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threewaysdivided · 6 months

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(same anon that asked about YJ Phantoms) I'd love to read a critic on Harry Potter one day because you'd have a lot of interesting things to say.

(follow up from this ask)

Good to hear from you again nonnie!

I’m very flattered that you’d like to hear my comments on Harry Potter but… I don’t think I’d have a lot to add? 😅 I wrote most of my Young Justice meta-analyses because I’d noticed some specific structural and writing patterns that weren’t being discussed in the wider fandom critiques, and I wanted to change that. (A lot of people were pointing to the time-skips and specific characterisation issues but not many seemed to be touching on Thematic Contradiction, Scope Management or the Side Quest problem, for example.) Meanwhile, Harry Potter has been dissected to the moon and back with a fine tooth comb – there isn’t much I could say that hasn’t already been said better, more eloquently and in more detail elsewhere.

If you put the Harry Potter books in a bubble, my takes are actually pretty mild. The books were important to me. I was a 90s kid who read alongside releases throughout primary school. I was a pretty big Potter-head at the time - I was daydreaming Potter fanfiction before I even knew what fanfic was. I think it certainly had an influence on my modern taste in literature; there’s a reason I gravitate towards fantasy and mystery as my comfort genres (I’m currently having quite a bit of fun with The Dresden Files).

On a technical level, Joanne Rowling was a decent writer. I think she’s strongest at emotional and character-writing, and she kept a consistent theme of love/grief/family/loss going throughout the series. Her use of mystery as a secondary structure to add pull makes the stories engaging and satisfying to “solve” on re-read. Her prose and dialogue was quite snappy – it flows and reads well, and there are some very quintessentially British-humour lines that made me smile each time.

Where she was weakest, in my opinion, was sociological storytelling and worldbuilding. There are some unquestioned biases and blind-spots in her writing (especially around stuff like the house-elves, the goblins, certain character descriptions and how she treats the status quo). I generally agree with the sentiment that her worldbuilding wasn’t necessarily the most original – not as derivative as Eragon (which I also liked) could be in places, but nothing especially new – although that’s more of a subjective note than a great artistic sin, and Harry Potter was a good execution of that well-trodden ground. There are definitely times when you can tell she was figuring things out as she went – some of her dates don’t line up and there are a few moments in early books where characters break “laws of magic” that she would later retcon-in (Mrs Weasley shouldn’t have been able to make sauce pour out of her wand in Book 2 according to the Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration introduced in Book 7 and, based on the rules introduced in Book 6, Hagrid shouldn’t have been able to disapparate away from the station platform when Harry wasn’t looking in Book 1). And of course, the infamous “vanishing poop” tweet. In a bubble, pretty average, for-their-time 1990s fumbles from a debut children’s fiction author. Flawed but in a mostly harmless, kind of charming way.

I’m also pretty iffy on the movie adaptations, which have been generally… okay. They showcased some good practical effects work and cinematography, but I never really felt they captured the magic (pun intended) or nuance that I enjoyed, due to the cuts and changes needed to fit the screentime. That’s kind of my general vibe with a lot of adaptations, though – with a few exceptions I generally prefer to experience stories in their original intended medium.

However, we do also have to take the books out of their bubble and discuss the context of Rowling’s current politics. I think it is not appropriate for people to try and erase her authorship of the books, or the way her largely open and accepting stance towards fan-content (in comparison to more litigious predecessors and contemporaries) contributed to the current state of modern fandom. Their popularity and widespread influence makes them an important cultural touchstone and point of reference for their time period, and I think we do a disservice by pretending them away or acting like there’s nothing to be learned from their success just because we disagree with the author now.

That being said, however, in the present Joanne Rowling is using the clout and funding she receives from the Harry Potter franchise to push policies and rhetoric that actively make life harder and more dangerous for transgender people (and has dragged in the neurodivergent community as a rhetorical device). She has also expressed that she considers support for Harry Potter to be tacit endorsement of those politics. Unlike past problematic-but-influential authors like Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Rowling is alive, politically active and benefiting from fandom engagement - and so the relationship between her work, her work’s fans and her current politics has tangible impact on real people. I think it is up to every fan to decide how they personally want to navigate that difficult and at-times painful environment.

Personally, my decision (and this is just my decision) for handling that has been to pull away from Harry Potter as both a franchise and a fandom until such time as Joanne either revaluates her stance on transgender people, retires from public politics, passes away (provided she doesn’t will ongoing profits to anti-trans causes), or her books become public domain. I still have the books I was gifted in the 90s, but there is a reason I generally haven’t shared or promoted Harry Potter content (even fandom stuff) to my blog for a few years. Hopefully that will one day change, but until/unless that happens, I probably won’t be doing that kind of deep dive.

Instead, here are some videos that I found particularly interesting when thinking about the writing, implications and adaptations of the series:

Just Write: Construction of Mysteries in Harry Potter | Fantastic Beasts: Revisiting Mystery Construction

Quinn Curio: What Went Weird With Ron in Adaptation | Does Draco Need Redemption? | Why Does Slytherin Still Exist?

Pop Culture Detective: Newt Scamander and Empathetic Masculinity

Dominic Noble: Lost In Adaptation – The Harry Potter-athon [Playlist]

And here are a couple on Rowling’s current politics:

ContraPoints: JK Rowling and the Sociopolitical History of Transphobia | The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

SuperGeekMike: How Creators Become Their Villains

Dominic Noble: A Harry Potter Fanboy's Response To J.K. Rowling

If you’re looking for other fantasy book recommendations I would heartily suggest Tamora Pierce. Specifically the Song of the Lioness series (4 books), its sequel Protector of the Small (also 4 books) and the unrelated the Circle of Magic universe (2 sets of 4 books plus an epilogue and 2 side-stories). Pierce writes to roughly the same reading-level as Rowling, and her books are a mix of magic, character- and mystery-driven. I would say she’s overall stronger at original magic systems and worldbuilding. She also has her own interesting relationship to fandom (being a former fan-writer herself) and a feminist streak, with books that focus on young heroines without being dominated by romances. They can be a bit hard to find in print these days but if you can they’re well worth your time.

For sassy British kids and urban fantasy, also consider Jonathon Stroud’s Lockwood & Co (recently adapted to a Netflix series) and his slightly-older Bartimaeus Sequence. Again really fun worldbuilding, snappy prose and dialogue, and a generally good romp. Lockwood is a ghost-hunting story and Bartimaeus uses demon summonings as its core worldbuilding conceit so if you like a little more horror in your fantasy then these will be a good time for you.

Hopefully that makes up for yet another doughnut! 🍩

#Double doughnuts for you today nonnie #sorry #I promise I do talk about interesting fun stuff sometimes #you just happened to double-bullseye two slightly thorny topics for me #have some vids and book recs instead!#Harry Potter #JK Rowling #book recs #writing analysis #anonymous #3WD answers

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dondybayron · 2 months

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True Narratives: These are narratives of true events or incidents, frequently portrayed in the form of stories. Their primary goal is to provide factual information in a story form so as to keep the audience interested. One could be a memoir depicting a life of an individual.

Example: "THE DAIRY OF YOUNG GIRL"

by:Anne Frank

Introduction:

The start of "The Diary of a Young Girl" contains historical background which is related to Anne Frank's life and the factors leading to the hiding of her family during the World War II. It successfully gets the essence of the factuality of the situation and builds the world of Anne’s diaries around the reader.

Summary:

Anne Frank's diary is from 1942 to 1944, when she lived in hiding and the text gives a moving description of a young girl's experience, thoughts and feelings during one of the darkest periods in human history. From trivial to fabulous, Anne's diary tells about the complexity of life in hiding, the dynamics of the secret annex and the challenges of adolescence during the war time.

Evaluation:

"The Diary of a Young Girl" is valued not only for its authenticity but also for the emotional depth it provides, shedding invaluable light on the Holocaust and human spirit. Through Anne's narrative, the voice of the author gives the readers a familiar point of view on universal topics of identity, hope, and survival. Nevertheless, some critics suggest that she is a little bit biased or too romantic towards her view of the annex, bypassing some tensions and conflicts among the residents.

Conclusion:

The book finishes with Anne's profound thoughts of the potential of humans to be hopeful and resilient amid adversities. The Holocaust has been immortalized by Anne’s words as a storytelling masterpiece and the legacy of those who perished live on.

TESTIMONY:

Testimonies are the official written or spoken statement for court proceedings. It is a proof or evidence shown by something that exists or comes through. Truth affirmation or fact statement.

Testimony (from Sarah Johnson):

"My reading of "Anne Frank's Diary: The Story of a Young Girl" during the hardest period of my life, the beginning of my journey with this legendary book. Anne`s diary is close to my heart since it was my safe-haven and light-house in the sea of darkness.

In every line I read, I was sinking deeper and deeper into Anne’s reality, a mental landscape of heart-wrenching description of the young Anne’s life in hiding during the Holocaust. By reading her diary I felt it like she and I were discussing deep and profound things and with that I connected with her to the core of her being, to her resilience and unwavering belief in a brighter future.

This wasn't the routine intellectual stuff. It was a great emotional experience reading Anne's diary. Through her personal portrayal which was full of the reflections on love, friendship, and even the human nature itself, the message of her book which remained in my heart was impressive.

'The Diary of a Young Girl' is there not only for hankent church but it is the ending of the perseverance of the human spirit in the presence of the unimaginable enemy . In addition, Anne's story has influenced people of all ages, me included, and I will always be thankful that such a miraculous divine link took place during this time of my life

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eduminatti · 1 year

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How to encourage youth leadership in your child

Confidence

Confidence is the key to magic. You need no magic wand or magic hat or magic shoes to shot your name with rainbow colors high in the sky; you just need some good skills and absolute confidence in yourself and your skills. While speaking in confidence, you gain the confidence of people who are around.

As per research conducted by schools in Bangalore ,once you establish confidence in people for you, they will encourage you, follow you and respect you as a leader. The next step after gaining confidence is maintaining it.

The choice of words you make, the path you lead, and the decision you take for yourself and your people, you must belief it in yourself first so that you can make the same energy travel across your people and from them to many more people. It all happens because of this confidence in you, building trust in them, the faith for you.

Read biographies of great leaders.

Another survey done by schools in Mumbai shows that learning is the essential step of leading. You are a leader, which makes you powerful because you have multiple brains working for you. You learn each day with every individual you meet during your entire day. You know from your experience, you learn from their experience.

Similarly, while you read a good book with great words, work, and people, you earn a chance to experience their situations, learn from them and find solutions in your way.

Every leader has an inspiration who inspired them to become what they have become today. For example, Sir Martin Luther King Jr. following the principles of truth and non-violence, given by another great leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Well, there is never too late to start and never an age to learn.

Decision Making

Every word that you speak in public will decide the future actions of the massive population that you have gathered. Your decision does not affect your life; they now affect the life of every individual who is concatenated with you and is conjoined with them.

Your words should be very cleaLeadership is an excellent social skill that you develop through a good social life and social engagement. Leading people with different mindsets and manipulating them to work according to you is the primary job.

Leadership requires good decision-making powers, excellent communication skills, empathy, some extra-ordinary abilities to work under pressure and make your teamwork under same, brilliant connecting powers and most important is the team playing.

Working with a good team makes work productive and way more efficient than working all alone and getting exhausted. Bring a team under one roof, keeping all the personal rivalries aside. Building confidence over each other is what a team leader is supposed to do to accomplish tasks.

You must also develop a sense of responsibility towards your team, respect each member and their abilities, and remember your team makes you capable of holding such a glorified title.

Youth leadership is one of the most emerging practices where the young generation asks for their rights and identity. Their fight is for taking healthy responsibilities and authority of themselves as well as others.

Being a youth leader is about inspiring the youth, awakening them, communicating with them, making a rightful decision for them, listening and listing their problems, finding solutions, etc.

This quality of leadership plays a role in enhancing social life or better communicating. It develops the even personality of the child by focusing the anger and energy in the right directions.

Here are a few steps mentioned, and following these steps, you will rise and shine as an inspiring youth leader aspirant.

r and precise for your audience. You must know your people, this will benefit you in making more accurate decisions.

Decisions made should never be biased and must lean towards the right. While you make a decision, always try to choose the best right, if in case you are in a situation to choose wrong and less wrong, never make a call as both can result in an outburst which might shatter you as well as your people. Be honest, truthful, and faithful to your public.

Work with pressure

Wearing a magnificent crown with emeralds and diamonds seems fascinating, and everyone wishes for the crown but being a leader is not easy. The crown has certain rules, boundations, and weight handling which is not everyone’s cup of tea.

A leader always has a sword hanging over his head tied with a horse’s tail hair, i.e., for every outcome, either positive or negative, you are answerable to the mass and must be prepared to deal with rotten eggs and tomatoes.

There are situations when you are supposed to take some decisions under heavy pressure. During such a situation, you have to hold yourself together and work on not to shatter as you are the core of the support system.

Decision-making is hardest in such situations, and being a leader, you must have the potential to make the right decisions and make the right choices.

#student #study #schools #education #parents

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oh-hush-its-perfect · 3 years

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Wait a minute; you seriously think that dreadlocks are a racist characteriture? I know people tend to grasp for straws when looking to cry “racist!”, but this? Take your own advice and do some actual research before you virtue signal.

WOO this reply turned out way longer than I expected it to! But since I'm chosing to interpret Anon's question as earnest and their complaint as sincere (though I am giving them far too much credit), I figured we might as well do a deep-dive. The sentences that are in bold are the main ideas, and the sentences in large font are the wider takeaway.

Actually, it ended up being so long, I made an audio recording in case y'all have ADHD or dyslexia! The audio's not great and I mess up a lot while talking and I do have a speech impediment, but I hope it's helpful.

Again, I want to emphasize the fact that I don't think RR is a racist. He's just a guy with some unaddressed biases. Also, it's worth noting that I am not black, and someone who is could probably make a better argument (Black Riordanverse fans— if you feel comfortable, reblog with your own opinions please!)

That being said, yes, when you make non-human villains with features associated with black people, you are effectively dehumanizing and villainizing black people.

When writing books, especially high fantasy books (though RR's works are decidedly not high fantasy), people must draw upon real-world cultures for inspiration.

This can put authors in a moral conundrum. They can either a) take inspiration a single culture or continent, making the story deeply rooted in the ideas and elements of one people, or b) they can take inspiration from multiple places in the real world and make divisions as we do in the real world. For choice (a), take small-scale fantasy stories that take place in Medieval Europe, or stories like Raya (I mispronounce her name in the audio; please excuse me) and the Last Dragon, which nearly exclusively draws upon South-East Asian experience and appearance. For choice (b), take stories that involve massive battles and multiple cultures, like Star Wars. The risk that comes with choice (a) is that you can end up with a homogeneous people, and that necessitates the exclusion of other ethnicities. The risk that comes with choice (b) is that you can racially code your fantasy races/species.

Racial coding is a technique used either consciously or subconsciously by writers when creating fictional races. It occurs when authors draw upon real-world appearances and cultures to portray fictional appearances and cultures.

For example, the trope of the "Bazaar of the Bizarre" is widely prominent throughout media. It depicts a bustling marketplace, often full of oddities for purchase and theives. This trope is highly inspired by real life bazaars and souks and the like, and the correlation made in media between these marketplaces and debauchery instills in the audience a feeling of distrust towards these establishments and the racial groups with which they are associated. You watch a movie where a guy gets robbed on an alien desert planet while traditional Indian music plays, and then you pass a couple of guys listening to traditional Indian music, and you hold your wallet a little tighter.

Or maybe there's a fictional race that has medium-toned skin purple skin, small and slanted eyes, and straight black hair. Okay, we can tell from that description that these people are meant to be visually similar to Asian people. These characters are racially-coded. And say that this fictional race is also known for bad teeth and addition problems. These are negative stereotypes associated with Chinese people, and since we already see a visual correlation between Asians and these fictional purple people, that negative stereotype is reinforced. That's called negative racial coding.

Now back to Rick Riordan.

The Giants described in the Heroes of Olympus books almost all have non-human skin tones and hair described as being "braided," or, in Polybotes's case, "wild." "Braided" could mean cornrows or box-braids. Polybotes's "wild" hair is easily interpreted as an Afro or other natural black hairstyle. For Enceladus, no words were minced; he explicitly has "dreadlocks, braided with human bones."

There is no question about it; the HoO Giants have their hair in styles traditionally associated with black people.

So we visually correlate the giants with black people. Now that that's established, let's look at their behavior.

The giants are cunning. They are downright, unquestionably evil. They can be manipulative, or they can be brutish, but they are all destructive. Most importantly, they are inhuman.

The Giants' inhumanity is not just in their appearance (with their dragon legs and all) but in their treatment of humans. Enceladus in particular is a great case study; he is preparing to eat Tristan McLean if Piper does not comply with his commands. Cannibalism is a practice particularly associated with native African tribes, and it remains as a nasty stereotype that implies a lack of humanism in Africans.

I want to draw attention, too, to the fact that not only does Enceladus have dreadlocks; his dreadlocks have human bones in them. This little detail ties together (literally) the features Enceladus bears that relate to blackness and the absence of his compassion for humanity. His African hair is closely associated with his inhumane nature.

The effect here is that features that imply blackness are correlated to evil and savagery.

"Oh, but Jules!" you may say. "What about Orion? Orion is the only giant to be explicitly described as human-colored (the color of wheat-toast) and he doesn't even have braided hair like the other giants! His hair is short, and straight, and swept back!"

Oh, yeah. Let's talk about Orion, the exception that proves the rule. Orion isn't black coded. And that might have something to do with the fact that Orion is supposed to be physically attractive and human-like.

When your only handsome giant who could "pass for human" is the only one who doesn't have braids and who explicitly has a real human skin tone is white, and the rest are barbarous and black-coded, you have a problem.

(Concession— Periboia is described as blond, which may imply that her human half is white. We don't really know, because RR, like most white authors, has a habit of only describing a character's skin tone when they aren't white. However, the fact that she is a muscular, physically large woman, may be seen as enough to dehumanize her.)

And all of this is ignoring that a couple of the giants are explicitly described as dark-skinned black.

Like, "coal black." And HoO isn't the only series where RR does this; his Muspelheim giants are depicted the same way— though, to his credit, he does go out of his way to say that the "black one," Surt, is very sexy.

Now, let's talk about intention. I do not believe that RR set out to make black-coded antagonists. I think it just came naturally to him, and that's also worth examining.

This is a common trope— so common that RR probably didn't question it. In fact, he was probably heralding back to the "great" authors of old.

Like I said in my original post, RR was not exactly the first author to make his villains with black features. There's an expansive history on the subject, and a lot of it can be traced back to J. R. R. Tolkien and his orcs. Here's a little excerpt from a novel written by Johnathan Coe (admittedly, another white author), The Rotter's Club:

"Surely he must have noticed that Tolkien’s villainous Orcs were made to appear unmistakably negroid. And did it not strike him as significant that the reinforcements who come to the aid of Sauron, the Dark Lord are themselves dark skinned, hail from unspecified tropical islands from the south, and are often mounted on elephants?"

Worth noting here that Tolkien's dwarves were also Jewish-coded, though that's somewhat off topic (unless we wanna start talking about Rowling again, who herself made Jewish-coded goblins).

Anyway, Anon, I am not "grasping at straws." And I have, in fact, done my research. The point of my original post was not to "virtue signal" but to bring awareness. In fact, I was actually defending Rick Riordan in that original post. Because, at the end of the day, this is a trap any author can fall into.

TLDR; Racial coding happens when a fictional species is given features that allude to a real-world ethnicity. Negative racial coding occurs when those features accompany negative stereotypes about that same real-world ethnicity. Rick Riordan (probably inadvertently) does this while writing the Giants in his Heroes of Olympus series. His Giants have hairstyles akin to black hairstyles, and are sometimes described as having black skin. Since the Giants are portrayed as ugly, evil savages, the subconscious message is that black people may be ugly, evil savages. This is a mistake a lot of authors make, though; it's not solely RR's vice.

#Anon you would make a great sock puppet #part of me wonders if you are actually an RR crit who wants to be like 'see?? there ARE extremely ignorant people who oppose us!'#though you're probably just a troll. lol.#RR crit #rr critical #heroes of olympus #hoo #i'm being too nice to RR again #riordanverse #rrverse #pjo #percy jackson

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count-lero · 2 years

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Okay, I guess, I’m still a bit too shy to translate from French into English even for my personal blog. Nonetheless, I want to make at least few small steps towards my dream project and simply need to find a starting point. :)

For example, I can begin with some interesting passages from the works of Russian researchers, concerning the political situation on the eve of the Sixth Coalition’s formation!

I’ve discovered this particular book only recently but already found curious observations about the prospective position of Austria as an international arbitrator (at least, that’s how Metternich envisioned it in his dreams), before circumstances finally forced Austria to join the Coalition.

“Austrian diplomacy in March-April 1813 was darting between Russia and France, trying to force both powers to move in the right direction designated by Vienna. Sometimes it seemed, despite the certain setbacks (as, for example, in the case of England), that everything was going exactly as the clever Viennese diplomat had planned. Metternich spared no effort and time to convince Napoleon and Alexander I through his subordinates that "only the power that wants nothing but peace for itself can be an intermediary." Austria wanted not only peace — it wanted to remain a power that alone decides all issues of the future territorial structure, and also serves as a kind of buffer zone between the two great empires (while extending its influence to the whole of Germany and the Balkans). To achieve this, it was necessary first of all to withdraw from the alliance with France, while convincing Bonaparte of the sincerity of Vienna's peacekeeping initiatives. And Russia, on the contrary, had to be kept at arm's length, in no case making any promises to Alexander I, who persistently convinced Metternich and Emperor Franz himself of the necessity and importance of Austria joining the coalition.

Playing on two fronts is always fraught with serious complications, especially if the task is to keep an equal distance from both fronts. But Metternich managed it for the time being. Although there was still some distortion: relations with France were more important for Austria at that time. The explanation was very simple — they were afraid of Russia in Vienna. "Recent events have shown us how dangerous Russia can be for Europe... We need a power equal to it, which will balance it — France is such a power: it should establish the foundations of a new system of European equilibrium," Karl zu Schwarzenberg bluntly told French Foreign Minister Y.-B. Mare in Paris on April 7, 1813 before meeting with Napoleon. And the bet on Napoleon seemed justified to Metternich.”

At the time Metternich’s ambitions were truly grandiose (as grandiose as his own flamboyant persona)!

Aside from that I also have to add commentaries, since the author of the book seems to me somewhat “biased” (or as a Russian myself I simply sense a bit of “patriotic” exaggeration): they were not “afraid of” Russia in Vienna, it’s just the fact that two opposite parties existed. The first one was inclined towards pro-Russian political course and the second one rooted for the balance between the two countries - Russia and France. The first one seemed to be much more numerous: not only Vienna’s aristocrats but also the major part of the Imperial family had been sympathising with the struggles of Russians for a long period of time. Those sentiments only grew stronger during the campaign of 1812. However, they lacked one crucial thing - the influence on the Emperor Franz himself. This particular influence was still the sacred privilege which belonged to his fellow minister, chancellor, etc, etc, in the face of Metternich. Klemens also was that lone, though stoic mastermind of the second party - party of balance.

As for Schwarzenberg he shared most of Metternich’s opinions regarding the matter. This man was very well familiar with both sides - Russian and French - thanks to his ambassadorial service and he witnessed the might of military potential which belonged to both of these countries from the front row as well. Besides, the key to active actions - emperor Franz’s good will - remained in Metternich’s hands, thus nothing could stop them from trying to settle the whole situation on their own intermediary terms.

Nothing but the fact that Napoleon didn’t want to cooperate, until for him it was too late! 😅

Moreover, this whole discourse made me remember another exemplary passage from my favourite Russian biography of Metternich (who could have guessed).

“On December 20, 1812, Schwarzenberg's auxiliary corps was advancing towards Warsaw to prevent the Prussians from invading deep into the territory of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Schwarzenberg's position can be judged by his own words: "The more both colossi [meaning Russia and France] mutually weaken each other, the better." With a soldier's straight-forwardness, he expressed what was now on Metternich's mind.”

So yeah, Metternich, Schwarzenberg and that one collective brain cell they were sharing. 😘🤝😊

P. S.

By the way, it’s not about them, Napoleon and Alexander, it’s Austrian raison d’état! Nothing personal, just politics. 🇦🇹

#napoleonic era #napoleonic wars #diplomacy #1813 #klemens von metternich #karl zu schwarzenberg #austrian empire #austrian history #19th century

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bettsfic · 3 years

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hi betts! i got very interested in your posts esp the implied author. i wanna ask a question (if you dont mind!). so about the implied author, i always feel like that my writings though beautiful always lack mentioned maturity and read very... YA-ish? its not something im trying to achieve. i want to make it more mature and 'classical'. do you have a tips for this? im not aware enough of what to improve on to achieve that, basically. thank you in advance!

this is a great question! unfortunately, though, i don't have a handy dandy term like "implied author" to thoroughly encapsulate my possibly abstract answer.

first, while i understand your goals, i think beautiful prose, and the focus thereof, is still a very important pursuit. there's also nothing wrong with being YA-ish; the implied author comes from a book called the rhetoric of fiction, and the title implies that it's a study of fiction in interaction with an audience. so different readers get different things out of what they read (i wrote about this more in my june newsletter). possibly your perspective is something someone else hasn't seen before, and you've offered them something new without even knowing.

that said, i absolutely understand the drive to have a wider perspective, and write things that you find more complicated and challenging. however, the only way i can answer this is with metaphors couched in narrative, of how i learned about how to approach my writing differently, and which presumably, maybe widened a reader's sense of my implied author (but since i can't be a reader of my own work, there's no way to tell for sure).

so, i once took a creative nonfiction seminar during which i read a whole bunch of memoirs, and the final project was either a research paper or a personal essay. obviously i chose the personal essay. i decided to write about my ex-boyfriend, with whom i'd broken up five years earlier, and i was still very fucked up about it even though we'd been broken up far longer than we were together.

looking back on that essay, it reads like a sales pitch, ten pages of me just pleading with the reader to see my side of the situation, to see how i was the victim, sympathize with me and not him. he's the evil one. hate him with me. please please please.

it was not a good look.

there was a lot of unprocessed grief in that essay, a lot of anger. it was clear i had no wider perspective of the situation other than wallowing in my own narrow feelings about it. i was telling the reader what to think about me, about him, about the situation, rather than conveying the situation as it truly was and allowing them to draw their own conclusions.

in nonfiction, that's terrifying, because it potentially paints me in a negative light. a reader may see my actions and think poorly of me. and honestly, looking back, they should. i was as toxic to my ex as he was to me. i was not good to him at all.

but see, that's an example of me telling you what to think. in the essay, i am pretty much saying outright, "he is evil. hate him." i want to force the reader to be on my side. but after a mental breakdown and a lot of trauma therapy, i was able to step out of the situation and my feelings thereof, and see it from a much wider perspective, and instead of putting my actual emotions on the page, i'm able to illustrate honestly the emotions i felt at the time. i am no longer in the story. i'm outside of it.

here are the events as they actually happened: one night, he didn't come home. i texted him. i tried to call him. i waited a couple more hours and called him again. he came home as i was looking up numbers to nearby hospitals, around four a.m. he wouldn't tell me where he'd been. the next day i found a bunch of hickeys on his neck. i was hurt, and angry, and i pushed him. i told him to get out of my house. he still denied it, and kept denying it for hours longer, until finally admitting he'd been dating someone else for months. i couldn't find it in myself to blame him. to me, it was my fault for not being good enough for him, for not fitting into the shape of someone he could love.

there was more to the story than that; he was financially dependent on me, he was no longer attracted to me and felt trapped in our relationship, my father had just died and i couldn't even begin to grieve over the loss of someone whose life mine revolved around.

but an essay -- or a short story, a novel, a poem -- can't ever render reality exactly as it is. we as writers are always just curators of experiences, images, sentences. there's a lot of fear in that, of leaving out details, of being misunderstood. but that's the inherent risk of art.

the lesson i brought back to fiction is this:

it's not my job as a writer to place judgment on my characters, but to simply convey the story as it happens. my characters may have biases, misperceptions, judgments, and opinions, but they are not mine. widening the implied author, so to speak, is a process of removing yourself from your prose.

obviously you will make characters who are like you in some ways, and so they may share traits with you. they may be identical to you in every way. but they are not you, and cannot be you. possibly the implied author is the absence of ego. or maybe it's an embrace of the self and the world as things that can't be fully known.

i think about films that have a wide implied author versus a narrow one (in my opinion; see above point about fiction as rhetoric). to me, pacific rim has a very wide implied author. even though all the characters in the movie take the events therein very seriously, i know that the mind creating this story knows it's kind of ridiculous, even though it's not a comedy. they know this wild, over-the-top conceit is a vehicle for the more complicated and nuanced experience of intimacy and trust.

a narrow implied author would be zack snyder's justice league. that film leaves me with no evidence that the mind behind it is capable of truly understanding experiences beyond their own, or using their medium to render a nuanced portrayal of being. that doesn't mean snyder isn't, in reality, capable of those things, or that the movie isn't enjoyable on an aesthetic level, but that i found no evidence in the text of, well, themes. it's just...characters doing things. i see no exploration in it, no question that the narrative addresses.

which leads me to my second point, which is that i think the widest implied authors are the ones who are vulnerable enough not to have an answer or conclusion, to simply discover and explore larger questions.

so, what questions do you have? what things do you not know? what are you most afraid to convey or admit?

in some ways, my answer to your question is that you don't have to worry about it, because the implied author is the experience of the reader, which you can't control. however, i think all of us, myself included, can work toward a greater perspective of ourselves and our world, to understand things to a more complex degree. and beautifully, writing helps us do that, at the risk of exposing the things we don't know, the questions we can't answer, our true colors which may be darker and uglier than we'd like to admit.

#writing advice #implied author

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doomarchives · 3 years

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David Annandale’s The Harrowing Of Doom: An In-Depth Review

So, I was kindly offered an advance reviewer’s copy of The Harrowing of Doom by David Annandale for the Marvel Untold series, a new prose line revolving around Marvel’s villains. Although I’m not personally familiar, the author’s prior written work and academic scholarship indicated a strong background in fantasy, science fiction, as well as horror film and literature - all essential elements of Doom himself honestly, whether in his character, design, or formative influences. A promising start from the outset!

To no one’s surprise, I was especially excited for this one. Doctor Doom is both my favorite Marvel character and area of nerdy comics expertise, and Annandale sounded like the perfect candidate to tackle him.

The Harrowing of Doom centers around a conflict familiar to those who know the character. Taking place fifteen years after his ascension to the throne, Victor von Doom is still hellbent on rescuing the soul of his mother, Cynthia, trapped in hell by the demon Mephisto. His yearly attempts to save her have been fruitless thus far, but he believes he can really do it this time, enlisting the help of a new character, Maria von Helm, and some of his lesser known subjects (also new characters) to accomplish the task, by building a machine called The Harrower. The noble scheme is further complicated by the reappearance of Prince Rudolfo Fortunov, son of the monarch deposed and murdered by Doom years prior, who is equally determined to take back what he believes is his birthright by any means necessary. The novel is a relatively dense and detailed one, and as a true blue Doom enthusiast, I have a dense and detailed review to match.

The first thing that I personally take note of in any material involving Doom is the author’s perspective on the truth of Latveria’s “benevolent dictatorship.” It immediately speaks volumes about a writer’s perception of Doom’s accountability and sense of morality; it kind of ends up coloring his entire characterization. That being said, I was really pleased by the evenhandedness with which Annandale treats Doom’s Latveria and his influence upon his subjects. It slots in neatly with some of the greats, Lee & Kirby, Jonathan Hickman, Roger Stern, etc with the acknowledgement that Doom is indeed a despot with an iron fist and a will absolute, but one who cares for the wellbeing of his country. Through dialogue from his subjects like the skittish Father Grigori Zargo and diehard loyal Captain Kariana Verlak, the reader gets the sense that Doom’s rule may be the best leadership Latveria has ever known. (A brief aside: another great strength of The Harrowing of Doom that has to be mentioned is the fleshing out of these different original characters. Maria von Helm was a particularly welcome addition, as a close friend of Doom’s mother and a far more empathetic magic user compared to him.)

Verlak is openly married to Dr. Elsa Orloff, a trans woman and neurosurgeon of international renown. Both of them had experienced the Fortunov rule that predated Doom’s, with Orloff even having fled Fortunov’s Latveria when she first come out as transgender, in fear of his tyrannical rule and the dangerously transphobic legislature he enforced called “The Laws of the Person.” It is apparent that Doom exists in obvious juxtaposition to the prior ruler’s bigotry. Beyond the total erasure of all previous discrimination and state-enforced bigotry, he has Verlak appointed in a role of great prominence, gave Orloff the tools she needed to succeed in her field, and even shares an exchange with her where he remarks that he knows her from her publications in the Lancet Neurology and that he appreciates them for their “speculative” approach. In an excellent exchange between Father Zargo and the rebel Prince Fortunov, the priest, who is by far Doom’s number one fan, explains Doom’s mesmerizing hold on the populace and the benefits they reap from his rule, despite it being a despotic one:

“I’ll be explicit, all the same,” said Zargo. “Doom is a sun king, even more fully than Louis XIV ever was. Latveria is a world power. How? Because of Doom and only because of Doom. Latveria’s strength and its wealth come from his inventions. And the beams of his sun touch every citizen. Universal basic income, free healthcare, free schooling, free universities, free training to the highest level of your calling - all of these things flow from Doom.”

“Free?” Fortunov snarled.

“The price is obedience, yes,” said Zargo, “And yes, Doom is feared.” Zargo stopped himself from saying Vladimir was feared and hated. [...] “Even though Doom is feared, he also is Latveria in every sense that matters.”

What I really appreciated was the author’s ability to walk the tightrope of acknowledging how beneficial Doom is for the country and his protectiveness over his domain, whilst also acknowledging Doom’s intense paternalism that ultimately favors his own goals. Doom, as well-read comic fans would know, is heralded as one of Marvel’s master manipulators. It’s a great strength of this novel to see him exerting his willpower and the strength of his personality to manipulate and sometimes, fully overpower that of his subjects. Father Zargo is definitely the most profound victim of this, a man with ties to both the church and the occult. Through the novel, Doom insistently pushes him towards the latter, his priorities made clear in one sentence: “The work was what mattered. Zargo’s soul was not Doom’s concern.” An especially interesting scene occurs later in the novel. Without too much elaboration, Doom performs an experiment where he uses the old Latverian nobility as guinea pigs. This was something I immensely liked, corroborating one of my own personal perceptions of Doom. It’s always made sense to me that Doom would continue to hold a certain amount of disdain for Latverian high society, even after he went from low class Romani boy to monarch himself.

(“The Fantastic Origin of Doctor Doom,” Fantastic Four Annual #2.)

Afterwards his partner, Maria von Helm, muses aloud that she always wondered why Doom let vestiges of the old regime remain, to which Doom responds: “Now you know. The aristocracy has its uses, and the advantages of being disposable.” It’s maybe my favorite example in the book of the exceptions to Doom’s purported benevolence. He does want the country to flourish and for his subjects to prosper, but this intent can be superseded by his innately ambitious nature and his own personal biases. It’s clear at several points in the book that Annandale is obviously well-read on Doom himself, but it was especially in the capturing of this nuance that it really stuck out to me in a big way. (As well as the fun reference to Doom’s brief jaunt in the French Riviera in Supervillain Team-Up!)

Outside of this core aspect of his characterization, I really enjoyed how the novel not only built up Doom’s cult of personality, but emphasized the sheer magnetism of Doom himself, in person. Constantly, characters find themselves buffeted by strength of his will, craving his approval or cowering and scrambling to avoid his displeasure. It’s a great true-to-character depiction of interactions between Doom and Latverian citizens, dynamics that were only touched upon briefly in the periphery of most comics involving Doom. I think, ironically, this is also perhaps the source of one of the novel’s few weaknesses. By keeping the book very Latveria-focused, Annandale does an excellent job of adding world-building on every level, from expounding on Latverian national holidays to the layouts of Doomstadt to the country’s storied history with witches predating Doom and his mother. But the fact that Doom mostly interacts with those beneath him or those who work for him gives the reader a bit of a myopic, overtly flattering perspective of him as almost too certain, too powerful, too unfeeling. I suppose it serves the scope of the novel for Doom to be more an obelisk of a man than fully well-rounded, but I contest that one of the best things about his character is that his indomitable exterior hides a deep well of pain and uncertainty.

(“In The Clutches of Doctor Doom,” Fantastic Four #17.)

(“Oath of Fealty,” Doctor Doom #7.)

The novel obviously perceives Doom as Byronic, there’s even excerpts from Manfred interspersed between chapters that I greatly enjoyed, but I did find the heart of the Byronic character a little lacking here. Where Manfred bares his soul alone in monologue or to others, Doom, for the most part, does not. There are definitely brief allusions to the trials he’s faced, but he seems rarely prone to doubt or vulnerability until the very end. (For example, the central task is the attempt to rescue Cynthia von Doom’s soul, but little time is spent dwelling on this very human connection between mother and son.) Or even self-admitted imperfection! Interestingly, I only ever caught one mention of his scars in the entire novel.

The Harrowing of Doom seems to prescribe to the line of thought that the mask is the only true face of Doom’s that matters, but I think with that philosophy, it stays firmly within the character’s own comfort zone. And his psyche never feels truly challenged, because there’s no worthy challenger. Doom knows without a doubt that he is Fortunov’s superior, so there’s no real interpersonal friction there. It left me keenly interested in seeing how the author would write Doom in the presence of someone like Reed Richards, an opponent who has historically brought out Doom’s baser instincts and invoked his self-doubt, drawing out his flaws and humanity in the process. Hopefully Marvel approves a sequel!

Doubtlessly, it’s still a strong entry into Marvel’s Doom canon and an excellent read for anyone who enjoys the character and is familiar with his history. The novel gives a sprawling, detailed look at Latveria and fleshes out both country and countrymen with aplomb. I took real delight at the indirect peeks at Doom’s personality through other characters’s observations or simple exposition. Some notable examples include Doom’s occult librarian wondering if he had been appointed out of spite of his witch-hunter ancestry, Zargo noting the west wing of Werner Academy was dedicated to clinical research in a nod to Werner von Doom’s work as a healer, and my favorite: the paintings within Castle Doom being impressionistic depictions of Doom’s ancestors, “people long buried, long forgotten, and in their lifetimes ignored or worse.”

The conflict also moves at an engaging, brisk pace and smartly takes advantage of the widely known fact that Doom is preoccupied every Midsummer Night and turns that into an opening to be exploited by Fortunov, who also is well characterized throughout the novel and even experiences his own personal growth.

(“Though Some Call It Magic!”, Astonishing Tales #8)

Essentially, the product is a great novel about Doctor Doom influenced by strong comic lore knowledge, Gothic and Romance literature, horror cinema (According to the author, Doom’s lab is modeled after the lab from The Bride of Frankenstein!), and fantasy. If that sounds like something up your alley, definitely check it out. It gets a wholehearted recommendation from me.

About Marvel Entertainment

Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of more than 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media for over eighty years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing, publishing, games, and digital media.

#victor von doom #doctor doom #media type: book #Marvel #MarvelEnt #aconyte books #review

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meta-squash · 3 years

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Brick Club 1.8.3 “Javert Satisfied”

I know this is technically a “good thing” since otherwise Valjean’s testimony would be for nought, but everyone except the prosecuting attorney agrees that Valjean is the real Valjean. I guess some part of me would expect for everyone to still think that Madeleine had gone crazy, or to somehow still be affected by the respect and veneration for Madeleine as mayor. But that’s not the case, and pretty much everyone believes that Madeleine really is Valjean.

Quick note that the lawyers also try to pull in all sorts of nitpicky bullshit to try and get Champmathieu indicted anyway, which courts still do today.

“This sentence, containing a great many ‘of’s, is the prosecuting attorney’s, written by his own hand, on the minutes of his report to the attorney general.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like the comment on all the “of’s” goes hand in hand with the earlier critique of the provincial language of the courts.

“...although the judge was a kind man and quite intelligent, he was at the same time a strong, almost zealous royalist, and had been shocked when the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, in speaking of the landing at Cannes, had said “the Emperor” instead of “Buonaparte.” A supposedly impartial person whose impartiality is a requirement for him to do his job well, actually be affected by his personal opinions and biases. I mean, that hasn’t changed in 150 years, that’s for sure. *cough Amy Coney Barrett cough* But it’s such a tiny little thing. Would the order of arrest be granted so quickly if the judge hadn’t caught that little honorific slip-up? It’s also just an example of the kind of knife-edge that things like someone’s life sits upon when in the hands of the courts. This is probably not the first case where a tiny, unrelated detail like that weighted the balance between life and death or freedom and prison for someone in this court.

Okay I don’t know anything about couriers and letter-sending and doing things quickly. If this is an official letter sent by courier, would that be one person riding horseback, without a carriage? Surely that would be faster than a horse pulling a vehicle? Especially since the deliberation went on for a little while after Valjean left the courthouse, and then the judge went in with the prosecutor, and then the letter was written and sent, but it got to Javert in M-sur-M soon enough that Valjean only had time to send his letter to Lafitte and briefly see Fantine. I’m just trying to figure out the timing of all of this.

“The buckle of his leather collar, instead of being at the back of his neck, was under his left ear. This denoted extraordinary agitation...For his collar buckle to be awry, he must have just had one of those shocks that could be called inner earthquakes.” I know the descriptions of Javert a few paragraphs later as being overjoyed means that this “agitation” is most likely shocked excitement, but I don’t know, something about this description is so weird to me. It’s the “inner earthquake” line, I think. That feels a lot more “negative” than excitement. Javert’s entire world has been shaken by this information. Perhaps it’s because this is so big. Really, it gets treated with such flippancy within the narrative, but a respected, well-known, charitable member of society in a mayoral position ends up being a wanted convict, and Javert was not only right about it, but right about it twice. That’s big for Javert himself, but it’s also big in general because it’s probably the first time Javert has ever uncovered something like this and been right about it and then told he was wrong and then proven right again. Plus the fact that he was hiding his convict identity the whole time while being a high-ranking, well-loved, leader of the community. Like, a “criminal” government official isn’t just corrupt in the usual way, he was fully a convict the whole time with a hidden identity and everything. It must be mind-blowing for him. And it’s interesting, Valjean is the only one who’s able to deliver multiple earthquake-status blows to Javert’s world throughout the book. (Valvert shippers, I’m starting to understand your perspective a lot more in this read-through than my last two.)

“...Javert turned the knob, pushed the door open as gently as a nurse or a police spy...” What an odd comparison to make. Nurse or police spy? Those are two incredibly disparate professions with totally disparate morals. Nurse implies a calm gentleness, a gentleness that is maybe nurturing or healing or at least positive in some sense. Police spy implies a much more cautious gentleness, one whose purpose is sneaky and definitely not positive towards those behind the door. How is Javert both a nurse and a spy? Unless he’s Harold Shipman, I’m not sure what to make of the connection to the nursing profession.

“Properly speaking, he did not enter. He remained standing in the half-open doorway, his hat on his head, his left hand in his overcoat, which was buttoned to his chin. In the bend of his elbow could be seen the leaden head of his enormous cane, which disappeared behind him.” Okay So this paragraph in context with the chapters before and after it are really interesting. He doesn’t enter the room at first, just stands in the doorway. He only enters the room after both Fantine and Valjean have noticed him. I’m sure there’s a good horror movie example out there, but it’s like he’s not allowed to enter until he’s noticed. Like he’s not allowed to exist for others until they see him. Does that even make sense?

“There is no human feeling that can ever be so appalling as joy. It was the face of the devil who has just regained his victim.” Man, I like the Hapgood translation of that second sentence so much better: “It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.” Like, it’s not Javert who has singularly persecuted Valjean (I mean it is, but not really), Valjean isn’t Javert’s victim. Valjean is persecuted by society, Javert is just there to collect someone already marked. He’s not the only one doing the marking. So I like the symbolism of a demon collecting a damned soul.

“Javert’s satisfaction radiated from his commanding attitude. The deformity of triumph spread across his narrow forehead. It was the full quotient of horror that only a gratified face can display.” I love this chapter for its bizarre contrast of ugliness and grandeur. Everything Javert does in this chapter is this gross, twisted version of divine justice. His joy, which should be a beautiful and pure emotion, is perverted by its circumstance. And the description of how scary a satisfied face can be is so good because it’s so viscerally descriptive. You see that exact face on every video of a cop being a racist, condescending, sanctimonious, power-hungry cunt to people on the street. That face of “I’m better than you and I have power over you and there’s nothing you can do about it so ha ha I win.” It’s more evil than antagonists who know they’re evil because Javert fully thinks that his actions and thoughts are right. And Hugo points it out here. Triumph and glee for the wrong reasons doesn’t make a person beautiful, it deforms them.

I actually love the description of how joyful Javert is because it’s clear that this is personal for him. When he arrested Fantine and sat down at his desk to write out her sentence as a one man judge-jury-executioner, he wasn’t gleeful like this. He wasn’t sad about it, he just was. He was doing a duty and Hugo even says that he was very thoughtful about it and spent time cataloguing what he saw in order to decide what to do. This isn’t the same type of detached judgement and condemnation. This is fully personal glee at being able to be vindicated.

“At that moment Javert was in heaven. Without a clear notion of his own feelings, yet with a confused intuition of his need and his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth, in their celestial function as destroyers of evil. He was surrounded and supported by infinite depths of authority, reason, precedent, legal conscience, the vengeance of the law, all the stars in the firmament; he protected order, he hurled forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society, he lent aid to the absolute; he stood erect in a halo of glory; there was in his victory a trace of defiance and combat; standing haughty and resplendent, he displayed in full glory the superhuman beastiality of a ferocious archangel; the fearful shadow of the deed he was accomplishing, making visible in his clenched fist the uncertain flashes of the social sword; happy and indignant, he had gnashed his heel on crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, and hell, he was radiant, exterminating, smiling; there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous St. Michael.”

I have multiple things to say about this passage so I think I’m going to break it all down into different paragraphs because there’s A Lot of different things in my brain.

First of all this is an echo--this time righteous and vindicated--of Javert’s feelings from 1.5.13. Madeleine lets Fantine go and Javert has this thought: “Or, in view of the enormities he had witnessed over the last two hours, was he saying to himself that he had to resort to extreme measures, that the lesser had to make itself greater, for the detective to turn into a magistrates, the policeman become a judge, and that in this shocking turnabout, order, law, morality, government, society itself, were personified in him, Javert?” In 1.5.13, Madeleine’s authority overruled him, protected Fantine and humiliated Javert. In 1.5.13, he is forced to accept defeat. Now, he has all of the authority, all of law and reason and justice behind him because Madeleine no longer has that same power. Javert is again the personification of justice, law, society itself, but there is not Divine Authority to stand up for Valjean as there was for Fantine. Javert is vindicated here for his earlier humiliation, with all levels authority backing him up this time.

“Without a clear notion of his own feelings, yet with a confused intuition of his need and his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth, in their celestial function as destroyers of evil.” Okay hold on wait. In 1.5.13, Javert has a moment of nearly breaking the fourth wall, nearly deciding that he needs to become a Symbol in order to restore the balance of authority and justice that he feels Madeleine has knocked askew. He is very much aware of his potential to personify Law and Justice etc. But here Hugo says that he does all of this with “confused intuition” and without a clear idea of how he feels. Interesting that when he is conscious of being able to become a symbol, he is prevented from doing so, but when he actually becomes a symbol, he’s unaware of it. Also, here’s another moment of Javert clearly Feeling Something but not fully understanding it, again a thing that only Valjean seems to provoke in him. (Oop more Valvert fodder.)

I don’t really know what to make of the superiority complex that Hugo describes here. Obviously Javert thinks that he is righteous and that he is doing a Great And Grand thing and that he is avenging society by ridding it of the scourge of the evil deceiver convict Jean Valjean. But the way Javert’s righteousness is describes feels like almost more of a “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” feeling. Is your righteousness truly righteous if you’re feeling personal satisfaction and personal superiority about it?

Javert is literally the Angel Of Death here! I know in my last post I talked about Javert as the grim reaper entering the room. His comparison to St Michael confirms this. Michael is a seraph, which are winged celestial beings with a fiery passion for doing God's good work (which is interesting to me considering how much Valjean’s symbolism is associated with fire). In Roman Catholicism Michael is the Angel Of Death who descends and gives the person the chance to redeem themselves before dying. He is also the one who will weigh people’s merits on Judgement Day. Except! Javert is Michael without mercy or patience! He judges without allowing a chance for redemption. We saw this in 1.5.13 when he sat down and wrote out Fantine’s sentence while she simultaneously explained her situation and begged for mercy. We see it now. Javert as St Michael is “monstrous,” he is the St Michael that defeated Satan, not the healing protector Michael. We even have the sword imagery. Michael used the sword to best Satan in battle; except this time the sword is “social” and to Javert at this moment, Valjean is the personification of Crime-As-Satan.

(Side note: something I love about Javert is that he as a human being isn’t really portrayed as an avidly religious person, at least not in the ways that Valjean or the bishop are portrayed as religious people. But his symbolism sure is religious. I think that’s one of the drastic differences between book Javert and stage Javert. Stage Javert is portrayed as a religious person but his symbolism is more human.)

“Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty, are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but--even though hideous--remain great: their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror. They are virtues with a single vice--error.” Hugo’s thought about duty done in error is so interesting. He says something similar when talking about Problem of the monastery: “To mistake a grave error for a duty has a grandeur of its own.” For Hugo, the fact of having such strong conviction alone is a grand thing. Having conviction, having a sense of duty is always a good thing--the error is not in the sense of duty itself but in what that allegiance might be to. The virtues of duty or honesty or conviction are by themselves inherently good, but they can be misused and misinterpreted and made wrong.

(Side note: This is actually a really interesting thought re: Grantaire! Hugo holds not just having beliefs but having faith in and conviction about your beliefs in such high regard. Which makes Grantaire, who is conviction-less and faithless, in the midst of all these people who are so loyal and committed to their beliefs and ideals, not a mild contrast but a massive one.)

“Without suspecting it, Javert, in his dreadful happiness, was pitiful, like every ignorant man in triumph. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called the evil of good.” God I love this line. “The evil of good” is a concept that really, really, really needs to be common usage. I feel like this line specifically really needs some in depth analysis but also I don’t really know what to say about it except that it’s just so true. Regarding Javert being “pitiful” in his happiness, this kind of reminds me of Mme Victurnien? Both think they’re doing a “good thing” and their deeds ruin lives; their triumph and feelings of righteousness are pitiful for this reason. Again, it’s the equivalent of a “ha ha I win” bully moment, but with much worse consequences. Man, I feel like this chunk needs more analysis than this but I don’t know what to give it.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.8.3 #les mis #les mis meta

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gibbering-miasma · 3 years

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I think I know how Warcraft’s casters work

It started with a simple question. Why can mages summon water elementals? It’s a simple question that resulted in me noticing other elements of overlap among the Warcraft casters. Not only can mages summon elementals, but fire mages and destruction warlocks can appear to be the same class at a first look. (Especially if the person doing the looking isn’t very experienced, we all know you, yes you, can easily tell the difference. The point is that two classes that seem to predominantly use fire magic are very similar.) eventually it got to the point where my initial question changed from “why can one class do this thing while another class can’t?” tonly to change again to

“What really is the difference between the casters of Warcraft?”

I want to be transparent here, I have not read Chronicle yet. I have the books (thanks again for that, you know who you are) but I wanted to get this theory properly formed first so i don’t spoil my biases. That leads me to another thing, this is just the theory of a guy who’s spent most of his life on this game who’s noticed a few odd dots and decided to connect them to see what picture they make. Blizzard can disprove this at any time with a word, because in the end, they’re the creators, and I’m just a fan. One last thing, I’m certain that there are some examples or details that i’ll get wrong (not playing the most recent expansions will tend to leave a sample size less than optimal) so if there’s an error that I’ve made, call me out on it. This may be a fan theory, but I want it to make sense.

To answer my previous question (what really makes the difference between Warcraft casters for those of you in the back), I think the primary difference is philosophy, not the type of magic that each class uses. What I mean by this is the general worldview, character traits, and relationship with magic that each class has. Obviously there are going to be outliers, mortals tend to mess with the systems like that, but this should be a good place to begin our analysis. When analyzing the casters, we see four main philosophies develop. I’d argue that those four are the philosophies of the Druid, Mage, Warlock and Shaman. I’ll include the other classes that I believe to best line up with those philosophies. I’ll focus on the primary casters of those philosophies, though I’ll use a few examples from the other classes that are philosophically adjacent.

And just so we’re all on the same page here, I’m assuming that magic is inherently sentient, and the overall type of magic used has no effect on your class. With all that out of the way, let’s begin.

Druid/Priest/Paladin- Philosophy of Faith.

The druid is the only class that willingly enters a state of unconsciousness and allows their magic to work through them, causing metamorphosis in the process. The primary tenets of the druidic philosophy are Faith and Dedication. The druid venerates the Wild much in the same way that a priest or paladin venerates the Light. What all of this means is that the druid views themselves as inferior to the Wild (or whatever source of magic you prefer). Power is attained not through study or ambition, but by submission and faith, resulting in power being granted as a boon. But it’s not all fluffy cats and boomkins for the druid, their submission and faith means that they are not necessarily in control. We clearly see this to be the case with the druids of the pack (and the same case can be made for the druids of the flame, but I’m unsure on whether ragnaros forced the flame druids to do his bidding or if they were just crazy like that). Spouting character traits with no examples won’t do us any good, so let’s rectify that by taking a look at Tyrande Whisperwind, a great example of the philosophy of faith. Yes, Tyrande is a priest, not a druid, but remember that the important thing about the classes is their philosophy, not the type of magic that they use. As a priest, Tyrande answers to the will of Elune, and will prioritize the will of the White Lady over anything else (consider the quote “Only the goddess may forbid me anything” from warcraft 3). Not only that, but Tyrande also becomes the vessel for a portion of Elune’s power during the Horde’s invasion, showing similarity to the powers that druids receive and use from their Wild Gods. The similarity between druids and priests could be a reason why those two classes are the major casters in Night elf society following the War of the Ancients. And before you start denying my claim that priests and druids are basically the same, let me ask you this: If Elune wanted Tyrande to willingly enter an unconscious state in order to become a more capable vessel of Her power, would Tyrande do it? I say that she would, because putting aside your own desires, fears and reservations in order to serve your higher power is the definition of dedication, it is the definition of faith, and it is exactly what makes a druid what they are.

Shaman- Philosophy of Synergy

The shaman’s relationship with their magic is exactly that, a relationship. I get the suspicion that I may have lost a few of you there so I’ll explain. The druid fully submits in order to gain power, whereas classes like the warlock will just take as they see fit. The shaman exists between those two extremes, they work alongside the elements and it is through that cooperation that they grow their abilities. Of course, the shaman also experiences their own fair share of magical difficulties. They are still drawing their power from sentient beings that may not always want to comply with the shaman’s wishes. This leaves the shaman with a difficult situation, especially if their magic rebels during a time where the shaman doesn’t have the means to deal with any of that nonsense. The shaman must cooperate with their magic unless they fall to dark shamanism and force their magic to submit, which is the exact domain of the Warlock.

Warlock/Warrior- Philosophy of Dominion

The warlock does not ask for power, nor does it work alongside their demons for mutual benefit (I mean really, do you think that your minions are there by choice?). I alluded to the warlock’s modus operandi earlier, and now I get to delve deeper. The warlock takes power as they see fit, often draining it straight from their enemies. The warlock will then add that magic into their own reserves, bending the magic to their will and growing in power. A warlock’s magic can be said to be a part of them in a more literal manner than any of the other four casters. This habit of taking power from others is actually quite common in the Warcraft universe, (look at all the Blood elves for instance) but i’ll highlight the 3 biggest examples of the warlock philosophy. Ragnaros the firelord, Garrosh Hellscream and Illidan Stormrage all are well known for having a desire for more power, while also having the ambition and skill to go out and get that power for themselves without having to plead to some other entity for assistance. Ragnaros consumed prince Thunderan, Garrosh merged with the heart of Y'Shaarj, and Illidan consumed the Skull of Gul’dan, and all three established control over their new power, and not the other way around. Just as a shaman who forces the elements to work for them isn’t much of a shaman, a warlock who is controlled by their power isn't much of a warlock.

Mage/Hunter/Rogue/Monk- Philosophy of Discipline

The other casters all have very distinct relationships with their magic. Warlocks must be constantly in control, druids are always trying to appease, and shamans just want everyone to calm down and talk about their feelings. And then we have the mage, who doesn’t have much of a relationship at all. To the mage, magic is a tool, one that should be respected, but a tool nonetheless. Khadgar used the skull of Gul’dan to close the Dark Portal with no negative side effects. Whereas Illidan barely has his hands on the thing for a minute before he’s undergoing radical transformations and sprouting new appendages. When trying to name this section, I had initially selected Mastery as a good means of describing the Mage’s philosophy. Mastery had made sense to me, the mage is the master of their magic, they display control and authority over their power in a way that is distinct from the warlock, and their utilitarian view towards magic separates them from shamans or druids. So why the change? Why does Discipline describe the mage better than Mastery? Because in a world where dragons rearrange continents, the dead walk, and where tyrants exist around every corner, the mortals of Azeroth need someone to keep a clear head when the demons are dead and their power is being divided among the victors. The mage is the embodiment of mortal authority in relation to magic, they lock questionable powers away so that those who would misuse that power could do no harm to innocents. The mage is a Guardian, the kind of person who has no interest in being warped into some sort of magical pawn to a higher power. They put their trust in their skill with their power, not the overall amount of power that they can wield like how a warlock would.

The Hero Classes

If you’ve been keeping track, you may notice that I haven't included two classes, those being the hero classes. The reason I haven’t included them yet is because of the fundamental difference between them and the other classes. A number of people have wondered what exactly makes a hero class, and while I don’t claim to know the exact truth, I think I have an additional pearl to add. Hero classes are a state of being, whereas the base classes are more like a career. If you want to understand a hero class, you have to understand what they are, not who they are. Furthermore, I believe that both the Death Knight and Demon Hunter are adjacent philosophically to two of the other philosophies previously mentioned. This doesn’t mean that Death Knights are automatically really, really edgy druids, just that they’re an offshoot.

Death Knight-Philosophy of Tyranny

Offshoot of the philosophy of Faith

What, did you think I was kidding about DKs being druids? Lets step back and ask the fundamental question: what are Death Knights? Simply put, DKs are dark magic inhabiting and controlling a mortal vessel. Yes, that does sound like something a warlock would do, but remember that it’s magic controlling a mortal, much like what we see with Druids. Plus, saying Death Knights are related to Druids has more panache, so i’m going with that one. To the DK, power is their birthright, and they will take and abuse and consume as they see fit. Nothing is sacred from their will, not the blood in your veins, nor the flesh on your back, nor the final, cold breath you give before you’re raised as an undead servant. The DK does not necessarily take to grow their power, they take to fulfill their desires-which is usually to kill a lot of people.

Demon Hunter- Philosophy of Unity

Offshoot of the philosophy of Synergy

Once again, what are DHs? While DKs are magic possessing and dominating a vessel, the DH is more than that. They are a combination of mortal soul and demon. The DH is the product of a perfect union between two distinct soulstuffs. Now here’s the important thing, I’m trying to distinguish between the Illidari, and the Demon Hunters themselves, which can be hard when you remember that pretty much every Demon Hunter is Illidari. The reason this separation is so important is that the Illidari with their whole “fight fire with fire, we shall take the demons' own magic and use it against them as our own” is a very warlock-ish thing to do. But I’ll maintain that the DHs identity points towards being more closely adjacent to the philosophy of Synergy than Dominion.

So why can mages summon water elementals? Because mages have power, just like anybody else. And power itself doesn’t have much significance, what matters is how you use it.

This has been a somewhat deep dive into the philosophy of Warcraftian magic, with the end goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the various classes, and the characters within the Warcraft universe.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

#wow

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lepertamar · 3 years

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PART 1 of 4(?): LUCIFER ON THEURGY AND HOLIES, NARRATIVE STRUCTURE THERE.

Bullet pointed thing not separating out good and bad stuff because most of the bad stuff is just like, failures to follow through on good stuff? Or weird arm-twists when the good stuff starts implying things a little too numinous and rebellious to the worldbuilding order and gets forcibly reined in?

Incapable of organizing my thoughts properly even though I tried so I’m just going to post all my thoughts and semi-arbitrarily break them apart into sections, I’ll probably come back to add links to the other parts later:

(I broke this in half lol becuz is was seriously too long but anyway part 2 which is more holies stuff is here)

Bullet 1. Fuck, theurgy is so good. Like the concept, the entire idea of it. Just fuck that is so good. *Much better explanation of wtf it is in this meta post.*

But it’s especially good as like a gateway to interactions or concepts too complex or liminal or interactive or emergent to be captured in anything like ‘a normal physical object’ — and it makes for a really really great process from the point of view of the characters doing it (or in Tamar’s and Eliya’s cases, interacting with someone else’s for the first time.)

The hint comes percolating through, slowly, inexplicitly, (or maybe it’s just because I read that meta post I linked first? I’m not 100% sure) — the whole world is made by this. Infinite recursion of souls.

1.a Yet it’s........actually pretty shallow simply from explanation of what it is, almost new-age-y vibes that really do it a disservice, and even more an underwhelming disservice when characters are being told how to do it. This is abrahamic fantasy! No embodied and tangible rituals? No songs and chants, no mysterious properties of specific things, which would have an extra layer of meaning because all things are souls? Eliya comes up with, in total (but forcibly unacknowledged) defiance of Lucifer, spoken-word ritual type things towards the end that DO help her, powerfully so. But so much of the book’s discussion of it seems almost designed to make it sound....lame. Thank G-d for Yenatru’s early-on pov of doing his own theurgy or I would have disliked it a lot, and thanks even more to that meta post I linked.

1.b It’s just…..weird and a bit of an um, self-own, that learning about theurgy was done through the characters literally just fucking…..being taught to about theurgy. As if this was a non-fiction book! Instead of a fiction book, a fantasy one no less, where information-communication is inherently always done differently. Why not have Eliya learn theurgy by subjecting her to various theurgies, manifestations of various people, sending her on a hunt for manifestations and making her have to try to figure them out or understand what this meant until finally she understands enough to ask questions? Why not have various elaborate rituals for theurgy?

BULLET 2. Lucifer is…………!!!$$%%???&&**???>. I loathed Lucifer as a constructed character, an execution of a part of a full narrative story. Absolutely hated them. Could not stop thinking about how much I hated them, how bad it was, all the ways the execution of them completely fails and takes out huge amounts of the overall book — character arcs, concepts, worldbuilding, resonant emotions — with them in the blast radius of the author utter failure at executing them.

And yet, Lucifer’s CONCEPT is………..amazing, their BACKSTORY is phenomenal. Absolutely incredibly original and drop-dead clever and woven into the worldbuilding in a way where dozens of tiny details about them, about theurgy, about G-d, about angels, etc, all line up to collide and open in the reveal *perfectly*. On the other hand, they are absolutely loathsome as a person. But this isn’t the problem. In fact it’s awesome. It’s not a problem on the front hand of it, at all, that they are so so so awful, as a person. It fits. This is what trauma does. Tells a truth, but then that truth metastasizes into a demanding cancer covering the world.

2.a (In this book, Lucifer’s (incredibly sympathetic) fall is very, very far from either the traditionalist folk depiction (ewwww rebellion against the wise and good laws of Heaven) OR the now-ubiquitous folk resistant reading (oooooh rebellion against the unjust and oppressive laws of heaven!) Their rebellion is instead basically a rejection of The Way Angels Are Naturally Existing, which is entangled with G-d’s soul in a lawless chaotic orgasmic orgy of unchecked creation that has the pitiless one-way un-budging This Is What Is simple Being-ness of nature and the universe. And it makes so so much sense, that in the intensity of traumatized backlash to this, Lucifer is not simply wise in the ways of ethical demands for justice from G-d and the world the way (I think) Lilith is, but is instead cruelly, reductionistly, circumscribingly dogmatic. They are many other bad things — projecting, saneist, insincere, avoidant, glib, safety-fetishizing, lacking in the tiniest budge of character development, but all these mostly go back to being dogmatic.)

None of which, again, I emphasize again, is anything except BRILLIANT and perfect from a characterization perspective. All of these things fit their character conception and trauma backstory perfectly. The issue is really that not a single one of these things are unearthed or bounced off of as the bad things they are. By which I REALLY don’t mean ‘ugh why didn’t any of the characters explicitly Call Them Out [tell not show] for how awful they are while they’re just minding their own business being awful [shown not told] as a character in this story’. I hate that kind of thing. I mean simply….the other characters’ personalities, natural reactions, and in fact the entire world around Lucifer, warps wildly in order for their creepy narrowing way of steamrollering and falsely-restating-using-‘it’s just my issue’ to be enshrined and stated [telling not showing] as Correct and somehow The Way and The Truth, the Reason Yenatru is happy now, the Reason Eliya succeeded at theurgy. When there’s not a single way this actually tracks.

2.b Why does Yenatru care about this person when everything they say would be horribly devastatingly harmful to Yenatru if its content was aimed at a slightly different category of people, but happens to not be harmful to him simply because this person happens to understand him specifically? Not the tiniest bit of supporting evidence why. There’s a tiny moment, where Lucifer challenges Yenatru to challenge them, in a way where I would almost claim that Lucifer was hoping Yenatru would challenge them and argue back against them, and continue to argue against them throughout the book because Yenatru is one of the few people who could do this without deeply triggering Lucifer’s trauma. But it never ever happens. It’s also not acknowledged but sadly refused along with their friendship later on, as it also could have been. It’s devastatingly disappointing and brought my liking of Yenatru, which was so so promising and deep because he in many scenes and aspects is written so well, down many notches.

2.c Why does Eliya successfully uncritically learn anything from them? Why does she [telling not showing] credit Lucifer with anything she learned, when she very very clearly [showing not telling] actually learned everything about herself and about theurgy’s weight and truth from Yenatru and from Tamar? It shatters the imagination to think that any of what Lucifer told her would not be grade-schooler basic knowledge for a lifelong resident of this non-portal-fantasy world, unless theurgy was a Secret Misunderstood Forgotten Art (which it very explicitly and clearly is not). I could see the information Lucifer gave her as perhaps so basic that it could easily fade into the background as not really Meaning anything or being graspable — which is exactly where Yenatru and Tamar, as an unusually gifted and deeply expressive theurgist, and an unusually extreme soul-appreciator and lover, respectively, come in!!!!

2.d And also it could have been where Lucifer’s rigid, trauma-calcified, dogma could have very expressively and poignantly come in too, as something that purports to be about How Souls Are and is illuminating by dint of how hyper-specific and inapplicable to most other people it is, how it’s actually not what souls are, but is very much what a traumatizing but successful struggle to Not Be Steamrollered Into Something You’re Not is. This would have been intensely sympathetic even. And speaking of, here’s the thing: I would have liked Lucifer a thousand times better if they [as a person] had been openly *worse.* If they were outspoken and explicit about their horrible ideas, and if the book [as a narrative] had let them be a mess incapable of intentionally teaching anyone functionally (and therefore much more poignant and illuminating-of-theurgy just by existing as an example of a person, an example that changed the world). Instead of them smoothly tucking their prescriptive ideas into the stretches between other unrelated scenes of ‘oh this is just my issue, these are my own weird biases’. They would be far better if they weren’t being twisted into having the narrative state [tell not show] like they were right about everything.

Bullet 3 It’s this — that’s what I mean. Insincere and politely erasing nonviolent-communication (a specific thing I have encountered a hundred time, more damagingly than any blatant articulated disgust and hatred I have ever encountered) -- with repeated statements of ‘no it’s okay to be you :)’ ‘i don’t think you’re immoral :)’ ‘everyone is different :)’ despite everything they say belying this. Which when placed alongside everything Lucifer says when not being confronted, does not ever function as a genuine ‘don’t listen to my biases’, but instead functions as a way to avoid actually stating (and therefore baring up to an argument) any of the erasing assumptions underlying their authoritative explanations of other things, so that those assumptions sneak through undetected when they would be interrogated and valuable if they were stated.

3.a. For example, if Lucifer’s [obvious to me, but probably not obvious to anyone else who hasn’t been personally subjected to a lifetime of this language] revulsion for the Holies and Tamar was openly stated and if they tried to actually argue they were right to be revolted…..I would have loved them! Even if they are arguing Tamar (and indirectly, I too) was a disgusting thing — a ‘leper-soul’ (to quote this fanfic), mad and lost and ruined and degenerate (to quote *this canon book quote*)—I would have loved them! I have nothing but delighted love for people whose clawing desperate insistence on not being what they were raised and created to be, no matter how hateful that makes them towards my loves and experiences.

If Lucifer had said and stuck by this until proven wrong by the narrative [show not tell, or even tell or not show!], instead of simply going ‘oh don’t worry, I don’t think you’re bad :) I don’t think it’s harmful :) it’s just my issue :)’ whenever speaking about Holies, it would have been GOOD and I would have REALLY respected them. Even while everything they’ve actually said about their opinion of souls in other contexts is such that it fundamentally precludes and rejects, as sick and as nothingness and deluded and incapable of being real, the entire concept and lived real existence of Holies (Tamar: I saw them, I am someone who’s done that) — but then Lucifer being actively explicitly validated [again, i mean ‘gets validated’ as in the book states this, with a positive-presence, tell not show wording, while also refusing to admit anyone else influencing Eliya as much or more. i do NOT mean ‘waaahh it’s Obviously Validated becuz Lucifer doesn’t get explicitly called out’ or whatever].

In fact, this specific struggle, between what they state to be True, and what Tamar’s very existence declares to be a truth, would have echoed the struggle of their backstory, and conveyed the message of this book more powerfully, more clearly, more sincerely. But seeing Lucifer instead warp a way into an actively (tell not show) defined enlightened master position in the book’s narrative structure made me shake a bit, not going to lie.

Continued uhhhhhhh soon, links to other parts (continually updated) under the cut:

#LONG POST #i have 99 problems with this book and it's the most direct contact with my soul anything's had in years and complaining is really fun #the eternal combination #coal reads the stars that rise at dawn #girl with burned out and still burning eyes #VERY sorry if i forgot to put in a link somewhere i intended to.....lol #coal sings #<-new original post tag

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adventure-hearts · 4 years

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( PART 1: DA + ASTROLOGY )

PART 2: DIGIMON ADVENTURE + MBTI

Taichi - ESTP Yamato - INFP Sora - ENFJ Koushirou - INTJ Mimi - ESFP Jou - ISTJ Takeru - ENFP Hikari - ISFP Daisuke - ESFP Miyako - ENFP Iori - ISTJ Ken - INFJ

Discussion and Commentary below!

If you’ve read some of my previous headcanons about the MBTI, and in particular this very popular post from four (!) years ago, you may find I’ve changed my mind a lot.

An important thing about this typology (or any other one, really) is that it’s quite easy to just look into some websites and make decisions based on the keywords used to describe each type. Which is what I used to do. Keywords are helpful to help us get the “basic picture” (hence why I quote them in this post), but now I believe that you have to read actual theory in order to understand the subtle differences between each type and make more educated guesses.

Since then, I’ve been reading more deeply into MBTI and the Functions. Consequently, the way I understand the MBTI has changed significantly, and so have my Headcanons.

It’s been particularly interesting to learn about the Inferior Function, or the “dark side” of each personality type. The more I read about it, it became surprising that how it seemed to describe most of the adventure kids’ characters arcs incredibly well. This is another reason why the combination Chosen Children + MBTI is such a fascinating and fun thought exercise!

It should be noted that different authors can have widely different interpretations of types, which is why, for the sake of simplicity and coherence, I’ve only read 3-4 main sources when preparing this post. And I tried stay away from popular MBTI websites and resources that exist around the internet, most which can have a slightly misleading/superficial vision of each type.

However, this doesn’t mean my HCs are “RIGHT” or that other people can’t have better ideas. I’m as biased about the characters as anyone else. I’d be very happy to hear alternative takes!

***

Taichi - ESTP Dominant function: Se

Flexible and tolerant, they take a pragmatic approach focused on immediate results. Theories and conceptual explanations bore them - they want to act energetically to solve the problem. Focus on the here-and-now, spontaneous, enjoy each moment that they can be active with others. Enjoy material comforts and style. Learn best through doing.

Taichi is pretty easy to type, and most ESTP descriptions fit him nicely. Thompson notes the archetype of ESTP is James Bond and Xena the Warrior Princess; I think the character of Taichi, who represents Courage, fits in the same tradition — a bold, impulsive, adventurous leader who is good at strategizing and is able to make though decisions, but is is also very charismatic and charming. Taichi’s tendency to become thoughtful, introspective, and indecisive under stress can be explained by the inferior function, Ni.

Yamato - INFP Dominant function: Fi

Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened.

By contrast, Yamato is always the most difficult to type! I ended up using INFP rather than INFJ, because I think it makes more sense for his dominant function to be Fi (introverted feeling): “Due to the introverted nature of Fi, INFPs’ status as feelers is not always evident from without. When immersed in Fi, they can seem a bit cool, aloof, or indifferent.“ (Drenthe). This type is pretty well representative of Yamato’s caring, passionate and caring side, and especially his conflict during Adventure is beyond, his search for self and meaning. Yamato’s more critical, aggressive, angry, and impetuous side is easily explained by him falling under the influence of the inferior function of this type, Te.

Sora - ENFJ Dominant function: Fe

Warm, empathetic, responsive, and responsible. Highly attuned to the emotions, needs, and motivations of others. Find potential in everyone, want to help others fulfill their potential. May act as catalysts for individual and group growth. Loyal, responsive to praise and criticism. Sociable, facilitate others in a group, and provide inspiring leadership.

Another character who’s relatively difficult to type. I see Sora as being in the middle of many of the Preference axis, hence why I initially typed her as something pretty difference different. But now I’m pretty convinced her dominant function is Fe, even though she’s probably only 51% Extroverted. She leans more towards iNtuition than Sensing: Sora’s definitely someone who can pick up things intuitively, especially when it comes to human relationships. So, ESFJ could probably work as well, but I see her as more of an NF type than a SJ type. Sora’s tendency to become hypersensitive, stubborn and withdrawn when under stress? That’s the inferior function, Ti.

Koushirou - INTJ Dominant function: Ni

Have original minds and great drive for implementing their ideas and achieving their goals. Quickly see patterns in external events and develop long-range explanatory perspectives. When committed, organize a job and carry it through. Skeptical and independent, have high standards of competence and performance - for themselves and others.

This is an example of how learning more about Functions made me change my mind! I believe Koushirou is the text-book definition of INTJ and the Ni function. Koushirou isn’t just someone who thinks — he creates knew knowledge and connects theoretical possibilities. One of the effects of the inferior function of this type, Ni, is an “Obsessive focus on external data”, which means that they can become obsessed with controlling small details, which is what Koushirou tends to do under stress.

Mimi - ESFP Dominant function: Se

Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realistic approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people.

Mimi is a rather obvious fit for this type, not only with her bubbly and happy exterior, but also her naïveté and compassion towards others (Crest of Purity).

Jou - ISTJ Dominant function: Si

Quiet, serious, earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Practical, matter-of-fact, realistic, and responsible. Decide logically what should be done and work toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Take pleasure in making everything orderly and organized - their work, their home, their life. Value traditions and loyalty.

Jou’s type seems pretty straightforward. The characteristics of this type to fit him (and the Crest of Honesty) very well. The inferior Function of this type is Ni, manifested as impulsiveness and catastrophizing — classic Jou moves whenever he looses his cool.

Takeru - ENFP Dominant function: Ne

Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. See life as full of possibilities. Make connections between events and information very quickly, and confidently proceed based on the patterns they see. Want a lot of affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support. Spontaneous and flexible, often rely on their ability to improvise and their verbal fluency.

Takeru is REALLY hard to type. Mostly because, just like his brother, he isn’t as transparent as he seems. Behind that charming, open, happy façade, Takeru runs deep. I ended up choosing ENFP is described as the most optimistic of all types (Crest of Hope), and they are very charismatic and inspiring as well. The “dark side” of this type can be hopelessness or depression (see also: tri. Chapter 3!)

Hikari - ISFP Dominant function: Fi

Quiet, friendly, sensitive, and kind. Enjoy the present moment, what's going on around them. Like to have their own space and to work within their own time frame. Loyal and committed to their values and to people who are important to them. Dislike disagreements and conflicts, do not force their opinions or values on others.

Hiakri is another one whose type isn’t obvious, but maybe for different reasons than the other characters I hesitated about — we just don’t see enough of her. I think you can make a strong argument for her being an Intuitive type, but ultimately I think Fi represents her better.

Daisuke - ESFP Dominant function: Se

I know it’s reductive to say Daisuke and Taichi have different personality type, but that’s easy to understand if you see them as being in different stages of type development.

Miyako - ENFP Dominant function: Ne

I’ve always thought Takeru and Miyako are pretty alike, hence why I think they would both fit this type.

Iori - ISTJ Dominant function: Si

Again, Iori and Jou are pretty alike, although at different stages of their personality development. I could see Iori a ISTP/ISTJ, too — to be fair, I haven’t made up my mind totally about him.

Ken - INFJ Dominant function: Ni

Seek meaning and connection in ideas, relationships, and material possessions. Want to understand what motivates people and are insightful about others. Conscientious and committed to their firm values. Develop a clear vision about how best to serve the common good. Organized and decisive in implementing their vision.

I’m just going to go and give Ken INFJ, although I’m not entirely sure it is the best fit. Ken is incredibly complex, but Ni seems to describe him fairly well. And certainly, the “dark side” of Ni, Se, can very well explain why Ken developed his Digimon Kaiser persona.

BONUS

A brief summary of the 8 Functions:

Introverted Intuition (Ni) collects conscious and subconscious information, and then synthesizes it to produce convergent impressions, insights, answers, and theories. It sees deep causes, patterns, and laws underlying sense data. It is characteristically penetrating and insightful.

Extraverted Intuition (Ne) surveys and creatively recombines a breadth of ideas, associations, patterns, and possibilities. It is characteristically innovative, divergent, open-ended, and non-discriminating. Outwardly, Ne users may present as scattered, random, quirky, witty, and ideationally curious.

Introverted Sensing (Si) retains, consolidates, and recollects historical and autobiographical information. It attends to and draws on a concentrated body of past experiences, routines, and traditions (i.e., the “tried and true”). It forgoes the constant pursuit of new or broad experiences, finding safety and security in stability and consistency. It also surveys inner bodily sensations.

Extraverted Sensing (Se) seeks extensive outer stimulation in the “here and now”—new sights, sounds, tastes, experiences, etc. It is open-ended and non-discriminating with respect to new experiences. It can also be associated with image-consciousness and observation skills, displaying a keen eye for detail. Outwardly, it may manifest as a recurrent desire for activities beyond talking (“Let’s do something!”).

“Introverted Intuition (Ni) collects conscious and subconscious information, and then synthesizes it to produce convergent impressions, insights, answers, and theories. It sees deep causes, patterns, and laws underlying sense data. It is characteristically penetrating and insightful.

“Introverted Thinking (Ti) utilizes deep and nuanced logic to examine techniques, problems, concepts, or theories. It seeks self-regulation and self-optimization through the development of personal skills, methods, and strategies. It takes a skeptical and reductive approach toward knowledge.

Extraverted Thinking (Te) uses explicit logic, including standardized methods, measurements, policies, and procedures, to make systems and operations more rational, efficient, or effective. This often involves working as part of an institution, be it corporate, scientific, academic, etc. Outwardly, Te delivers opinions and directives in a firm, direct, measured, and unemotional fashion. It may at times be perceived as harsh, tactless, or unsympathetic.”

“Introverted Feeling (Fi) explores and refines personal tastes and feelings, contributing to a strong sense of personal uniqueness. It is self-regulating and self-controlling, working to maintain inner emotional and moral order. It may also emotionally invest in a limited number of love objects, be they persons, animals, hobbies, or causes.

Extraverted Feeling (Fe) surveys a breadth of human emotions, values, and morals. It strives toward interpersonal rapport, consensus, and continuity. It can also be associated with effective communication and social intelligence, facilitating growth and transformation in others. Outwardly, it delivers opinions and directives in a direct yet tactful way, often with a sense of emotional urgency and conviction.

in My True Type, A.J. Drenth

MBTI RESOURCES

A.J. Drenth. “My True Type”

Lenore Thomson. “Personality Type”.

A.J. Drenth. “The 16 Personality Types”.

The 16 MBTI® Types https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/the-16-mbti-types.htm

Naomi Quenk, “Was That Really Me?”

#series: typing the chosen #digimon #headcanons #personality types #mbti #sorry but Tumblr formatting is a MESS;;;; I hope it's more readable now!

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demi-shoggoth · 4 years

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COVID-19 Reading Log, pt. 7

36. Fox Tossing and other Forgotten and Dangerous Sports, Pastimes and Games by Edward Brooke-Hitching. After a run of long and/or downer books, I wanted something short and upbeat. So I reread something. This book is exactly what it says on the title—most of the games have been abandoned for being cruel to animals, hazardous to human health or just silly (or sometimes multiple at once, like archery golf). Sports and games tend to get little exposure in histories, and so it’s nice to see both that people have always done weird stuff to alleviate boredom, and that we’ve gotten less openly bloodthirsty and cruel in the modern era.

37. The Leprechaun’s Kingdom by Peter Haining. This is a collection of folktales from Ireland, some of them literary and other less so. It also serves as a repository of art of faeries, ghosts and other supernatural things from various British Isles sources, mostly but not entirely Irish. I wish that some of the pieces had been replicated at larger sizes, but that’s just about my only complaint here. If I had found this book at, say, 11 or 12, I would have been completely obsessed with it.

38. Sleeping with the Lights On by Darryl Jones. I was initially disappointed in this book, which was much smaller than I was expecting—for $16, it’s a hardcover about the size of a trade paperback, but half the page count. Turns out, it doesn’t need to be long. This book is a concise overview of horror scholarship and analysis, covering a lot of the highlights with brevity and insight. The section on vampires, for example, manages to do better in 7 pages than Nick Groom’s entire book. This is a great introduction to critical perspectives on horror for someone who is just getting into the subject, and even as an old hand I found new things to think about and enjoy.

39. Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Food Plants, edited by the National Geographic Society. I have owned this book for years, using it as a reference. Sitting down with it turned out to be a disappointment. The first seventy or so pages are a history of agriculture and food plants, which trends strongly towards the March of Progress fallacy and is extremely biased towards Western Europe. The bits on the plants themselves are oddly organized (why start classifying fruit by botanical fruit types and then give up halfway? Why does soy only get a brief mention as an oil plant, and not for its other many, many uses?). Some of the authors need to be reigned in more—the author of the nuts chapter was purple in prose and pseudoscientific in their claims.

40. Catastrophes! by Donald Prothero. Prothero is an author I have a love-hate relationship with. His writing on mammal paleontology and evolution is typically pretty good, and he’s the co-author of two good books about paranormal claims (one on UFOs, one on cryptids) that I quite like. But about his Mesozoic writing… let’s let Captain Muramatsu explain it:

Thank you, Cap.

Anyway, this is his geology book about natural disasters. The author’s anti-religious bias shows in dramatic and occasionally baffling ways, like his constant remarks on the “irony” of deadly disasters on Christian holidays. In an aside during the discussion of Pompeii, it appears that he sides with Emperor Titus about the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem! And in a chapter on mass extinctions, he claims that the asteroid impact was minimal if not uninvolved with the extinction of the dinosaurs, which he supports by savagely cherry picking his sources. The irony of him complaining about global warming deniers cherry picking their sources seems lost on him. At least there’s some good, and lengthy, quotations from primary sources to be found, and the diagrams and photographs are strong. But the authorial voice was decidedly unpleasant.

#reading log #covid 19 #horror #horticulture #ultraman

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gravitascivics · 3 years

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VIRGINIA: A DIFFERENT BASIS, ONE SIMILAR RESULT

As one leaves the New England colonies, where the Puritan influence was so strong, and looks at the other colonies, say Virginia and Pennsylvania, one encounters some highly distinguishing social elements and some common ones as well. What seems to prevail in all the colonies is a foundational understanding of governance and politics.

That leads to a set the basic assumptions of how government should be set up and, therefore, reflects agreement about basic related values. In addition, that similarity led to agreements about what government is and how it should function. Generally, an overall description of this similarity can be characterized as federal thinking.

A colony that predated settlement in New England is Virginia. Thirteen years before the first settlement in Massachusetts was established in 1620, the Jamestown settlement of Virginia was established in 1607. While there were three types of colonial arrangements – property colonies, charter colonies, royal colonies – given the inability to garner immediate profits, and in terms of the Crown, indifference, all the colonies devolved into being free standing entities establishing local governance.

The initial businesses that set up the colonies, for the most part, were unsuccessful (the Virginia Company went bankrupt in 1622), but the role the colonies were to play in the prevailing mercantilist system was to provide natural resources to the mother country, England. Given this overall aim, a lot of policy was accepted that might have been at least questioned otherwise. That would include the introduction and furtherance of slavery.

The first slaves were introduced in 1619 as they were brought to Jamestown.[1] These unfortunates were to work on certain agricultural products – rice, sugar, tobacco, and eventually cotton. These crops lend themselves to large land allotments and, given the geography of the area, the development of the plantation economy quickly came to be.

Another difference between Virginia and New England was that Virginia was not settled by Puritans. In that more southern area, Anglicans initially populated that colony. This was offset a bit with a level of popularity for Puritanism among the first natural born generation of Virginians.

Despite this variance, almost from the beginning, there was a similarity between the constituting documents written and enacted in New England and those that will guide the way in Virginia. Donald Lutz reports on an initial Virginia document:

Under its initial charter, Virginia was run by a cumbersome double council. A thirteen-member council in Virginia to carry out its will. The system did not work, and the Virginia governor had to become a virtual dictator to maintain order. The [Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martial for the Colony of Virginia, 1610] was issued under martial law but still reflects the values that were generally accepted by the colonists. It is equivalent to a code of law and may be fruitfully compared with the other codes of law [found among the colonies]. Religion plays an important role in this Virginia document, as it did in codes elsewhere, and the moral content looks similar to that of New England codes. … The similarities with the Puritans may have been due to the predominance of “low church” members, who while remaining securely in the fold, shared many of the Puritan inclinations against pomp, status, and other vestiges of what was termed covert popery.[2]

This gave way to representative governance, defined by compact, shortly afterward.

The general attitude of the English Crown to the developments in Virginia was to mostly ignore any problems. This led to the company’s employees to organize themselves that led naturally to a federating model. Naturally, one can attribute their already existing biases for representative governance due to England’s parliamentary tradition, but with the Crown being so far off and mostly indifferent, one can see federated bonding as a normal mode of advancing a structured polity.

And this indifference would last for the greater part of the 1600s. That is not to say certain actions by the Crown would have inconsequential effects. It, for example, issued highly generous grants to its favored parties such as when it granted William Penn Pennsylvania in 1682, the Carolinas to the Carolina Properties in 1632, New York to the Duke of York in 1666, and so on.[3] But as the colonies became viable and then lucrative – along with some uppity biases – the interest among British policy makers would change.

And then there is the effect that growing Enlightened attitudes would have. Here, there is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the Enlightenment will undercut the authority of religious thinking (as previously explained in this blog), but on the other, it would also undermine aristocratic assumptions about people. The whole notion that well off people are so advantaged due to some godly plan was seriously questioned.

This led to republican leanings among Enlightened thinkers – among them one finds the “social contract” theorists. It was a historical shift toward equality. One imported set of ideas was those of John Locke. While subsequent writers have attributed too much influence on this philosopher,[4] his promotion of a natural rights view and its introduction to America should be noted.

To the extent that natural rights was considered and adopted, it presented a competing sense of what it meant to govern and engage in politics. So, during the 1600s, Virginia was allowed to organize itself, initiate its basic economic arrangements, and proceed to establish a viable position within the mercantilist system that was one, global, and two, highly entrenched. But before moving on to examine Pennsylvania’s development more closely, the next posting will give an overall comparison between the natural rights view and federal theory.

[1] Slavery had already been present in America; the first slaves were probably introduced on this side of the Atlantic as far back as the early 1500s with Christopher Columbus transporting them to Hispaniola. See “America’s History of Slavery Long before Jamestown,” The History Channel (n.d.), accessed May 6, 2021, https://www.history.com/news/american-slavery-before-jamestown-1619#:~:text=The%20arrival%20of%20the%20first,as%20early%20as%20the%201500s.

[2] Donald S. Lutz (ed.), Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund,1998), 314.

[3] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005).

[4] See, for example, Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1978/2018).

#colonial Virginia #natural rights #John Locke #slavery #Donald S. Lutz #civics education #social studies

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threelivesthreeworlds · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: Hello sorry if I was unclear. What I meant to say is that most people have a superficial view on intimacy of any sort, and so while I love Tang Qi's portrayal of romance, I hate most people's physicality-obsessed interpretations. Dunno if it's a western thing, but fanfiction is so out of alignment with canon romance themes that the characters are barely recognisable anymore. (1/4)

Secondly, Most readers/viewers do not give characters like Yehua or Lian Song a chance before making stereotypical assumptions about them. I love their real personalities, flaws and all, but I hate the sheer hyperexaggeration the fandom makes out of it (e.g. hating on Ji Heng). People just cannot see a character as a whole but put them into one category or the other. (2/4)

Thirdly, I just added that I relate to Lian Song(depression etc) because I kinda share his views on romance/love and don't really care for physical aspects that much. I'm aware he's a playboy, but he's also not a stereotypical one (which is unfortunately how most people interpret him) so it's a relief that your blog instead backs up my interpretation of him with facts. (3/4)

Lastly, I'm so sorry for ranting in the Q & A section. Making several points with a word limit really compromises what I'm trying to say 😆. But the bottom line was that fandoms' misinterpretations of your favourite characters makes it hard to see them in an objective light again. (4/4)

(this 4th one came in after most of our answers were done, so we apologize if it comes off a little ??? we weren’t aware of the end goal for the anons received. We mean no ill-will in how we come across, just elaborating on things and we hope that’s alright with you. <3)

(Admin Lin): Hey! Thanks for sharing your opinions, though these anons are starting to get a little haughty for our own comfort to continue addressing. Both admins have our own grievances with the fandom / how it views particular characters (Ji Heng being a prime example here), however the fandom still offers plenty of good things from it. This is not only a western fandom “issue” (I say as this physicality isn’t necessarily an issue), it can be found in the eastern fandom as well for not only this series but others as well. Both admins are in fact western fandom despite Admin Ro being Asian.

As for when it comes down to interpretations - Peach Blossoms is written in first person and hard to find on the western side of the internet; Yehua has an extra from his perspective but that’s the only direct contact we get with him that isn’t through Bai Qian’s eyes. Qian isn’t a romantic person nor does she necessarily find what he does romantic, she’s been engaged to him for so long she kind of considered their engagement troublesome due to her past experience with his Uncle Sang Ji. When it comes to the drama’s take of Yehua, we get a clearer idea of him but at the same time it’s easy to see where others can’t grasp him in his entirety or simplify things when in a fanfiction. Or, for the likes of me, knows what he’s like but can’t formulate a more articulate summary or introspective version of him because of his extensive complexities and in some ways, the knowledge of a Chinese household of some fashion to express the intricacies of his upbringing. It’s merely harder.

In the case of Lian Song - the Western fandom doesn’t have access to the information that can be found on this blog as easily because Lotus Step is in the middle of a hiatus but will continue serializing by next year. So, it’s no one’s fault for misunderstanding what kind of playboy he is since that was only addressed in the fall of last year and the dramas both make it clear he’s a playboy / amorous person but never elaborates on it. So it’s an easy assumption to make that he may be a typical playboy by fans of the other available media because he’s not featured beyond Yehua’s uncle or Donghua’s best friend with touches here and there of his connection to Cheng Yu. It’s only in his novel that we get to see a different side of him that will ultimately have a shift at some point to what we see 50,000 years down the line. So, I’m not actually bothered by this myself, personally. It is bound to happen because no one on the western side of the fandom has as much access or want to read an untranslated novel.

With TQ’s stance on romance writing, I will say the concept of eternal love or a love that lasts 3,000 lifetimes is a very Chinese one that unless one digs through it with patience and interest in Buddhism / other Eastern religions, that it can be a harder nuance to grasp for those unfamiliar.

(Admin Ro): We’re sorry you’ve had bad experiences with “fanon” material. We’re thankful that you like the content on this blog enough to comment on it! These are my opinions on the whole affair: as a Chinese woman who reads Chinese novels, from a perspective of writing tropes, hyper-exaggeration is already frequently utilized...in canon. And - from a personal standpoint, when the tropes hit right, I - don’t necessarily mind. Depth can be dug out of the text, but it’s understandable for people to simplify when they’re simply writing or analyzing for their enjoyment.

I’m ace, so maybe I understand, Nonny, when you say that you don’t care for the physical aspects of love. I personally, in my life, don’t necessarily want or need that kind of intimacy, and I don’t find myself straying into the smut tag too often to read about it as it stretches my comfort limits. Granted, I am not sex-repulsed, and it takes a great deal to upset me - however, if everything is in layers and someone enjoys writing smut, then they simply enjoy that layer. Romance isn’t less good and interpretations aren’t less good if there’s a degree of physicality in it. Heck, Admin Lins and I have discussed extensively the physicality of these books - we keep it off the blog 80% of the time because tagging, but it’s a present theme. And, all of us enjoy different things. At the end of the day I think we can’t say the tropes aren’t good when the tropes are the lead-ins that drew us into the more extensive stories.

Furthermore, a lot of what is on this blog is “read,”and I will never say my read of a character or a part of canon is “right” - or that it's “right”-er than someone else’s. Yes, there’s room for passionate debate as evidenced by many, many essays, but I’m not upset when I can’t change anyone’s mind. People are not automatically wrong when they disagree with me - even if there’s textual evidence, there is difference in interpretation of that textual evidence. I understand why fandom thinks the way it does - though, you’ll have to forgive me, my brain is 90% of the time focused on Pillow Book. Regardless, whether you walk out of a book thinking “this character has this much depth and this many flaws” or “this character is just a flat out antagonist” is very much dependent on you. Yes, we as a blog synthesize textual evidence to make that synthesis easier, but ultimately we are no better judges of anyone’s personality than anyone else out in the fandom.

Rather, I think sometimes for the sake of finding reasons or understanding, or when we look for evidence fitting our own assumptions about characters sometimes we lean into a softer read, maybe entirely without realizing it. This is a big no in the world of analytical writing for the sake of, ironically “objectivity” - but this is for enjoyment and not academia. There are times when textual evidence is untouched by the author's tone in terms of connotation and so when we take it for our reading and we have our pre-formed opinions we fall a little more between the lines. Admin Lins and I obviously differ in where this happens as we each have our own, minutely different vibes for characters in question. We know where our confirmation biases in interpretation might lie. Everyone has those.

Up till about February or March this year, I, like a lot of the rest of this fandom, wanted to roast Ji Heng on a spitfire. That is my bias. We are humans, and I think we are perhaps incapable of reading something and staying entirely objective to each character. I clawed my way out of my bias (I say ‘clawed’ because it was difficult), however, by looking at the book, looking at my own opinions, looking at other people’s opinions and asking myself: which parts of this is most likely to be true? I think the only way of striving toward objectivity in terms of portrayal is to consider other people’s portrayals, even if you don’t like them - and see if there’s any truth you can see past your bias. And to accept that truth, even if it’s a hard pill to swallow.

I guess what I have been trying to say, for this entire time, is that we are not the authority on what is and isn’t objective, on what is and isn’t right in these characters, interpretations, and this blog. We are glad to be an interpretation you enjoy - but that doesn’t mean the rest of the fandom who have different opinions are wrong or misinterpretations. I realize we can come across like that sometimes because we make salty memes and because we write long paragraph essays when we have opinions, but ultimately, no one is wrong. Our bubble of enjoyment is our bubble, and no one has to agree with us.

#three lives three worlds ten miles of peach blossoms #three lives three worlds the lotus step #Yehua #Lian Song #admin lin answers #admin ro answers

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internethistoriananalysis · 3 years

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Habermas’ Public Sphere and its Transformation in Relation to YouTube

The Public Sphere

German philosopher and devotee of liberalism, Jurgen Habermas conceptualised the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ through his historical analysis; arising from the establishment of a new liberal social order starting in the coffee houses of England in the early 18th-century before spreading across Europe to countries like Germany and France; necessitated by the increased trade which upped the need for more open discussion of matters of common concern (Habermas, 1989). He defines the bourgeois public sphere as “[being] conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour” (Habermas, 1989:27).

Habermas’ theory of the public sphere is ingrained into the late-stage enlightenment philosophy of liberalism and its values. As such, Habermas defines a set of prerequisites that must be met in order for a space to be categorical of a public sphere. The space must be accessible to and inclusive of all citizens; there must be allowances for the formation of public opinion within a debated framework of rules and governing regulations wherein unrestricted debate may take place in accordance with the ideals of free association and expression (Habermas, 1989).

Transformation of the Public Sphere

YouTube, as a place that anyone can go, and a tool that anyone can use; could easily be called a ‘public sphere’. The question lays in if the prevalence of the digital era constitutes a transformational change for the public sphere as a whole.

Habermas argues that the ‘public sphere’ that came into existence in the 1830′s due to the advent of increased trade was a very open, rational, and freethinking arena. The relationships in this public sphere were horizontal, not vertical. In essence, this means that people interacted with people of a similar class or socioeconomic status to themselves, rather than any action between classes occurring (Habermas, 1989). The public sphere during this time was structurally classist in this regard, something that would persist later on, but for different reasons with the emergence of the corporatism of the 20th century, and the formation of the welfare state.

In the in the 20th century, classical liberalism sacrificed itself to avoid Marxism through the creation of the welfare state. Paralleling this was the merger of many large companies into corporations, particularly in the publishing and media industries where the narrative was thereon controlled by the stage-managed narratives of corporations that operate(d) on curated content that was unilaterally incentivised by a profit-motive sought to promote the interests of advertisers: other faceless corporate entities. According to Habermas this re-established the vertical nature of the public sphere seen in feudal times, as it was analogical to the nature of King talking to Subject. Instead in the modern era, the ‘King’ became the Media Corporation and the ‘Subject’; the Consumer.

Old versus New Media

YouTube, in some regard is similar to the traditional media organisation, yet on the same hand is also radically dissimilar. I would argue that the similarities are less prevalent, and that the differences are so radical in their nature that they outweigh any similarity between traditional media; it’s conventions, and itself by an order of magnitude.

One of the most notable similarities between these two ‘institutions’, for lack of a better term, is both YouTube and the traditional media are controlled by corporate entities. In the case of the former; Google. This means that YouTube is still controlled by the same kind of institution as the traditional media. It can be succinctly argued that this control has had a significant impact over the platforms evolution over the years. For example, there has been a marked shift from the platform promoting itself as a platform of independent creators, to a more traditional stage managed one, where the platform can be controlled. “YouTube is inevitably heading towards being like television, but they never told their creators this,” remarks Jamie Cohen a professor of new media at Molloy College speaking to USA Today in 2018 (Alexander, 2019).

It is undeniable that YouTube has fundamentally changed people’s expectations of media and the way in which they consume it. There is no doubt about the fact that traditional media is on the decline, especially in the certain antiquated domains such as the newspaper industry. CVM for newspapers; books and stationery has gone down from over £2.2bn in Q3 2000 versus £569mn today, Q3 2020 (Ruddock, 2020:Online).

So, has the Public Sphere been Transformed?

As I have explained above, it seems clear that the public sphere has been fundamentally transformed as the old corporate-controlled narratives of the past have subsisted in favour of independent rational thought and reasoning by a decentralised network of content creators on platforms such as YouTube and Twitter due to the lack of ‘stage management’. This would imply that the vertical relationships as described by Habermas have ceased to be. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Targeted advertisement based on people’s personal data is now a societal norm. Curated content is so too, with the YouTube algorithm personalising content based on one’s viewing history. It has also been described as “one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century” (Tufekci, 2018). These divisive algorithms seek to divide society through further polarization of political thought. It is hard to see how this could improve the quality of the public sphere.

I mentioned above, when describing the similarities that YouTube was purchased by Google. What was ‘Google’ is now known as the parent company ‘Alphabet Inc.’ This is not a new behaviour, as media corporations did the same kind of mergers and buyouts in the 20th century when forming what became the corporate media that is now in decline, it is certain that the similar narratives are being promoted if the logic is Habermas is correct, except in different ways. Possible examples include incentivising self-censorship through revocation of monetization from videos when certain unfavourable key words are detected; algorithmic discrimination, and termination of accounts. The above explained algorithmic polarization often lead to amplified censorship within communities that are politically biased (Ashokkumar, et al. 2020).

Compared to the 19th century coffee houses of London, a place of free and rational debate. The public sphere in the digital era seems like a stone’s throw away from societal breakdown. The main driving force is algorithmic technology which has arisen from the profit-motives of large corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. It is safe to say that the public sphere has been transformed, but it is difficult to argue that it has been transformed for the better.

References

Ashokkumar, A., Talaifar, S., Fraser, W. T., Landabur, R., Buhrmester M., Gomez, A., Borja, P., Swann, Jr., W., B. (2020) ‘Censoring political opposition online: Who does it and why’ J Exp Soc Psychol. 91(104031) DOI; 10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104031

Alexander, J. (2019) The Golden Age of YouTube is Over. The Verge. [Online] [Accessed 4th January 2021] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18287318/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-demonetization-adpocalypse-premium-influencers-creators#:~:text=The%20attention%20Kjellberg%20brought%20to,from%20halting%20their%20ad%20spending.

Habermas, J. (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere : an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: MIT Press

Ruddock, V. Office for National Statistics (2020) 09.5.2 Newspapers; books & stationery Newspapers & periodicals CVM NAYear NSA £m. Newport: Office for National Statistics.

Tufekci, Z. (2018) YouTube, the Great Radicalizer. New York Times. [Online] [Accessed 4th January 2021]

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