#roland: k that's problematic

[eritvita]

// from side-blog @streetgoats : “You think a courtship and a hunt are two separate things. They're not.” // from amelina.

@streetgoats

And Roland winces, bits of grass and greeneleaf chosen and woven into his hair and settled upon his grass-stained clothes. "Wouldst thou find the equality of the Movement better suited to thine stature and spirituality?" inquires he, as if to persuade this tiny deerling onto greener, sweeter meadows.

"A mass of sacred communication what keeps thine heart and thine body and Soul so beautifully protected; so listened? So gathered, so plucked upon consent and twittering tail, Goodly creature? Whyfore wouldst thou be so hunted?"

FANTASY MAGIC & ROMANCE QUOTES .

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

With all the work done by Roland Fryer, Lyell Asher, Arthur Levine, Richard Pondiscio, Karen Chenoweth, Rita Kramer and many more, America has everything it needs to fix its education woes - from K through to colleges, and all the way up to the heads of the beast, the Ed Schools and the college administrators. Much of it is absurdly simple and common sense (e.g. teaching kids to read the way that works, rather than based on an ideology). They have the evidence, the statistics and they've even put it into practice and measured the results.

"You know, we really gotta think about this gap here. Because there's like a white-black gap going on. I'm not sure why you guys can't actually achieve." -- Roland Fryer

Something no Woke program can do or will do. To even suggest that its success should be demonstrable and measurable - such as via standardized testing, for example - is itself problematic. Like any religious claims, there is a moral obligation to simply accept its necessity as truths, based on faith.

Knowing what to do isn't the problem.

The problem is that what needs to be done is extremely practical and pragmatic, and not politically sexy. It's not conducive to hashtags, icon overlays, acronyms or slogans. And it's particularly not conducive to performative white absolution.

The problem is that what needs to be done speaks not to the fashionable boogeyman of "systemic racism" or "white supremacy" but to what amounts to educational malpractice.

The problem is having the backbone to reject the "equity" activism demands by the same people who created the problem in the first place.

[spaceexp]

An alarming discovery in the blood of an astronaut

ISS - International Space Station logo. Nov. 23, 2019 Astronauts at the International Space Station have discovered an additional risk to past space travel.

This discovery proves the importance of conducting more in-depth research into the risks astronauts face in space. Image Credits: Niketh Vellanki via Unsplash.

Astronauts are not just people who have the chance to visually check that Earth is round. These are also important topics of study when trying to find out what effects space produces on the human body. On Earth, astronauts are regularly subjected to battery tests to measure their vital signs and physical condition. In space, the cosmonauts take care themselves to carry out these tests. During an ultrasound, one of them realized that a blood clot had formed in one of his veins, to the surprise of the specialist who was assisting him in real time from the Earth. "We were not expecting it," says Karina Marshall-Goebel, NASA's chief scientist and author of a study on the subject. "It has never been reported before." Other NASA physicians have intervened to treat the astronaut remotely using anticoagulants. This is not the first time that we notice significant side effects in people who spend time in orbit: optic nerves swollen, eyes a little flattened and vision deteriorated due to increased pressure intracranial. The need to conduct studies on astronauts To understand how this blood clot had developed, scientists studied the jugular vein of eleven astronauts, nine men and two women on a mission aboard the ISS, the international space station. Their blood flow was measured, sitting, lying down and tilting. Then participants were asked to repeat the same tests in the space. Scientists found that blood flow stopped in five of the eleven astronauts. Yet, it is not common for blood to stagnate in this kind of veins. Usually, it happens in the legs, when sitting too long without moving.

Blood clot. Image Credit: Wikimedia

Sometimes the blood clot dissolves itself or with anticoagulants. But other times, it can cause significant blockages. In the case of two astronauts, the researchers realized that their blood had begun to turn around in the jugular vein, probably because it was blocked downstream. Karina Marshall-Goebel hypothesizes that the organs are brought up inside their bodies, causing dysfunctions of their blood circulation. Once back on Earth, the astronauts no longer had problematic blood clots and their health has returned to normal. This discovery, however, has shown the importance of conducting more in-depth research into the risks that astronauts face in space. Because if it takes only a few hours to return to Earth from the ISS, it would take months to return from Mars for example. Not to mention that astronauts maintain excellent physical fitness, which is not necessarily the case for everyone willing to pay to participate in the SpaceX project. Related link: Assessment of Jugular Venous Blood Flow Stasis and Thrombosis During Spaceflight https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2755307 Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Michael B. Stenger, PhD/Marshall-Goebel K et al./SLATE/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[setepenre-set]

Set, I just have to ask. How is your writing process? I'm blown away by the speed you publish such quality stories at! What's your secret?? If you don't mind my asking :)

an anon also asked: 

How do you write so fluidly? You’re an inspiration and I’d love some tips or even just how you prep to write? Thank you, love your work!

Thank you so much! 

( I’ve got a number of other writing advice posts: one, two, three, four which you may find interesting. And, as always: remember that writing is an individual thing; a technique that works for one person may not work for another

I go through periods of intense hyperfocus and extreme productivity sometimes; I don’t know how to make them happen, sadly. but! I can give you some tips and go through what I do for prep work and my writing process!

I will use my fic Love and War as an example, so that you can see what I’m talking about. ( later on, there’s also an example from my fic Code: Safeword )

Step one is, of course, to get an idea for a story.

And the very important step two is to play out the story in your head–check that you can imagine a good and satisfying ending, that you have an idea for the beginning of the story, and a rough idea of how to get from the beginning to the ending.

So–my idea for Love and War: The Fairy Kingdom and the Dark Forest fought a war over the love ban / imprisonment of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Dark Forest won, and Bog marries Marianne for political reasons. Eventually they fall in love.

There’s a satisfying ending there: “eventually they fall in love”

There’s a beginning: “Bog marries Marianne for political reasons.”

But did I know how to get from the beginning to the ending? I did not.

So I adjusted my ideas for the fic: Make it much shorter; a one-shot. Instead of having the ending be the demonstration of Bog and Marianne’s love, the ending will be the reader learning that this love will eventually come to pass. So all we need to see is the start of them falling in love.

Ending: the reader sees Bog and Marianne start to fall in love, and is assured that they will eventually be in love.

Beginning: Bog marries Marianne for political reasons.

Middle: We need a reason for Bog to start falling in love with Marianne, and a reason for Marianne to start falling in love with Bog.

In canon, Bog seems to start liking Marianne when she breaks through his skylight and attacks him. Marianne seems to start liking Bog when, after this fight, he leaves his weapon in the throne room, takes her to see her sister, and assures her that he’s working on an antidote.

Bog falls in love with Marianne’s sharp edges. Marianne falls in love with Bog’s kindness. And the whole thing centers around the two of them dueling.

So in the fic, Marianne challenges Bog to spar with her, gives him a sharp smile, and half-jokingly threatens to maim him. And Bog starts falling in love with her sharp edges.

And when he comes to her rooms to spar with her, Bog treats her as an equal, clearly enjoys fighting with her, and doesn’t even suggest that they consummate the marriage. And Marianne starts falling in love with his kindness.

And just like in canon, the whole thing centers around a duel.

So we have a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying ending, and the plot of the fic echoes the plot of canon in an interesting way, which is extra pleasing to me.

When I’m writing a one-shot, this is generally the extent of my prep-work; I start writing after this.

I wrote out the first chapter of Love and War, which follows the plot outline, and has the satisfying ending of them starting to fall in love.

After publishing the one-shot, several people asked me to continue the story, so I tried again to plot it out in my head. And, again, I couldn’t think of a middle bit. 

At this point in the prep-work, if you’re stuck for a plot, it can be useful to bounce ideas off of other people–and if you’ve already posted the one-shot, then comments and speculations from readers can be useful as well. 

Finding a middle for the story is sort of like finding the original idea for the story: it requires a certain amount of sudden inspiration–there’s usually an ‘ah-ha!’ moment when you figure out the plot.

Mine came when I read a comment from @displacerghost on the first, one-shot chapter. She mentioned that non-consummation is potentially very problematic in political marriages.

AH-HA!

Well, Marianne, as crown princess, would know that, of course, and so it would be likely that Bog, as king, would know that as well…but wouldn’t it be more interesting if, for some reason, he didn’t know? Cultural differences in marriage law–

–so you’ve got Marianne worrying over the non-consummation and…yes, she would try to come up with a way to solve this problem, and being who she is, she’d probably favor an attempted coup–

–but that’s a secretive thing; it’s something that only Marianne will be doing; this story is working towards the satisfying ending of Bog and Marianne’s happily ever after, so the plot absolutely needs something for Bog and Marianne to be doing together while they’re falling in love…

–cultural differences in marriage law–cultural differences in all laws! And of course since their kingdoms are united, now, they’ve got to come up with a unified law code!

Play out the story mentally:

Beginning: Bog and Marianne’s political marriage, the start of them falling in love.

Middle: Bog and Marianne work together to create a unified law code while Marianne secretly plots a coup, and all the while the two of them are falling in love.

Ending: Marianne decides not to attempt a coup, she and Bog confess their love; happily ever after.

We have a beginning, a rough idea for a middle, and an idea for the end.

Time to work this plot out in more detail and outline!

For a while I didn’t outline stories until I was about a third of the way through them, but lately I’ve been working more with outlining them ahead of time. Love and War was definitely outlined.

The original outline for Love and War looked like this:

BREAKFAST, ARGUEROLAND VOLUNTEERS TO HELP COUPLAW CODE / FALL IN LOVE / MARIANNE PLOTSDAWN AND SUNNY ENGAGEDDIVORCE MISUNDERSTANDING / LOVE BAND LIFT

MARIANNE IS BITTERPLANNING WITH DAWNROLAND CALLED OFF

BOG AVOIDING MARI

DAY OF THE WEDDINGBOG COMES TO TELL HER ABOUT SEPARATIONF I N A L L Y   T H E Y    T A L K

AT WEDDING, EVERYTHING HAPPENS, ROLAND STARTS COUP, SUCCESSFUL, CONVINCES EVERYONE SHE TOLD HIM TO DO IT, DAGDA BELIEVESDAWN SAYS MARI WOULD NEVER STAGE A COUP DURING HER WEDDINGMARI COMMANDS THEM TO LET HER GO, SHE KICKS ROLAND’S ASS, CUTS HIS FACE AND THROWS HIM OUTPARTYMARI DRAGS BOG TO HER ROOMSEX SCENE HAPPY ENDING YAY!

You will notice that the plot of it is considerably different than how the actual story turned out–many of the details are missing (Imp, the love potion, all of the girls at the party, the trip to the Dark Forest, Griselda). And Bog and Marianne confess their feelings before the wedding / the attempted coup–and the tone of the sex scene is different; Marianne is clearly dominant in this version.

Outlines do change as the story is written–you get better ideas, details take shape; it’s very exciting! The outline isn’t there to force you to do anything; it’s just there to help you keep track of your thoughts. It’s a safety net, not a prison cell.

I typed this outline directly into the Love and War document, and then started writing the actual text of the story above the outline. That way the safety net was always visible to me, and I could cross off each plot point as I wrote it out, which is satisfying.

BREAKFAST, ARGUEROLAND VOLUNTEERS TO HELP COUP

(so satisfying!)

And as I write and details emerge, new plot points become necessary–I add these to the outline, and change things as needed.

ROLAND CALLED OFFMORE PLANNING WITH DAWN (TRANSITION)ROLAND PLOTS, CONVINCES GIRL TO GET POTION

BOG AVOIDING MARI, WEDDING PLANS, BOG AND MARI SING

TALK ABOUT SWORD DANCES

ROLAND TRIES LOVE POTION, IT FAILS

SWORD DANCE DEMO

MUSES ON FINALIZING THE LEGAL SEPARATION OF THEIR KINGDOMSROLAND TALKS TO PLUM, LEARNS ABOUT LOVE POTION,

BOG TAKES MARIANNE TO THE DARK FOREST, TALK WITH GRISELDA

ROLAND COMES UP WITH PLAN

DAY OF WEDDING IMP IN MARIANNE’S ROOMIMP TO ROLAND’S ROOMSFAMILY BREAKFAST WITHOUT BOGMARIANNE’S AWKWARD TALK WITH DAGDA

ROLAND ON THE WAY BACK FROM READING THE LETTER IN FRONT OF THE TROOPSIMP IN ROLAND’S ROOM

CELESTE NECKLACE SEARCHROLAND IN MIRRORBOG CAPE PAPERSBOG’S BOUQUET, NOT NOWCELESTE TAKES SWORDS TO BALLROOM, MARIANNE PUTS DAGGER IN POCKETCELESTE GOES TO ROLAND’S ROOM, FINDS MEMENTOS, FREES IMP

WEDDING, BANQUET, BALL BEGINS, FIRST DANCES, SWORD DANCE TO STARTGO! WE SURRENDER, NO WE DON’TROLAND’S PLAN UNFOLDS, DAGDA UNCERTAIN, MARIANNE DAGGER, SEARCHEDBOTTLE AND ACCUSATIONS, PUNCH, IMP, BOTTLE AND POTION FALL ON BOG, HE SEES DAWN FIRST, NO REACTIONCELESTE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE SCENT, APHRODISIAC NO NOTHING IF IN LOVEMARIANNE ACCUSES ROLAND OF DUSTING HERCELESTE SAYS HE MADE HER GET THE POTIONBELLA CLAIMS HAIRCELESTE MENTIONS NECKLACE, MARIANNE SUGGESTS THEFTROLAND POINTS OUT LETTERCELESTE MENTIONS DRAWERPOTION SHENNANAGAINSDAWN SAYS MARIANNE WOULD NEVER RUIN HER WEDDINGMARIANNE DEMANDS FREEDOM AND SWORDFIGHT, CUT, BANISH

NECKLACEBALL CONTINUESMARIANNE LEAVESBOG FOLLOWSDISCUSSION AT LAST

WINGSROBESNECKLACEBOTTLE, DRESSWINDOW SEAT, WALL, BED, NEW BED, EXCUSE FOR A PARTYHAPPY ENDING YAY!

You will notice that the details of the sex scene itself has now been outlined: wings, robes, necklace, bottle, dress, window seat, wall, bed.

As I wrote the story, my feelings on what the tone for the sex scene should be shifted–we see Marianne come into her own and take charge in the ballroom, which is good and emotionally satisfying. So the sex scene can be emotionally satisfying in a different way. Marianne’s spent this entire story feeling like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, like she has to manage everything all the time, has to always be strong. 

The sex scene is emotionally satisfying because it allows her to finally relax and let Bog take care of her–because she has gotten to a point where she trusts that letting him take charge right now won’t mean that he respects her less or gives her any less power in their relationship.

And it’s emotionally satisfying in regards to Bog because he’s spent the whole story feeling ugly and untrustworthy and now he’s allowed to really realize and revel in the fact that Marianne wants him so badly and trusts him so much.

You are allowed to change your outline as needed!

A note about plot–the big “action” moments in the plot should also be the big “emotion” moments for the characters. This is where my first outline was unsatisfactory! 

If Bog and Marianne confessed their love before the wedding, Marianne wouldn’t have spent the entire wedding in a state of emotional upheaval. She and Bog wouldn’t have been so emotionally overwrought about dancing with each other. And the drama the attempted coup would have been lost–Bog couldn’t have that big emotion moment of thinking Marianne had set up the coup, and surrendering to her, and Marianne couldn’t have that big emotion moment of saying that they don’t surrender and stepping in front of him. No extremely emotional sword dance! No intense misery concerning both of them being dusted with the love potion.

Do you see what I mean? Every big ‘action’ moment: the wedding, the dance, the coup, the sword dance, the love potion–needs to be a big ‘emotion’ moment for the characters. 

The things that happen have to matter to the characters not just on a surface level, but in a way that affects their inner emotional state of being.

Outline for the emotion, and write towards the ending. 

Having a good and satisfying ending is, in my opinion, the most important thing when writing a story. Everything that happens in the story is working towards that ending.

And this holds true for each chapter of a story as well! Every chapter should have a good and effective ending; the entire chapter should be leading up to it. Cliffhangers are generally effective, as are notes of despair, and uplifting notes.

The ending of Chapter 12 of Love and War is Roland shouting “go” to start the coup, and the line “and chaos erupted in the ballroom”. Clearly a cliffhanger!

But this is also something that the entire chapter has been working up to. Things are tense, and the tension has been wound tighter and tighter until finally chaos! And the cliffhanger!

Chapter 2 of Love and War has Marianne curling up on her bed in despair and thinking “you cannot trust anyone”. This–the note of despair–is an effective ending to the chapter because she has spent the entire chapter feeling as if things are steadily getting worse, and as if nothing she does improves things. The chapter has been working towards this moment of her despair.

Chapter 26 of Code: Safeword, on the other hand, ends with Megamind and Roxanne lying in bed together. Megamind tells Roxanne that, because of her, he’s trying to stop hating himself and to believe that she’s right about him. He asks her to try to like herself more, too, and to believe that he’s right about her. She says that she’ll try, and the two of them fall asleep. An uplifting note.

This chapter has also been working up to this point–there have been plenty of explosions of tension in the chapter–this ending is satisfying because, after the arguments and explosions of tension, we saw the two of them trying to begin the process of recovery–they’ve begun discussing their concerns and problems openly with each other, and have started to be emotionally honest. The uplifting note is a reward for the reader and the characters, an assurance that they really are beginning to recover.

Mechanics-wise, I write a chapter at a time, and when I’ve finished a chapter, I read through it once, proofreading and correcting as I go. Then I copy and paste the chapter into a separate document, and change the font to something completely different. (I write in helvetica; I change it to american typewriter.) If you write in a sans serif font, change it to a serif font, and vice versa; the change of font allows you to catch mistakes more easily.

If I catch a lot of typos during this read-through, I do another proofread. Repeat as needed until I manage to get through it without finding more than one or two typos.

Then I copy and paste the corrected chapter into the main document, delete the original, uncorrected text of that chapter, and save. And then either send to my beta reader (if I’m using one for the story) or post the chapter!

So! That is an example of my writing process, and some writing advice. I hope it is helpful!

-Set

[stretchjournalemerson]

J. K. Rowling: Ruined or Revered?

By Cayleigh Pine

When I was in fifth grade, my overly-Christian mother finally allowed me to read the famous Harry Potter series, the same books that millions of children became avid readers of to the dismay of conservative church-goers against witchcraft. I distinctly remember being obsessed with the series, reading one book after another before bed, in restaurants and even during my brother’s basketball games. I became attached to the fictional wizarding world, and I admired author J.K. Rowling’s description of characters that any reader could fall in love with. And readers certainly did, with Harry Potter spanning a blockbuster film franchise, a theme park, a Broadway play, a video game, as well as several controversies regarding its creator. In an age where the fanbase of Harry Potter is stronger than ever, it seems that there are complexities beneath the surface of this fandom, with many furious at Rowling for adding new (and admittingly, strange) details to the Potter-canon, as well as problematic statements posted online. Going from an idolized billionaire authorial goddess to someone almost as hated as her Voldemort antagonist, Potter fans have changed over the years in their support of Rowling and how they view the series due to her many controversies. Due to this, many are conflicted on if they should still be fans of these works, or if they should allow Rowling’s influence to taint the positive message behind Harry Potter. All of this leads into the question: Should readers separate the author from their texts, or is their intent all-encompassing? 

Readers tend to become fans of not only their favorite books, but of the authors that write them, leading them into learning about the author’s personal background and writing process. However, others tend to ignore who the author is in favor of not letting them influence how they read a story. “Death of the Author” is a literary concept that was created by Roland Barthes in the essay La mort de l'auteur published in 1967 (Barthes). This theory spawned off of the New Criticism literary movement, delving into the idea that readers should not have the author’s intention influence their understanding of the work being read, acting as though the author is dead or non-existent. Barthes argues that giving a text a single interpretation from the author limits the creativity and imagination the readers can develop off of that work, and how interpretive tyranny only works to the detriment of the reader, forcing an idea on them instead of having the reader come up with their own understanding (Barthes 5). This theorist explains that instead of looking to our authors as god-like and creating something out of nothing, Barthes tries to explain through this concept that there are no original works since writers are influenced by multiple factors, such as: mythology, religion, and other authors. This means there should be multiple interpretations since there are various sources (Barthes 4). In Ancient Greece, playwrights were open to where the sources of their stories came from, re-telling the tales of Achilles and Electra and others and never proclaiming to be original. However, in 1960s society, authors liked to pretend they were the sole, divine creator of their literary universes, and this has continued to the present. The popularity behind the term “Death of the Author” has risen and fallen throughout the years, but the support behind this literary concept has since gained traction with the recent advent of social media. Authors are now posting on their Twitter about character's motivations or secrets that were never expounded upon in their books, leading fans into an uproar against authorial intent. 

J.K. Rowling has always been an author in the public eye, her Harry Potter novels launching her into a celebrity icon due to how well-loved they are. With around 500 million copies sold world-wide, she became beloved by many who thought of her as their favorite author (Pottermore). One of the many reasons for this is due to the Barthes-like influence her readers hold in viewing Rowling’s work. Christian groups protested the series after every release, believing that what was in the books promoted Satanism and the occult (Halford 2). Despite Rowling being a Christian (Halford 3), these religious fundamentalists practiced “Death of the Author” to ignore Rowling’s background that is similar to theirs, instead viewing their own interpretation of the Harry Potter series as an unholy promotion of witchcraft for children, which is a very different perspective from what the author intended. However, this also worked in the reverse for readers of the same religion. Many other Christians that are fans of the series used Barthes’ theory to interpret many Christian allegories in the series that they could relate to their own backgrounds, a common example being Harry’s sacrificial death and resurrection in Deathly Hallows mimicking that of Jesus Christ’s in The Bible. Christians seem to find their religion in the stories Rowling created, intentionally or not, and use their interpretations as evidence to the series being in support of or against Christianity. 

However, religious groups are not alone in using “Death of the Author” to interpret Rowling’s writing. According to the study: “The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice” published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, psychologist Loris Vezzali asked fifth graders to fill out a questionnaire about their attitudes toward minority groups, then had them read excerpts from the Harry Potter books that dealt with prejudice. Specifically, the blood prejudice that is a major theme in the books about how some “pure-bloods” consider themselves better wizards than “half-bloods” or “muggle-borns” due their different backgrounds. According to readers, this is an allegory for racism, and this theory shines through with how Vezzali’s study proved that young readers living vicariously through the characters in Harry Potter impacted their attitudes positively towards marginalized people in real life (Vezzali). Readers tend to use this as a basis for the series being progressive, interpreting the series to be against racism. Unfortunately, the series is not as cut and dry as this. According to the Midwest Quarterly, author Christine Schott argues that there is racism prevalent in this series, but fans ignore these instances. The house elves in this story are essentially slaves for pureblood wizard families and who “do not want to be freed” even when characters offer to help save them. Schott explains that the creation of creatures that desire to be slaves teaches readers a message that some beings are naturally inferior to others and want to be enslaved, which is a horrible message if these books are supposedly “progressive” (Schott). It seems here that Harry Potter can be, and has been, interpreted in various ways, all due to who the reader is and how they utilize “Death of the Author”. 

Besides there being many interpretations of this series, the majority of fans tend to look at the books as an allegory for sticking up for underrepresented groups. It seems that Rowling also gravitated to this positive interpretation, with how she began to make additions to her wizarding world in order to appear inclusive, but they all seemed to backfire. Her controversies began in a 2007 Q&A session at Carnegie Hall with fans of the recently released Deathly Hallows, where she stated Dumbledore was gay (Smith 2). This split the fandom into two groups: supporters who thought this was great representation for the LGBTQ+ community, and those that questioned why Rowling felt the need to reveal this if she never included Dumbledore’s sexuality in the books. The latter’s opinion has intensified over the eight years since this comment, and with Rowling’s new Fantastic Beasts film franchise—prequels including a young Dumbledore—that still do not explore his sexuality, fans are speculating that she has been using Dumbledore as a way to prove she is “progressive” with nothing to show for it, accusing her of the harmful marketing tactic “queer-baiting” in order to attract the queer audience while not offending conservative consumers (Bradley 3). This past comment led into more controversial statements, like her comparing her fictional werewolves to the AIDs epidemic in the US (Baillie 2). This shocked many people because most of the werewolves in her books were framed as villains that preyed on young wizards, so with Rowling’s commentary, this comment becomes a metaphor for gay people preying on children. Because of Rowling, the readers’ interpretation has shifted from viewing werewolves as mythological creatures to now gay predators in disguise. The add-ons do not end there, with Rowling beginning to use her characters to advance her political views, utilizing the titular character Harry Potter to say that he would support the boycott against Israel, so you should, too, as well as to deny describing characters’ races in her books in order to appeal to a more diverse crowd (Donaldson 4). She constantly uses her Twitter to inform fans of her new changes to her fictional universe, yet she disappoints them by not including her supposedly progressive ideals in her works outside of social media. Her race and sexuality-bending has become such a hot topic that it became a meme when a comedic article called, “J. K. Rowling Proves That You, the Reader, Were Gay All Along” was published in 2019 to The Hard Times, poking fun at Rowling’s new revelations about characters’ identities that are never shown in her books (Hernandez). Since then, thousands of social media users made Youtube videos, tweets, and memes, parodying her characters, and even her readers, finding out from her that they had an identity they never knew about. However, even with all of this, Rowling was never seen as a fully negative celebrity, at least until her most recent tweet. 

In December of 2019, Rowling posted about supporting a transphobic woman named Maya Forstater in her mission on spreading the message that transwomen steal the jobs of ciswomen, repping the hashtag #IStandwithMaya proudly for all of her 14.5 million followers to see (@jk_rowling). This was met with huge outrage from fans, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community. Readers became upset because they felt if they liked Harry Potter, they were supporting a transphobe, and many began to attribute this series with a negative connotation (Donaldson 5). Her fans were mostly upset with the hypocrisy behind this tweet and how Rowling could disregard a minority group, even though her books supposedly stood up against prejudice. However, others argue that Rowling can say and do anything she wants with her characters and their identities, and even the overall message of her book, due to the fact that she is the creator of the series. Writer Natasha Troyka states that, “Barthes’ argument in The Death of the Author focuses on the impossibility of guessing the author’s intentions. If we can’t read an author’s mind, we shouldn’t fixate on authorial intent when reading a story” (Troyka 4). In the case of Rowling’s use of social media, her fans are almost able to read her mind about her intentions due to her excessive tweets. But even with her explanations, fans are rejecting her new form of Twitter-storytelling, using not only Barthes’ theory to ignore her authorial intent, but a rejection of social media in itself. Due to the fact that Rowling is not writing any more physical Harry Potter books and posting add-ons to her Twitter, fans do not count these changes as “canon”, and Troyka argues that that is largely due to the lack of respect fans hold of Twitter versus a book (Troyka 5). This writer mentions how with every sequel the wizarding world changed, with turning from bad to good (in the case of Snape) or even additions to the lore (The Deathly Hallows being created). Troyka asks: What’s the difference between a sequel and a tweet? Who decides the boundaries of works, if it is extra or canon? If it happens on Twitter, does it make the writing any less “real”? The argument here is that even if fans disapprove of Rowling’s quasi-progressive add-ons to Harry Potter, it is still her writing and she still is the creator, so they should count as part of the series, regardless of what platform they are released on. Despite this, it seems that fans are using Barthes’ theory to not only kill off the author, but also any disliked changes she wants to make to the series. 

Even though fans hate Rowling’s new additions, considering them more fanfiction than canon, she has always been supportive of fans using her work to create their own fanfiction, with her spokesperson saying she is, “... flattered people wanted to write their own stories based on her characters” (Waters 1). This is not always the case with many authors, such as author Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles) threatening to sue her fans if they write anything involving her characters. And then you have former-Youtuber-turned-author John Green, who not only supports whatever fans want to do with his work, but the concept of “Death of the Author” itself (“Death of the Author.”). Green became a famous author off of social media, gaining a fanbase through informational literary videos that analyze classic novels, and then finally releasing a book of his own. In his book, The Fault in Our Stars, the protagonist Hazel gets to meet her favorite author, and learns he’s a reclusive alcoholic whose personality ruins his works for her. This is a commentary on how much influence an author can have on their works, and how an author can ruin their own books for their fans with their wrongdoings that can taint their art. In 2014, Green tweeted, “Books belong to their readers” (@johngreen), agreeing with Barthes’ theory that fans get to hold the interpretation of the work and ignore the author behind it, which is probably a stance he later regretted when he started suffering backlash from fans about his portrayals of teenage girls (“Death of the Author”). In a Tumblr post, a fan described Green as, “...a creep that panders to teenage girls to amass a cult-like following”, wherein Green responded saying he never sexually assaulted anyone (Jusino 3). It was an odd response considering the post never mentioned him doing this, so fans immediately were suspicious. This uproar faded into nothing, but it left many readers feeling uncomfortable with his writing, and in recent years, many posts online shame Green’s portrayal of teenage girls for being two-dimensional. This has led to many using fanfiction as a way to fix what Green created, having the readers utilize their own interpretations “for good”. This is also seen with Rowling’s fans creating fanfiction that they deem better than Rowling’s books simply because it follows their interpretations instead of hers. From this, it is made apparent that when readers begin to dislike the author, they either step away from their works, separate the art from the artist, or they rewrite it to better suit their own interpretations. 

Rowling seems to bank on the fact that her fans are so besotted by Harry Potter that none of her controversies can get in the way of people’s love for the wizarding world. Even with all of her problematic statements, Potter fans are still around, shown in how her recent prequel films racked up around $814 million worldwide (Mendelson 3), and the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play based on the franchise breaking monetary records on Broadway (Chellman 3). It seems that even though there are those that are against Rowling and her political stances, the majority are not against her work and will not be boycotting Harry Potter any time soon. 

 Overall, it appears that J.K. Rowling remains one of the most famous authors in the world, and her problematic comments throughout her career have not done much to bring down her rule other than turn her into a comedic meme. Personally, I believe that it would take a lot more than problematic tweets to shut down this massive franchise, especially since Rowling has not faced any real-world consequences monetarily-wise. This goes to show just how much people love Harry Potter since they are willing to pay the bills of someone who may hold harmful beliefs that readers do not agree with. It has become such a phenomenon that people simply cannot leave this series due to a problematic author, and unless Rowling Avada-Kedevra’s someone, I believe that fans will keep separating her from her work in order to enjoy it without a guilty conscience. Fans are comfortable using “Death of the Author” to ignore Rowling’s controversial past, and even I am guilty of this. I used to automatically associate Harry Potter with Rowling, but now I view the series as its own entity with no relation to its creator in order to feel as though I am not supporting Rowling. It seems that there is no clear answer on whether separating the author’s work from them is morally correct or not, however it appears to be a popular choice for fans that want to take their own interpretation of the series and do as they please with it, even if that means blocking out—or just blocking on Twitter—the very creator of the wizarding world they love. 

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my mother for eventually letting me read Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling for writing the series, as well as for being such a fascinating topic, and Professor MKB for supporting me and this paper with her wonderful feedback. 

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Donaldson, Kayleigh. " J.K. Rowling is the Exemplification of Why We Need the Death of the

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[jazphotohistories]

The Personal vs. the Institutional Voice

Wagner, K. 2017. The personal versus the institutional voice in an open photographic archive. Archival Science. 17(3), pp. 247-266.

The written descriptions that people provide for their family photographs and those with which they retain memories of are much more subjective (less neutral) than an institution would have of the same images

Three key approaches/theories that Wagner uses: rhetoric (art of persuasion through speech or other forms of communication); genre theory (a way of classifying photographs that share common themes) and semiotics (which Barthes (1964) describes as the concepts of denotation and connotation)

Furthermore, semiotics also includes the concept of deixis, which explores how users refer to their photos using specific personal pronouns and adverbs to attach further meaning

Roland Barthes is mentioned frequently throughout this article regarding the ways in which we can theorise and study photographs, so I may explore some more of his work when it comes to analysing my own images

When it comes to providing an institutionalised description of an image, Wagner explained that “standardization, searchability, clarity and objectivity are keywords in all the documents I have studied.” (p. 252)

The shift towards social media means that the way we archive is changing, as is the public/private border upon which our archives operate

A question that is consistently raised throughout this piece is does the personal voice act as a help or a hinderance? Does its lack of objectivity render it less valuable or are the extra details a further insight into the image?

I would argue that the personal voice, as long as it is recognised as such and not as fact, does generally add more to the study of these images rather than take anything away – personal voices make these images more human, and therefore more engaging, perhaps allowing for further understanding

Important to remember the materiality of photographs when studying them in an archive, an element that is all too often neglected (Edwards, 2004)

"By including things outside the picture frame … the meaning of this picture has been widened.” (p. 259) – context can also shed more light onto images, for example the four I am analysing were all displayed in my grandfather’s house

The personal voice is more often than not egocentric, which provides a unique perspective – also include motifs and circumstances of the photographs

The personal voice “tells us all sorts of things that are not necessarily visible in the pictures themselves.” (p. 262)

For now, the personal and the institutional voice run parallel to each other, and attempting to combine the two could be problematic; but also rewarding

Further reading: Rhetoric of the Image by Roland Barthes (1964); Photographs Objects Histories: on the Materiality of Images by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (2004)

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Julio Cortázar Literature Class

In his 1952 short story “Axolotl,” a reader may find the central fulcrum on which the worlds of Julio Cortázar turn. Here, in this brief story (a mere seven pages in its English translation), Cortázar relates the experiences of an unnamed narrator; one day, in a Parisian aquarium, this narrator encounters the “Aztec faces” of the axolotls, encounters the “presence of a different life, of another way of seeing.” The narrator (alternating between the “I” and the “we” throughout their exposition) sees themself in these creatures, these “witnesses of something,” these “horrible judges,” and, as a result, they become an axolotl themselves. These dialectics — these convergent borders of the “I” and the “we,” the Modern and the pre-Modern, the European and the indo-American — reverberate throughout Cortázar’s work, and they remain the beating heart of his oeuvre. In fact, it is their explication and application that make Literature Class, Berkeley 1980 (translated by Katherine Silver), New Direction’s translation of a series of lectures by Cortázar, a vital entry into his body of work.

Julio Cortázar (photo by Jerry Bauer)

Circumscribing his goals and ambitions, Cortázar says that “in the present day, what matters is not to be a writer from Latin America but to be, above all, a Latin American writer.” Here, Cortázar is saying that Latin American writers should immerse themselves in the Latin American terroir, which Mario Vargas Llosa once described as the “harsh and sometimes violent” coexistence of European, African, and indigenous societies. These writers should write of Latin American subjects and particularly Latin American paradoxes and problematics. Their undertaking should be an intervention of Latin American politics, not only of the political realities but of their readers’ very way of being. “To make a revolution … it has to be made on every level,” Cortázar says; “it also has to happen in the mental structure of people who are living that revolution and are going to reap its rewards.” But, as Cortázar himself is quick to point out, these politics of anti-colonialism are difficult to put into a writerly practice — he goes so far as to describe language as “one of the most terrible traps lying in wait.” “[I]f [the writer] uses the language that expresses the world he is attacking,” Cortázar says, “that language will betray him.” What he means is that revolutionary language must upend the inherited strictures of language that order our understanding of the world. The critic Roland Barthes touched upon this subject in his seminal study Writing Degree Zero — though his conclusion, that “revolution must of necessity borrow, from what it wants to destroy, the very image of what it wants to posses,” remains decidedly pessimistic.

Cortázar takes a different view, believing that subverting hegemonies of language are possible through questioning and distancing, through rejecting received wisdom and familiar platitudes. Language must be examined before it is used; Cortázar, in an extended paraphrase of his novel Hopscotch, says: “[K]eep in mind the possibility that [language] is deceiving us, that is, that we are convinced that we are thinking for ourselves when in reality language is thinking for us, using stereotypes and formulas that come from the depth of time and could be completely rotten …” While the efficacy of Cortázar’s approach remains to be seen, Literature Class itself functions as an interesting and, to use Cortázar’s word, ludic experience that puts some of his ideas to the test.

As a glorified transcription of recorded dialogues, some of which are missing and some of which feature obscured audio, Literature Class decenters Cortázar’s voice and rejects the idea of the text as a fully enclosed object. Reference is made to unheard conversations and events the reader cannot be a party to; questions and answers are inferred or fully elided; and the voices of students are interjected throughout. The form of the text subverts and undermines the authority of the lecture as a method of pontification, as a site of authority. Though it was published nearly thirty years after Cortázar’s death, it is fully in keeping with the spirit of the work he intended for publication, embodied in his hope for Hopscotch, to have not just a reader but a “reader accomplice,” a reader who has “engaged in a very active and important dialectic between the reader and the book.”

While he offers many insights into the writing of fiction (the enjoyably side-stepped exigence of the whole project), it’s Cortázar’s insistence on self-discovery and constant questioning that shines brightest through this posthumous work. Here he offers a post-colonial praxis — not just for writing fiction, but for reading fiction and for thinking more generally. Only time will tell how useful that praxis is, but the application of it, the experience of it, is exciting to say the least. Being made a reader accomplice, being invited to play one of Cortázar’s games, “not a trivial game that has no meaning” but rather “a dialectic, an exchange,” makes other books look pallid and rude by comparison.

Literature Class, Berkeley 1980 (2017) by Julio Cortázar is published by New Directions and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

The post Julio Cortázar Literature Class appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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