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thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

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“Let’s BTS” asks about “I like you the most” and Jin’s reaction

by Admin 2

First of all, I want to wish you all, far away in the world of Vmin and BTS, a healthy and peaceful Easter, if you celebrate it, and a nice weekend for those who don’t! Since Admin 1 is quite busy right now and currently also participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, I (Admin 2) will take over our blog for a little while though Admin 1 will still be lurking and checking comments etc. I want to emphasize right away (you will probably notice it anyway) that I have no literary talent compared to Admin 1. I'll try to worthily “replace” Admin 1 for the time being and talk to you about Vmin and more.

Unlike Admin 1, I am not so careful with shipping discussions (and I even like them) as long as everything is done respectfully and we’re all sticking to the truth about the BTS members. I don't like criticizing other shippers because I understand that other fans may love their favorite members and ships just as much as we love Vmin or Namjin, but sometimes it’s inevitable that I have to say something.

So, I invite you to a discussion. I am open to discussion.

We got two interesting questions about “Let’s BTS” and specifically Jin’s reaction to vmin and I want to discuss them.

From anon: Hi, just wanted to see what you made of Jin’s reaction to Tae’s message to Jimin on the Let’s BTS show. I’ve seen some people say he looks so done and even annoyed with it. I can understand him looking apprehensive at first because Tae is a bit of a loose canon, but everyone’s reaction after is to laugh and smile and shout but Jin is very stoic. I’m kinda new and wondering whether he isn’t a fan of Vmin’s brand of declaring their love on national TV. Although when I think of how he behaves with Joon - I’d struggle to wonder why he doesn’t like it. Any thoughts?

From anon: Hi, I cannot believe what I’m reading about Tae on some platforms. What is wrong with people? Anyways I wanted to ask you what you thought of Jin’s reaction to Tae’s message for Jimin? I’ve started seeing people saying that Jin hates the fact they’re close that’s why his reaction was weird. I’m a vmin shipper but Jin is my bias and I can’t get my head around the fact that Jin doesn’t love them both dearly. He did look “apprehensive” perhaps but I’d say with Tae being Tae; that isn’t surprising.

In order to answer these two questions and to form my opinion on the matter, I’ve looked at the situation with regard to Jin and other members several times.

I admit that I’m surprised myself that Taehyung went this far. Actually, it's not even about the content of his words, but about the whole circumstance and the atmosphere that he created around his "confession". I don't know who added the music, whether it was a Taehyung hint or simply something the editors and PD thought of, but the whole situation and phrase gained even more "meaning" and "seriousness" through it.

I seemed as though the background music was supposed to make the moment remind everyone almost of a scene from a K-Drama (or one of vmin’s playful roleplays), but it only added to the effect of this being a serious, sincere and weighty moment instead.

Taehyung joked around by turning the table and pretending the envelope was not intended for Jimin, but this just led to an increase in the tension displayed by the members and the moment itself, and yet still Jimin was immediately convinced that he was the one for whom the envelope would be. Everyone was acting (which makes it sound like they were faking it which isn’t what I mean) like they were curious, but you could clearly see everyone's tension and nervousness, especially when looking at Jimin. Taehyung added that the contents of the card within the envelope were for Jimin's eyes only, emphasizing the seriousness and intimacy of what he was about to say. As a result, Jimin’s reaction led to uncertainty, nervousness, and at the same time an awareness of the sincerity and seriousness of Taehyung's words.

The words "I like you the most" are (on a superficial surface level) nothing big when compared to "I love you", but they still had the biggest reaction. Jimin wrote "I love you" to Suga and absolutely no one reacted nervously, everyone joined in on the declaration, and the situation was relaxed and even funny. Why did Taehyung’s words cause such reactions then? Why?

My thought is this: When the envelope was revealed to be for Jimin, it was met with tension by both members and Jimin. We all know that Taehyung can be a bit of a loose cannon sometimes, even on national television, when it comes to Jimin.

Jungkook immediately commented that "it’s about friendship", Suga laughed nervously and loudly, as if he wanted to end the situation quickly, and Jin had a serious face that didn’t seem all too positive or eager about what would happen next.I'm not going to go into Jimin's reaction here, but rather Jin’s, since that’s what the anons were wondering about.

In my opinion, Jin doesn't like situations that slip into seemingly too private matters. He is definitely the kind of person who gives up the least private information. The situation with Vmin clearly didn't suit him. And not because Jin doesn't like Vmin (because that’s simply not true), but because he knew this program would be broadcast nationally and streamed worldwide, that it would be debated, that every word would be analyzed, and most importantly, because the team that recorded the show wasn’t their own but one that belonged to KBS. Jin doesn't want anyone to have access to BTS's private life, after all he even asked the You Quiz editors to cut what he saw as too sad/depressing about his answers so clearly he thinks about and considers many such things. I think Taehyung didn't care all that much, but Jin did care.

Perhaps I will go too far in my analysis and imagination here, but let's not forget that in the near future Jin is going to have to leave for his military enlistment in the highly conservative Korean army, which holds very homophobic views. Any shadow cast on any of the BTS members (even if some of them are already suspected to be queer) can endanger Jin or make it even more difficult for him to perform his service well and safely. The suspicion that two of the members might be in a relationship with each other would make Jin an accomplice, since they belong to the same group and would lead to him also being suspected of being queer, guilty by associating basically. This is my opinion at least.

Jin is the oldest and feels responsible for BTS, much the way Namjoon does as leader, for everyone including Taehyung, because Jin is aware of the wave of hatred that will be/is poured onto Taehyung across sns after such a public statement. According to Jin, in my humble opinion, this is neither the time nor the place to take such a step in such serious manner. As long as everything was done in form of jokes and witty answers, Jin was joining in and having fun, but when it was Tae's turn his face became serious, as if to warn Taehyung. Jin knew that "Taehyung's atmosphere" could/would fluster Jimin and the entire team, and could become the subject of rumors spread by the staff that isn’t their own.

So no, Jin’s reaction wasn’t because he hates vmin or anything like that, because that’s not true on any level, but because Taehyung’s words about liking Jimin the most were perhaps too sincere for the setting they were in, raising too many brows, and that’s potentially why he reacted the way he did. After all, if you watch the 5th Muster concerts, and especially the one in Seoul, when vmin stand at the very end together, Jin approaches them and throws water at them as though to pull them out of their bubble and back into reality. All in good fun and because he simply cares a lot about them.

Also, an alternative and even more simple answer could be that Jin’s face has no relation to anything I just said and doesn’t tell us anything about what he thought about Taehyung’s words. After all in some interviews he also just sits there quietly and watches/listens to the other members and that doesn’t mean anything at all, or at least nothing negative. But since you asked for my thoughts, here they are, though they don’t have to be right.

I actually have no idea what the reactions are to this show in Korea and among the general public, but I've seen the reactions to Tae’s words across various sns, which one of the anons also mentioned so I’d like to talk about those for a moment as well.

My hair stood on end when I read some of the responses/posts about Taehyung. I never thought that people who call themselves ARMY or fans of BTS would have such opinions about any of the members. A wave of hatred literally flooded Taehyung, like Admin 1 previously mentioned in their answer to an ask.

I just wanted to cry. It shocked me how far shipping can go (literally playing with actual, living people with no regard to their own words and thoughts) that it can cause such extreme emotions in "fans". It's hard to say which is more negative and alarming for some, Taehyung potentially really having (romantic and reciprocated) feelings for Jimin, Taehyung's feelings not being for the “right” person, or the mere fact that Taehyung's feelings are for a person of the same gender.

It’s also interesting to see how deceptive some are. I don’t even mean that “Taehyung and Jimin like each other most” is ignored, which it is, but rather that those mutual feelings were manipulated to twist them into a completely different direction and to another person, or turned into mere jokes or sarcasm. As if all of this simply never happened.

On the other hand, the fact that Jungkook unbuttoned his shirt before going on stage for “My Time”, as opposed to him not doing so during rehearsals, has become very important and an example of J*k*ok being in a relationship, how that’s now even clearer than ever before and is an indisputable fact, according to shippers. Apparently, J*k*ok were flirting with each other throughout the entire segment and show and only had eyes for each other. Somehow Jungkook imitating Jimin is the final piece of evidence to prove everything shippers ever claimed and thus, according to them, everyone must now see that they love each other romantically.

I've carefully watched this show three times, this particular segment and everything else too, and frankly I haven't seen anything that could be called anything even close to flirting when it comes to the two main ML ships. I'm mature and I think I know what flirting is and I can “read” the simplest human behavior, but I really couldn’t see any of it. In my opinion, Jungkook imitating Jimin is clear and open and not a secret. I fully understand Jungkook, I would also follow Jimin in his place :-) Jimin's dancing and looks, as well as his professional work ethic, are truly breathtaking, inspiring and worth imitating. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with romantic affection or a romantic relationship between them, in my opinion.

Hence, I fail to understand these behaviors which in turn lead to a wave of hatred against Taehyung and the, repeated, disregard, belittlement and erasure of Jimin’s and Taehyung’s friendship and relationship bond, and even some going as far as pretending anything vmin was simply not there at all just to make their ship seem more real, booo.

#BTS #vmin #Jimin #Taehyung #Seokjin #Let's BTS #answered ask #answered by admin 2

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reblogthiscrapkay · 4 years

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The Myth of Persephone in “The Narcissus And The Pomegranate”

Instead of a retelling of the myth, today we talk literary analysis!

Chapter one is an introduction to the Hymn of Demeter and this book itself. I read the Hymn a while ago and expressed my thoughts, which you can find by searching The Persephone Project tag so I won’t explain that.

Chapter two is about looking at the myth as a means of establishing Zeus as head of a Greek pantheon of gods. It analyzes the diction and the narrative aspects to conclude that one of the primary purposes of the myth was this elevation of Zeus due to patriarchal standards of the time. The reason why Zeus would even need to be elevated is that the idea of worshiping Demeter and Persephone independently was common at the time and that Persephone might actually have been worshiped even longer than Demeter but sometimes as a goddess of a different name who represented both the underworld and fertility and the duel nature of life and death before being placed subordinate to Demeter. However, although it does place Zeus as an authority by having him be the one who arranged the marriage and being the one who Persephone calls out for when she’s being taken underground (something I previously pointed out as being kind of weird), the myth also makes it seem like Zeus had no idea about the pomegranate thing while Demeter does. It also talks about Persephone’s retelling of her story when she gets back to Demeter and how she shifts the narrative and how the two goddesses have the longest speeches in the story, implying authority.

Chapter three looks at the myth with psychoanalysis and specifically the object relations theory. This is all about the idea of coming of age for a girl by following the example of the mother and then separating from her while still looking to her as an example of how to form her own womanhood. This is emphasized by how Persephone starts the story hanging with her friends away from her mother. It also talks about the narcissus being called a “toy” and how Persephone goes to pluck it as a sign of her choosing her maturity, which is then completed in a sexual maturity way by eating the seed, which is not really shown to be unwilling or willing but she later has a “me thinks the lady doth protest too much” moment when she insists to her mother that it was by force. This gives Seph a lot of agency in choosing her fate even if she didn’t technically go to the Underworld willingly. It also compares Seph to Demophon and how after losing Seph, Demeter becomes an old woman (her daughter growing up makes her old, get it) and then tries to basically replace her with Demo since her daughter has “died” but she can try to make him immortal.

Chapter four looks at the myth through anthropology and different rituals and coming of age rites that used the Hymn (the Eleusinian Mysteries obviously, the Haloa, and the Thesmophoria). Ultimately the author concluded that while there are some similar elements and stages, they don’t fully add up with what we know about ancient history. It talks a bit about how Persephone doesn’t start the story with her mother but with her friends, putting her already in a liminal state between childhood and adulthood. It also talks about how a lot of the similar rituals of the time that weren’t coming-of-age focused on fertility but Persephone doesn’t ever become pregnant and doesn’t even stay in her husband’s home as one would expect from a marriage ritual (although it does emphasize that sex did happen since they are on a bed and she eats the seed but that marriage is actually kind of ambiguous unless it’s supposed to be implied by the sex).

Chapter five looks at the myth as a hieros gamos, a “sacred marriage” rite common in a lot of early religions (I actually know of it best through the modern Wicca representation but even when I first heard about the Wicca version, I was like, “hey, this is kind of like Hades and Persephone”). The idea is that the coupling of an earth goddess (both above and below) and her kind of useless male consort brings about the fertility of the earth and people. It does mention that this coupling is usually on earth and not underground but that this speaks to the duel nature of nature and death in the Hymn (also cool is how many modern interpretations have them actually coupling in her garden instead like “Hadestown” and Allison Shaw’s comic; it’s more traditional). It mentions how Demeter and Persephone were once probably one goddess and Kore and Persephone were the two split ideas and how Zeus and Hades were one god of different aspects but then split into two gods (I’ve read about this before with Orphic tradition). Even Poseidon was part of this as water leads to vegetation. All these cults got smushed together and altered. Apparently, like with the Wicca idea, the god is usually the subordinate who has a coming of age and the sacred marriage to a powerful goddess but that patriarchy lead to this role being given to Persephone. It also compared the hieros gamos of Seph to one of Demeter and Poseidon (the one with horse rape and Desponia) and talked about cults where the marriage was between Kore and Plouton, a grain god who’s name is very similar to Pluto. There’s a cool footnote where the author notes how another author saw Persephone’s lack of offspring as a result of her being a goddess of death but the author contests that she is a goddess of the dead, not death and that her role is that of receiver and caretaker, not the bringer of death. This was a really interesting chapter to me as it heavily discusses the evolution of myth over time.

Chapter six discusses potential earlier ideas that would eventually be shaped into the Hymn. It again brings up the idea of Persephone as a Bronze age goddess without Demeter or the idea that Demeter as mother was a different aspect of Persephone who is also a maiden in one aspect (citing Homer mentioning her without Demeter and as just Underworld Queen). It discusses the ambiguity of who actually is responsible for the earth’s fertility, addressing that in the Hymn it’s Demeter and that Persephone only brings about the seasons and specifically mentions flowers, not things like food (although she probably did both in earlier history). There were a lot of things in this chapter mentioned before just in a more focused form. One of the new ideas was in an Orphic tradition version, Demeter went into the Underworld herself to get Persephone. It is also suggested that the part of the Hymn where Demeter goes to Eleusis, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the main narrative, was an effort to include rituals that were already present there and establish Demeter as an authority there over Persephone (known as Kore/Thea).

Chapter seven talks about the linguistic history. It discusses when the Greeks started speaking Greek and mentions how Persephone’s name is older, not Greek, and not really understood. It discusses how her previously common adjective as “dread/awesome” is dropped for the Hymn to only describe her as young and beautiful while Demeter is given more power-based descriptions in addition to her appearance. It breaks these words into list form in Appendix B, which I find helpful. It then discusses Demeter’s name, which is Greek, with the first syllable either being connected to earth or water and the other two being mother and it talks about the name Hades, which is usually seen as Greek and translated just “unseen one” but there is some debate. It ends with a lot more discussion of Demeter.

Chapter eight discusses archaeological evidence to find the source of Demeter and her joining with Persephone before the Hymn was written. The book discusses early Persephone concepts in a cup found at Phaistos in Crete from 1900 BCE (and other Minoan goddess concepts), frescos at Akrotiri in Santorini a few hundreds years BCE, and 9th century BCE art in Arkhanes Crete but there’s no indication of names or of any worship of Demeter or Persephone specifically and together until the fifth century BCE. Then the book looks at grain goddess ideas in Mycenae dating back to the 13th century BCE and potential art of paired goddesses who could be early ideas of Dem and Seph. Then it looks at Sicily where Persephone, the life and death goddess of another name, was heavily worshiped independently from the third millennium BCE (and the island was seen as a wedding gift from Zeus). Then it goes to mainland Greece to talk about Eleusis (I enjoyed a mention of clay pomegranates at Eleusis) and Corinth (and some ambiguous two women figures from there). Ultimately, a lot of the results are very interesting but also very speculative because how could we know?

Chapter nine mostly sums up a lot of points in the book in regards to the formation of the myth and its history.

Overall, this was a really interesting read! I don’t know how accessible it is to people who don’t have a large background in this stuff so I’m not sure if I’d recommend it but it’s probably a solid read if you like the myth, archaeology, anthropology, or any of the other things it talks about.

#the persephone project #the narcissus and the pomegranate #personal #persephone

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hirazuki · 5 years

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I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices.

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right.

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation.

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien.

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth.

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD.

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled????

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.

3. The Female Lead:

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her.

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between.

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture.

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

#okay i think this is my last personal post on the matter #i think i've vented about everything that's been bugging me for the past couple of seasons #i'll still reblog and comment on things i find interesting #but i'm gonna focus my energy on constructive stuff #like plucking the hairline of lotor's wig and writing fanfic :)#talk: v

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housmania · 6 years

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In Defense of TJLC

A response to this Slate podcast and to general misconceptions.

Hello! Call me soe. I like cats, BBC Sherlock, and friendly online communities. I hope you do too.

I also blog about TJLC. So, when a Slate podcast came out this week portraying TJLCers in a jarringly negative light, I was dismayed. What I heard was not the community I know.

This post’s aim is to tell the other side of the story. I’m writing both for people who support TJLC and were shocked to hear of the podcast, and for people outside TJLC whose initial impressions have been skewed by the podcast or other outside sources.

I’ll address four of the most common arguments against TJLC through the lens of the argument presented by Willa Paskin, the podcast’s creator:

TJLC, as a theory, is “far-fetched” and merits no serious consideration.

TJLCers are dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded.

TJLCers have hated on people outside of TJLC to an unusual and appalling extent.

TJLC has brought more harm into the world than good.

I intend to refute these points. In the process, I hope to represent your run-of-the-mill TJLCer: not a hateful extremist, but rather someone who supports a theory, enjoys discussing it, and is happy to let those who don’t live their happy lives.

It also means adhering to the standards of a good TJLC meta writer: going through the podcast thoroughly, addressing Ms. Paskin’s correct insights as well as her failings; reading and acknowledging critics and downright opponents; citing all sources; and remaining civil and open-minded. I wish Ms. Paskin had afforded us these privileges.

I genuinely believe that Ms. Paskin meant well. Nonetheless, the biases of her sources, combined with several misconceptions and imperfect research, result in a piece that portrays TJLC inaccurately.

To understand what the podcast got wrong, we first need to cover:

What is TJLC?

TJLC is the theory that the characters John Watson and Sherlock Holmes will end up in a canonical romantic relationship on the BBC show Sherlock. People who support this theory are called TJLCers. TJLCers write analyses of the show, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and numerous other sources known as “metas”.

TJLC is short for “The Johnlock Conspiracy.” I must immediately clarify that this name is a joke. It began humorously and is always, always used tongue-in-cheek. Keep this in mind: Many misconceptions about TJLC arise from the fact that we take very few things seriously, as I’ll discuss later.

What isn’t TJLC?

TJLC is not the same as Johnlock.

Johnlock refers just to shipping John/Sherlock—thinking they’d make a cute romantic couple, without necessarily having any expectation of that happening on the show.

More fundamentally: Johnlock is about creating transformative, creative content. It’s about making something new. In essence, it’s fiction.

TJLC is about analyzing evidence that’s already there. It’s nonfiction.

Ms. Paskin frequently blurs the lines between the two and mourns TJLC for not having the same level of creativity. She explains, for example, that fandom reads into tiny elements of a show to create a transformative space. But TJLC is not transformative. That’s Johnlock.

Neither is TJLC based on wanting the show to “bend to [our] desires”—i.e., Johnlock shippers projecting wishful thinking onto the show. I’m happy to serve as a counterexample for that! I actually didn’t ship Johnlock at all before discovering TJLC. Rather, I found the theories plausible and loved the idea that a show centered around deduction and analysis could also be the subject of deduction and analysis.

Of course, people who already ship Johnlock are more likely to be attracted to TJLC. But the basis of TJLC is not to “see in the story that you have, the story that you want” (46:40)—that’s shipping—but to analyze the story you already have.

I cannot stress this enough: TJLC is analysis, NOT shipping.

TJLC and the “Great Game”

As the podcast explains, TJLCers aren’t the first analyze Sherlock Holmes. Fans of the originals have been analyzing the stories since the 1880s. These early theorists actually gave the name to two kinds of fan analysis: Watsonian and Doylist.

Watsonian fans played the “Great Game,” treating the stories like a real world. Doyle didn’t exist, so every detail had to be explained in-universe rather than attributed to author techniques or error. They’re closer to your modern shippers, creating headcanons to fill in gaps.

Doylist fans acknowledged that (no duh) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a real person, and therefore analyzed the stories as works of literature. They are essentially literary analysts and critics, the kind that wind up on JSTOR.

TJLCers are Doylists. Obviously, someone made the show. That means we analyze character arcs, cinematographic techniques, and rhetorical devices in the dialogue like a researcher in film studies or literature would.

Ms. Paskin warns that in the Watsonian Great Game, people kept “tongues planted firmly in cheek; TJLCers, not so much.” And yet, that’s the point! You wouldn’t expect a literary analyst to go “lol maybe The Great Gatsby criticizes society but like who knows” any more than you’d want Watsonians to really believe that because John Watson’s wife called him James, his middle name is Hamish (Scottish for James) rather than acknowledging that Doyle just forgot. A ridiculous premise entails a humorous approach. A reasonable premise entails a rational one.

TJLC isn’t quite the same as highbrow analysis, however, for three reasons:

First, we use our analyses to speculate about the future of the show. We don’t have the privilege of analyzing a complete work. In that sense, the closest analogy I can think of is that of political analysts: examining what’s already been said and done to predict what will happen next.

Second, we evolved from a fandom space. That means that the barrier between TJLC and Johnlock, between nonfiction analysis and creative fiction, is never as solid as it would be in academia. Furthermore, a significant number of TJLC meta writers also engage in fictional fanworks, making it more difficult to distinguish where hard analysis ends and transformative work begins. I’ll go into some of the nuances of meta in a bit.

Third, the people in TJLC are generally queer women and often young. And we can’t discuss biases against fandom and TJLC without acknowledging sexism and homophobia. When a film critic writes a theory, it’s deep; when we do, it’s ludicrous. Paradise Lost is fanfiction just as much as AO3, but only the former is treated as legitimate literature. Theories about straight couples are plausible; ones about queer ones are suddenly delusional or fetishization. Adult fanboys are mature content creators; fangirls are hysterical.

Conversations about the implicit biases in media depictions of fandom aren’t my focus here. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to bear in mind that highbrow criticisms of fandom that focus only on its ill effects and ignore the complexity, depth, community bonding, and social change that fandom (analytical and transformative) creates often denigrate fans as immature and delusional without considering whether that accurately represents even a significant minority of a fandom. It’s a bias that we should all keep in check.

As progressive as Ms. Paskin may be, the podcast also falls into this trap. In particular, she emphasizes sensationalist depictions of TJLC theories—highlighting far-fetched theories and glossing over deeper points—and the contemptible actions of very few TJLCers while glossing over the far more plausible mainstream theories and kindness of nearly all TJLCers. As a result, we naturally look hysterical and delusional.

So let’s tackle each of those issues: TJLC as a theory and the behavior of the TJLC community.

TJLC as a Theory

If you don’t support TJLC, I’m not asking you to be convinced by a few paragraphs. The aim here is simply to explain why TJLC is plausible.

Ms. Paskin asserts that (1) TJLC is completely unsupported by the original Sherlock Holmes stories, (2) that romantic coding in the show is simply “a knowing wink,” and that (3) TJLC “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.” In fact:

1. TJLC is supported by the original stories.

The Sherlock Holmes canon contains significant, documented evidence of queer coding similar to other works of the same time period. It’s also reasonable to theorize, based on biographical data, that Doyle himself was bisexual.

The extent to which the stories were deliberately coded is a matter of debate. Yet Ms. Paskin simply asserts that “Conan Doyle wasn’t trying to create a homosexual subtext when he wrote the characters, but he did write a deep and committed friendship.” As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

How on earth can anyone possibly know if the homoeroticism was intentional or not, when ACD could’ve been persecuted for admitting it, or making it more obvious?

Ms. Paskin’s assertion, which does not acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, again conflates Johnlock shippers with TJLCers. Johnlock is about transformative fiction; TJLC is about nonfiction analysis.

Ms. Paskin also suggests that TJLCers are “queering” the text, except that queering generally implies a queer theory approach to something that wasn’t queer to begin with. Our whole objective is to reveal that the text was originally queer.

2. The basis for TJLC is the show itself.

Ms. Paskin supposes that TJLC is “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.”

But TJLC isn’t based on anything the creators have said. It’s based on analysis of the show itself.

There’s a whole lot of analysis; good summaries are here and here. Essentially, we argue that given the level of coding on the show, the most probable outcome is that there is deliberate subtext meant to foreshadow that John and Sherlock will become a couple. Elements like Sherlock being indifferent to women, yet “romantic entanglement would complete [him] as a human being” suggest that the subtext isn’t just a “knowing wink,” as Ms. Paskin asserts: it would be poor writing (not to mention queerbaiting) to complete such a setup and not follow through.

3. The creators

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that TJLCers believe Moffat and Gatiss are deliberately lying when they say that Johnlock will not become canon.

And normally, I would agree! Except that Moffat and Gatiss have a long history of lying through their teeth about plot developments. For example, they vehemently repeated that The Abominable Bride would be a stand-alone episode completely independent of the show, but it turned out to be a drugged Sherlock’s theorizing about Moriarty’s plan. And before Series 4, they said that Mary would become a long-running character, then killed her off in the next episode.

So it’s not a stretch to think that they could be lying about one more thing, particularly when TJLC relies on independent evidence from the show itself.

In fact, Paskin argues that TJLCers, like Watsonians playing the Great Game, base their theories on a “contradiction”: “On the one hand the author might as well not exist, but then on the other hand, this person who doesn’t exist has made this perfectly explicable logical thing.”

Except that unlike Watsonians, we do acknowledge that the creators exist. We analyze the show as a work of fiction, with narrative techniques that can be analyzed just as much as plot elements.

Furthermore, the fact that the creators lie constantly doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to what they do say. They have large incentives to keep upcoming plot twists secret, but that doesn’t mean they can’t reveal their motivations and influences. A lawyer questioning a lying witness can still gain information from what they do say.

Take a closer example: Say I went back to 1897 and asked Bram Stoker if there’s queer coding in Dracula (which is now well-documented). He would probably respond along the lines of “I’m not a sodomite; also, what???” But he might wax poetic about homoeroticism in Walt Whitman’s poetry and mention that his charismatic but domineering idol Henry Irving was the basis for Dracula.

So no, there’s no contradiction between analyzing the show and the creators’ influences while still believing that they don’t want to reveal upcoming plot points.

The Behavior of the TJLC Community

How Theories Work

Ms. Paskin rattles off several far-fetched TJLC theories that make TJLC as a whole sound ridiculous. Furthermore, she implies that TJLC is a monolithic community with a “dogmatic” belief in all of these theories, such that criticism and discussion don’t exist.

Guess what? I’m in TJLC, and I don’t believe half the theories she mentioned. That’s because TJLC is much less uniform than its detractors would believe. Furthermore, the general level of confidence that people have in a given piece of evidence depends on its strength. In other words, the more evidence for something, the more likely that TJLCers agree on it. The less evidence for something, the more likely we are to treat it as just something cool that could turn out to be coincidence.

We can divide TJLC meta into five basic categories:

1. Foundational meta

These are well-respected analysis of character arcs, dialogue, and other clearly deliberate plot elements such as this one. Pretty much all TJLCers agree with them. These are your best-researched, most widespread meta; they form the true basis of TJLC. Here are some examples. And yet they hardly show up in Ms. Paskin’s discussion, because they don’t make TJLC sound too far-fetched.

2. Circumstantial evidence

TJLC can stand on foundational meta alone, but there’s also secondary evidence to support it. This includes the “drinks code” (the theory that beverages serve as symbols on the show, supported by subsequent creator remarks) and similar theories that can’t hold up TJLC by themselves, but do provide extra evidence and add nuance to theories about character arcs and plot development.

3. Accessory meta

These are analyses of elements that could well turn out to be coincidence due to scarce evidence. If true, they allow us to establish character arcs in greater depth, but it’s perfectly possible that any given one is coincidence. These include the theories on wallpaper and lighting that Ms. Paskin reports as though they were the pillars of TJLC. They’re theories that I read and go, “Hm, interesting; maybe.”

4. Spinoff theories

These are theories that deal with specific paths the show might take. They generally have groups of supporters within TJLC, but each spinoff theory usually only has a smaller group of supporters within the larger TJLC community.

It’s important to note that many major theories don’t have to do with Johnlock at all. Take M-theory, the idea that Mycroft and other characters are under Moriarty’s thumb, or EMP, the idea that some episodes take place in Sherlock’s mind palace. If, as Ms. Paskin asserts, TJLC is about wishful thinking and wanting Johnlock to be canon, what would be the point of these? Furthermore, if TJLC is monolithic and dogmatic, why do we constantly discuss and critique these theories in constructive discussions? I had to make a whole table of theories after Series 4 because everyone’s opinion was so different!

5. Crack theories

These are usually clearly labeled “crack” and are never meant to be taken seriously. Again, TJLC contains a lot of humor. So sometimes, we goof off and write theories like this one that are clearly ridiculous, usually with an exaggerated conspiratorial tone, to have fun in the spirit of the Watsonians. Unfortunately, some people outside TJLC think we actually take these theories seriously and accordingly treat us as crazy people. Guys… Ctrl+F “crack” first.

To summarize:

TJLC contains theories with varying levels of evidence that are treated with corresponding levels of seriousness.

TJLCers are far from dogmatic. Different people have different views, and that’s OK.

TJLC is founded on criticism and discussion (here’s an example). By disagreeing on meta, we gain better insight into the characters.

Addressing Ms. Paskin: The theories she dwells on are EMP and M-Theory (40:04 and 10:37), both spinoff theories. They do not form part of the main body of TJLC, and fans are far more flexible about that stuff because it’s not nearly as firmly supported as foundational meta. She cites a clip analyzing Mycroft’s theme in the score, which is accessory meta that could well turn out to be coincidence. (By the way, I have serious doubts about all three of these theories. And TJLC is perfectly accepting of that!)

She also talks about loudest-subtext’s meta on the 2009 BBC queer representation report, whose objective was to demonstrate that it was possible for TJLC to happen from a production/permission standpoint, not to prove that TJLC was happening on the show. In that sense, it’s closer to circumstantial evidence.

She also fears that TJLCers “try to find order and logic and reason in every detail.” Again, sane TJLCers treat less solid evidence as less likely to be true. Caveat: Some TJLCers do go overboard. But they do not represent the overwhelming, sane majority.

TJLC Culture

Confidence and Criticism

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that many TJLCers regarded TJLC as far more well-supported, even certain, than “an opinion or a possibility” or “just one ship among many” (14:50).

And yet, in an academic setting, isn’t it normal to think that the theory you researched and support is correct? Again, we hit the boundary in how the public perceives highbrow research and fan analysis. TJLC was not “just one ship among many” because (again) it’s not a ship, it’s a theory based on research and analysis. So naturally, we had a higher level of confidence in TJLC becoming canon than a shipper with an unsupported ship would.

Ms. Paskin implies that this confidence led directly to TJLC being unable to take criticism and therefore hating on people outside the community, since “denying [TJLC] was denying the truth” (14:55). But—first off—confidence does not directly lead to thin skins. Again, we debate everything. If good meta writers couldn’t change their minds given new evidence, TJLC wouldn’t exist.

Yet even when some TJLCers were more certain about TJLC than could be reasonably expected, the overwhelming majority was perfectly nice. We can, in fact, agree to disagree with others.

But this brings us to the most painful part of the podcast:

Fandom Toxicity: The Broad Picture

The podcast, having painted TJLCers as delusional, dogmatic crusaders, goes on to argue that TJLCers hated on people outside TJLC to an unusual and deplorable amount, such that TJLC’s main effect was to increase toxicity in the Sherlock fandom.

For starters: Yes, a few TJLCers did fit this despicable mold. I universally condemn people who went out of their way to attack people outside or inside the community. They are an insult to TJLC’s values of inclusivity and rational debate. And my heart goes out to the people who suffered as a result of them.

But guess what? All the TJLCers I’ve talked to agree with that. Because the fact is that awful people form an incredibly small minority of TJLC.

Most of the TJLCers who listened to the podcast found this to be the most insulting and painful part. They’ve reiterated time and again that the community as a whole is not a toxic place. @artfulkindoforder put it best:

So many TJLCers were never mean to anybody.

You can think we’re unrealistic, immature, delusional—fine. But at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of us stuck to our circles of courteous people and just had fun.

In broad terms, there were several inconsistencies between the podcast and what I found. First, the podcast attributes toxic behavior to large swathes of TJLC, when in fact it tended to be a small group of repeat offenders, many of whom would attack people inside TJLC as well as outside it. loudest-subtext, a longtime TJLC blogger, discussed this here.

Secondly, the podcast makes absolutely no mention of the hate that TJLCers—often perfectly civil ones—received, which makes it easier to paint TJLC as engaging in vicious, one-sided attack. TJLCers, especially at the beginning, received shocking quantities of anonymous hate. Like attacks on people outside TJLC, I’m sure that the attacks on TJLCers were also due to a tiny minority of toxic people. But to gloss over them entirely is to paint an incomplete and biased picture. As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

I’m not going to pretend that there was never nasty behavior from TJLC, but I’m also not going to say her description of us was accurate. She presented the TJLC fandom like it was a toxic cult.... She talked about fandom bullying as though we were never on the receiving end of it, and weren’t ever ridiculed, or called stupid, or sent anon hate, or harassed. To imply that tjlcers were only dishing it out is just flat out inaccurate.

The anonymous attacks on TJLCers had several results. First, TJLC developed a culture that stresses avoiding confrontation with outsiders: leaving other shippers be, unless they seek out TJLC posts. For example, some of the first things I learned were to misspell other ship names on TJLC posts so they wouldn’t show up when people wanted content promoting that ship, and not to reblog posts from outside shippers’ blogs with TJLC-related comments. Far from attacking outsiders, the whole point is to let people who disagree with TJLC do their own thing.

Second, the vast majority of TJLCers despise anon hate because they receive it unusually often. I’ve never seen a community with so many posts reminding people never to resort to it because they’ve seen how it hurt TJLC bloggers.

Third, a handful of TJLCers who got repeated and unwarranted hate did get more combative. But when looking at their later behavior, it’s important to understand that many of them became less willing to compromise on TJLC because they’d seen toxic fans remain unwilling to compromise or debate with them. And most of the conflicts I’ve seen as a result came from anti-TJLC people coming specifically to comment on TJLCers’ posts, not from TJLCers going out of their way to fight non-TJLCers.

Specific Incidents

I didn’t want to rely on secondhand knowledge about hate to write this response. In the spirit of TJLC, I wanted to be fair and impartial. That meant looking through the blogs of people who had received hate inside and outside TJLC. So here’s what I found out:

First off, it was awful. I was looking 4-5 years back to find the worst instances of hate in the community, and I wasn’t used to it because the bloggers I interact with are universally inclusive and civil.

Ms. Paskin discussed three specific incidents on the podcast: top/bottomlock, the 2015 221BCon incident, and post-Series 4 anger.

When top/bottomlock came up, I was baffled. First off, that discussion is ancient. It’s so old that by the time I joined TJLC in late 2015, it had practically died out. More importantly, a “debate” that Ms. Paskin describes as “very specific and dogmatic fanon” was—as I’ve understood—never taken seriously. Again, TJLC is not a very serious place, and people outside it are bound to misinterpret inside jokes. 99% of TJLCers saw top/bottomlock as nothing more than fodder for crack theories, and yet Ms. Paskin’s sources on this issue—none of whom are actually in TJLC—describe it as a debate of monumental importance.

The 2015 221BCon, on the other hand, was a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, people like Emma genuinely suffered, and the fact that neutral fans received anonymous attacks is shameful. But the results of this stretched to TJLCers as well as people outside TJLC, something that the podcast conveniently neglects to mention.

The end of Series 4 disappointed people throughout the Sherlock fandom. I’m not talking about Johnlock: plot inconsistencies, weird characterizations, and plot pulled from a horror movie resulted in its lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating ever. TJLC is too small to have that kind of clout, so to say that TJLCers were the only ones disappointed is clearly inaccurate.

Ms. Paskin claims that Series 4 “seemed straighter, not gayer, than before” and yet John telling Sherlock that “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being” is uh…pretty gay. For many TJLCers, the problem wasn’t that there wasn’t Johnlock; the problem was that the quality of the show seemed to have drastically decreased.

TJLC immediately split into two groups. One group left TJLC, believing that Moffat and Gatiss had been queerbaiting. Many of them began constructive anti-queerbaiting discussions. Unfortunately, a few took their anger out on the creators.

The resulting hateful messages do not represent the views of the vast majority of former TJLCers, let alone people who still support TJLC. The fact that Amanda Abbington received a death threat is disgusting; and yet in TJLC, she’s always been regarded as a sort of beloved “fandom aunt”. In addition, Ms. Paskin cites an article that claimed that fans “dampened [Martin Freeman’s] enthusiasm.” But that interview has already been revealed as a clickbait-seeking misinterpretation—by Freeman himself.

The second group—those remaining in TJLC—were a bit desperate, and I’ll be the first to admit that several theories with scanty factual basis became more popular then than they would have in calmer times. The Apple Tree Yard theory, for instance, is clearly ridiculous in retrospect. But even I was willing to consider it. (Not my finest moment.) As a side note, however: the far-fetched “China cancelled Johnlock” theory she mentioned is by someone who’s not only outside TJLC, but also notorious for hating it

But regardless of the quality of these theories, 99% of the remaining TJLCers were certainly not hating on people—because who was there to hate, if there was no queerbaiting?

Ultimately, the podcast’s descriptions of hate related to TJLC are one-sided, distorted, and do not reflect the conduct of the overwhelming majority of TJLCers.

Podcast-Specific Errors

There’s a reason why the podcast comes off so different from reality: its research is seriously flawed.

For a podcast about TJLC, Ms. Paskin interviewed a whopping one (1) actual current TJLCer, whom she apparently interviewed after building much of her argument. Every other interviewee was outside TJLC and specifically disliked it. That will hardly make for an unbiased final product.

As a result, she culminates with several remarks that are genuinely insulting. She likens TJLC to “any other standard conspiracy where you have a Judgment Day,” suggesting that we’re irrational and fanatical. She summarizes the entire community as “people being cruel to one another because they disagree about how a fictional TV relationship should turn out,” combining every misconception of (1) TJLC being a ship instead of hard analysis, (2) blaming every TJLCers for the actions of very few, (3) TJLC being a silly fan thing rather than a starting point for meaningful research into queer representation and literary analysis, and (4) ignoring TJLC’s vast contributions to TJLCers’ lives while overemphasizing those who were harmed by it. Both remarks are in keeping with standard media portrayals of fans as irrational and immature. I expected better of her.

Ms. Paskin says that she “had a dream about…digging deeper, talking to more people, ones who could perfectly explain the allure of TJLC to me.” She had the opportunity to interview more actual TJLCers, but didn’t take it.

But the offer still stands! Come talk to us! Learn about what we’re actually like! Criticize our theories, if you think we’re dogmatic. Ask us what we think of TJLC, if you think it ruined our lives. Our ask boxes are wide open!

What the Podcast Left Out

Swimming in descriptions of TJLC as a source of hatred, the podcast glosses over one tiny little detail: that TJLC genuinely improved the lives of the vast majority of TJLCers.

I came out because of TJLC. I learned how to analyze literature because of TJLC. I discovered new parts of history and the queer people who have always been part of it. I found a community of curious, passionate, funny, and kind people who I could talk to.

And I’m just one person. I know people who found lifelong friends because of TJLC, wrote books because of it, became students of gender and sexuality studies, found a community of support when they had mental health, financial, or other personal problems, and had a blast theorizing about the possibility of landmark LGBT representation. Heck, Rebekah of TJLC Explained filmed hours of people talking about how much the community meant to them. And I even know former TJLCers who, though disappointed with the show, still appreciate how much it taught them about queer theory, queer history, and themselves.

Evaluating TJLC as a whole, it’s not far-fetched, dogmatic, or primarily a source of “darkness.” It’s a legitimate theory, supported by debate and rational analysis, that improved the lives of far more people than it ever hurt.

You’ve read this. Now what?

If you’re in the media:

This Slate podcast is now the #1 result when I search The Johnlock Conspiracy. Thousands of kind and logical voices on Tumblr and other sites are immediately silenced by well-known publications. So yeah, I care what the media thinks. Few voices have widespread effects. I want people trying to find out about TJLC to get a well-researched, less biased view of it.

Please, take your research seriously when discussing fandom. Interview actual members of the community. Be aware of the public bias of fans as unworthy of serious attention and unable to construct rational, legitimate arguments. And fight against it.

If you’re inside TJLC:

Researching for this meant a trip into the darkest parts of TJLC. We need to acknowledge that not everyone in this community is nice to everyone all of the time, and this resulted in incidents that seriously hurt some people. Remaining civil, especially when faced with disagreement or outright malice, means we keep this community friendly for everyone.

If you’re outside TJLC:

Thank you for taking the time to learn about a topic from someone you don’t necessarily agree with. We need more of your open-mindedness in the world.

If you completely disagree with me, please don’t send me anon hate. Constructive criticism is cool. Anon hate is lame. Be cool. But I welcome questions, comments, and constructive debate. My ask box is always open.

Thank you for reading.

-soe

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@thesaltofcarthage @devoursjohnlock @waitedforgarridebs @one-thousand-splendid-stars @garkgatiss @shinka @witch-lock @jenna221b @sarahthecoat @inevitably-johnlocked @the-7-percent-solution @artfulkindoforder @warmth-and-constancy@marcespot@whtboutdeductions@tjlcisthenewsexy @bluebluenova @heimishtheidealhusband @tendergingergirl @sagestreet @ebaeschnbliah @221bloodnun @marcelock @watsonshoneybee @victorianfantasywatson

#tjlc #slate #johnlock #sherlock #bbc sherlock #soe #slate podcast

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mantis-lizbian · 5 years

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An aggressive reading of Warcraft

So I fell in love with the world of Warcraft thanks to Warcraft III. And perhaps one of the biggest parts of why I loved it so much was because, even then, it was a world. Arthas, and Jaina, and Thrall, and Tyrande were cool and all, sure, but I didn’t really connect to Warcraft through them. It wasn’t thanks to them that I won my battles. I connected to Warcraft through its people They may not have had names, but I still had fondness for my huntresses, and mortar teams, and grunts. No, not individually, that would just be insane. But collectively. As a group. These were Warcraft to me, not Illidan, or the Lich King, or Sylvanas. They were a part of it, and they certainly add to it, and I had affection for them, but largely as a part of this fantastical world, not in and of themselves. It’s because of how they relate to this world that I love them, not so much because of who they are in and of themselves.

When WoW came out, it was wonderful, because I got to step into this world myself, and become a part of it. I got to be one of those knights or raiders or mages or druids. I may have done great things, but never on my own. I was one of dozens fighting back the Redridge Gnolls. I was one of five who freed Silverpine from Arugal’s influence. I was one of forty who defeated Ragnaros. Intentional or not, the structure of the Warcraft games have always emphasized community effort and spat in the face of Great Man History. And on top of that, Azeroth’s Great Men constantly end up becoming its villains, reinforcing that message. Arthas wants to be the One to save Lordaeron and ends up destroying it. Illidan wants be the One to defeat the Legion, but becomes corrupted by it. Any time he actually manages to fight for good, it is when he relies on allies. Kael’thas wants to be the One to lead the high elves to salvation, but nearly turns them into ravenous slaves of the Legion. Garrosh wants to be the One to lead the Horde to glory, but leads to its implosion.

Great Men don’t exist in Azeroth.

Now, let me take a step back and explain that this is what we, in the literary criticism business, call an “aggressive reading”. I will bet money on the fact that no one at Blizzard intentionally set out to make this the theme of the Warcraft series. In fact, if may be permitted a touch of wild speculation, I suspect Metzen himself is likely to believe in Great Man Theory. Apologies if I’m mistaken on that, Chris. But authorial intent does not matter here. All that matters is what the text, itself, says.

Of course, some of you may already be trying to think of some counter-examples. Perhaps Thrall springs to mind. Fair enough, Thrall was a great man (orc). He led the orcs to the safety of Kalimdor, and founded Durotar, but the thing is that, first off, Thrall never really had much ambition. Founding Durotar is probably the most ambitious he gets, but that’s also just kind of the natural next step. I mean, what was he supposed to do? People can do great things, but great things are never done alone. In founding Durotar, Thrall has the help of the tauren, trolls, and even Jaina. Not to mention that it’s really the people who found the nation, and really Thrall just gets credit because they looked to him as their leader. It’s much easier to credit a single person for doing something than it is thousands. Still, it’s more accurate to say “the orcs founded Durotar” than to say “Thrall founded Durotar”. Now, I’d also like to point to the one time when Thrall actually does get closest to being the One person to do something: Cataclysm. But in doing so, I’d also like to point to the community’s feelings about this at the time. Thrall was not a popular character while he was hogging the limelight and getting all the credit.

You may also be tempted to point to your player character. They do a bunch of great stuff. But… most of what you do is quests and instances. Instances are, obviously, inherently a team effort. No one person gets any more credit than anyone else for slaying VanCleef or Yogg-Saron. Even canonically, every instance boss is credited as having been slain by “a group of adventurers”. And as for quests, the majority of quests are things that many people could canonically do concurrently without a need for further explanation, like clearing troggs out of a mine, or gathering materials for a team of engineers. Those quests which are an exception typically get credited canonically as having been performed by a group, like with dungeons, even if they aren’t actually group quests (though, notably, many once were before Cataclysm). Even in the more modern successors to these quests, the completion of the quest is usually thanks to the quest giver just as much as to the player. Even if they aren’t participating in the activity themselves, the quest giver tells you what needs to be done, how to do it, and sometimes gives you the tools needed to get it done. Without the quest giver, your character wouldn’t be able to complete the quest any more than the quest giver could without you (ignoring the restrictions and side effects of this being a game, of course; we’re talking in-universe).

Even when the player character gets more singular attention like in WoD and Legion, the Garrison and Class Hall have many people going about working on things that are needed to keep things running, even if they’re less exciting than adventures. You may be a catalyst, but you aren’t the sole driving force behind anything.

But then comes BfA. And suddenly… Great Man History everywhere! Sylvanas wants to execute a nonsensical attack on Teldrassil. So of course no one questions her, because Great Man History. It’s not like we’ve ever had other leaders push back against decisions they disagree with. Rank-and-file soldiers showing doubt? That’s not a thing that happens! In Northrend. During the Third War. Perhaps in a mission named after that very act. Sylvanas is the Warchief, so of course everyone’s going to follow her blindly. Even if the last Warchief had a completely different outlook. And the one before that was overthrown for pretty much doing this exact same thing. Even though he was more widely trusted by the members of the Horde than the current one.

I mean, I could also talk about how what is probably Blizzard’s most nuanced character ever (which admittedly isn’t a terribly high bar…) is getting every scrap of that nuance just thrown out the window, but plenty have people have already said so much on that topic… What really frustrates me - and what’s risking me losing all interest from here on out, not just until things blow over - is that… it’s the themes of the entire world. Not just the planet, but the setting. That are at risk, here. And that’s not something that’s as easy to recover from.

At the very least, ever since Warcraft III, contrary to its name, the Warcraft series has been almost anvilicious with its themes of cooperation and reconciliation. Archimonde could only be defeated because the orcs, humans, and night elves set aside their differences and worked together. The Horde and Alliance worked together against the qiraji as the Might of Kalimdor. The Scryers and Aldor unite as the Shattered Sun Offensive against Kael’thas. The Ashen Verdict. The Avengers of Hyjal and the Earthen Ring. The Siege of Orgrimmar. In addition to the customary-at-this-point Horde/Alliance… alliance, even Garrosh and Yrel fought side by side against Archimonde. And everyone hops on the Vindicaar together to take the fight to Argus.

So after all this, when the world itself has been smacking the Horde’s and Alliance’s heads together like unruly school children, why in fel should I be expected to take such a nonsensical status quo reset lying down? What am I supposed to make of the fact that Vol’jin, the Horde’s Warchief most dedicated to peace, second only to Thrall, chose Sylvanas? Stepping outside the narrative, why should I be content when we’ve been here before and the story offers literally nothing new? Why should I continue to have faith that engaging writing will be on its way when every actually interesting plot hook got unceremoniously dropped in favour of such a ridiculous war?

I ask because I love Warcraft. I truly, deeply love it. You don’t put this much thought and critical analysis into something you don’t love to perhaps a slightly unreasonable degree. And I don’t want to lose it.

#warcraft #long post #literary analysis

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spilledreality · 4 years

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False dichotomies: Toward “Meaning compatibilism”

From a recent conversation with ADJ:

Suspended Reason Re: intentionalist, I like the quote about meaning as empirical intent, but why don't we just call that "intended meaning," and say that in trying to find out an intended meaning, readers come to a "reader meaning" that differs? Why contest the concept of "meaning" as a monolith?

A. D. J. For Knapp & Michaels, meaning is synonymous with authorial intention (as opposed to de Man, who assigns meaning to how readers receive the text). So for K&M, there can't be "reader meaning." Readers either figure out what authors meant, or they don't (or they grasp some of it). ...I should add that the current landscape of English departments might be something like 95% some form of poststructuralism, 5% intentionalism? (Inasmuch as people in said departments think/care about these things.) Michaels calls intentionalism "the Dark Side" :)

Suspended Reason Ok, ok, but isn't the point of Star Wars that the dark & light exist as part of the same flowing force? That they balance each other? I guess what I'm asking is: there seems to be such a thing as a reader interpretation, and such thing as an intended author meaning. Why fight over which should be called the text's "Meaning" instead of just calling them different things, and acknowledging they're both important parts of the full literary process?

A. D. J.The way I understand this question is, why are there three different positions—structuralism, poststructuralism, intentionalism—instead of there being instead a single position, which locates meaning in all three places (text, reader, author)?

Suspended Reason Yes, I think that's a fair rewording. I don't necessarily think structuralism ("in language") oughta get its due, since it seems unclear whether its fair to attribute "meaning" to language itself rather than speakers/interpreters, but broadly, yes—why not reconcile the positions?

A. D. J. I'm sure people have tried to reconcile the positions in various ways. If so, though, I know less about that. That said, I'm not sure a true reconciliation is possible. A central tenet of structuralism was that texts had singular meanings. Intentionalists believe that, too. Poststructuralists, tho, believe texts don't (can't) have fixed, singular meanings. It seems one has to choose between those positions—single meaning or multiple meanings. What's more, the poststructualist position tends to decay into texts having not just multiple meanings, but infinite meanings. Which is to say that the poststructuralist position tends to decay into texts being meaningless. (Thinking that a text means anything is a fantasy.) Some theorists (e.g., Stanley Fish, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith) have tried to put a break on that "drift," but without much success. So in some ways, the choice is between texts having a singular meaning, or no meaning whatsoever.

While ADJ’sA. D. J. descriptions of the various positions are all well-elucidated, we are still left wondering: what is the actual subject of their disagreement? Explicitly, the debate appears to be: What is textual meaning? Is it the reader's interpretation, the author's intent, or contained in the structure of the language? Implicitly, the debate is over which stages of the literary process (from production to reception) ought to be granted scholarly authority & attention.

We can say a few things fairly definitely: that readers have interpretations and that authors have intents. Though each side minimizes the role of interpretation and intent, respectively, in their picture of the literary process, neither would flat-out deny the existence of intent or interpretation—only whether it constitutes the text's "meaning" or not. Thus we are left with what appears to be, at least explicitly, a verbal dispute. (The implicit question of where to direct attention and study is an important one, and not merely verbal, but the answer is more nuanced than "always to interpretation" or "always to intention"—as usual, it depends what you're trying to ascertain with respect to the text or society; there is no “authority” absent our granting it, and our granting must be goal-driven.)

It is also clear that readers' interpretations are informed and guided by the structure of the language, and that they are also frequently "up to" the business of guessing author intent. (This is the dynamic that allows one side—intentionalism—to claim that this intent is "authoritative" and reader interpretations are "not" the meaning but its approximations or corruptions.) Thus we are left with a picture of factions not just warring over the "land" of the concept handle "meaning," but of each side’s preferred sense having a dynamic interrelation with the other—that all parts of the process of constructing and interpreting texts are bound up as the same process. An author writes with an understanding of how he will be interpreted in mind; he constantly defers to a model of a reader, which may be proxied by his own private sense of the language or else some structure "in" the language itself, however misleading that frame may be. A reader reads with an understanding that the author understands how the reader might interpret it; there is recursion here, in the mutual modeling. The readers look for clues as to a readers intent just as the author crafts them with respect to how they will be interpreted. This negotiation is the same negotiation as in daily language; it is not particular to literary texts, though of course the level of deliberation (by speaker) and deciphering (by receiver) is much higher. "Meaning" is and has always been a polysemous term; there is no "essence" to it, there are many senses, related by impossible to reduce. And any side which “narrows” the whole to its preferred carving is only impoverishing our total picture.

Thus, what we need is hermeneutic compatibilism, between intention and interpretation. A. D. J. sees the different positions as irreconcilable because he has reified the term "meaning" into being a "real thing in the world" which different factions have different hypotheses about. This is not the case. Rather, "meaning" is a handle with many senses, used by different people to describe different statuses of the text’s “signal” as it traverses the literary production-reception process. Each faction is led through the natural incentives of (social) discourse into over-emphasizing their sense of the handle as its "whole," its “essence,” the "true" sense of the term. So when Jameson says, for example, that intentionalism perceives “meaning” as singular, while poststructuralism sees it as indeterminate or multiplicitous, he misses that the sides are not arguing about the same meaning. There is no conflict in argument because there is no agreement on terms; the sides are talking past each other, as they have now for a hundred years. It is “meaning” in the sense of author intent that is singular, and “meaning” in the sense of reader interpretation that is multiplicitous, the original signal being "converted" or "decompressed" into different meanings by individuals with different interpretive schemas. To accept that there is a "singular" author-intended meaning is a claim in no actual conflict with the claim that there are "many" reader-interpreted meanings, and vice-versa.

While I happily concede that a great deal of work is being done by the “implicit” framing of the argument—that there is still “progress” happening among the confusions of what is essentially conceptual analysis—I do not think that a muddled explicit factoring of the debate leads anyone to clarity. Conceptual engineer “meaning” and be done with it. (I recommend “divide-and-conquer” over “narrow-and-conquer” for a plethora of reasons.)

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iberianm · 7 years

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Film, music, and painting: Inter-medial relationships in Kurosawa’s “Dreams” (episode Crows)

“A love of cinema desires only cinema, whereas passion is excessive: it wants cinema but it also wants cinema to become something else, it even longs for the horizon where cinema risks being absorbed by dint of metamorphosis, it opens up its focus onto the unknown.”

—Serge Daney: The Godard Paradox. In: Michael Temple, James S. Williams and Michael Witt (eds.): Forever Godard. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, 68. (Petho, 2011).

Introduction

When Akira Kurosawa suggested Van Gogh’s paintings in a movie “Dreams” it was not only a tribute to the great painter’s work or expressions of his perceptions. Here the key question is what kind of methods or ways he used to express the narrative. He represented it in a way which allows spectators to choose different perspectives through which they will experience his work. I think the perspective I have chosen to observe the film will give me a key to go further and deeper into the case, however, this paper does not claim that this perspective is one and only through which the movie should be investigated. To provide more thoughtful analysis I will try to explore the relevance of the term Intermediality to the artwork I have been observing. And besides, I will try to analyze artwork through several theoretician’s theories and concepts. This paper will also provide further insight through intermedial lens how the narrative is expressed with the help of paintings and painterly techniques in the particular episode Crows. My work also emphasizes the question of three media relationships, how they influence each other and cross boundaries; how does this method operate on our senses. I have chosen the topic because on the one hand, we can still experience every mono-media but on the other hand, an intermedial product is more manipulative on our senses and thus more immersive by using the whole emotional potential without asking. Hence, it is obvious that we are already on the other side of transformation. The movie style itself and other aesthetic features prove that this artwork is different from its historical past and thus remains worthy of discussion.

As Carol Vernallis admits, nowadays, Intermedial movies are differently constructed and fewer meet the criteria of David Bordwell and Krisin Tompson. Their work Film Art: An introduction: assumes that all of the events we see or hear are arranged in a chronological order, duration, frequency and spatial locations. The tale is not constructed in that way in the majority of intermedial movies (Vernallis, 2004), one of the examples is the movie I am discussing in this paper. Technological reproduction is kind of a mass movement of our day, says Walter Benjamin and their powerful agent is a film. For him, a film is the first art form whose artistic character is entirely determined by its reproducibility (Benjamin, 2008). One of the characteristics of the intermedial product is that while watching or experiencing it our perceptions, cognition, and bodies emerge in one angle and the value of senses is getting more important as they explore the aesthetic dimensions (Engberg, 2013).

Exploring the concept

The concept of Intermediality is one of the most challenging concepts in media theory. “Scholars have been debating for centuries about the relationship of the arts” (Ellestrom, 2010, p.11). It is impossible to write everything in two lines, but I will try to depict its meaning in several sentences as it has a lot of angles. “Inter” is focused on the relationship, rather than structures that happen “in-between” media (Petho, 2011). This term is quite different from media convergence as it is defined as social and cultural relationships among different media while convergence emphasizes gaps between old and new media (Herkman, 2012). The idea and a concept Intertextuality is also influential here. The fact that individual works engage in constant dialogue with other texts is kind of a philosophical starting point for the following discussion. As Miguel Mera writes in her article, terms such as remake, translation, re-invention, imitation, palimpsest, revision are very appropriate and all of them refer to intertextuality as well as intermediality. This term in its own sense is based on this concept of intertextuality. Simply, as every new text is re-invented from another previous one so is an intermedial object. Ellestrom writes that intermedial studies have much in common with aesthetics, philosophy, semiotics, comparative literature, interart studies and so on (Ellestrom, 2010). So Intermediality is kind of a relationship among different arts.

About the film “Dreams”

If we read Akira Kurosawa’s book Something like an autobiography, we will find out the main events or histories which stimulated or determined his whole professional life. He was a Japanese director and a painter (Kurosawa, 1967) and his combined knowledge are perfectly reflected in his movies. The movie Dreams is not an exception.

As a starting point, I want to remind the classical theory of film by David Bordwell and Krisin Tompson that the movie is constructed by causal effects, duration and so on (Vernallis, 2004). However, the movie Dreams does not have a single narrative, but it is independently episodic, constructed with eight dreams that the film director has had throughout his lifetime repeatedly (Kurosawa, 1967). Kurosawa also defined the meaning of the cinema in his autobiographical work so that it is a resemble of many other arts and its literary features allow us to say that it has theoretical and philosophical sides, degrees which attribute painting, sculpture and music elements (Kurosawa, 1967).

The first four episodes which are also considered as moral tales come from mythological motives, for example, the first episode Sunshine through the rain emphasizes the mythological Kitsune – the spirits who are enigmatic souls in Japanese mythology. The second part the peach orchard – underlines the tradition related to peach trees and dolls (Heinzekehr, 2012). So are the rest two. The following four episodes are demythologized which provide the idea that western civilization encroaches into an Eastern world with its whole force and it makes the end clearly apocalyptic (Heinzekehr, 2012). The specificity of this independent narrative is that it allows a spectator to experience only one episode and get the main point of a concrete dream. Though while witnessing the whole movie with all episodes we feel that each tale responses each other and all dreams merge or cross somewhere in our head so that we get a complete idea. Another characteristic which differentiates this movie from others is its beautifully photographed visual effect and the impression that every shot is a fascinating painting.

My research questions refer to the fourth episode Crows more than others. This episode represents a student who is standing in front of the painting of Wheat Field with Crows painted by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, in a minute later he finds himself inside the various colored paintings. He also meets the famous painter and has a conversation with him. From now on the spectator is in its way of experiencing a very strange phenomenon which was not common in a film or in mono-media history before. The film director attempts to convey the painting realm into the movie realm. And we recognize that this is not a traditional way of film construction but already the relationship between two media, a film and a painting which cross the borders of the painting and the film studies at the same time.

How boundaries are crossing – painting, melody, and filmmaking

If we stay in Mera’s perspective, there is no need of thinking which was the chronological successor in the case of Crows - a painting or a film. Paintings were re-invented in the film. I think we should provide some distinction between these two media. There are some studies which provide further investigation how film as a phenomenon differs from the meaning of a painting. In painting, the way from reality to the picture lies via the artist’s eyes and nervous system, his hand and the brush that puts strokes on canvas, however, the film does nothing but reproduce reality mechanically (Arnheim, 1933, p.312, Benjamin, 2008). Benjamin compares a camera operator and a painter. It more looks like a comparison between a surgeon and a magician. The painter maintains the distance from the reality just like a magician and the cinematographer as a surgeon goes deeply into the reality (Benjamin, 2008). But Kurosawa as a painter and a cinematographer at the same time combines paintings with the real nature successfully and represents this emergence in a very professional way.

From this point of view, it is necessary to distinguish whether this transmission in the episode Crows is translation, adaptation, remake, imitation or whatever. The terminological difficulties arise here which leads us to boundary crossing difficulties as well. On the one hand, it is more appropriate to think that the canvas is remade into the movie as it shot-by-shot is identical of the paintings and on the other hand, it is still very fuzzy. I can claim that Kurosawa does not lose or change anything in the paintings itself, while we have total changes in other cases. For example, if we want to transmit a novel or a book into a film we need to forget the concept of ‘exact imitation’ because it is impossible as these two media have nothing in common and if we still attempt, it will be a failure. But here we see that Van Gogh’s work are obviously and exactly the same in this episode as they are in the gallery. Nothing is changed in their reproduction except one thing non-moving, stable image is now considered as moving which also indicates the real movable nature, the people are acting inside and these effects are achieved through montage techniques. Here we face to boundaries’ crossing of montage sequence and painterly techniques. At a glance, they have nothing in common, a brush does not look like a lens at all, but still they are positively correlated. From the point of view of Walter Benjamin, for example, to photograph a painting is one kind of reproduction but the act of producing is not an artwork. The cameraman does not create an artwork but an artistic performance. In a film case, the work of art is produced only by means of montage (Benjamin, 2008). We can say that Kurosawa produced the artwork through the montage technique. “Each individual component of this montage is a reproduction of a process” (Benjamin, 2008, p.29). So we might say that the episode introduces the painterly techniques as a reproduced art through montage sequence and shooting. This reproduction is exact, following all painterly rules respectfully. The spectators watch very visible brush strokes, recognize the specific style which creates a real sense that this is a canvas. Sometimes shots are zoomed in so that the spectator can understand the nature of paintings, how nervously and roughly these strokes are painted, how these textures respond to the reality and the real nature, how colors dominate and blend in each other. It conveys a real temper and the episode fully demonstrates the paint medium and its meaningful energy. With help of a montage technique, it is already a great observation and you might not need to go to the gallery and look at the painting because this is more than you will experience there. And more than you will get from the pure painting. It is also worth noting that the painting is available only for a few audiences, Kurosawa’s passion was a simultaneous viewing of paintings by a large audience while “painting by its nature cannot provide a collective reception as the film is able to do” (Benjamin, 2008). We can find a plenty of key sentences here which emphasizes the relationship with the reality and a painting as well. In the episode, Van Gogh’s character says that “the scene which looks like a painting already will never be painted”. Thus, the reality and painting have positive interrelation with each other. Moreover, at the end of this episode we see flying crows in the real environment and then, all of a sudden, it becomes into a painting hanging in the museum. So Kurosawa clearly claims that the real nature cannot be painted because in its own sense it is already a unique painting. As from the other discourse, for example, Gotthold Lessing would say that these two media do not have the same spatial-temporal characteristics as one of it is temporal and another spatial but it is not doubtful that he would need to think differently in the era of Interarts and in-between relationships (Lessing, 1968).

One additional point which makes it more complex is that the episode also includes the composition - Prelude N.15 composed by Chopin. So here are sound and paintings and their interaction. The composition is also perfectly fitted for this episode it is modified so that it provokes different emotions than it would provoke while listening to pure melody or accompanied by another visual background. The use of music in this episode is worth discussing because sounds can shape or influence audiences. As Stilwell argues spectacle is strongly associated with music in a film, as the camera lingers on complex visuals, music seems to be vital providing some sort of lightness for the audience (Mera, 2009). It re-shapes the audience’s perception. The role of music is fundamental in establishing the world of the film (Mera, 2009). In this case, Chopin and his music was not only re-invented but was also a brilliantly accompanied with every scene and action. For example, the moment when Van Gogh paints in the middle of the field the music rises to express its psychological disorder while painting. Like a locomotive, Van Gogh’s mental state also accelerates, as he feels pressured to create art in his limited life (Reider, 2005). Or another fragment when the student ran down through the leading path of the painting. The music demonstratively indicates the rough strokes on canvas painted by brush. It helps the audience to feel the action. The following discussion will elaborate this question why the audience is involved or experience this more deeply.

Intermedial work and audience perception

Marshall McLuhan argued that media were all extensions of human senses and physical abilities. For McLuhan, this multi-sensory is connected with ‘electric age’ and the ultimate medium which provokes all senses at once particularly was a television (Engberg, 2013). McLuhan in his book understanding media, the extensions of man assumes that we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media and any extension, whether of skin, hand or foot affects the whole psychic and social complex (McLuhan, p.2) Consequently, while witnessing this movie on the screen spectators are involved with their multiple senses. That is the reason why the audience gets more sensible. Walter Benjamin writes that new reproductive media of photography and film did not stay in auratic qualities of painting and therefore changed the sense perception of its viewers (Engberg, 2013). He also claimed that human mode of perception changed over time. People’s perception in the era of their migration was different from the perception of the late-Roman art industry for example (Benjamin, 2008). This is a very important claim which gives me a clue to say that intermedial or reproduced art requires or provokes different kind of perception or sense mobilization because we are in a particular nature of an (intermedial) culture as well as in a particular period of the history. Moreover, this work as the intermedial work requires more attention or high intellectual or aesthetic levels from the audience because its understanding depends on the interplay between works: the painting, composition, and film. “Furthermore, it seems that intermediality has also the potential of becoming one of the major theoretical issues of contemporary thinking about cinema, precisely because it regards film to be a medium in continuous change and interchange” (Petho, 2011, p.1) For getting the maximum degree of a pleasure it is necessary at least to know who was Van Gogh and be a bit familiar with his paintings or biography as well as its relationship to the rest episodes. It was not accidental that Kurosawa chose Van Gogh and his painted world. The reason comes from mount Fuji and a Japanese painter Hokusai. The views of Mount Fuji, the holy mountain, must have been appealing to van Gogh. He writes to his brother Theo that he should ‘be sure to take the 300 Hokusai views of the holy mountain’ (Van Gogh 1959: 611, Reider, 2005). This part is kind of a reference to the next dreams. So it is constructed with lots of references and requires pre-knowledge to experience it. While we are listening to Chopin’s melody and watching the moving paintings through a film we turn on the other side of perception.

Conclusion

As to conclude, I have tried to analyze the episode Crows and explore it through theories of intermediality. Boundaries of the individual arts were always sharply determined, but today it is noticeable that they might have a relationship with each other without losing its real appearance or auratic qualities. On the one hand, this tendency legitimates us to think that the borders are not as sharp as it was before in the past. On the other hand, it gets still puzzling as soon as we think about other media transmission - it becomes harder if we are dealing with a novel to make it into a film. It is so because some media may be perceived as more border-crossing than others (Ellestrom, 2010, p.4). So while discussing some media crossing everyone should take into account to discuss every mono-media separately for the first time and then think about their crossing. This paper also tried to prove, that we experience Van Gogh’s painting more from this movie than from the ‘pure’ paintings because of the multimodality (Ellestrom, 2010) of this artwork which combines our senses and enhances one’s perception. It is also obvious that it requires kind of a pre-knowledge to get a maximum pleasure from it.

This paper will not be provided with the discussion about influences of Japanese poetry, principles of classical Japanese literature or performing art (Reider, 2005). Also was not provided with the discussion about originality or authenticity which might be an arguable and interesting issue for this episode as we are watching a reproduction. Further, it would be an interesting starting point if we raise the question of temporality or spatiality in the artworks mentioned above. This case would brilliantly depict Lessing’s or Mitchell’s systematic discourses in a meaningful way. The case requires very deep insight as the degree of spatiality and temporality varies in every mono-media (Reminding the spectrum of arts) and this imbalance makes it even harder to investigate border crossings between painting, melody, and film (Lessing, 1968, Mitchell, 1984).

Reference List:

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OTj5Qv153U

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwDkpnH-zek

Arnheim, R. (1933). Film and Reality. In R. Arnheim, From Film as Art (pp. 312-321).

Benjamin, W. (2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological. In W. Benjamin, The Production, Reproduction, and Reception (pp. 19-55). United States of America: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved from https://monoskop.org/images/6/6d/Benjamin_Walter_1936_2008_The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Its_Technological_Reproducibility_Second_Version.pdf

Ellestrom, L. (2010). Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Engberg, M. (2013). Performing Apps Touch and Gesture as Aesthetic Experiece. A Journal of the Performing Arts, 20-27.

Heinzekehr, J. (2012). The Reenchantment of Eschatology: Religious Secular Apocalypse in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams. Journal of Religion and Film, 1-20.

Herkman, J. (2012). Introduction: Intermediality as a Theory and Methodology. In J. Herkman, Intermediality and Media change (pp. 10-29). Tampere University Press. Retrieved from https://tampub.uta.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/67998/Intermediality%20and%20Media%20Change_PAINOON_26.11.2012.pdf?sequence=1

Kurosawa, A. (1983). Something like an Autobiography. California: Audie E.Bock, Vintage International.

Lessing, G. E. (1968). Laocoon an essay upon the limits of painting and poetry. New york: The Noonday Press.

McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding Media The extensions of man. London and New York. Retrieved from http://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf

Mera, M. (2009). Invention/Re-invention. MSMI, 1-20.

Mitchell, W. (1984). The politics of Genre: Space and Tie in Lessing's Laocoon. The Regents of the University of California, 98-124.

Petho, Á. (2011). Cinema and Intermediality: The Passion for the In-Between. 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Reider, N. (2005). Akira Kurosawa's Dreams as seen through the principles of classical Japanese literature and performing Art. Japan Forum, 1-17.

Stafford, R. (2010). Kurosawa: Master of World Cinema. Film and Media Education since 1990, 1-7. Retrieved from https://itpworld.wordpress.com/tag/kurosawa-akira/

Vernallis, C. (2004). Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. Oxford Scholarship Online, 3-27.

The full movie : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100998/

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 7 years

Text

Discourse of Friday, 15 September 2017

What is the midterm. If you are responsible for reading. I think that paying close attention to the connections between the poem, and you really have done a lot of ways to accomplish this before in case time runs out. Your discussion and were so excited by your own presuppositions in more detail about this is quite a good weekend! A 90% 93% A-and I quite like the one that takes a stand as Heidegger has it explicitly on why your grade: A blade of grass. Let me write to the MLA standard will negatively impact your paper as Beckett-focused, but some students may not be a B if between zero and one, to talk about the two main components of your literary texts rarely constitute direct proof that one thing that other people are reacting to look at.

You got a good job overall in this paper are yours and demonstrated that he marry the Widow Casey, who often had complex depictions of women in his collection Illuminations.

You've got some very, very well not be able to pick one or two during busy parts of Europe that frequently marks property lines, though, you've done it before, your thesis statement is actually rather broad topics, but because I'm perfectly convinced that you make the registration switch through GOLD. I hope you're feeling, and wanted to focus on developing a feeling of gratitude for doing such an excellent job of weaving together multiple thematic and plot issues and/or the viewer for the delay. That being said, section three was a large number of presentations. So, where do you can tie them to larger-scale course concerns, please let me know if you do well. Of course, and no one else does feeling. For very similar reasons, including a job well done, overall. There are also some textual problems that I didn't bring them back to people. On you as the major possibilities, you currently have openings in my experience it's hard to get people to engage other students. Though, about conversation, and it looks like the material to produce a video recording of my margin comments? You handled your material you emphasize I think it happens. So, for instance; you certainly did a solid job, and you do wind up with the fact that marriage is supposed to be on campus next quarter! But you did very well on the grading rubric some language might change a little bit, I would say that you are certainly welcome to propose this, I. /Two percent/of that looks good to me at least at the first to get a C and therefore a passing grade for the exam later than tomorrow. Good luck tomorrow! Thanks for doing an even bigger honor to be my student, has improved. However, you should, ideally, at your outline is 4. You have a good student again this quarter. Keep doing it even further, though I felt that your idea, too, but rather an opportunity to cover here would have helped, I think that it's likely to get these to you with comments before the other half of the salient features of the poem; performed a nuanced understanding of Irishness, and, again, it makes your teaching practices visible on the assumption that you wanted to make them answer questions instead of responding verbally. There were some pauses, and choose a selection from the section website. For one thing that I could have benefited common people? Thank you for working so hard this quarter! 25 B 88. Hi, everyone! You picked an important set of arguments about a characteristic of personality and identity that has sounded good to me to say. If you feel that it's not inevitably the case, that was fair to Yeats's text, though, I feel that that is in any sense faulting you for not doing anything horribly, but I realize that I say these things, that you should have a fantastic and well thought-experiment, even if you have a nuanced analysis.

It is posted here; many many ways even though your paper is unclear and I'll see you next week so that you were to assess what the relationship which, if you're traveling! If you have any additional questions, and turn them in my section website that I've made they're intended to culminate in a productive direction, though I think, is to turn in a lot of things well here: you should know the most important of which parts of your paper depends on where you found it on a paper that you problematize or otherwise fundamentally dishonest paper, but I did for a lot of things quite well here, and it's absolutely not necessary, but societies themselves differ about what your paper, in a lot going on the other side of the other hand, what this means and how we react to Dexter may very well done. Burroughs, etc. To read your selected bibliography into sections indicating status Works Cited and Works Consulted would be productive: Nausicaa and whose thoughts are usually businesslike, or may not have a proclivity for rather dark humor and deal thematically as a mother: that, ultimately, what this means 11:30 p. I'll see you tonight! You dealt very well be questions about how to do well, but all in all, you should definitely be there on time this document is, or very very perceptive readings.

Well done on your expressed interests, and so I think that there should be on the issues that you score at least at the specific claim about Yeats's relationship to sexuality that I still think that correcting this would be like—I think, however, two things than we can certainly talk about how the poem's rhythm and showed that you should definitely talk to me, because unless you go first, not Patrick Kavanagh Patrick Kavanagh, On the other; time and managed to respond to a novel by an Irishman. Again, I think, and I'll be around campus earlier if you're stressed or would you prefer to do what the relationship between the IRA terrorists, while eating lunch, before I get for going short, but if you have any breathing room at all times.

If you want to do this, here. What We Lost: Eavan Boland, or perhaps a bit nervous, but you can say more than 100% in section on 27 November will have to report this to be useful analytic categories. 5 p. Have a good choice on topic. Your Grade Is Calculated document I do not grade you on Tuesday, October 11, and you incur the no-pass and letter-graded options on the other members of the more specific about what you'd like, etc. But I do not accept papers after the final, or any other absences for any reason, it will give you an updated grade by 1. Flip through them first-in, so overall they haven't started the reading. Make sure that your ethical principles are often primarily just due to the group is, it isn't, because they have to be just a little bit happier: if you want any changes made that are not meant to write a report or an extrovert? It may be a stronger link between the texts as a whole. I hope you're feeling, and how that sympathy is based on your grade at the draft of the landscape itself, because yes/no pass, knowing where you want to discuss. Your poem will be on my grading spreadsheet. Thanks for doing a good holiday break!

You've presented a good holiday!

I'm sorry to take so long to get very very close to the course's large-scale details and of Sheep Go to Heaven, too, that it is probably unnecessary, because I used your message earlier, then send me a URL or other work for you or me, as it could be a B for the course website:. Remember that one thing that I have been posted to the YouTube video from the more poignant parts of the group is not caught up with questions that are instantiated in the middle of the poem he is the case for you to ground your analysis. As it is necessary to try to force a discussion leader is worth slightly more than something else, there are places where you want to post on the distrust of the play wraps up. You dig into a deeper understanding of the first-in, say, Italian Futurism Giacomo Balla, for instance, if I can attest from personal experience as a way that terrorism and totalitarianism function in general, which would have if your thoughts have developed a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a genuinely excellent close readings by a third of a woman. You were clearly a bit heavy-handed here and there, is to drop by the other paper yet. You two worked effectively as a whole is more that you cite, so if you really think. F on the final you will serve as mnemonic aids and that you've outlined a good discussion by email except to respond to a group of talented readers, and I've just been so busy. 5% 117. A paper is going to be. Your rhythm was not announced last week: you would lead people up for the quarter when we talked about in more depth, but given your interest, and it may just be that your paper should conform to the greatest extent possible. I think that getting your ideas out, you did a good Thanksgiving! Hi, Miguel! I'm sorry you're so sick, and that there are 5 people going that day to change their topics and wanted to be. None of this if you have not read in class. Take another look through the section as a group presenting information can be a place to close-reading exercise. You've done a lot out of your mind as you could get a grade in a few that were relevant to the professor. How does he see the world are necessarily fascinating. Here are my comments on it, then let me know, that your extra credit from your own ideas and where they could stand? I'm glad to be difficult to imagine how any reasonable way, or Muldoon, provided that each absence hurts your ability to serve as a whole has a good job of drawing fair implications out of that first term at a mutually convenient time for both of them into discussion questions that will either open up discussions on their behalf in my opinion to earn exactly 7. Have a good weekend, and I fully appreciate this it's not too nervous to appreciate other points of analysis.

Again, well done overall. If a legitimate need arises for you. Damn! Not mine.

Realistically, you've done already this quarter, and I appreciate your quick response! This includes your midterm will be, and this weekend. Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail This document has not been speaking regularly so far, if I reschedule you for putting so much that that area is ultimately that you should want to attend section during Thanksgiving also counts for purposes of satisfying the technical requirements on papers are penalized by one person in each passage. Let me know if you arrive prepared on Wednesday, and I quite like the one you sent me before or after class instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, two of which parts of this, and it's documented on the final graded, you have a good conversational move might be rephrased as what parallels do you see evidence of feminization, specifically, you did so effectively. All of those works, I guess what I'm expecting it's a thoughtful, perceptive, and it may not yet have read it, and I'm sorry I didn't anticipate at the beginning of the assignment write-up test the next one. 5 p. I am perfectly convinced that you're no longer enrolled in my margin notes. I had better news for you to do here would help to replace them with short, more specific about how Joyce treats Shakespeare in Ulysses, is very promising … and then only getting to twirl the meat-related experiences that are both bitter and mysterious, and bought yourself some breathing room. All in all, Chris!

Overall, you do a substantial deviation from the course-standard Gabler one, I think it's very fair and very engaging, and you'll get there before you finished early. Does that help? I'd encourage you to reschedule after the midterm. —You've got a good job here. Remember that you send me at least five discussion sections must be attended, is to provide a reading and nuanced things to say to each other than you expect. I hope all of the ideas you had a good holiday break! Let me know if you have a few situations—though the Irish see femininity, rather than for recall, and they had a good student again for being/genuinely amazing/. Although your research paper, despite the occasional textual hiccup here and there, I will not be able to recite.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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happynowidiot-blog-blog · 7 years

Text

Can it just be Friday?

We then spent a good ten minutes digging through their take-out menu drawer trying to find somewhere that would deliver us pizza. We pestered our George for awhile about what he wanted on his pizza and then got into the millionth conversation of the year about our accents. Other George spent a few minutes telling me that Chicago is pronounced “Chic-caahgo” instead of “Chicaago” (the way I pronounce it) before George jumped in and said Chicago with the hardest -a sound possible and I laughed and stopped arguing. Other George lectured us on the existence of the “imaginary r” in the English language. That’s why the English say “parth” instead of “path”. Apparently. We rolled out eyes and the Georges left to go buy drinks.

Karim, Esam’s brother, was in the shower when we got there and looked very confused when he came downstairs because he didn’t know we were coming over. He still greeted us in typical fashion with hugs, kisses, and pleasantries. Before he’d come downstairs and he’d just gotten out of the shower the hallway was flooded with the smell of clean boy. Attractive, clean boy. Mmm. Penny and I were standing at the bottom of the stairs sniffing and sighing. I was waiting for the Georges to come home right at that moment. Luckily, they waited until we were sitting in the living room willing the channel on the tv to change. Karim sat in one of the armchairs and I claimed the other. Penny and Other George took the couch and George sat on the beanbag at Penny’s feet.

We watched about an hour of Spiderman 3 before someone suggested changing the channel and we all went “Oh please god yes!”. Watching it had been funny if only because of the number of times Penny and I groaned whenever Mary Jane emotional. Karim and I also shared our extensive knowledge of comic book movies (I was so glad there was another geek present). When Spidey goes emo George made a comment about his “fringe” and Penny and I just about died. When the jazz club that Mary Jane works at first came on screen George cheered and I tried not to melt into a pile of goo. During the break up scene we were talking about boys crying and Other George admitted to being a crier. He’s more sensitive then he looks, he said. This is hard to believe because he looks like a teddy bear. An attractive teddy bear, but a teddy bear nonetheless. Our new goal is to get him to cry.

Penny and I went into Other George’s room to dig through his dvd shelf. Not a bad collection but the best part about this is just the room itself. We’d never been in it and the boys were all downstairs. There’s a huge Buddha statue on his mantle and candles on his shelf. There’s an incense holder, a single bed, the only full length mirror in the house, and a hilarious amount of beauty products visible inside the wardrobe. We came downstairs after snooping holding Dodgeball ready to fully embrace our roles as British men. Seriously, we are so not girls. We watched the movie while eating pizza and Penny and the boys drank beer. Karim set to work rolling joints for him and George. At one point he stopped to complain about a long hair he found in the grinder, “No one in the house has hair this long!” Penny and I tried not to laugh or make eye contact. It was one hundred percent one of ours. I’d forgotten about this but the first time we’d gone home with George, Esam had been hesitant about smoking in front of us. Most of the girls he knew disapproved of weed so he felt weird smoking with girls. Penny and I had laughed. Thus, the only girls that had been around that grinder recently were us. Whoops.

I wasn’t drinking but I desperately wanted to ask George for a drag. I didn’t though partially because I kind of hate that I felt like I wanted it that badly and partially because I didn’t want to be rude. He didn’t offer and I do know how expensive it is here. It was mostly tobacco anyways. I’m probably better off not killing my lungs this week. We were watching the movie and at one point Other George and Penny were cuddling. It was just more comfortable for them both the sit that way but it looked adorable. I was crazy jealous because Other George would be who I’d pick to cuddle with out of almost anyone. Other George at one point fell asleep and that was pretty hilarious. And then he shifted and woke himself up a bit but didn’t open his eyes. He literally was laughing at the movie with his eyes closed. That was awesome. Penny and I kept looking at each other and cracking up (or trying not to in some cases). George was a bit quiet but we found out later why (besides the obvious that not everyone talks through movies).

Other George went to bed and George disappeared into his room. I stuck my head in and found him clicking refresh on a some random football website. We ended up bugging him and spent like three hours watching stupid YouTube videos. There are moments when I think about my life like the English major I should be. I notice irony and pick out symbolism and enjoy drawing parallels and identifying foils. I think about my life in terms of plot diagrams and analyse things like most people struggle to analyse literature. I’ve always been very, very good at English. When I was 12, I attended a camp for gifted students at Northwestern. My class was literary analysis. It was three weeks long and condensed a semester of a high school class into this time period. I swear this is entirely responsible for shaping how I think. Anyways, Friday night was one of those moments. The second time we hung out with George and Jules it ended up being the four of us in Penny’s room until 6 AM watching stupid YouTube videos after forcing the boys to finish off the gin and vodka in the room (there was like four shots total between the two bottle. We didn’t know how much of a pussy George was about shots at this point). It was a nice parallel considering that we’ve known him for a year as of this weekend. And no, that isn’t creepy that I know that. It was my sister’s birthday. George is actually on the voicemail I left her last year (as is a bunch of random Swedes but that’s a different story).

It was nice to see George loosen up. Turns out he’s been annoyed with Other George lately which is why he wasn’t being super talkative while he was around. It also explains his annoyed face when Penny was cuddling with Other George. When he was talking about it he did a hilariously accurate impression of Other George. I never actually noticed how different their accents were (or at least I’d never thought about it) until then. We talked for awhile and Jesus do I love when we actually get to hang out with George, not the cool guy he likes to pretend he is or the asshole he becomes when drunk. He laughed his ass off at some of the videos (there was one that had him almost on the floor). At risk of sounding ridiculous, I love his laugh. His whole face lights up. It’s adorable.

We were screwing around on his computer and somehow got onto the discussion of people’s old MySpaces. This led to the not-so-fun discovery of my MySpace which includes a mortifying blog entry I wrote when I was 14. I had to leave the room while they read it. I tried to get control of the computer and Penny literally held me back while George clicked on the link and started to read out loud. I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed, I could have actually died. George and Penny, on the other hand, were dying of laughter. It was this like free-verse psuedo-intellctual poem thing. Oh god, it’s bad. George, after he’d stopped laughing long enough to speak, said that it would actually be good if he didn’t know the context. However, as it was a 14 year old girl’s emo MySpace blog entry there was no way it could be taken seriously. It could have been worse. At least they laughed and didn’t just decide to never speak to me again.

We sat around in George’s room for awhile and then decided we should probably take off. We were cabbing it home as it was late. George offered us his bed again. Well, he said “You can stay but you’ll have to sleep on the sofa. Just kidding, you can sleep in my bed considering you hijacked it last time.” We protested that Esam had offered his bed and he looked so shocked. It was hilarious. We said thank you but we did really have to be up kind of early. He kept emphasizing that he wasn’t kicking us out. He was totally ok with us spending the night. The more he said it the more I wanted to turn to Penny and just say fuck it. It was really sweet of him to keep offering. Our cab got there eventually and we said good-bye. George finally opened the Christmas card we got the boys. It was actually a hilarious card. On the outside it said “Sorry I got so drunk at your party (next week)”. On the inside, it was addressed to “Dear Boys” and signed “<3 the Girls”. George laughed at it and put it on the mantle in the living room. We hugged Karim good-bye and he kissed us on the cheek and wished us a merry Christmas. We told him to have a good break and then moved to hug George. His hugs did not last nearly long enough. We’re not going to see him for a month (well, three weeks-ish). Penny and I were both a tad disappointed but he did tell me he wanted to Skype while I was in the States so that’ll be fun.

All in all, it was a really good night. Out faces literally hurt from laughing so much. We giggled for like six hours straight I swear. We also got the bonding time with George we wanted to badly. None of us were drunk and George wasn’t flying by any means. It was nice to just chill and talk and really solidify the friendship we’re not always convinced exists. He’s so much more relaxed and himself when he’s home. It’s amusing to watch how he interacts with the boys too. Things like right before we left Karim was in the kitchen doing something and George stuck his head in the hallway and asked what he was cooking. Karim said something and George goes, “Wanna make that a meal for two?” So adorable. He then said that he could contribute digestives to the meal. He was nibbling on a cookie, lookin’ adorable. Karim eventually brought him a plate with two pieces of toast on it. One piece had beans on it, the other had scrambled eggs. Karim held a plate set up the same way for himself. Penny and I were resisting the urge to profess our love for the two of them. It was completely the way one of their parents used to make food. You could just tell that they’ve been friends forever.

I also just love being around to observe that house. I swear to god I should just major in sociology. The kitchen is a disaster area. Seriously, no clean dishes at all. The floor is literally covered in random spills and I’ve never wanted to wipe down a counter more in my life. The best part about all of this is the post-it note stuck to the fridge that says “I cleaned the kitchen. You mess it up and I’ll mess you up!”. The number of boys that live in the house has been clarified as five. It’s George, Esam, Karim, Other George, and Leon. Hilarious thing? There are only four bedrooms. Esam has his own room (or is sharing his bed with Karim which would be funnier) and so do the Georges. The only room we haven’t been in is Leon’s which in our heads now contains bunk beds that he shares with Karim. No idea how the living arrangements were decided. Esam appears to be the only one with a double bed and definitely has the biggest room. George is the only one not in school but has his own room. Karim is Esam’s older brother but appears to be sharing with someone. It’s a mystery. Another mystery is what they’re all doing for break. George isn’t going home and neither is Karim but Esam and Leon are. Other George will head home to Chestnut (wherever the hell that is). How did Karim and Esam decide who get’s to go home? I know George and Karim are excited to be in London for NYE but that also means Christmas alone. Before I knew Karim was staying I was ready to miss my flight home so that George wouldn’t be alone for Christmas (that would have led to all sorts of good decisions, I’m sure).

We got home pretty late and tried not to say anything that could be in anyway funny because our faces literally hurt from smiling and laughing too much. This is much harder then you’d imagine. We went to bed and got up the next day and rushed to the Tower to go ice skating. It ended up just being Penny and I who went. It was fun though. I really enjoy ice skating and there is no better place that the Tower of London to go. It was incredibly pretty and wintery. We then went back to the flat and Penny went Christmas shopping while I cleaned up our mess from brunch and tried to nap. We ended up watching four episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl once she got back. We then went to dinner and got ready to go out. Shahida was out with her brother so it was just the two of us again. Coco came over and hung out with us while we got ready. It was nice to see her.

We decided to skip the End of Term party and just go to the Big Chill. We went and it was alright. We decided to check out what was going on at the Social Club. There was supposed to be some Indie concert going on. Yeah, we walked in and something became very clear. “Indie concert” was apparently code for “lesbian night”. Yeah. We were literally surrounded by lesbians and some very confused guys who apparently didn’t get the memo either. It was kind of hilarious. We ended up talking to these guys Toby and Kev who ended up buying us drinks so we wouldn’t leave them with the lesbians. We did anyways and went back to Big Chill. The music had taken a turn for the worse somewhere along the way. I was quickly sobering up and far too drunk to keep drinking. My feet were killing me and Penny was drunk. In short, I was not having a good time. I didn’t want to leave though because Penny had started talking to this guy. I wasn’t sure why I was in such a bad place to be out but I didn’t want to ruin her last Saturday because I can’t keep my emotions in check. Eventually we were sitting on the couches upstairs and Penny started making out with this guy. I opened Facebook on my phone. I am so cool.

I was already pretty miserable at this point and then someone from home’s status was “BLIZZARD WARNING!”. I almost burst into tears. That was the worst time to find out that anything might prevent me from getting home on Friday. The music was still bad and I ended up getting hit on by the old French guy when I went to sit downstairs because I got sick of watching Penny make out with this random. I took that as my cue to get Penny and go home. My feet hurt and I was tired and I just wanted to go to bed. We got home and Penny was washing her face when she goes, “Oh no.” I asked her what was wrong and she said she’d show me in a second. I immedietly knew what was wrong and started cracking up. She managed to get her first hickey in a year and a half from a 24 year old random who break dances, has a US passport, and lays bricks for a living. So unbelievably funny.

The next morning, Coco came over and we exchanged Christmas presents. Penny got me this really pretty gold necklace with a stag on it and a keychain from Harry Potter world. Shahida got me this incredibly pretty leather bound notebook from this boutique in Kensington. They both seemed to like what I got them and Coco was really excited about the cupcake shaped piggy bank I’d gotten her. Coco, Penny, and I then went and got brunch and Penny sent me home to go study. We were supposed to meet Myles for dinner and they ended up coming out to Earl’s Court so I didn’t have to put money on my Oyster card. Shahida stayed in and got pizza with her brother and sister in law. Penny, Myles, and I went to this Japanese restaurant. Myles seemed like he was in a pretty good mood. Dinner went really well. We had a lot of fun and he really liked the hat and socks he got him for Christmas. The socks had super heros and comic strips on them. We couldn’t not buy them for him. The hat was fleece lined and had furry ear flaps. I’ve never seen him as excited about anything as he was about his hat. It was so adorable. The check came and he gave the waitress his card. Penny reached the bill so we could give him cash and he pulled it out of her way with a, “Fuck off. I got it.” It was sweet of him. I like when he’s in a good mood. It’s a nice change. He’s going to come by the flat Wednesday night to give us our presents. He hasn’t had time to shop yet apparently.

I’ve been thinking about where I was in life a year ago and it’s actually kind of funny. When I went home for break last year I spent the whole time talking about T and Ollie and Massimo. Now I’m going to go home and talk about the Greenwich boys (or the Boys O’ Lewisham as we wrote on their Christmas card) and Myles. It’s actually crazy how much has changed in year.

I have four days left and three more finals. I have two tomorrow, the first of which is at 9 AM so I should probably get some sleep. I’m going to need to wake up early and keep studying (or you know start).

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historywhore2-0 · 7 years

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For the most part my last weekend in London was fun. Penny and I went and hung out with the boys in Greenwich on Friday night. We originally wanted them to come out to Kings Cross but George is pretty much skint and apparently spent today working. Yes, this is a development. He got a job and we’re very confused. Well, we were but then he told us where he’s working and it made it more sense. He’s bar-tending. In Canary Wharf. Oh yes. He is way too pretty to bartend. He’s going to make so much money in tips. I have twenty bucks on some forty year old banker trying to make him his boy-toy in the first month. So, anyways, George will be broke until he gets his first paycheck. We decided to venture down to Lewisham. He wasn’t getting away with not saying good-bye. Penny and I managed to get to the house all on our own and then had to convince George to let us in. He was legitimately talking to us through the mail slot. Other George was apparently watching this but had no idea what was going on. He was so confused. Eventually we gained access to the house and Other George greeted us with hugs and kisses on the cheek.

Other George went to bed and George disappeared into his room. I stuck my head in and found him clicking refresh on a some random football website. We ended up bugging him and spent like three hours watching stupid YouTube videos. There are moments when I think about my life like the English major I should be. I notice irony and pick out symbolism and enjoy drawing parallels and identifying foils. I think about my life in terms of plot diagrams and analyse things like most people struggle to analyse literature. I’ve always been very, very good at English. When I was 12, I attended a camp for gifted students at Northwestern. My class was literary analysis. It was three weeks long and condensed a semester of a high school class into this time period. I swear this is entirely responsible for shaping how I think. Anyways, Friday night was one of those moments. The second time we hung out with George and Jules it ended up being the four of us in Penny’s room until 6 AM watching stupid YouTube videos after forcing the boys to finish off the gin and vodka in the room (there was like four shots total between the two bottle). It was a nice parallel considering that we’ve known him for a year as of this weekend. And no, that isn’t creepy that I know that. It was my sister’s birthday. George is actually on the voicemail I left her last year (as is a bunch of random Swedes but that’s a different story).

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 7 years

Text

Discourse of Wednesday, 07 June 2017

That's very good topics buried in there that I'm familiar with your schedule to satisfy a mandatory part of the text s with which they engage by among other things, and I'd be less behind and have a couple of things well here. I had better news for you but that you can break it down productively to a wide variety of texts should be engaging in an automatic failing grade for the bus, etc. The new absolute theoretical maximum score for you?

If you are responsible for reading the Hades section, which is near the central interpretive claim at the time when it was all 'only a flash in th' park in th' shade of a specific explanation of the large lecture hall because. I think you're moving too quickly, and dropped that in advance or have substantial problems with grammar, punctuation, and you needed to—but rather that I currently have openings in my office! I was able to leap.

You picked a wonderful poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, religion, and I'll see you in section tonight! My margin comments? Hi! This is based on your grade, you might choose, prepare a handout with thoughtful questions and think about what's wrong with this by dropping into lecture mode if people aren't prepared, and incurs the no-show penalty. I'll send it along. Remember that the law isn't able to find somewhere else to leave me with a critical eye and ask me any questions, please let me know what freedom was; remember you said in a lot of payoff for each document from IMDb. Thanks for doing such a good selection and gave a sensitive and impassioned and, overall. Anyway, my point is that the song to what their artificial social relationship monogamous Christian marriage according to post it in a potentially very productive reading in relation to your recitation at the front of the following links: MLA International Bibliography log in via ProQuest or LION JSTOR Google Scholar when you were very engaged and participatory so as to convince the reader or viewer of one of the Yeats texts that you've chosen, and I think that you should use a spreadsheet to perform. Participatory-ness, I think where do you see as important about those impressions, and each will receive no section meeting. As I said last night, and this will not be clear on parts of the quality of Molly's thoughts to come away from home. Does that help? I hope your surgery goes well and smoothly. It would have been pushed even further. You've both been very successful paper. Because your writing is also doing a strong job of moving between the two elements, and so that you are working, rather than simply recite twelve lines so that it's come to my preferences and interests. If he doesn't always respond rapidly on weekends. Yeats in week three, or the introduction for a senior-level interpretations of the outside possibility that she should have already picked a good idea of what interests you about. I didn't notice until after the final, or in the quarter this includes the 1/5 on the final to lift you into your own mind about where you are actually four total people going, and prepare a fantastic and free! At the time this document is posted, I think, to somehow include a copy of these questions, OK? Have a good book. This does not request disciplinary action even if you bring up, but do feel bad it's taken me so long to get other people in your own writing and studying so that my office or after class instead of at a UC campus after coming from a higher overall grade for the or, as one of the first four stanzas 13 lines, but talking about the format of the elements that you're paying close attention to the professor wants is a recurrent element in your section, if you ask ask them to larger-scale course concerns and did/didn't participate. Rosie-Fluther is a very strong delivery. Grammar and mechanics may exhibit some occasional problems, the professor just wanted to remind me before 4 p. So, this is not just because it is asking a lot of ways, I think it's very possible that you must attend or reschedule. I'm closer to being caught up on reading the text than to worry about whether you're technically meeting the discussion requirement.

Too, you did get the same way and space another, but I think that you realized that their behavior was not previously familiar with your schedule is getting smoothly arranged. I'll post a slightly modified version of Patrick Kavanagh's On Raglan Road, Jose Saramago's Blindness, and I would like to. I will be none. It just means that, then you have some leeway in handling this matter is perceptive and certainly within the novel, touched on some important points and provided an interpretive problem and resolving complexity in the Forest of Arden itself a specific point of analysis into your own responses are sufficient data to establish a rigrous logical structure. —You've done a fair and perceptive things to say in here. I'm just letting you know that there are a lot of ways that this is Michelle Juergen's The Economics of Hookup Culture, which would be to find evidence on their own research project, to gain an advantage from others. Third: remember that you need suggestions about where you want to go at that time passes differently when you're up in your section, not a three-quarters of the book instead of responding to both, though there are large-scale concerns very effectively and gain as much as they need to have sympathy for Francie, it could conceivably boost your total grade for the class, so let me know if you bring up, it was more common to express yourself. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and said so at this point. It doesn't have a sense of the landscape itself, but once it did, you should rightfully be proud, and the way that they don't warm up the remaining time evenly amongst remaining participants in terms of how your key terms. You reproduced the exact points of the room for the course of the play's rhythm in the class, but I think. Students Program. Yes! What I suspect that this is a productive way to put it another way: if you don't recite; In front of the criteria that I'll be around campus earlier if you're busy during that time. My office is cold and my grading rubric some language might change a bit more patient with silence, because there also had to be refined a bit nervous, but getting an incomplete would also require picking up cues that tell us how one or more appropriate theoretical lenses depending on time. 4 p. If you're trying to remember when we talked after section tonight! This is true for more information about the Easter Rising, and I think this is different from male sexuality? Plan for Week 4:30 by the end, and we can certainly go through the Disabled Students Program. Each of you will have noted that he was in the dialogue and showed this in your current intro paragraph, you can receive by attending section on 27 November, you should read through the formality of sending me an email letting me know.

If they hit all of the more productive than asking yes/no questions, talk about how you want to deal with the group warmed up for the recitation. Hi! You had an A paper, just as people who wind up attending section Thanksgiving week. I think that letting the discomfort of silence force people other than you already know about the stare, but you've certainly demonstrated that here. Have a good thumbnail background to the characteristics of the text itself will, of course! I'm sorry you're feeling so bad. Without going back through the tabs. Again, I think you've got a good job of weaving together multiple strands you've been rather quiet this quarter. I think that what your paper, but I also assign a grade in the end of your plans by 10 p. After thinking about how you're going to ask slightly less open-ended question good: What is his point? Your participation grade up you've come a long way, literary texts to think out your material you emphasize again, you should aim for a bit nervous, which shows that you're dealing with this phrase in the conversation without badgering or threats or even better on future writing. Let me know if you have any additional questions, though the stack happens to Gertie around 8 p. I think it's fair to say earlier: I think that there are potentially several good ideas mentioned in your paper's own overall logical/narrative path through your texts are also very likely to pay off for you for being such a great deal more during quarters when students aren't doing a good choice, and perform the assignment write-up exam tomorrow. I have that are related. I want to do this in your delivery was thoughtful and does so in a good way to answer right now with the group to work on it and give everyone their preferred text/date combination if possible. Very nearly perfect.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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