but they love talks where they can learn different points of views and perspectives they never thought about.

They are well cultured people.

They like to dress elegantly, and this is an expression of them, could be therapeutic, dressing according to your mood.

They hate disharmony and arrogant people.

They love when they find someone who is open minded and can talk about everything without criticizing and judging the other person.

This is a placement where the person can try to please people a lot, and sometimes just agreeing with them to stop the fight/ argument.

Loves luxury, and the fines things. They can be very good at interior design. Probably, Yeonjun will be the one decorating his house.

They care about what people think of them, and sometimes too much 🙁

Just loves the idea of being in love and being in a relationship.

Virgo Sun and Mercury:

Virgo is ruled by Mercury, so in Yeonjun’s case his Mercury is in domicile, and this makes easier to this planet to act naturally, accordingly to his virtues.

Having a Virgo Sun can make the person very demanding and hard on themselves and the others.

They can be super anxious about things, because they are always trying to reach perfection, even tho they know is not something possible to do it.

But they will try the hardest they can to achieve their goals, they will always try to give 1000% of themselves.

They know that in order to reach your dreams you Gotta work hard for it, so they often over work.

They have almost this obsession over details, and this can make them lost the big picture of things.

They are practical and problem solvers, but will appreciate when someone try to help them, to show that they care about them, and their wellbeing, because they are always the ones doing this for everyone, so is nice to change this dynamic once in a while.

In Yeonjun’s case having a Mercury Virgo just makes this energy stronger. So, you can count on he pays a lot of attention in to details, and he is always analyzing everything he can.

Owns a very logical and practical mind.

Can be an amazing writer too.

Very smart and witty.

Not super talkative, he is more the one observing people’s behavior, and yes, can be very judgmental sometimes 🙁

But, ofc he is not just serving this to people, he is the main focus of his critical mind, so he can be his worst enemy in a way.

Always thinking he is not doing enough and trying to overcompensate, always trying to do more.

Can feel sometimes, that he doesn’t deserve to be on top, if he doesn’t work hard enough and go beyond, he will second guess his own potential.

Because his Mercury and Sun are conjunct in Virgo, this can make him very aware of what he eats and his health in general; Also, how he behaves, all his gestures and how he is portraying himself.

He can be really found of reading and activities that involve patterns, and logic.

Leo Venus: It’s like...go big or go home kind of love demonstration.

Loves to spoiled and be spoiled by their loved ones. They are generous and love to buy you gifts for no reason at all, it’s because they are so in love by you, they just can’t help.

He is so genuine when he loves someone. Leo Is all about the heart, and being truly honest with your feelings, emotions, with yourself, so when he is with someone, he is for real.

He wants to show how much he loves you, so he does whatever he can to make you see that. Actually, you and the whole world.

He can even be a little clingy, he just loves being around you and feeling your presence. This makes his heart race and just fuels him with happiness.

He is truly faithful, and can be a little jealous. Will take care of you 1000%. It’s like, you are his precious little thing, and nobody can hurt you, EVER. He will defend you with his all, it doesn’t matter.

Being a Virgo Sun, and the sun being the ruler of Leo, we have here a very attentive and devoted guy. He will want try to help you with whatever he can, definitely the type to go the next mile to do something for you. But don’t fool yourself, all this love and devotion he will wanted back. He will need that you guys are connect for real, like your hearts and energies are in the same sync.

Venus talks about the pleasures in life, and in Yeonjun’s case no wonder why he loves to dress up, and fashion, and have this amazing style. He is super bold, and honest about the things he tries. That’s him, like...he is not pretending to be anyone else, you know? He does not wear the clothes to simulate or fool people, he is truly expressing himself. And, of course, he is not afraid to do it. No wonder he loves the big and all over your face, accessories, right?

He is such a romantic and passionate guy, he could even be a little be cheesy, ngl.

But, overall, will love someone with all his heart, body and soul.

He is drawn to authentic people, who are empowered, and knows their value. People who are not scare of being who they are, who can speak up. Who are passionate about what they do, and who inspire people around them, gives them courage to be brave and do what they truly want to do. Yeah...this is definitely a strong and confident person, who could totally call his attention.

He can be really confident indeed. Sagittarius Mars:

So bold and up to the challenges in life. Loves to throw himself in new experiences, especially if he is with his friends around.

Is not afraid to take risks, because this is how you learn things and gain knowledge of how things work.

He can be really competitive, and gives his all to win. He is just that guy that loves to win, and as we see above, he is totally up to the challenge. This desire to win can totally ignite his energy.

His mars is conjunct with Pluto, so this make Yeonjun puts a lot of determination in things he does. He does not stop until he gets what he wants. Could even enjoy dangerous situations.

May love to explore about the subconscious mind too, and why does he do things in the way he does. Is looking for answers there, and is not afraid of it.

Curiosity is something that definitely moves him.

He can be really energetic and doing an exercise can always help him to burn that extra energy he may have.

He can be good at sports and loves to spend the day doing things, especially outside.

I feel he loves to shop, and can’t get enough from it. This could be his favorite sport, yeah.

Can be a person who loves being around nature too, this can help him relax and get in touch with his inner self, and just to put things in his head in order, since he can overthink a lot of things, and this could lead us to a lot of tension and stress.

He can take a while to lose his patient, but when he does...OMG he can be so brutally honest, and even scary. He knows what to say in order to hurt someone, he owns a very analytical and sharp mind, so he knows how to push your buttons, he knows what is sensitive for you.

And Pluto conjunct to his Mars, can make him even more assertive with his words, and even the tone he uses can be very dark, and just terrifying. People can feel the presence of his anger, and how mad he is, even if he looks calm and collected, you’ll know by his tone of voice...it’s crazy. You can feel how serious he is, and that he is not messing around. He had enough of it.

Can lose his head when people try to boss him around, and tell what to do, or just try to take away his freedom.

Can be hard to forgive, and even if he does won’t forget what happen.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Hi there, I never really paid attention to bnha (I mean it's just so violent I skipped 60% of it) so It's really amazing to understand these intricate elements of the story, the hero society, how heroes and villains are viewed and the metaphors(?), sorry I don't remember I just learned they existed.. But anyway you're so very sweet, and brilliant. Thanks for bringing a new light to bnha for me

Anon, I kindly dare you from now on to pay attention to the little things.

See, I've love writing since I was a very young kid who had trouble understanding the world and society's rules. I still have. I feel like an alien trying to learn how human beings work lol.

And if I learned something is that since the beginning of our existence, we have used stories to understand the world we lived in. See the paintings on the caverns, the amount of mythologies and religions around the world. We are storytellers by nature, we don't even have to try. When you tell a family member or a friend how was your day, you're already building a story.

So when people say "it's just fictional", they are wrong. I find joy in following the traces of human souls contained in those stories to reveal the lessons hiding within them. And there's always a lesson. We can learn great things from very simple stories and little elements.

So I'm glad you found my interpretations interesting. I mean, some people watch or read bnha / mha just for the basic plot and that's not wrong! Humans are free to enjoy basic or shallow things! In fact we need to, to avoid going insane with how complex the universe is.

But every manga is just that the main story. I see many critics talking about plot holes and stuff, and of course that's important, but there are other elements. There's a difference between a theme and a plot, between what the characters are doing and what the story is trying to communicate. And it's our duty to engage and interrogate those stories. All the answers we need are withing the work of art, withing the author. We can connect those elements to things outside the story, but we can't violate the story (at least not if you're doing meta) to try and force something the story is not giving you.

I just think meta writers in tumblr doesn't realize that this is exactly how the academic world works. You took a subject, you analyze it and you create a conclusion. Something some simple and it's how the humans works to improve their lives.

I'm really glad you like my blog and the things I create 🥺🥺🥺 it's always a great joy for any artist to hear from the public consuming their work, to hear how it affected them and changed them. This makes me ridiculous happy and I hope you know it.

[hiriajuu-suffering]

Anime Hot Take: Goblin Slayer is more offensive than Redo of Healer

I totally understand why the anime community is collectively freaking about Redo of Healer not getting cancelled by normies like Shield Hero, Ishuzoku Reviewers, and Uzaki-chan. A lot of anime content creators are saying because anime [social] cancellation is based on clout chasing and it’s because Redo of Healer is a bad anime, and I disagree completely because Uzaki-chan is also a bad anime. As excessively raunchy Redo of Healer is, its offensiveness has more narrative backing than Goblin Slayer does for its world-building.

Elephant in the room: depictions of rape are poor artistic choices when the physical act is shown instead of heavily implied for the narrative. Both Goblin Slayer and Redo of Healer depict rape onscreen to get more attention for being edgy and raunchy, needlessly. People finding Shield Hero more offensive for involving a false rape allegation are missing the forest for the trees and there is no rape in Ishuzoku Reviewers. Goblin Slayer uses its rape scenes to objectify people we’re supposed to see from the perspective of, very clearly. Meaning, Goblin Slayer is asking for a self-objectification in order for you to be invested in the main casts’ goals. The effect of this is Goblin Slayer is really only showing these gratuitous rape scene(s) for shock value. Goblin Slayer is a Fantasy, not specifically an Isekai Revenge Fantasy like Redo of Healer is. Redo of Healer uses its rape scenes to subjectify people we’re supposed to see from the perspective of, making it fundamentally different and more aligned with Game of Thrones depictions of rape than Redo of Healer. In episode 1 of Redo of Healer, the main character is subjectified, not objectified. In episode 1 of Goblin Slayer, the rape scene objectifies the woman. The only other conclusion hyperfeminism could have to this incongruity is media that portrays sexual violence is more acceptable when male sexual violence is on the forefront, which is fucked. In episode 2 of Redo of Healer, the first antagonist is a female and the rape scene itself is sick and cruel, but not gratuitous in the way Goblin Slayer handles its rape scenes. Again, the character is subjectified and not objectified, which makes a lot of difference if media makes the morally abhorrent but logical choice to depict rape for views because it works. Redo of Healer already starts on better footing than Goblin Slayer because a central theme in Goblin Slayer is the objectification of life and experience while Redo of Healer works in that same theme with the subjectification of people’s lives and experiences.

Redo of Healer is ultimately a power fantasy like most other Isekai are, Goblin Slayer is intended to make you feel powerless. There is some subtlety in the way the author puts forward the narrative of “power makes people bad” in Redo of Healer, while the narrative choices in Goblin Slayer directly portray the message of “no matter how much power you have, you cannot affect the world”. Both are a criticism of power fantasy, but Redo of Healer is actually within its genre doing so, not looking from the outside-in and acting above the genre itself when it has taken over the anime industry. The plot structure in Goblin Slayer reads as if it’s better than the Isekai trend, making itself pretentious and thereby worse than the trend because it’s just mocking something popular because it’s popular. Redo of Healer actually looks into why this popularity exists and if it’s legitimately warranted or just feeding the vanity of its readers. In the first two episodes, the narrative has all this suffering going on written in a way so the reader actively disconnects from the normally self-insert protagonist in an Isekai. Goblin Slayer literally does the opposite with Priestess. The self-insert scenes in Redo of Healer are actually the opposite because they structure themselves in that way but do the opposite, you don’t want to be in any of those situations. When you weigh moral wrongs and aren’t afraid of playing the oppression Olympics for the sake of philosophical conjecture, Keyaru is enacting retribution in a manner reciprocally efficient or less compared to what he endured. You can see that via his intended final act of retribution of Flare being to make her his consensual sex object rather than everyone’s nonconsensual sex object as he originally was. The finger-breaking was his exchange for the deception, involuntary servitude, and general lack of empathy; regrettably, the sexual assault with bodily harmful object was for the forced drug addiction via symbolism analysis. He ends up healing all this anyway and not being overwhelmed by it, meaning everything he did was a small fraction of what had been done to him. It’s still revenge, but it’s nothing nearly as crazy as what was done to him and actually didn’t drag out as much as people say compared to goblin rape scenes in Goblin Slayer (some of them which didn’t need to exist narratively and were only there because author is insulting your intelligence, assuming you forgot it’s a thing because it assumes you’re an Isekai reader). Fair warning about Blade and Bullet though is they represent very real tropes on the social spectrum, Blade representing hyperfeminist ideologies to the point of outright misandry and Bullet representing men who degrade themselves just for being men, so a lot more people will have something to be butthurt about when that narrative realization comes to pass. Part of the way Redo of Healer compartmentalizes its characters into said tropes speaks to a larger picture of what the show intends to do, criticize the Isekai genre and its tropes instead of just mocking them like Goblin Slayer does.

The narrative structure of Redo of Healer reads like a hate letter to Isekai power fantasy writing, the narrative structure of Goblin Slayer reads like a roast to Isekai power fantasy writing. Hate letters are generally more honest and genuine than roasts, which sacrifice truth for the sake of being comedic. Goblin Slayer itself wasn’t even that funny though, it had moments but its humor was so self-contained, it only existed if you already were self-involved enough in the tropes, in which you were the one being roasted. Effectively, Goblin Slayer seeks to roast you with no audience, making the roast itself kind of pointless and belittling. Redo of Healer though criticizes Isekai writing on two fronts: the morality of the world (which Shield Hero already did pretty masterfully) and the reasonable scope of a self-insert protagonist. Living in a morally dark Isekai world that’s full of hell and suffering is something Rising of the Shield Hero did so well, it would be difficult to see it done better, but Redo of Healer follows the exact narrative thread Shield Hero does only in a far more sinister way. The difference is Redo of Healer takes the grinding element from Cautious Hero and totally removes the opportunity for it to be had and the end result is said self-insert Isekai protagonist being abused in the party instead of valued, it actually makes sense on a power scaling level if you place it in a world where the characterization of all humanity is made out to be shitty from the start (slave trading demi-humans, raping other people for mana, rulers with no actual empathy or morality, etc.). Redo of Healer’s setting emulates humanity from Chapter Black in Yu Yu Hakusho. In simpler terms, if any of these dudes popularizing Isekai self-inserts into Keyaru, they’re not overpowered for no reason like in other Isekais, they’re overpowered because they were already humbled to the extent where nothing could ever feel like redemption. Most of these people self-inserting probably aren’t as great as they think they are, but especially on the moral scale. Keyaru represents a broken version of that self-insert: a human that is fallible, can feel real negative emotions and act abhorrently on them, and isn’t overly resilient for plot convenience’s sake. Keyaru’s immensely busted skill comes at a heavy toll, meaning it was balanced but he broke it (like Maple did in Bofuri) because he was driven to madness. If you break the “overpowered for no reason” trope in both harem and Isekai, you ARE a criticism of both. Are there good anime that use this trope well? Slime is an example. But Kadokawa specifically has been tending to favor titles that are criticisms of Isekai rather than straight-up Isekais themselves, making this something they were willing to push to the forefront even though it borrows a little too much from hentai plots. If anything, Redo of Healer shows how frustrated the industry, from writer to publisher, has been with the Japanese otaku community when poorly written, power fantasy, self-insert shows like Sword Art Online become the face of otaku culture and starts a predatory profit-seeking trend of everything has to be Isekai for it to make money. Redo of Healer reaches for a larger criticism of why anime storytelling has gotten less substantive in the past decade and plunges its hands into the depths of the filth and degeneracy that’s being promoted. It’s a meta-criticism to make what you’re putting out there so horrific it becomes nearly impossible to connect with.

Do I like Redo of Healer? No, absolutely not. Do I think it sends a loud and clear message to viewers who know how to analyze a piece of fiction with good depth and nuance? Yes. Goblin Slayer does not do that, Goblin Slayer itself is just an amusement park ride you’re supposed to enjoy, but they jolt you with shock value to get you invested, making its plot threads and themes gimmicky at best. Redo of Healer actually does what Goblin Slayer was going for in shock value and makes you so numb to it you actually realize how devolved Isekai storytelling is, adding its attention grabbing mechanism as short hentai clips like Ishuzoku Reviewers did. As for why Shield Hero was mentioned so much, it’s because the characterization of Blade specifically goes after those who were trying to get Shield Hero cancelled for its narrative thread. Blade is the worst representation of that, worship and veneration of femininity in a patriarchal context which ultimately results in the worship of power and existing power structures which promote said power to the point where queerness (in love of femininity) somehow excuses deplorability since postmodern queerness never actively promotes masculinity as something that can function as socially just. Flare, Blade, and Bullet all show more toxic masculinity individually in the first 3 chapters/episodes than Keyaru, and that was a deliberate writing choice. The reason why Redo of Healer isn’t actively being socially cancelled is because its biggest statement is “people are shit” and that’s an okay statement for normies.

Normies are coming after Nagatoro because it normalizes and almost makes light of real bullying. I think us weeaboos need to understand that bullying is a higher impact problem than rape being depicted in media if we’re fighting on the hill of “violent video games don’t encourage violence”. I find Nagatoro more difficult to understand the narrative intent of than Redo of Healer, the fact the weeaboo community is disconnected from that means we’re only looking at things on the surface level and are too within ourselves to know what real world problems actually have ripple effects on human behavior. The reason why we accept Nagatoro is because we know the two main characters eventually become involved and Hachioji could handle it to the point he consented to it. In pretty much all scenarios you have a mean girl bullying someone, regardless of gender, that’s not what happens: the person is left scarred, changed, and with significant platonic trust issues into adulthood. Rape is an issue that’s handled with so little care because of patriarchy and power struggles, people are generally far more numb to it than seeing actual mental and verbal abuse just being glossed over because “he’s a guy, he’s less of one if he can’t handle it”. Anime generally is going the way of Scum’s Wish where there’s more morally abhorrent characterizations of humanity than morally neutral ones, and all of these anime that stir controversy is a reflection of said fact. Having said that, Redo of Healer is willing to go way farther down into the abyss instead of just looking at it from the edge of the hole like Goblin Slayer does, then seeing scenes for shock value when you use telescope to look. For the reason Goblin Slayer thinks it’s above an Isekai while commodifying abhorrence to draw attention, I actually find Redo of Healer to be less offensive.

[funkymbtifiction]

How I Write, How I Dream: ESTP Edition

Mod: An ESTP asked permission to submit this, since she noticed I do not have an ESTP ‘How I write stories’ description in the archive to match this series. What follows is in her own words.

ESTP: How I Write, How I Dream

So this submission is like 6+ years late topically, I think, but it’s an understatement to say I get side-tracked easily. First I had to be self-aware enough to actually determine my type with confidence, and then I had to remember to write this up. Hopefully it’s an edition that’s better late than never – in any case, I thought it might be fun to contribute, given the frequent lack of Se-dom voices in things like this.

I’m aware that I might be in a comparatively small group as a regular ESTP writer, let alone one familiar with personality typology, but I wrote my first short story at nine for a 4th grade assignment, and then my first full story/intended book when I was eleven, (both of which I immediately proceeded to act out on the playground), so it’s sort of always been a part of my normal retinue of hobbies/coping mechanisms/diversions/distractions. Usually I find that I write the most when I’m bored or otherwise dissatisfied with my real life – sort of using it to spice things up with more exciting events, even if they’re regrettably fictional. I also suspect that I use writing to experience all the interesting things I find myself unable to physically do, at least for the moment – not unlike what your ISTP contributor described. I think sometimes that I use it to subconsciously work through certain concepts, too, until I understand them holistically. It’s like it gives me a way to actually engage and interact with a philosophical concept through tangible expression – through embedding it into [fictional] human behavior. Like how I understand the nuances of the concept of apostasy better for having walked through the plot of Silence (2016) with Scorsese than I would have if it was still just a definition in a theology textbook. Application helps me. (I also had a counselor a while back who told me that I used my writing to work through the emotions I hate to process in real life, but I was never wholly convinced of that or the connection of my plots to my real life events, so jury’s out, I guess.)

When I was a kid, I liked to read a fair-ish amount. Spies were oftentimes my favorite topic, but I also wanted eagerly to be one and owned probably every kid spy gadget ever manufactured for sale at the Spy Museum in D.C., to which I dragged my parents practically every weekend so I could crawl through air vents, etc. However, my favorite children’s series of all was actually the Ingo series by the late Helen Dunmore, which provided me with exciting, nature-based, and [mostly] emotionally satisfying adventures in my lifelong favorite unpredictable environment – underwater. (I also dragged my parents constantly to our local aquarium.) As I got older, the frequency of my reading dropped, and I now find myself usually pulled more towards nonfiction.

[Note – I just realized a lifelong quirk with me and books. I’m sort of ridiculously set on *seeing* the books I own. I mean, I know what I own, but I still constantly get out every book I own on a particular topic just to see them all at once. It makes the knowledge more cohesive for me to concentrate it visually, I guess. Even just the covers. Anyway.]

My writing habits are kind of awful – in that, like alluded to above, I pretty much only write when I either a) am seized by a great idea, or else b) have nothing better to do. I have little ambition to actually publish or anything like that, regardless of encouragement, and I prefer to think of my writing as just a diversion, an amusement for myself alone (though I do crave minimal approval, as I do in anything). In any case, as soon as the pressure of a schedule is attached to my writing, it drains of all joy for me. Much like your ISTP contributor described, I think I hover somewhere between plotter and pantser, depending on the story. Too much planning leads to my feeling like I have no incentive to actually write it, as I’ve already experienced it, and too little leaves me spinning aimlessly with no real direction. I write both prose and screenplays, and the rule seems to hold true for both, overall. Also, whenever I have a problem in my plotting or characters or whatever, I find that I have to step away, go be busy with something else, sometimes for a long while, and when I come back everything just falls into place. I guess unconscious Ti and/or Ni finding solutions? I’m not totally sure how/why that happens.

As my inclusion of screenplay format may suggest, I experience my stories in an incredibly visual way. I think sometimes that my narratives come across very much like movies, with all the requisite limitations and usual lack of character introspection. I feel like I pretty much focus on the observable actions of my characters – I find describing any kind of extended rumination highly unnatural, at least most of the time. Even my planning is highly visual. I have a tendency to graph, chart, draw, and plaster my options all over the walls. It’s ridiculous sometimes, but in many cases I just have to be able to see them all next to each other, even if there’s no other information provided. Like my books, mentioned earlier. It helps clarify my plot choices in my mind. It’s also a quirk/weakness of mine that I am often entirely dependent on outside images for descriptions. I need to find a real person, place, or thing to base my fictional ones on physically if I hope to have any kind of concrete knowledge to allow description. Again, it helps solidify them/it in my mind.

I have another weakness in my writing that often results in much incredulous laughter – I’m often entirely blind to any hidden meaning or symbolism in my own writing. I might get the vaguest sense of something being a good line, but be unsure why until my ISFJ friend starts praising my deep, archetypal references and crafting – and then staring at me when I clearly have no idea what she means. It’s happened several times by this point, and though it makes me laugh, I’ll just blame it on the subconscious inferior Ni. I pretty much never have any kind of goal of being symbolic or laden with deep meaning. If I were ever to try that, I think it would massively stress me out.

In terms of editors, beta readers, or whatever else we want to call those who give solicited criticism – that’s just what I need/want. Criticism. For the most part, I’m incredibly thick-skinned about my writing and would be absolutely fine if someone told me that it was utterly terrible and the whole thing needed revising down to the very concept. That may be because I think many of my concepts are lackluster to start with. But nothing frustrates me so quickly as readers unwilling to actually [and harshly] criticize. I always tell them that I want him/her to rip it to shreds. I mean, that’s the only way it’ll get better. (I’ve made mistakes before by assuming that other writers feel this way, too – my sister did not appreciate my input.)

I write almost exclusively dramas these days, I guess, though of varying subtypes. (I also maintain the availability/ready accessibility of about 10+ stories at any given time of active writing. I bounce between them sometimes based on what I’m feeling like at the moment or what I have a new thought about.) I have a sort of historical drama thing that takes place in the 1680s, a modern drama prompted by a premise of genetic engineering, a Most Dangerous Game kind of hunting/weapons thing, a detective story in the immediate aftermath of WWII, a classic deserted island story, a thing involving the phenomenon of stigmata… the list goes on and shifts constantly.

However, while I’ve typically enjoyed writing, here’s the omnipresent rub – engaging with it for any great amount of time makes me really unhealthy emotionally. I’m pretty sure that after like two or three days primarily working on a story without other overriding priorities, or like six or seven with those scattered distractions, (at best), I’m plummeting straight down to my inferior functions. My historical stories do this even more quickly, because they oftentimes seem to require more mental effort. I get super irritable, drown in self-loathing, start to think that everything real that I want is never going to happen – it’s really not good. The fact of the matter is that while writing is a fun diversion oftentimes, I go insane doing it for too long, because I need to get out and engage. (Thanks to my pesky Se-dom, daring to ask for more than just incessant fidgeting.)

When I do write, however, I’m known for my in-depth research, my character-driven plots, lines some people in my life seem to think are witty or something, and emotional depth, believe it or not. I’ve been complimented on it, as well as my tendency to accurately portray mental/emotional illness. I don’t know. I’ve never thought I was overly talented at such things, but then again, I never paid much attention. Even this write-up has been hard – analyzing my writing like this. It’s not a strength of mine to scrutinize my own habits.

After all, I’m busy – I have to go blast Maroon 5 as I jump off a 20-foot wall yelling, “Parkour!”

I am an ESTP, remember? ;-)

[teacherintransition]

The Ugly American...who? Me?

My wife an I have become avid travelers and the closing of countries due to Covid-19 has hit us in the heart...

The time at home has given me chance to read about travel and given me pause to re-evaluate my behavior while abroad in the past and for the future...

The Ugly American, a novel written in the late 1950’s and which was a The New York Times Best Seller, was written by political scientist Eugene Burdick and writer and former U.S. Navy captain William Lederer. The book took a much needed look at the behavior of Americans traveling abroad; from the rugged backpacker hiking India to the field State Department personnel actually presenting the “official face” of our country in the international community. Prior to World War 1, most international travel by Americans was done by the wealthy elite among society. The “common” man through the tribulations of war, was given the opportunity to experience European culture and a yearning for seeing the world was fostered. If fact, there was a saying after WWI, “how you gonna keep Johnny on the farm after he’s seen Paree (Paris)?” The travel bug... wanderlust was born in the hearts of the middle class and gave rise to this phenomenon in film and in books written by Jack Kerouac, Cheryl Strayed, Ernest Hemingway up to contemporary writers like Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Sean Greer and Elizabeth Gilbert. Even Rick Steves who has become a knowledgeable source of traveling information with his travel guide series, has presented an informative open minded view of travel abroad.

All of these written treasures of traveling the world unveils to readers the magic that is to be found by stepping out your front door. The Ugly American presents a scathing look at how the “American” while overseas, displays an arrogant , intolerant, dismissive view of cultures far older and in many cases, more refined than ours. Burdick and Lederer’s book is set within the intrigues of international diplomacy and how that uniquely American view creates failure in the establishment of effective foreign policy. The authors listed and many more besides, instruct their readers to varying degrees to take more note of the intricate nuances a traveler should pay attention to and to show respect and admiration for the centuries of history and culture that exists all around us and that is not American. There is a common thread throughout all their works about what is missed when we stand outside and dismiss the uniqueness of every nation we might visit, instead of immersing oneself and appreciating it in a culture not our own. The “ugly American” has become a mythos of how Americans respond critically to anything that is not “MURICAN!”

Several other factors besides short sighted American foreign policy have contributed to the yoke placed on Americans traveling: cutthroat business practices while dealing with European, Asian and African countries; missionaries whose demonstrate a dismissive view of spiritual practices that have existed for millennia and, quite honestly, the behavior of tourists while abroad. Many experienced travelers draw a clear distinction between the tourist and the traveler. Kathryn Walsh differentiates the two in the following way:

Tourists

It's usually easy for locals to spot a tourist among them. A tourist may carry a camera, guidebook and map at all times and wear the same clothing he'd wear at home. Tourists tend to stay in their comfort zones a bit; they may speak only English instead of trying to learn phrases in the local language; stick to major cities instead of venturing to smaller towns or off-the-beaten-path locales; and stay in areas where the amenities are similar to what they have at home.

Travelers

Generally speaking, someone who considers himself a traveler will try to immerse himself in the local culture rather than standing out. If you're a traveler, you may try to explore the less-traveled areas and explore locations where tourism doesn't drive the economy. You'll interact with locals. Your goals for a trip will be to learn and experience new things, rather than to take a relaxing break from everyday life. A traveler may consider a trip a journey rather than a vacation.

The traveler presents a deferential, respectful and admiring view of the nations they are visiting and adopt the wise phrase from antiquity: “when in Rome do as the Romans.”

There is nothing wrong with being a tourist, often it is the less expensive approach to travel, unless you become the arrogant American tourist then perhaps you need to reassess. Travel is a big part of my retirement plans and goals, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. Two highly anticipated trips with two years involved in planning were rescheduled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a disappointment we shared with thousands of tourists and travelers alike; and further postponements may continue to confront us. Perspective is needed in such a situation as being denied travel is far below other struggles this event has presented all of us. That being said, it has been a terrible disappointment down to my bones. We’ve missed much needed fellowship time with great friends, the excitement of seeing new places, the immersion in the culture and history of the locales, and, for me personally, our yearly travels have been my muse and inspiration for so much of my art. It’s akin to being very thirsty and having only a few drops to suffice. Introspection is the course of action when hopefully contemplating the possibility of the trips occurring.

To satiate the urge, we’ve read and watched travel programs in the interim and have evaluated our connection to the Ugly American concept? Are we ...them? In our past travels, have we appeared at all dismissive of the people and practices of the places we’ve visited? My wife and I have always been in awe of our travel destinations, so I feel fairly confident that we have not displayed the aforementioned arrogance of many American travelers. The thought that then arises is how much we have not allowed ourselves to be immersed in the culture; which, in the long run, is a detriment to us more than anyone. Our minds are open and willing to become part of the places we visit, but if we eliminate the brusque nature of so many Americans while overseas, what is the stumbling block that draws such distinctions when traveling? I fully concede that most Americans feel they have little to learn from many places on this planet, more is the pity, and there is much flawed thinking that goes into this mindset; but what fundamental differences exist between the cultures? I came across a very enlightening blog article written by Alain Veilell that was spot on in identifying the differences. Veilell simply observed that we run on different clocks. Not literal clocks but a “clock” obsessed with structure and deadline.... hello Americans! Veilell notes that Europeans start late and end late, while American and many Asian cultures start early and end early. Americans tend to view the un-regimented approach as being akin to laziness. I coached soccer and baseball for many years and many of my Latino players would not be as punctual as my other players. They were as talented and competitive, but their homes weren’t ruled by the seconds on a clock. Dinner started later, lasted longer, the dishes could wait... the priority was the quality of interaction with the people your with... ah, there it is ... sort of.

The average American meal last twenty minutes, while the average meal in Spain, for example, lasts two hours. They certainly don’t eat as much as Americans so why all the extra time? Why should time even be a factor so often? It’s the conversation and fellowship that is the priority not timing. While without question, the structured regimentation is a contributing factor to the American commitment to financial success, it also contributes to hypertension, stress, anxiety, depression and conflict that might be avoided with having an extra glass of wine and talking and not worrying if dinner is on schedule. Taking a little more time, enjoying the moment, letting serendipity reign may not be part and parcel of the Puritan work ethic; but it plays a helluva big part in realizing “La Dolce Vita.” This perception of time throws the rhythm off for many American tourists and makes us the ones to call the front desk complaining that the folks in room 210 are just too loud at 9:30 pm. The local population may just be getting ready to start dinner at that time. Remember, “when in Rome do as the Romans?”

While traveling, often American tourists view differences as a personal affront. “ I have to ask for ice?’ “What, no air conditioner?’ “They call the restroom the toilet?’ “Ugh how vulgar ... and a bidet? You must be kidding?” Truth to tell, Americans also suffer from mischaracterization from travelers from abroad as well. If I had a nickel for ever foreign exchange student who thought that all of Texas was a giant ranch with everyone riding horses and wearing cowboy hats. I think though that visitors to our country more often than not allow themselves to be pleasantly surprised than to have their feathers ruffled. It seems that we allow the “ours is better than yours” mentality to outweigh the magic of the unknown and the different. Every spiritual guiding ethos advocates living in the moment, treasure what is happening right now, greet the unknown with hope not hostility. The ugly American leaves no room for such an upbeat approach. Superiority mentality leave very little to treasure in this magnificent world other than what is yours and that limits learning, excitement, growth and just the pure joy that comes from trekking this world.

Is this assessment of mine a blanket judgement? No, not at all but there is some truth to it and there is something to be learned. As I self analyze, I found that I may harbor some of these traits and it’s good that I have time to stand back and look ...to learn. The worthy goal of being an affirming member of this global community is a purpose that I seek; and the rewards are far beyond just being intrinsic but rewards the cultures you visit with an admiration and respect they deserve. As these thoughts have been put down, it reignites the hopes that the planned journeys come to realization with the anticipation of more to follow. No more ugly Americans, British, Japanese or what have you, just eager travelers wanting to see and experience all that this world has to offer. Happy travels my friends.

Burdick, Eugene Lederer, William; The Ugly American ; Norton Publications; 1958

Veilel, Alain; “Why don’t Europeans Travel to Cancun?;” Quora; October 8, 2020

Walsh, Kathryn. "Differences Between a Tourist and a Traveller" traveltips.usatoday.com, https://traveltips.usatoday.com/differences-between-tourist-traveller-103756.html. 5 April 2021.

Photo from https://www.myheritage.com/

Photo from https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL13640A/Ernest_Hemingway

[sosation]

On the Passing of Michael Brooks

I only relatively recently became aware of Michael, less than a year ago. In that time he has impacted my life more than any other media personality, more than anyone I’ve never met.

Even though the first time I voted was for Obama in 2008, my political consciousness really began during my 2nd stint of college at UTA circa 2014/15. My history undergrad was waking me up to the power dynamics and hegemonic systems that exist in our society. I was beginning to understand geopolitics under the tutelage of Dr. Joyce Goldberg and getting really wrapped up in 20th century diplomacy. The Snowden leaks had happened and the Michael Brown demonstrations in Ferguson were drawing attention to the militarization of our police forces and their tactics on US citizens. I began to see capitalism as consisting of, and causing and contributing too, countless problems. Then, the 2016 election cycle stoked my already burning interests.

During this time, there was little “left-tube” to be found. Since 2012, streaming on our X Box has been my wife and I’s primary means of entertainment. Slowly more and more of our time was being spent on YouTube. The Young Turks was really the only progressive voice on Youtube, to my knowledge, at that time. (I wasn’t yet aware of Pakman, Kulinski, Seder and Brooks.) And even though they were my primary source of news, I wasn’t crazy about the hyperbolic presentation, Cenk’s ego, or some of the attitudes expressed by various hosts at various times. That being said, I learned a lot. I was exposed to many many great journalists and they certainly helped me solidify and articulate many of the arguments I had been thinking and feeling during this time. I even became a Texas Wolf-Pac Volunteer right after Trump’s election. 

I ended my bachelor’s and master’s programs under the Trump presidency. (May ‘17, Dec ‘18 respectively.) During this time I read and wrote more than I ever have in my life. Under Dr. Christopher Morris, Dr. Patryk Babiracki, and Dr. Pawel Goral, I read Marxist historical theory and studied the history of the Cold War  from the perspectives of the US, USSR and Europe. I also began watching less and less TYT and more Secular Talk, David Pakman, and David Doel. While these shows are great, there was little to no international perspectives or geopolitical discussions happening. (Doel being Canadian accounts for something but, IMO, anyone who lives in the 5 Eyes is hardly a non-western perspective and therefore significantly less valuable in regards to gaining the insight of the peripheries of the globe. As the hegemonic “leader” of the world, Canadians, New Zealanders, Aussies and Brits, can point and laugh at the US all they want but they are taking our lead-systematically and economically.That’s not to say that their perspective is unimportant, just not the same as those outside the western sphere) Furthermore, there is still even less of a historical perspective being represented in regards to current events anywhere on YouTube. No one seems to have a long dureé, an understanding of how history plays out- again and again, and how capitalism is responsible for much of our recent history. Marx did. Michael did. 

I began my teaching career in earnest last summer, 2019, as a Geography teacher. First time I’ve ever had a salary and the first time that I didn’t have to wear a hat (or hairnet) to work. My lunch was 2nd lunch, 12:35-1:15. Here in Texas, The Majority Report was live and it began showing up consistently on my youtube feed so I began watching them while I ate my sandwich and apple, before students from guitar club would show up for a quick lesson before 6th period. I had watched TMR before, particularly live streams on twitch during the first few primary debates this cycle. They reminded me a little too much of an east coast morning talk show for me to take them too seriously at first but I eventually began to see that while Sam is--well-- Sam, the others on the show had quite a lot to say and clear, logical and articulate reasons for their positions...especially this guy Michael. Once I heard that he had his own show it quickly became the most listened to podcast in my feed. (This in itself is no small feet. I’ve been listening to podcasts for hours a day (sometimes 8) since 2012. It, too, no doubt contributed to my education and understanding of our world during this same time period but that is another blog all itself.)

Michael was everything that I was looking for. He was unabashedly a Marxist. He was intelligent and enjoyed rigorous thinking and leftist theory. He was hilarious and did fantastic impressions. He also was compassionate, kind and empathetic. He was a humanist, in the truest sense of the word and he understood, and articulated to me, that Socialism is a humanist movement. After I became a patron, I once asked him on Discord what his credentials were and he said that his Bachelor’s was in International Relations, which explained so much. Again, he was the only media personality that I was aware of that was knowledgeable and curious about the same things I was. He understood history. He valued history and its importance, so much so that he dedicated a separate Sunday show just to “Illicit Histories” where he would invite Historians from all over the world to discuss leftist movements in their own countries and how we could apply those lessons here and vice versa. This was it. This is what was missing from our national discourse--an international perspective and voice, and a historical perspective and voice. Michael was both and he was damn good at it. 

The Michael Brooks Show was an inspiration. Michael, Matt Lech and David Griscom were smart, eloquent, young men who articulated the systemic failures of our time, who critically discussed and analyzed our current political discourse and who pondered possible solutions based in history. The guests of TMBS, the network Michael created, really were the shining feature. Ben Burgis, Artesia Balthrop, Molly Webster, Glenn Greenwald, Adolf Reed, President Lula De Silva, Slavoj Žižek , Noam Chomsky, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Richard Wolff...the list goes on and on and on. These people brought so much insight to the state of our world. Professors, Journalists, people who have spent their lives working on the cause, a cause for a better future, one based in humanity and empathy. Michael was able to bring his own empathy for humanity into his interviews, asking thoughtful direct questions that got to the heart of the issue-- while simultaneously bringing levity to a serious topic by making jokes in the voice of Gandhi, Mandela, Obama, or Bernie, to name a few. He, fucking, got it man. He understood how the world was connected. He understood that we are ALL humans, and that we all deserve to be treated with dignity, and he understood that Marx was right about a ton of shit and he wasn’t scared to remind you of that. 

Michael, for me, was an exemplar. He was a role model. I looked up to him. I had no idea he was only 13 months older than me, I thought he was probably in his early 40’s just based on the amount of shit that he knew. My personal 10 year goal was to be on his show. I wanted to either become a writer or go back into academia. I even wrote into a show a couple of months back and asked him which was a better choice. He was honored to be asked such a heavy question but didn’t feel comfortable giving that kind of life advice and I don’t blame him. He recommended that I continue teaching high school if that’s what I enjoy doing, and I do, and I likely will. He has shown me how to speak up for ideals that are right, regardless of what people think. Like, I understood that in the abstract, but watching someone do it multiple times a week really put it in my head that I need to advocate for my position publicly. I tell people that I’m a marxist- which in Texas is unheard of, even among leftists. Mostly due to people not understanding labels and what that even means. So I tell them. Thanks to David’s weekly recommended readings I haven’t stopped reading leftist theory even though I finished grad school over a year and a half ago. If TMBS never existed I never would have had the opportunity to read any of that. 

My heart bleeds for Matt and David. I can’t imagine what they’re going though. I want them to continue, to keep the community alive in his name. But I completely understand if that is just too painful. 

I was thinking earlier, trying to find an appropriate historical comparison to his passing. There are many but as a North Texan, the one that I ended up landing on was the passing of Dimebag Darrell Abbot. He did a lot. He accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He inspired many to do things like him. It was entirely unexpected and not one person, not one, has a bad thing to say about the guy. Dimebag was adored. He listened to people, strangers, fans. He was kind and open-hearted and treated everyone with respect. Which made it extra hard when he passed. The same can be said for Michael. For Michael, since Socialism is more than just music, he inspired us to educate ourselves, to ask questions, to remember the periphery-Latin America, Africa, and Asia,-- to remember history and value it, to be compassionate, to educate others and to be active in our own communities. 

He will be sorely missed. The one thing I keep telling myself is that his death has the potential to bring even more attention to his message-- to help further catapult this movement into something undeniable. To bring more awareness to how power works and to finally activate us to become, as Michael said at Harvard on Feb 1, 2020: machiavellian.

 “...we still have to put work into reminding everybody that (Dr. MLK Jr.) was on the left. He wasn’t a guy who came out once a year and said ‘everybody should treat each other nicely. ...The other thing I loved about this speech was he talked about the fallacy- that certain Christians misunderstand love as a seeding of power. And then Nietzsche came along and rejected christian morality because he thought it was denying someone’s vitality- the will to power in a healthy sense, and he said ‘Love without power is sentimental and anemic. And power without love is abusive and corrosive’ I’m paraphrasing. And that was when I saw, I thought, ‘well here, ok, we know the left-wing Dr. King. Well here is the machiavellian Dr King, and I love it.’ I want the left to have Machiavelli, so we can have the strategy, the ruthlessness, the clarity, to actually win these battles. And be ruthless with institutions. And then I want us to learn how to be really kind to each other, welcoming of a broad set, and actually have a movement that has the capacity to do that.”

Let’s do the best we can to make that happen. Educate yourself about power. Educate yourself about ideologies. Read Marx and Engels. Read Slavoj Žižek and Adolf Reed. Read Michaels book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. Don’t get caught up in identity politics. Never lose sight of class dynamics. Use this knowledge to educate others and make informed decisions. Register to vote. Run for office. Effectuate real change. Do the intellectual rigor that was happening on TMBS every week, multiple times a week. Thank you for all that you brought to us Michael, you will be sorely missed and I hope to see you at the clearing at the end of the path. 

Anthony Sosa

7-21-20

[sinfulfolk]

On Writing: Technique & Characterization in John le Carré

John le Carré Obituary in the Guardian October 19, 1931 — December 12, 2020

David John Moore Cornwell began writing novels about espionage and spies when he was working as a full-time intelligence agent for the British foreign service MI6 – a group whose very existence was not acknowledged by the British government until 1994.  He wrote under the pen name John le Carré (“John the Square” in French) only because foreign intelligence service were forbidden to publish under their own names. When his third novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) became an international best-seller, he left MI6 to become a full-time author, but obviously part of him has always stayed in the intelligence services – for all of his books concern themselves with secrets, lies, espionage and spycraft.

I’ve enjoyed reading John le Carré from time to time over the years, but only really became entranced with his craft last year, when I happened upon his masterwork Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and was enthralled with the subtle humor, the detailed characterizations and the incredibly slow pace of a highly suspenseful novel. How, I wondered, did le Carré manage to maintain tension in a novel that focused on a retired old bureaucrat named George Smiley?  Smiley is pudgy, dowdy, old-school English, wears thick glasses, stutters when he talks at all, and when he does speak, expounds in soft syllables. He is a paper-pusher, an analyst, and has probably never held a gun in his life. But somehow, John le Carré makes this novel about Smiley crackle with suspense, and the novel kept me glued to the narrative for 100s of pages. It is a thick book, and a very complicated one, and I even know exactly how it ends, but I never once thought of putting it down. How did he do it?

There are many tools le Carré uses to build his work – like a pointillist master painter, every tidy English scene, every spare sentence and every bit of dialogue builds a gradual picture of enormous tension and incredible momentum. I can’t detail the volumes of education I gained about how to improve my own writing when I analyzed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and more recently The Russia House, but I can illuminate a few bits of craft that le Carré is teaching me now.

First is the fact that le Carré paints a vivid picture when he describes any character. In fact, le Carré exaggerates when he paints a character. For example, he describes a new character entering a scene with metaphor (not simile) – writing “The first to speak was a distraught, floating man with baby-pink cheeks and baby-clear eyes and a flaxen jacket to match his straggling flaxen hair. His voice floated too” (40). The vividness of this character description stays with the reader for much of the rest of the book, and from time to time le Carré reinforces it with a slight nod towards the “floating” quality of this man’s look – what is interesting is that this very quality later becomes a plot point, as the Americans distrust this man for his qualities of not-quite-there. le Carré forces readers to see characters as vivid movement on the page, and uses these slightly exaggerated characterizations as a way of burning the character into the reader’s mind, so that there is no doubt what the character is like when he later references them. Painting brightly at the outset allows your characters to last longer in the reader’s mind.

The other thing I am beginning to learn from reading closely into le Carré’s work is that a character’s interior life will only take you so far. What I write well, without conscious effort, is interior psycho-drama in which you experience a character’s inner world as they see it, without the intervention of outside elements such as dialogue or even physical descriptions of the surrounding terrain. It is the one thing that literature can do very well that is nearly impossible to replicate in film. For in film, there is no true imaginative interior monologue, no way of seeing the world in terms of interior metaphors and interior voice. There is, of course, the filmic device of a voice-over, but even that doesn’t provide the scrim of dream-like narrative that we as human beings overlay on visceral experience to make a sense-story of life.

We constantly are making a story of everything around us, relating it to other things, and this sense of a world-being-made-of-metaphor is what literature does so very well. When I go out in the world, every person and thing I encounter reminds me of other experiences – I am constantly building a chain of connections between my past experience and my past imaginative life and the life I am currently encountering. I am never just “out of my head” (except perhaps in moments of focused physical attention, such as playing sports or sex). Many great novelists such as DeLillo, Faulkner or McCarthy, spend much of their energy creating a tapestry that resembles this inner life, and that is why their best work is nearly un-filmable.

However, the more I read novelists who are telling a compelling story and are writing for plot, the more I am discovering that good literature can do both psycho-drama and external plot. To establish the point that le Carré is not all about plot and character description, let me first show that le Carré also does the interior psycho-drama thing well. He demonstrates this skill in chapter 7:

She pictured him a waif… lying in semi-darkness on the top berth reserved for luggage, listening to the smokers’ coughing and the grumble of drunks, suffocating from the stink of humanity… while he stared at the appalling things he knew and never spoke of. What kind of hell must that be, she wondered, to be tormented by your own creations? To know that the absolute best you can do in your career is the absolute worst for mankind? (172).

This passage serves as a good synecdoche for the book’s treatment of inner life. It moves clearly from one character’s apprehension of another in the world, and a clear description of how she pictured this person in their ‘waifish’ environment, to her conception of the character’s mindset and concerns. The passage touches on particulars of experience, then implies dark secrets, and then moves naturally to the broader questions of their shared humanity and the big questions of human morality. It is a solid bit of interior monologue.

What le Carré is beginning to teach me though is how much more powerful such an complex and emotionally full interior space can be when it is prefaced and impacted by events and physical locations that are clearly described and that have action associated with them that has no “discussion” in the reader’s own head. Motion in the exterior world can be as suspenseful and entrancing as motion in the interior world. In The Russia House, le Carré writes mostly a straightforward narrative full of precise observations, character descriptions that are exacting and precise, and dialogue that sings off the page. Here is one sample passage that demonstrates his skill in this critical exterior narrative:

The woman was trembling. Not only with the hands that held her brown perhaps-bag but also at the neck, for her prim blue dress was finished with a collar of old lace and Landau could see how it shook against her skin and how her skin was actually whiter than the lace. Yet her mouth and jaw were set with determination and her expression commanded him.

“Please sir, you must be very kind and help me,” she said as if there were no choice. …. What happened next happened quickly, a street-corner transaction, willing seller to willing buyer. The first thing Landau did was look behind her, past her shoulder. He did that for his own preservation as well as hers. But his end of the room was empty, the area dark. “Got it with you then, have you dear?” he asked, peering down and smiling like a friend. “Yes.”

What I’m learning from le Carré is that very precise description that does not paint with emotion, but instead paints with detail – every detail in the woman’s description denotes terror, every moment adding fear, and the whole scene creates a moment of enormous suspense for both the reader and the characters. Then, le Carré also adds dialogue that has awkward language, but also implores, finished by a commanding note at the end. Finally, there is the rush to action, coupled with the caution of looking around at the crowd. The dialogue is masterful, because it is so spare, with few adverbs at all. Landau, the character, gives a very English reply – he asks about the manuscript, but the manners he use imply that he is trying to be casual, trying to act as if it is of no great concern. Even though we as readers know that the rest of this 400+ page novel depends upon this scene, and even though both characters act as if their lives depend upon what happens with this manuscript handoff, the exchange is a studied moment of casual conversation. This, for me, demonstrates something I could take to heart: casual “throwaway” moments can be just as dramatic – even more so – than moments that are overwrought with adverbs and emotion.

Overall, what is key to learn here for me is the necessity of moving vividly outside the character’s heads and into the world around them in a forceful way. The action can be constrained – as le Carré demonstrates with finesse in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – but it must be external to the protagonist’s head-talk. If the writer makes the external world come to life in a very real way to the reader, then the internal landscape will matter even more when we return to that inner monologue. The truth is in the intersection between this outer world and this inner world – this is where the writer must make their art.

Since I wrote this post, I was inspired to complete my own spy novel, which is a bit of a twist on the Cold War and War on Terror espionage so well described by le Carré. My novel Wilderness of Mirrors will be released in 2021.

                                               On Writing: Technique & Characterization in John le Carré was originally published on Ned Hayes

[recklessdarkness]

Please don’t get upset with me, but I’m really curious as to how someone could like both Reylo and Phasma. I see Phasma (at least in supplementary materials) as a unique feminist character, while Reylo is a ship often criticized as sexist. How do you see it?

Hey. Well, first about Reylo: as any fictional couple, much like fictional characters in general, it can be seen in many different ways. For me, this is the magic of fiction.

What drove me into loving Reylo, and connecting a lot with Ben Solo as a character (to the point of calling my cat Ben after him), was how deep and complex their relationship was, and Ben was. As a writer, and reader, and spectator, I personally enjoy complex characters and relationships. That’s one of the main reasons I love Phasma, in fact. I’ll talk about that later on.

Luckily, there’s an old post from a Tumblr user that says pretty much all of what I think about Reylo. I had to look for it for a lot to find it, but eventually I did, and I’ll link it here for you. Basically, this post says - and who writes it seems to have a lot of experience to be writing it - that Ben was a troubled child without an advocate, and that his advocate turned out to be Rey. It’s a long post and a complex analysis, but, as I said before, I enjoy complexity in fiction. It’s what drives me to it. And I encourage everyone who has the same doubt as you regarding Reylo to read this full post. It’s exactly what I think about the ship, and the two characters involved on it. I could write all of that down again, but it would be just a repetition of what that user already wrote.

But well, as I also said before, many people might not agree with that. And that’s totally okay. Seriously, I mean it. That’s also part of the “magic of fiction” that I mentioned. And, again, this is why I like it. Once more, it has to do with complexity.

About Phasma now: I definitely, completely, absolutely, more than anything else in my life as a reader/spectator (and even writer), LOVE HER. And I could talk for days on a row about why this is so true and I wouldn’t finish explaining. But I’ll say it here the simplest way I can find:

She’s goddamn COMPLEX.

She’s complex and deep to the point of many people seeing her as a pure abuser as well. This is how I see her? Not a chance. However, if we only see what she did, not along with why and how she did it, it’s the same as Kylo Ren: killed relatives, sacrificed people in order to rise, was the main figure (not main responsible, let’s emphasize that) in a program that brainwashed children to make them the perfect soldiers.

Now, is that how I see Phasma? Is that how you see Phasma? No. Because she’s not just that. Just like Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. They’re complex characters, and must be interpreted like complex characters.

But how do we interpret complex characters? Well, here’s what I think:

Phasma did all that I said above? Yes, she did. However, what drove her to do it? What was the intention, the reason behind all the horrible things she did? Emphasizing now that I said reason, not justification. Sometimes acts have no justifications at all, but every act has reasons.

Taking a minute to emphasize deeply, to make sure everyone understands this, that I’m talking about FICTIONAL CHARACTERS here. All I’m saying here is regarding FICTION. Let’s not confuse fiction with reality. To debate such topics regarding real life like I’m doing to fiction here, you have to be a mental health professional at least. That’s my opinion.

Now, do you see my point? There are a million reasons why Phasma did everything she did. Like that user did with Ben Solo in their post, I’ll briefly expose some of Phasma’s reasons for being the way she is:

- Rough childhood

- Neglective parents (briefly said on the book, but it was enough)

- Not being allowed, in pretty much any moment of her life, to show weaknesses/flaws/fears

- Anger and feeling of injustice

- Revenge wish for those who caused such injustices to her

- Physical abuse (her parents hit both Keldo and her)

- Mental abuse (Brendol blowing up Parnassos in front of her is more than enough, but there are other moments in the book)

- Sexual abuse

This last one is a theory of mine but I would definitely vouch for it - Brendol did force himself into Phasma, to show power over her, to keep her disciplined, to shape her into what he wanted her to be. I’m working on a dossier to explain to everyone why I think it happened, and I’ll definitely post it here as soon as I’m finished.

I think the right way to analyze anything in fiction is looking through all of it, not just the acts, not just the reasons for the acts. As that post I linked here said, Ben Solo has reasons for being the way he is, for actin the way he acts. Just like Rey has reasons for being the way she is and acting the way she acts, and this includes loving Ben.

And one last thing: that post was from before TRoS, so I have to add: Ben gave his life to save Rey. He indeed redeemed, for her, like that post said he would do. That doesn’t make Rey less than him, neither it makes her less powerful or less of a feminist icon (I usually say feminist icon because feminism as we know it in our society - the one that started with the suffragette and developed with all that came later on - does not exist in Star Wars’s society, so it’s kind of an add of ours to the characters). Rey defeated Palpatine. Rey gave her life to destroy the dark side of the Force. Having her life saved by Ben Solo after that doesn’t lessen anything she did. At least, not for me.

That’s basically what I think about this topic, I can say. The reason why I both ship Reylo and love Phasma is all about the complexity of the characters and/or the relation between them.

[youngjusticeslut]

Let’s Talk About Will Harper!

Hello friends, and welcome to another round of analyzing Will Harper’s character: finale edition!

This will be a (very) long post that will contain spoilers for the remainder of YJO (you’ve been warned), and is a general analysis and my feelings about his character this season. I will also make a general disclaimer: I love Young Justice, and while this season wasn’t my favorite, I still enjoyed it as a whole. However, because I love this show, I care enough to point out things I wish could have been changed, or questions I have regarding character development. I also love Will Harper, despite the things I’m about to point out. I have and will always love his character. So with that out of the way, let’s dig in! 

This season started off strong with Will. Each time Will showed up in the first 13 episodes, we learned something new about him. In ‘Princes All’, we learned that he and Artemis are roommates and co-raising his daughter. In ‘Private Security’, we learned how much he’s grown since S2, has a stable relationship with Jim and Roy, has a successful business, and cares about his daughter. In ‘Home Fires’, we learned that he participates in the ‘Superhero Mommy and Me’ playdates, and struggles a bit with being a single dad. In ‘Exceptional Human Beings’, we learned that he still holds a candle for Jade and wants her to come home because he and his daughter needs her. 

All solid, character-driven moments. Pretty strong. 

However, in the second half of the season, this character development pretty much halts, and I’m left with more questions rather than answers. My biggest qualms with Will’s character (esp in the latter half of the season), are his relationship with Lian, his relationship with Artemis, and his existence to serve other characters. 

Will’s relationship with Lian: I know, I can already hear you. ‘Ariel, you’re the biggest Will and Lian lover like wtf do you have to complain about’. Valid. But I have criticisms about how their relationship was portrayed in the latter half of the season, especially once Lian started becoming more prominent. For the normal people out there who only watch their interactions once, you probably don’t see anything wrong with it. Will is a good father, he loves his daughter, all is well. However, being the insane person that I am who has watched their interactions approximately 67 times each, I started to notice that things were... off. 

If you go back and rewatch the scenes, Will only interacts with his daughter twice this season: In ‘Private Security’, when he touches her head, and in ‘Leverage’, where they share the adorable moment over dinner and she gets another head-ruffle. That’s about... it. Heck, Will met Lian on Valentine’s day, and yet, on a Valentine’s day episode, there’s no mention of it, and he instead has Violet babysit her so he can hook up with Artemis. Every other moment involving Lian, you’ll notice that she’s usually in the care of Artemis. Artemis is the one who administers bath time and who snuggles her when she’s scared of a thunderstorm. Artemis is the one who is usually encouraging her and has a pet-name for her. Despite an entire season of moments with our favorite toddler, we have very little indication of what her relationship with her father is actually like. 

In the comics, Roy and Lian are incredibly close. He isn’t a perfect father, but he loves Lian and very clearly shows it. In Young Justice... Well, I know Artemis loves her niece. It’s the little things that I wish would have been different. Small changes. Like Will kissing Lian’s head before Violet puts her to bed in ‘Overwhelmed’. Will being the one to have a nickname for her. Will could have been the one about to give Lian a bath while Artemis has coffee with Helga and Jefferson. As a viewer, it’s more important to me to see a father’s relationship with his daughter, rather than an aunt’s. Especially when this father-daughter relationship was so crucial to Roy’s character in the comics. 

Also, I’ll make an addendum and say I know Will and comic!Roy’s personalities are different. I know Will is more stoic and has a harder time expressing emotions. But I think there is a middle ground between ‘interacts with daughter via 2 head touches’ and ‘smothering her with kisses’. And I truly hope this is developed more in Season 4. 

Will’s relationship with Artemis: I will go to my grave saying that I don’t understand why Will and Artemis’ relationship was a plotline this season. I really would have liked them to remain platonic, they served as excellent roommates/family to each other. However, I respect the writers’ decisions, and on a surface level, it makes sense. Let’s think about it for a moment. Artemis and Will are both single, and both hurt by a previous lover. They have someone that connects them (Lian), and are pretty attractive people. Thinking about it from a totally non-biased standpoint, I can see why they would form feelings for each other. 

I just... don’t care for how the relationship worked out. I wish we’d gotten some more explanation as to what they truly saw in each other, aside from a few longing glances. Was it a matter of convenience? Was it a matter of grief? I don’t know. I wish I knew. I would have liked to see Will’s reactions in episode 25. In episode 10, he was still hung up on Jade. And yet in episode 25... nothing. Not even a thought when he kisses her sister? A glance at a photograph? Did he regret it? What were his emotions? 

I thought his feelings for Artemis came out of left field, because other than two weird glances, we didn’t know anything about how he felt about her. We have one scene in which she admires his domesticity and how he interacted with Lian, but nothing on the reverse. Maybe it was solely physical. Who knows? At the end of the day, we’re at the same place we started: with both of them in a platonic, roommates/family situation. So.. why go down the romance path at all? Now I’m left with more questions, and little answers.

Will’s existence to serve other characters: I know, I know. This sounds super harsh. I promise I have a point, though, if you bear with me. In the first half of YJO, as mentioned previously, Will has direction, thoughts, and motivations. He owns a company and wants to help Dick realize his errors in ‘Private Security’. He chats up Lynn in ‘Home Fires’. He tries to reason with Jade and bring her back home in ‘Exceptional Human Beings’. Again, this halts in the latter half of 3b. For the rest of the season, Will is essentially an accessory to Artemis’ journey. His presence in the plot is to exist around Artemis and serve as her potential love interest, without any real thoughts, feelings or motivations of his own. How does he feel about having a full house? No clue. Is he concerned for his daughter’s well-being? How is he doing, personally, in his life? I wish I knew. What about his relationship with Kaldur? Did they have a falling out, are they still close? Does he still talk with his former friends? What about his relationship with Jim, Roy, Ollie and Dinah? So many questions, not enough answers. 

Again, I’ll bring up the scene and my analysis above on when he and Artemis kiss. Though, I’m going to take a swift turn and put a positive spin on this scene for a moment. Because outside of all this, I do feel bad for Will. You can tell that he tried, by setting up a romantic dinner. Has Will Harper ever even been on a date? I’m sure he hadn’t done many, if at all, with Jade. This poor guy, probably only ever been with Jade until she left him and (likely) broke his heart. He was just listening to her by moving on, hoping that maybe he had a chance with her sister Artemis. You can tell he’s grown as a character, and took the liberty to set everything up and do it the right way. And in the end, he was still turned down. Jury’s out on whether he was actually relieved, or lying and lamenting a girl he really cared for, but still. I have to give him kudos here. Poor Will. 

If I could rewrite the Will and Artemis scenes from episode 25, I would change a couple of things. I would not have had Will initiate; Artemis should have initiated. She could have kissed him, and Will would have been the one to pull away. He could have said something, anything about it not being right, about still having feelings for Jade. Artemis still could have ran off and felt ashamed of herself. Upon coming home, Will would apologize, and they still could have had a talk. And everything would have worked out just the same. 

If you’re still reading, amen to you, and thanks for sticking it out! Again, I do love Will Harper. I’m just frustrated by his portrayal in the latter half of Season 3. I do hope that we get to spend some more time with him in Season 4, and hopefully his relationships with everyone will be improved upon. 

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 2 of 26

Title: City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris #1) (2002)

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Weird, Short Story Collection (kinda), Horror, Fantasy, Metafiction, Mushroompunk (yeah), LGBT Protagonist, First Person, Second Person (sort of), Third Person, Unreliable Narrator.

Rating: 8/10 

Date Began: 1/7/2020

Date Finished: 1/17/2020

This edition of City of Saints and Madmen is a collection of 4 short stories and a massive “appendiX” of other stories/notable worldbuilding pieces, all of which explore a fictional city called Ambergris. Ambergris’ world is not unlike our own, with technology that somewhat mirrors ours, but is nevertheless distinctly surreal and fantastical. One Ambergris’ most notable elements are creatures called the gray caps (or “mushroom dwellers”), who are basically humanoid mushroom people that play a role in each of the stories. 

More details and a look at each of the stories under the cut. 

Surely, after all, it is more comforting to believe that the sources on which this account is based are truthful, that this has not all, in fact, been one huge, monstrous lie? And with that pleasant thought, O Tourist, I take my leave for good. 

I’ve read VanderMeer before-- the Southern Reach trilogy (which he’s most well known for) is one of my favorite series of all time. While I haven’t seen it yet, the film Annihilation is loosely based on the first book, and I hear it’s quite good as well. This will be my first foray into other stuff he’s written.

While this may put some people off, one thing I really liked about this book was it DIDN’T paint a clear picture of Ambergris. Each of the stories focus on particular details their respective protagonists find important, so the view we have of the city is always incomplete. There are tenuous and sometimes contradictory connections between the stories that often made me wonder what’s true/real, a recurring theme throughout the stories. Several of the stories are works of fiction within Ambergris, which skews perceptions even further. To me, all of this made the setting much more interesting, and the actual revelations more rewarding.

My personal favorite stories were The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, The Transformation of Martin Lake, King Squid, and The Cage. I’ll go into more detail on all the individual pieces under the cut, but rating them individually doesn’t much sense due to the weird format.

The Main 4 Stories 

Dradin, In Love 

An unsuccessful missionary priest named Dradin comes to Ambergris to plead assistance from a former mentor. However, when he spots an unknown woman through the window of a shop, he becomes convinced he is in love and becomes obsessed with her. As an event called the Festival of the Freshwater Squid looms, the city itself begins to change in startling ways. 

From what I can tell skimming other reviews, this one trips people up because Dradin is just... a piece of shit. He’s terrible. There are some sympathetic traits to him -- he’s a fish out of water with no one to help him, he had a traumatic childhood, etc. But the more you learn about him the worse he becomes. He believes he’s superior to pretty much everyone he meets, has committed various atrocities you gradually learn about in the story, and he believes he’s in love with someone he’s never met and spends a great deal of the story fantasizing about her and their future relationship. It’s pathetic-- but it seemed pretty clear to me I’m not supposed to like him, so I read the story knowing that. 

Anyway, this wasn’t my favorite, but it is an interesting introduction to Ambergris. It’s from the perspective of an outsider, so alongside Dradin you learn things about the city such as the various religious sects, the gray caps, and the Festival. It is jarring when the Festival starts out as this whimsical parade and then goes full Purge for the rest of the story. That feeling pretty much lasts the rest of the book. 

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris 

The conceit of this one is that it’s a travel pamphlet written for tourists to provide a quick rundown of Ambergris’ early history. But the writer Duncan Shriek is so obsessed and passionate about the subject that he goes into way more detail than necessary. He also makes extensive use of the footnotes (often longer than the actual page) to (1) insult the reader, who he assumes is a stupid tourist who will skip them, (2) go on long rants about various other historians, and (3) go into intricate, intense detail or speculation about seemingly innocuous things in the main text. Honestly relatable. 

Personally, I love a good history text, so a well-done fictional one is lots of fun. The stylistic choices are engaging and a great characterization tool. The “story” really came together for me in the third act. Super eerie and surreal, and a lot of details about the gray caps and a vast underground kingdom-- but there’s still a sense of unreality, because the account exploring this may or may not be a fake. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one. 

The Transformation of Martin Lake

This one is technically two stories at once. Martin Lake is an unknown painter looking to make his big break in Ambergris, when he receives an anonymous letter inviting him to a beheading. Alternating with these novel sections are excerpts written by art critic Janice Shriek (recognize the name?) which analyze the creepy and grotesque paintings made by Martin Lake-- Ambergris’ most famous artist. 

This piece was by far my favorite of the main four. Janice evaluates various paintings created by Lake and speculates on the meanings behind them. The Gothic horror story sections star Martin, and the events within reveal the true origins of each painting. The horror story is very creepy and well written, and I really like Martin more than most of the protagonists. It’s also amusing to see just how incorrect Janice’s analyses are. Overall this was a very well structured and entertaining read. (Side note: to whom it may concern, this is where the LGBT Protagonist tag comes from.)

Also, Janice and her brother are apparently the central characters in the next book? I enjoyed both of them so I'm excited for that.

The Strange Case of X

A psychiatrist interviews a mental patient known simply as X, who believes he has invented the world of Ambergris, and he’s actually from a place called Chicago. 

I'm torn on this one because I feel I accidentally ruined it for myself. The premise sounds like a pretty cliche setup, but there's a  twist at the end that keeps it interesting. The only problem is I went into the story assuming that twist was the case. It's not even like I guessed it or picked up on hints or whatever... I just assumed the twist for whatever reason, so I got to the reveal and was just like "...yeah?" 

Anyway, this one’s a good read, just not my favorite. X is obviously a fictionalized version of VanderMeer. I didn’t find him as important in the context of this story, but notes found in his cell make up the appendiX. I *did* really enjoy the story excerpt within this one that starts like a children’s book with very simple sentences, then slowly evolves into more complex language over time until it’s like the rest of the book. The swap between third and first-person in the story, then the narrator commending himself on how clever he is, was pretty funny and good characterization. 

The appendiX 

Dr V’s Note + X’s Notes 

Technically this is 2 “stories” but they’re presented together. Dr V’s note is just an outline of the stories in the appendiX, which are apparently various notes, pamphlets, writing journal excerpts, and pieces of paper he found in X’s cell. He speculates on the meaning behind some of them. It’s a handy reference that I turned back to a few times. X’s Notes are literally just some misc author’s notes/ideas. The final note, though, draws back to the surreal scene I mentioned from The Hoegbotton Guide, which implies it is in fact real. 

The Release of Belacqua 

This one is about an actor named Belacqua who’s been typecast into a specific role, which he plays every single day. One evening at his hotel room home, he gets a super weird phone call from a woman looking for someone named Henry. Based on what happens in the story, I’m guessing Belacqua was probably supposed to be a character in one of the stories but got scrapped, and this story is literally about scrapping him. It was kinda meh for me. 

King Squid 

No, I’m not transcribing the entire title of this one -- it’s, uh, quite long. This one is sort of like The Hoegbotton Guide, except it’s a biological treatise written by a man named Frederick Madnok about the King Squid, which is Ambergris’ main economic staple. Like The Hoegbotton Guide, the author goes into intricate detail on what he considers important and makes extensive use of footnotes. The thing is, Madnok is clearly going through a nervous breakdown as he writes, and the footnotes and tangents grow weirder over time, often delving into vague memories and details about his home life as a child. 

I think this one really shines when you get to the bibliography and notice it’s longer than the rest of the story and seems to list every single book Madnok has ever read. Personally I found a lot of the titles funny, but you could be forgiven for skipping them. However, certain titles have side notes, supposedly to point out notable things about them. Some of these, however, are disturbing and clearly unrelated to the title. Eventually, Madnok goes into a full breakdown and starts to describe himself transforming into a squid -- a phenomenon he described earlier in the text. His breakdown, juxtaposed with the absolutely immaculate formatting of the story, really made this one stand out to me. 

The Hoegbotton Family History

The Hoegbottons are a merchant family. Their company Hoegbotton & Sons is basically the Wal-Mart of Ambergris and is present through multiple stories. This text is interesting for some context for the next story, but not particularly notable on its own. V’s notes at the beginning say as much. 

The Cage

One of the early Hoegbottons visits a mansion which has been condemned after an attack by the gray caps to purchase the remaining assets to resell. Among the items he finds a strange, seemingly empty birdcage which he can’t stop obsessing over. 

This was my favorite story by a long shot. It was insanely creepy and surreal with the best visuals in the book. There are references everywhere to fungi and decay, and there’s something very odd going on with Hoegbotton’s blind wife that defies explanation. And obviously, the cage itself and what’s going on with it is very disturbing. Contains very very very good body horror which is apparently just A Thing for me. Of all the stories this one had the most Southern Reach-y vibe. 

In The Hours After Death 

This one describes what happens to a man after he dies, and it’s not quite what you think. It’s a short piece and I liked the writing; very melancholy and surreal. It’s one of those stories that just incidentally takes place in Ambergris, but would be a good story outside of it, too. Until the end, that is, which ties it back to the gray caps in another creepy way. Thanks. 

The Man Who Had No Eyes 

This one is notable because apparently, in the original release, it was written entirely in code. You had to use page numbers, paragraph numbers, and lines in the rest of the book to decode it. Because this edition is an updated re-release which shifted the pages and format around, it doesn’t work anymore. Instead Dr. V provides a decoded version. However, some of the words are wrong, and the final paragraph is still in code (supposedly because V was afraid to keep going). I had to look up the story online to get the full picture. 

Anyway, I suspect this story is foreshadowing for stuff that’s going to happen in future installments. It describes the gray caps taking the city back over and flooding it, and how they mutilate a writer living in the city so he has to find alternative ways to keep writing. It mentions the goddamn cage again. It’s kind of fever-dream creepy. 

The Exchange 

Depicts a short story about the Festival of the Freshwater Squid (remember that?). Apparently this story is provided by Hoegbotton & Sons for people who purchase a safe house to avoid getting straight-up murdered during the Festival. The story itself is entertaining and has a great twist at the end, but what’s interesting is someone’s made extensive annotations to the piece describing the fallout between the author and illustrator. I found it most fun to read the base story, then go back and read the annotations-- it felt like I was seeing the same story from very different perspectives. 

Learning to Leave the Flesh 

This one’s referenced in The Strange Case of X. Unlike every other story, this actually doesn’t take place in Ambergris, but our world. However, like The Strange Case of X mentions, details and names from Ambergris seemingly appeared in the story even though he had no recollection of putting them there. 

Honestly, it’s an OK work of fiction but was probably my least favorite. Mostly it felt like lengthy flavor text for a story I’d already read. The ending was pretty good, though. 

The Ambergris Glossary + A Note on Fonts  

Putting these two together. The Glossary actually answered a lot of questions I had and clarified some events from the various stories. (”What the fuck is with the Living Saints. What the absolute fuck-- oh.”) It’s implied that some of the entries are written by Duncan Shriek. Hi, again. 

A Note on Fonts describes the various fonts from different stories as if it’s a wine tasting, which was hilarious. 

[kingofthewilderwest]

Do you feel Hiccup’s personality in RTTE is different than his personality in the movies? If so, would you chalk it up to him still working on growing up, or say it’s the writing? Personally I just feel his personality is slightly more brash and self-centered than he is in the movies. I still love him with my whole heart of course and I LOVE RTTE but I can’t help but feel his personality is a little... off. Also apologies if you’ve already received a similar ask before.

It’s an interesting topic! I like to consider it from both a meta framework (Doylist) and in-universe accounts (Watsonian).

As you said, Hiccup’s personality feels slightly different in RTTE versus the movies. I agree. The difference is objectively there. The showrunners gave us a brasher, bolder, more aggressive Hiccup in the shows.

However, for me, difference doesn’t automatically mean OOC or off. I like to think about it as different flavors of Hiccup. It’s common for a character in a large franchise to have the same core personality and role throughout the franchise, but when you compare individual pieces of media, how the character is spun, or what traits are focused upon, differ from piece to piece. You’ll get permutations where the character feels more violent or confident or humorous, but it’s still the core character you can recognize.

Hiccup has brash moments in HTTYD 1, and that feature got highlighted in the shows more strongly. But it’s still emanating from his core character as a dragon-loving, out-of-the-box-thinking, revolutionary, impulsive, heart-on-his-sleeve young man.

Tony Stark and Natasha Romanova have different flavors depending on which comic series you’re going through with which writer. They’re different between the comics and the movies, they’re different between the animated movies and the television shows and the MCU, and heck, they’ve got different flavors for every MCU installment they’re in. You can still analyze and connect an ongoing consistent narrative from Tony Stark from IM –> IM2 –> Avengers –> IM3 –> AOU –> etc., but frankly, the different writers for the MCU give us obviously different Tonys regardless of continuity. It’s how it is.

So brasher rtte!Hiccup is an obviously different flavor. We can see that the writers of RTTE handle him objectively differently than Chris Sanders + Dean DeBlois handles him in HTTYD 1 + GOTNF, and how Dean DeBlois handles him in HTTYD 2 + HTTYD 3. Regardless of continuity, those differences exist.

But that doesn’t mean Hiccup’s character growth can’t be connected between film and show. I think that, if we want to, we can give a cohesive, comprehensive account of how Hiccup grows through the years. I don’t think it’s bizarre to say that a sarcastic, awkward, impulsive, sometimes brash teenager in a war-centric society (HTTYD 1) becomes more confident when he’s given responsibilities and fits in better with his peers (ROB –> DOB). As he’s faced with more enemies, his confidence continues to grow, and he understands his identity as a dragon protector who thinks outside the box, sometimes meeting enemies with violent solutions to save the day (DOB). But his newfound confidence and leadership skills get tested with an enemy who challenges his strengths, an undercutting experience that can make Hiccup more irritable and brash as he tries to process what’s happening (RTTE). After going through his most dangerous set of circumstances yet, he’s tired of fighting and wants peace, remembering how well that worked in his youth. But now that he’s no longer able to be that carefree kid flying with dragons, he’s questioning his identity and future (HTTYD 2). He’s forced into leadership, where he must mature into an adult who will selflessly give up dragons to the wild (THW).

I watched friends between the ages of 15 to 20 do drastic character developments like that. I had one friend go from an academically-centered goof to a rude cocky pothead to a mature selfless youth group leader in five years, and it all made sense why he changed as he did. And frankly, Hiccup’s more consistent than that. XD

While it’s a lot of smacking together official materials and intentionally reading those materials in light of “Let’s fit this together,” that’s the fun of experiencing any large franchise. Large franchises are always us choosing whether or not we feel like the latest character presentation fits in with the other pieces, and we as fans have the right and interest and valid right to put those pieces together. Stories are meant to be both critically analyzed (looking for where writing could improve) and accepted for our imaginations (bringing materials together into a cohesive whole). Fans have a right to look at Luke Skywalker in TLJ and say, “Yeah, I can see him growing into that,” or not. It’s not wrong to read it either way - or both ways!

So to me it means it doesn’t have to feel off when we see tetchier rtte!Hiccup. I think we can look at the in-universe world, see the circumstances Hiccup is in, and say, “Yeah, that kid’s still growing.”

Personally, I think it’s a lot more fun to say, “Yeah, that kid’s still growing.” I enjoy talking about Hiccup morphing through the years and going through that slightly cocky phase in his middle teens. It makes sense to me. A sarcastic kid who’s used to being ostracized is now given lots of respect in the tribe, everything is going “right” for him (beating bad guys and saving dragons!), and so his ego and temper might spark up to match. Once he realizes he was being brash, he could pendulum hard the other way (I had a pendulum moment in my own life when I was 21) and seek peace to a fault… only later coming to a balanced middle. And as someone who loves all things How to Train Your Dragon, from the movies to the television series, to me there’s nothing more fun than to read the world together as one!

[reggiedomme]

Personal Academic Journal

At some point in our lives, we would all like to get out of the house or our country and see the world with our two eyes. This idea made me decide to travel for my master’s course elsewhere. I sought for a country that is conducive and accommodating, where I can live and study peacefully continue my educational ladder. Even though there were a lot of hurdles in my journey, I have been able to make it to my destination. I am persuaded that traveling can make people grow because of the experiences I had. After all, it is our nature to aspire to become a better version of ourselves and we strive to satisfy this. 

I started my journal today September 24, 2019 because I arrived in Canada late for the course. I am eager to learn as much as I can from this course. Deeming the oratory that people with no goals, go nowhere. Therefore, with such a great journey ahead, I should like any stranger traveling, prepare myself by laying out a road-map with a planned route, anticipate the need to nourish myself with new ideas, pack the possibility of getting lost (due to construction, of course), and leave beyond the fear of failure. I am reading “Gilthrow” to make up for the classes I missed. In chapter one, the writer introduces genre by different perspectives and in different situations. Each of these has it’s style of utterances from the circumstances it arises, and from the settings it takes place. I understood that genre depends on different situations and can be enacted from culture, education, social, political and the others which suits the occasion. I need to use different wordings for every discipline and take note of the level of education in my essay writing.

In chapter two, I learned about summary citation and authority. In summary, the writer made it clear that the summary might look like a peripheral formality, but it is not a check to see if students have done assigned readings or its roles in exams to see if readings were understood. It touches the salient points. 

25 September, 2019

Audience and Discourse Communities

I had my first class on Academic writing before I had my class I read about “audience” in the book of Gilthrow chapter 4. What I gathered was when I am writing, I must not let my individuality and resistance make me lose sight of my listener’s but,  put them into consideration. My daily activities and interaction with people can make me know what to write to facilitate communication. It was quite long so I couldn't finish reading to the end. I now realize I am a total stranger in a dynamic community. I need to have in-depth knowledge by doing a lot of reading in order to write. To be a successful member I need to be developed by other community members to be acquainted with the dynamism, norms and it’s culturing over time. I am referred to  APA citation, over and over again. Hugh! It is not easy to be trained.

2nd October, 2019

Coloring Epistemology

 I read Gilthrow chapter 3. I read Patti Lather’s writing on Paradigm Proliferation but couldn't synthesis it well with all the diagrams. In our lecture, it was discussed that she explored the shitload of stories and perspective on paradigms and how knowledge is in the academy. She brought in different ideologies on history, colonialism, power, writings, readings, racism and other educational angles to be materialized to make learning useful. In our groups we discussed what we read in Gilthrow Chapter 3, thus anticipating my audience objection and refuting them in my writing, can help me to make a better argument.

9th October, 2019

Scholarly Styles  and Discursive ‘I’

 The scholarly style of writing is based on specific goals and classified vocabulary.  The syntactic well-formed sentences and ambiguity of strings of diction by Patti Lather challenged me cognitively. Patti Lather’s book “Paradigm Proliferation”, and some chapters of Gilthrow and other articles I read before classes make me lose track of what I am reading by looking up words in the dictionary. Again, I need to learn how to integrate a summary of writers and bind together parts of the argument. (Mitchel will say; connecting the dots).  Another style I need not be perturbed to use is ‘I’. At the end of my research, I need to elaborate on my perspective and assumption based on my findings. My identity and subjectivity would not be relevant without the use of the discursive ‘I’. I don’t know much about politics here but the question; “What would you like to say to the leaders of Canada’s political parties?” was to make my harness on the use of ‘I’.

16th October, 2019

Rhetorical Techniques

I must admit; this is the most fascinating article that I enjoyed reading before class. Eubanks & Schaeffer, “ A kind word for bullshit”(2008). This scholarly style depicts how academic writers use ethos, pathos, and logos to build a strong argument. “Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through.” ( Eubanks & Schaeffer, 2008 pp. 380) , is my favorite quote. I need to be able to use these rhetoric techniques to tell lies for my readers to believe spiel.

  My habit of not acknowledging writers when quote them is one of my idiosyncrasies. This character makes it difficult for me when it comes to citation. I was taught how to cite to make a strong point and need to apply it to my “critical response” review. In spite of this, APA citation is too difficult for me. If I had been a little girl in the family, I would have asked my father; “Daddy why are we using APA to write? It is so difficult. All the same, I am working on it.

23rd October, 2019

A Critique

Reading the work of Roxane Gay gave me chunks of ideas of how to criticize someone’s work. Gay’s panning of the works of some writers was touching on every aspect of the writings. The perception was, “the end of men is the rise of women and the end of women is the rise of men,” which is not the fact. In learning how to criticize, I need to be fair in my writing, and not to think in a vacuum, but to maneuver to communicate.

Furthermore, I also learned that at the end of my research, I need to check what others have also accomplished on the same topic I have researched on to combine, summarize, and analyze my work. I need to synthesize to tell a story.

Critical Response Paper

My critical response paper made me learn how to explain myself logically. Going through this guise, however, has greatly opened my mind. My thoughts are now complex because I have learned how to sustain a logical argument in an organized manner. Furthermore, writing on my peers’ critical response paper has significantly widened the scope of my writing. My writing is more superior than it used to be. When it was mentioned that we were going to review our peer’s paper I soliloquized; “what do I know to criticize someone’s work?” I was quite shy and reluctant to do it. I must be frank with this, my peers’ paper was better than mine. It was difficult to identify gaps in her writing at that time, only because I felt like I had not learned so much. I felt that I had not largely expanded my literary analysis and writing skills, but I needed to be prepared to review the work which required an eagle eye. Going through an academic writing course has taught me how to organize my thoughts and support it with the works of others. I learned that as everyone had their own point of view, many different ideas could be produced and I found the energy of group participation made me feel more energetic about contributing something. Writing had always been one of my strengths, but it was challenging to take that initial step to write in a master’s course.

 Hmmmmm,  few moments reflection seemed like an eternity as I feel my consciousness ebbing away, and my thoughts, as clear and concise as they were mere moments ago, we're coming to an end. My eyes grow heavy from the strenuous effects of excessive agitation of my mental faculty.

                               References

Eubank, P. & Schaeffer J. D. (2008). A Kind Word  For Bulshit. (pp. 380).

[mediaeval-muse]

Academic Book Review

The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature by Irina Dumitrescu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 235. $99.99.

Argument:  Anglo-Saxons valued education yet understood how precarious it could be, alternately bolstered and undermined by fear, desire, and memory. They praised their teachers in official writing, but composed and translated scenes of instruction that revealed the emotional and cognitive complexity of learning. Irina Dumitrescu explores how early medieval writers used fictional representations of education to explore the relationship between teacher and student. These texts hint at the challenges of teaching and learning: curiosity, pride, forgetfulness, inattention, and despair. Still, these difficulties are understood to be part of the dynamic process of pedagogy, not simply a sign of its failure. The book demonstrates the enduring concern of Anglo-Saxon authors with learning throughout Old English and Latin poems, hagiographies, histories, and schoolbooks.

***Full review under the cut.***

Chapter Breakdown

Chapter One (Letters: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People): Argues that Bede focuses on linguistic alienation of the vernacular and linguistic disability as symbols of political and spiritual enslavement. Contains sections on Bede’s attitudes towards language, muteness and liberation in the Historia Ecclesiastica, and language as entry point into the Christian community.

Chapter Two (Prayer: Solomon and Saturn I): Argues that Solomon and Saturn I teaches readers to desire the Pater Noster through graphic and violent defamiliarization of the prayer. Contains an overview of Solomon and Saturn I (structure and manuscript context) as well as sections on the theme of knowledge and ignorance in the poem (and medieval texts on the Pater Noster more broadly), Saturn’s desire for knowledge and the depiction of emotions in the poem, and how the poem takes the reader “back to basics” by recalling childhood reading lessons.

Chapter Three (Violence: Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies): Analyzes images of pedagogical violence (corporal punishment) to argue that violent imagery makes the text’s lessons more interesting/memorable, but also that they dramatize disruption (of the self, of monastic community, etc.). Contains sections on reading Bata in context, grammar and spelling in the Colloquy,  Ælfric’s pedagogy of pain, classroom performance, and the violent logic of discipline.

Chapter Four (Recollection: Andreas): Presents learning in the Old English poem Andreas as a dynamic process of recollection, forgetting, and remembering again, primarily through discomforting imagery. Contains sections on the background of the poem, the form of teaching in Andreas, learning and memory, comparison to Cynewulf’s Elene, Anamnesis and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and rhetoric and riddling.

Chapter Five (Desire: The Life of St. Mary of Egypt): Argues that St. Mary of Egypt undergoes a “passion” through erotic temptation. Her past makes her a fitting teacher for Zosimus, but revealing it threatens to renew her desires. Contains sections on ideas of teaching in the Life, St. Mary of Egypt’s pedagogy, and the danger of teaching.

Theories/Methodologies

literary analysis: New Criticism

Reviewer Comments

I really enjoyed reading this book, not only because it contained arguments that made me think more deeply about the way teaching worked in Anglo-Saxon England, but because it was so beautifully crafted that it made me want to reorganize my own work!

Dumitrescu offers a wide range of texts to dive into the world of medieval education, from prose to verse, chronicles to saints’ lives. I very much appreciated that this range was included not only to show how actual texts were used as teaching tools, but also how depictions of learning (in various forms, not just ones we would expect as modern readers) reflect the idea of what it means to educate and be educated. I also appreciated the way Dumitrescu used close reading, showing how heavy pedagogical theory isn’t necessarily productive for understanding these medieval texts. Rather, Anglo-Saxon concerns with education and responses to education are embedded in each text at the level of language choice and imagery.

My favorite part about this book is probably the angle Dumitrescu takes on education. She focuses on emotional response and experience rather than the ins and outs of daily monastic life or pedagogical tracts, which made for an insightful and much-needed intervention. Her analyses made it easy to see Anglo-Saxons as humans with thoughts, emotions, and responses to media, just as we do today, though their media was very different from ours. I especially liked her use of kinesic memory to explain how the actions portrayed in a text would make real-life connections between what was happening in a poem or prose narrative and what happens in the Anglo-Saxon classroom. It made a compelling case for paying attention to the potential responses readers had to what they were reading.

Dumitrescu’s prose is very clear, and her organization of information facilitates understanding of the material she discusses. It was always easy to find her argument, and her introductions provided an effective road map for each chapter - something I’ve come to appreciate more and more as I continue reading academic books. While I would not recommend this book if you’re not familiar with the basics of Anglo-Saxon monastic life, you also don’t need to be an expert, as Dumitrescu lays out everything you need to know very clearly. It would also be beneficial to have some knowledge of Old English and have some familiarity with major authors such as Bede and  Ælfric Bata, but again, Dumitrescu explains everything so well that even unfamiliar texts feel familiar by the end of her analysis.

Recommendations: This book might be useful if you’re working on

the history of education and pedagogy, medieval education and literacy

monastic traditions

genres: dialogues, chronicles, narrative poems, and hagiography

history of emotions

Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Solomon and Saturn I, Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies, the Old English Andreas, The Life of St. Mary of Egypt