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aspoonofsugar · 5 years

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Sorry, I only saw today that you responded to my ask about Snk and PMMM so I didn't saw your other question ! I didn't find either, I may have confused with someone else (mb hamliet ? but i didn't find on their blog either) ... The post was about Serumbowl, and the moment Eren realized that he wasn't the real SNK's hero but that it was Armin, as Sayaka in PMMM with Madoka. Madoka, like Armin, suffers from a lack of self-confidence, but she has enough power to solve the whole plot. [1]

She just lacks the will, that Sayaka has, but does not the power that goes with it. Sayaka jealous Madoka as Eren jealous for Armin for this, but can do nothing more. I hope that tells you something? Otherwise I'll continue the research to eventually fall back on this post. But as you are the only one to my knowledge to have made metas and snk, and on pmmm I thought it could only be you ! [2]

In any case thank you very much for answering my ask, it's sincerely one of the most interesting metas I've ever read, and you have a gift for observation, even between two different stories, very impressive ! I don't know how you do to analyze in this way, I would be curious to know if you have a method or something but in any case it's very nice to read you x) [3 - and last]

Hello anon!

Thank you for your kind words!

Mmmm, I don’t think it was my post, but it seems a very interesting one, so let me know if you are able to find it again :)

That said, when you mentioned Armin and Eren paralleled respectively to Madoka and Sayaka, i had very similar thoughts to the ones you described just now, so even if I did not write that post, it seems that I share a similar opinion as the person who did :’’)

Anyway, I am very happy you liked my meta and as far as your second question is concerned I don’t have a specific method.

Or to better say it, when I started analyzing things I did not have a specific method. I started coming up with analyses because I started noticing some patterns and symbols in stories I liked. Since I am very invested in themes, they were usually things concerning them. Then, I started reading metas and so I started noticing other approaches to stories and tried to apply them as well.

Let’s take the concept of Jungian shadow, for example.

The Jungian shadow is a concept born in psychology and created by Jung. It can have slightly different definitions, but, generally speaking, it is the part of the self a person can’t see or accept. Since people don’t usually accept the negative parts of one-self the shadow has a tendency to overlap with those parts, but it is not something necessary.

All in all, this concept can be applied to many stories and narratives quite easily. Sometimes it is simply because an author makes a direct reference, whereas other times it is simply because of how narrative works.

And here comes the fact that knowing something about narrative structure can help analyzing stories as well. This doesn’t mean one has to know everything. For example, I would not say I am much of an expert and what I know comes mostly by reading other people’s analyses and discussing stories with friends who have studied narrative structures.

That said, one of the basic of narrative structure is that a character is usually defined by a flaw and an objective.

Now, both the flaw and the objective can sometimes be embodied by something concrete in the story itself.

Let’s concentrate on the flaw to clarify this.

It can happen that another character represents this flaw in a more extreme version. For example, in The Nightmare Before Christmas the Oogie Bogie represents what Jack refuses to accept about himself.

This flaw can also be represented through some element of the worldbuilding like it happens in both Madoka and Snk.

This, however, is a mechanism very similar to the Jungian shadow and so one can be used to better understand the other. Moreover, both can be used to analyze stories more easily.

So, if we consider the meta I wrote to answer your previous ask, I started by noticing a similar mechanism (the Jungian shadow) being present in a similar way (thanks to the worldbuilding) in the two series.

After that, I saw if the characters could have similar arcs or similar flaws and I noticed that Eren’s flaw is similar to Sayaka, but Eren’s arc is also similar to Madoka’s in how they both find themselves at the centre of everything and have to struggle to change the situation (we can say that despite having different flaws, they have similar objectives). They are also the object of the affection of two other characters (Mikasa and Homura) whose flaw is exactly that they do not want to let go of respectively Eren and Madoka (so they share both the flaw and the objective which in their case is an objective they have to let go of).

Finally, I noticed that Yimir/Historia have simiral flaws to Kyouko/Sayaka which are addressed through a similar structure i.e. two inversed arcs of two characters with opposite flaws.

As you can see, one can already make very precise comparisons just by thinking about characters’ objectives and flaws and how the worldbuilding works. If one adds reflections on the fact that they are both coming of age stories and have examples of deconstruction of a specific genre (shonen for snk and the magical girl genre for Madoka), more comparisons are bound to come up.

I hope my brief explanation was of some help! Thank you very much for your asks and your kind words!

#asksfullofsugar #anonymous #sweet anon

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thefifthbusiness · 7 years

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Group Discussion

The other day, I met with my group member Carolyn to discuss Fifth Business. We discussed a variety of topics, including Freudian/Jungian psychology in the novel and how the novel reflects Canadian identity.

Freudian and Jungian Psychology

After studying some Freudian and Jungian psychology in class, we became acutely aware of how pertinent Freud and Jung’s theories are in Fifth Business

Archetypes

Many of the characters fit into specific archetypes. This could be attributed to the fact that Dunstan, who is obsessed with stories and myths, is the narrator. Applying archetypes in his recounting of the novel could be him trying to place himself and his life into a story of his own.

The Rich Young Prince: Boy Staunton

Boy comes from a reasonably wealthy background, and rises to become one of the wealthiest and most successful people in the country. He is preoccupied with satisfying his material needs, as well and his thirst for power.

He looks up to Prince Edward of Wales, and he likes to portray himself as a good-looking, vivacious young man.

The Bully: Boy Staunton

From the snowball incident during his childhood, to his abuse of Leola, to his treatment of his son, to his interaction with Paul, Boy is always a bully.

He puts his own needs above everyone else’s.

He likes to be dominant and in control.

The Hero: Dunstan

The town views him as a war hero when he enlists and when he returns to Deptford with a Victoria Cross.

He also willingly plays the part of the hero when he receives the Victoria Cross for clearing the machine gun nest at Passchendaele. He does not believe that he is a hero because he believes that what he did was purely due to luck. I also suspect that he feels guilty that he is being honoured for killing innocent men without even giving them a chance to surrender, which demonstrates his heroic values.

The Fifth Business: Dunstan

He spends most of the novel telling the stories of other people’s successes, while he himself remains a humble scholar. (see more about Dunstan’s role as Fifth Business below)

The Damsel in Distress: Leola

She is the victim of Boy’s bullying and ends up dying in despair when she can take his abuse no longer

She makes a feeble attempt to reach out to Dunstan for salvation when she addresses him in the suicide note that she writes when she fails to kill herself.

The Great Mother: Diana

Diana takes care of Dunstan when he wakes up from his coma. She feeds him, changes him, and re-teaches him how go about doing ordinary things, such as eating, with his physical disabilities.

Diana renames him Dunstan instead of Dunstable.

Dunstan refuses to marry her because she reminds him too much of his mother and he does not want to be tied down to another woman who will be in control of his life.

The Great Mother: Mary

Dunstan treats Mary like his own mother, by caring for her unconditionally as she ages.

Dunstan mourns her death as deeply as a son would mourn the death of a mother.

Mary is one of the only people that Dunstan trusts, especially during his childhood in Deptford. Dunstan associates her with safety, trust, and even love. It is clear that Dunstan looks towards her for motherly affection when he is about to die at Passchendaele and sees her face in the face of the Madonna statue.

Wise Old Man/Father Figure: Padre Blazon

He gives Dunstan advice on life, such as “learning to grow old”, and well as advice on what Dunstan should do about Mary Dempster.

The Magician: Paul

Paul is literally a magician.

Although he comes from a dysfunctional family and was bullied during his childhood, Paul rises to create a successful life for himself. He runs away to join the circus and develops his talent until he is able to put on his own show and travel the world in fame. Because Paul created a life for himself when he was given so little, you can say that he created something out of nothing, just as a magician would.

Rebirth: when Dunstan awakes from his coma in the hospital

Dunstan “dies” in the fall, which is considered to be the season of death, and awakes in spring, the season of birth and renewal.

He has suffered injuries which have disfigured his body, physically making him a new person.

He must relearn how to do everyday things such as eating, walking, etc.

He is renamed Dunstan instead of Dunstable

Diana acts as his mother (see above)

Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus Complex is the tendency for a child to be attracted to his mother. Dunstan demonstrates an Oedipus Complex with two different women: Diana Marfleet and Mary Dempster. When Dunstan awakes from his coma, Diana acts as his mother by caring for him and re-teaching him basic skills. Dunstan and Diana later pursue a romantic relationship, and they even consider moving to Canada together to get married and live on a farm. Dunstan’s obvious attraction to Diana, who he even admits reminds him of his mother, shows that he is attracted to mother figures in his life. Moreover, Dunstan admits to being in love with Mary Dempster when he was a child. This could easily be dismissed as a boyhood crush on an older woman, but Dunstan sees Mary as a mother figure to him, which is evident in the fact that he cares for her unconditionally, and when he sees her face in the face of the Madonna when he is about to die. Because Dunstan admits to being in love with two mother figures in his life, it is obvious that he has an Oedipus Complex.

Anima and Animus

It is believed that each person has both Anima (female attributes) and Animus (male attributes) in their shadow. If a person suppresses either one, they are likely to become bullies or to have other deep character flaws. In the novel, Boy can be considered as someone who completely rejects his anima. He is very dominant, and is only focuses on feeding his physical needs. He is materialistic, has multiple affairs, and wants to occupy a powerful position, first in his business, and later in the government. At the end of the novel, he refuses to submit to Paul as they undergo a battle of dominance, each one trying to demonstrate that they are superior to the other. His refusal to admit that Paul has dominance over him also leads him to refuse to admit ever throwing the snowball that caused Paul’s premature birth, which in turn leads to death, either directly or indirectly depending on interpretation of the novel.

The Shadow and the Persona

Mary is one of the only people that Dunstan trusts. Because of Mary’s brain damage, she does not feel shame and is therefore always honest about her thoughts and intentions. This is shown in her interaction with Joel Surgenor, a tramp whom attempts to rape Mary, but whom Mary ends up willingly having sex with as an act of charity to the poor man who “wanted it so badly”. Mary is shunned by the rest of the town because this was seen as scandalous, especially since she is married and was having sex in a public place. Mary is not preoccupied by the whispers from the other townspeople and is only concerned with doing this poor tramp a favour. Mary’s lack of filtering and pure intent demonstrates how Mary is all Shadow. The Shadow is also known as the unconscious, and contains all of the wide abundance of characteristics that make each person who they are. The Shadow is normally filtered by the Persona, which only allows certain elements of the Shadow to be seen in a personality. These selective elements of the shadow changes depending on the situation that the person is in. In contrast, Dunstan does not trust his mother at all after the egg incident, during which his mother became hysterical with anger at him for no apparent reason, and then went right back to being a loving mother just as quickly. His mother’s mercuriality causes Dunstan to mistrust her, since he does not really know what her true intentions are. This is because Dunstan’s mother, like every other person in the world, has a Persona that changes in different situations.

There were many other elements of Freudian and Jungian Psychology that we wanted to explore, but we ran out out of time and decided to discuss other topics.

Canadian Identity

Since our interviews are going to focus mainly on how the novel relates to Canadian identity, Carolyn and I shared our ideas on this subject. We both came to the conclusion that Canada is the Fifth Business of the world. Fifth Business is defined as a character who is not important in and of itself, but is still crucial to the development of the plot. Because Canadian achievement on an international level is often neglected, Canada can be considered Fifth Business. First, Canada is often seen as Britain’s child or America’s little brother, and is often forgotten because of the prominence of it’s allies. For example, Americans claim that they were instrumental in turning the tide of the war, when in reality, they only joined when the war was pretty much decided. Meanwhile, Canada followed Britain’s call to action, and, even though the Canadian army was small, it was also recognized as having some of the most fearsome fighters. Canadian influence during the First World War is anything but negligible. Second, Canada does generally not fight its own wars; rather, Canada provides supports to other countries such as America and Britain as they go to fight their own battles. This means that Canada does not often take centre stage in international conflicts, but we are still instrumental to the course of the historical events. Canada’s quiet importance on the world stage is similar to Fifth Business characters in plays and opera, or in this case, it is similar to Dunstan in the novel. Dunstan is the Fifth Business of Fifth Business, which is demonstrated by the fact that he does not have a particularly remarkable life on his own. He is somewhat of a loner and spends his days developing his spirituality and knowledge. Nevertheless, he has a lot of influence on more important characters such as Boy and Paul, and his friendship with the two men is what brings them together before their reunion brings about the end of the novel. Even though Dunstan does not stand out as a remarkable character, he is still a vital character in the novel, just like how Canada is still a vital player on the world stage.

We discussed so many different aspects of the novel, that I do not have time to write all of them down here. In addition to discussing other elements of Freudian and Jungian psychology, we also elaborated on different Canadian aspects of the novel such as the setting, and different themes in the novel relating to isolation, coming to terms with one’s past, guilt, and deception.

#journal entry 1 #journal entry

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month

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Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

— C. G. Jung

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#C.G.Jung #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #quotes #polarity #pairs of opposites #dark and light

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 29 days

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“Consequently, the individual history of every creative man is always close to the abyss of sickness; he does not, like other men, tend to heal the personal wounds involved in all development by an increased adaptation to the collectivity. His wounds remain open, but his suffering from them is situated in depths from which another curative power arises, and this curative power is the creative process.

As the myth puts it, only a wounded man can be a healer, a physician. Because in his suffering the creative man experiences the profound wounds of his collectivity and his time, he carries deep within him a regenerative force capable of bringing forth a cure not only for himself but also for the community.

This complex sensibility of the creative man increases his dependence on the center of wholeness, the self, which, in continuous attempts at compensation, enhances the ego development and ego stability that must provide a counterweight to the archetypal preponderance.”

Erich Neumann, Art and The Creative Process, pp. 186 - 187

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#quotes #Erich Neumann #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #healing #myth #wounded healer

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month

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Art: Dante’s Inferno illustration by Gustave Doré

* * * *

Jung said that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, “Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out everywhere,” the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens.

But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man’s life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self, in which he will be inwardly open to an interference by the tertium quod non datur (the third, which is not given, that is, the unknown thing).

In this way, as Jung said, the anima is the guide toward the realization of the Self, but sometimes in a very painful manner. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#Gustave Dore #Marie-Louise von Franz #The Interpretation of Fairy Tales #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #quotes #no way out #Dante #The Inferno

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 14 hours

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Art: Tomek Sadurski

* * * *

“The outcome of an actual encounter with someone who is a carrier of the anima or animus projection 'frequently gives rise in dreams to the symbol of psychic pregnancy, a symbol that goes back to the primordial image of the hero's birth. The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious.' The real psychic purpose of the conventional man's affair with his very unconventional anima woman is to produce a symbolic child, which represents a union of the opposites in his personality and is therefore a symbol of the self. The meeting with the anima/us represents a connection to the unconscious even deeper than that of the shadow. In the case of the shadow, it is a meeting with the disdained and rejected pieces of the total psyche, the inferior and unwanted qualities. In the meeting with the anima/us, it is a contact with levels of the psyche which has the potential to lead into the deepest and highest (at any rate furthest) reaches that the ego can attain.”

Murray B. Stein (Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction)

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#Tomek Sadurski #Murray B. Stein #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #anima #animus #dreams #psychology #quotes

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 28 days

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Art: Kay Nielsen

* * * *

“There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.”

― Simone Weil

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#Kay Nielsen #Simone Weil #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #quotes #words and writing

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 11 months

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*I’m not talking about fixing it, I’m talking about making a change in the mind that realizes; my god I’m crazy…

We have lost the feeling of the beauty of the world that we are looking for substitutes. Erich Hoffer said: “You can never get enough of what you don’t really want.” Meaning we rush around buying stuff, needing stuff permanently needy, needing therapists, needing love, needing relationships, needing holidays, needing vacations and you deserve it; says the ads, you deserve it because you’re miserable, you’re depressed.

So now the government has all the health services so you can read a questionnaire and find out you’re depressed even if you don’t really know it or feel it it can be discovered and then you can take medication against it. But the feeling of loss: is that we don’t know what it is we’ve lost and that’s what I’ve been trying to emphasize; is what we’ve lost is the beauty of the world and we make up for it with attempting to conquer the world or own the world possess the world.

You know, I’m a therapist so I’m very careful about using words like saving so I’m not really talking about “saving” or “salvation” or any of that. I’m talking much more about waking up to common sense, it’s just a matter of realizing how dependent we are on taking a deep breath or how dependent we’re upon our glass of water and if that is lost then we are in some kind of unreal world; delusional world.

So it’s that waking up to insanity of the way we’ve structured ourselves rather than doing something in the world to make a change, that’s the old style American way; let’s fix it, I’m not talking about fixing it, I’m talking about making a change in the mind that realizes; my god I’m crazy.

Once we reawaken our aesthetic sense and are not anesthetized as we’re by all the distractions; if we’re not anesthetized we would be able to see and appreciate the beauty in the world. Now the moment there’s beauty, you fall in love with beauty that’s Plato but it’s also our own experiences. You see a beautiful man or a beautiful woman and you fall in love with them that’s the first bit of attraction and if you fall in love with something ; love the world, not through Christian moralism about you must love the world or an economic one is sustainability for our own benefit therefore we live longer that is not it, it’s got to be something much more profound that touches the heart and it touches the heart if you realize that our job on the earth is to love it; to fall in love with it; not just to love it -you must love the world- but to fall in love with it and you only fall in love with it if you aesthetically alive to it.”

-From James Hillman Interview

[Centre of Applied Jungian Studies]

#James Hillman #Centre of Applied Jungian Studies #quotes #psychology #healing

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