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nevermindirah · 1 year

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🦋🎈📡 (and a kiss 😘)

Beijos para você! (I'm being so normal about not falling down a rabbit hole about tu vs você right now djksfjdasfjds)

🦋what are you most insecure about when you post a fic?

Are people gonna like it?? (Do people like me??)

Then once I wrangle my social anxiety brain worms back to their rehabilitation corner, I'm wondering about whether the things I was trying to communicate with the fic seem to be coming across to the people reading. Do my understandings of these characters ring true for other people? Did the things I thought were poignant or funny or hot actually feel that way to people who aren't me?

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

I've been told more than once that I have a very distinctive writing style for smut. At first I just blushed my face off whenever I heard that, because oh my GOD I am publishing pornographic writing on the internet!!?!?!? and people are READING it!!?!???!!!?!??? Now that I've had some time to get used to it, I take it as a badge of honor, even when anxiety pokes through that maybe not everybody means it strictly as a compliment. You know what it's a style and it's fun and we're embracing it!

More broadly, my style has definitely changed since BoN first ate my brain. There are some elements of my older fics that absolutely make me cringe now, like the rapid-fire pov shifts (sometimes in the same sentence!) and the explosion of French pet names. No shade on those old fics, I'm glad I wrote them, and I'm glad the people who still enjoy them are enjoying them! It's just that looking back on my older stuff confronts me with how much less practice with writing fiction I had two years ago than I do now.

One element of my fic style that hasn't changed and I doubt ever will is my tendency towards complex, multi-phrase sentences. My professional life has required too much writing about legislative details; at this point it can't be reined in completely, even when I try.

A thing about my style I'm hoping will evolve in the future is I want to learn more from writers like you who are writing so beautifully and effectively in English as a second language. Using my high school Spanish to write anything more complex or poetic than "Booker piensa que Nile es hermosa y tiene razón" (Booker thinks Nile's gorgeous and he's right) feels impossible to me. But English has a much larger vocabulary than Spanish for a bunch of historical reasons, and I have access to several (but importantly not all) registers of that vocabulary for a bunch of personal as well as structural class-and-race reasons, and the significance of word choice as an element of style probably operates differently in a language like Spanish with its relatively smaller vocab inventory so that means other stylistic choices I'm completely unaware of are probably doing super cool things to express the layers of meaning I've been taught to lean on word choice to accomplish in English — this is an enormous area of comparative linguistics but one small example of the ways we can shift our writing styles to more effectively express our ideas to people with different linguistic frames of reference. All that's even more interesting given the staggering diversity of language experience among our immortal blorbos. I don't know what particular stylistic changes might be in the future for me along these lines, it's just a thing I'm thinking about.

📡why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?

I love that you asked this because it gives me the excuse to say fandom is important! It's part of our lives! Hobbies we do for fun and stress relief aren't The Most Important Thing In the World but they're still part of our lives and part of the world and therefore what happens in fandom matters! Nile Freeman is a fantastically rich, complex, well-drawn main character and she deserves tons and tons of fandom content about her, and I'm a part of that and so are you! Fuck yeah!

I also really cherish my part in building Jewish Booker. The overwhelming majority of Jewish representation in mainstream US movies and tv comes through filters: Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries being pushed into the entertainment industry by several European countries' discriminatory policies and that tradition carrying over in the US despite legal equality, Euro-descended Jews being model minority-ized by the post-WW2 US that very much did /not/ involve itself in that war to stop the Holocaust but chose to frame itself that way after the fact, lots of individual Jews' family trauma and internalized shame and fear of the next wave of antisemitism around the corner, etc etc. The result is most US media that includes Jews is made either by Jews who feel enormous pressure to represent our entire people in a way that's perceived as palatable and nonthreatening to white culturally-Christian people or more often by non-Jews who've absorbed decades of iterating carbon copies of what previous generations thought was palatable. US Jews invented comic books and the superhero genre and yet the first MCU property to have an explicitly Jewish character was the 6th tv show in Phase 4.

There just isn't much mainstream content about Jews in my country, one of the two places where most of the world's Jews live, made by Jews who uncomplicatedly like being Jewish and don't have big economic and cultural pressures on them to represent all of us in Certain Ways. Wow, I didn't realize this rant was building up in me until I started typing. Anyway yeah I get to be honest about what Jewishness means to me and what I think it would mean for Booker and share it with people through fandom with just a little teeny tiny bit of a filter (my own internalized stuff) compared to the many layers of mess that mainstream content has to go through before it reaches non-Jews all over the world who consume US media and who may or may not know many Jews personally.

#fandom friends #jewish booker #linguistics #why am i like this

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beyondthepage · 1 year

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'Leaving Home' Leaflet

A head teacher has asked the students to produce a leaflet called Leaving Home. The leaflet will be aimed at older teenagers who are going to live in another town or city to go to university. The following text is a leaflet made by one of the students, and in the leaflet, it gives advice and guidance on how to manage living away from family for the first time. Write a reflective commentary on the leaflet, explaining how the writer’s linguistic choices contribute to fulfilling the task set by the head teacher.

So, congrats! You’ve aced your A levels, and now it’s the time you’ve been waiting for. Time to wave bye bye to your bro, sis, Ma, Pa and pet goldfish and head off for Universityville, Freedom County, zip code IND3P3ND3NC3. Yay! But before you pack your lifetime collection of odd socks and a year’s supply of chocolate, hang on a minute and have a look at some valuable advice from me, your friendly expert Uni Preparation Guide.

Tempted to squander? Try not to blunder!

Too posh to look after your dosh? Or in too much of a daze to save? At Uni, you’ll be in charge of your own money for the first time in your life. It may feel pretty amazing to have all that filthy lucre to manage. Keep a track of everything you spend so you don’t run out of cash when you’re going to need it most. Always make sure you’ve allowed enough for rent, food, books and travel before you’re even tempted to treat yourself to that extra-special customised Porsche.

JK! For that you’ll have to wait until you’ve graduated...

Eating like Einstein

We all know that students need brainpower, brains need food and food equals fuel, but what kind of fuel are you going to feed that thinking machine inside your head? Burgers? Fries? Ice cream? Cake? Uh-oh! Take-aways are super-high in empty calories and astronomical in cost. Instead, take time to select fresh fruit and veg to cook yourself; choose pasta for slow-release carbs. Eating healthily, you’ll feel good, learn more efficiently and you won’t be allowing unhealthy choices to chow down on your budget!

Tickety tock

No doubt having made all those new friends, you’ll be desperate to become the life and soul of the party, but late nights and disco fever can take their toll. Sure, use your planner to detail which nights you’re meeting your mates, league match fixtures and hot dates with the girl who sits on the front bench of the lecture theatre, but plot in your lecture timetable, seminar dates and assignment deadlines first. If you manage your time carefully, you won’t need to give your fave band’s next gig a miss because you’ve an essay to hand in the next day – you’ll have that essay proof-read and printed, smug as you like.

Good luck, peeps! And enjoy!

To start off, the purpose of the text is to inform the audience, older teenagers, who are planning to move to a different town or city for university. It also aims to give advice and guidance on how to handle living independently without the support of family members for the first time. The author uses the form of address "you" and "your", the second point of view, making the audience feel like they are conversing with the writer. The majority of this text is in future tense, indicating that this will be a part of the audience's future one day. The register is conversational as the language is chatty yet serious. This is because slang words and interjections were used, like "JK!", "yay!" and "uh-oh!", which helps reduce the age gap between the author and audience, creating a closer relationship. The author also uses many punctuations like exclamation marks and different types of sentences to grab the audience's interest throughout the text. Not only that, different types of sentences, ranging from simple to compound sentences, were used to add interest and help the writer to get their ideas across effectively. Furthermore, the author separates the text into sections, giving it a coherent structure, and writes sub-headings with catchy titles, which makes it easier for the audience to follow and to give the reader an indication of what the following information will be about. The tone is overall lively and humorous, creating a light-hearted and refreshing atmosphere for the audience.

The text starts off with a two-word fragment, "So, congrats!". This signifies that the author firstly wanted to express how proud the author is of them who have worked hard on their A levels before bringing up the main purpose of the leaflet, creating a fulfilled mood. The author continues congratulating them with jokes by using language devices like humorous neologisms ‘Universityville, Freedom County, zip code IND3P3ND3NC3’. This creative combination of the word ‘independence’ and number 3 to replace the letter E prevents the style of the text becoming a formal leaflet so that students will not stop reading mid-way - it already gives them a strong first impression. The author then ends the introduction using the language device metaphor ‘lifetime collection of odd socks and a year’s supply of chocolate’. Here, the author sarcastically describes what students do after the final exam is over - they relieve their stressful days by going on a vacation and eating as much as they want. This left the audience amused as they can relate to it but then continues to inform the audience of the overall impression of university life in a serious manner.

In the first section, teenagers are greeted with rhyming assonance in the heading ‘Tempted to squander? Try not to blunder!’. This directs the reader’s interest towards the next paragraph. In addition to that, the reader may pay attention to the use of the rhyming verb ‘squander’ and the noun ‘blunder’, this will evoke the reader to wonder what mistake might they make, which helps pique their interest even further. In the first sentence, the writer uses even more rhyming assonances as well as using rhetorical questions ‘Too posh to look after your dosh? Or in too much of a daze to save?’. The use of the rhetorical device suggests the reader participate in the text as if prompting them to answer the question so that they continue engaging in the text. In the next sentence, the writer starts using future tenses ‘you’ll’ which makes the reader imagine what the writer is describing. Because the reader is imagining what the writer is saying, the writer’s advice comes across naturally and this causes the reader to accept the advice, which helps the writer accomplish more of the purpose of the text. In comparison to the lengthy advising sentences before, the last sentence is a short casual sentence. It uses the abbreviation of ‘JK’ which is to remind the reader that they can resonate with the writer even after the writer gave them informational advice. Right before the paragraph, there is the use of ellipsis ‘until you’ve graduated... ‘, this allows the reader a pause before they continue to the next paragraph.

Moving on to the second section, the use of the alliteration in the heading ‘Eating like Einstein’ implies that the paragraph will be about smart eating. The writer used ‘Einstein’ as a substitute for the word smart, leading to the reader having to think what Einstein means, and after hooking them on the heading, the reader might want to know more and so it evokes them to read further. The writer now starts using the second point of view, to direct the reader or even trick them to agree with the writer’s opinion ‘We all know that students need brainpower’. Then the writer uses the noun ‘fuel’ and the noun ‘machine’, this is to compare the similarities between food as fuel and machines as our brain. The writer also uses more rhetorical questions like ‘what kind of … inside your head? Burgers? Fries? Ice cream? Cake?’. This makes the readers ponder for a while as they can reflect on the meals they usually consume and whether they are living a healthy lifestyle, creating a contemplative atmosphere. Lastly, the writer ends the last sentence with an exclamation mark ‘budget!’ to emphasize the point of the sentence and maintain the lively tone.

In the third section, the heading makes use of the onomatopoeia ‘Tickety tock’. The use of the term ‘tickety tock’ implies that a clock is ticking, this suggests to the reader that time is passing, and they must use it wisely. Again, this is used to hook the readers to continue reading. Then the writer continues to give further information of what’s to come in university using the idiom ‘life and soul of the party’ as well as the phrase ‘disco fever’. This helps the readers to visualize a vivid scene of them socializing and partying all day long with their friends, creating an astonishing feeling as it is very different from what they experience in college. Continuing the use of the second-person point of view, the writer is describing a future situation with ‘you’re’ future tenses and personal pronouns. Again, this gives the reader the effect of experiencing what the writer is describing as if the reader becomes a character in the story. The writer describes a hypothetical situation ‘If you manage’ and ‘miss out a gig’, which makes the readers reflect on the advice of the writer, thus helping the writer complete their purpose.

Finally, the writer ends the text by using short sentences with the punctuation of exclamation marks. With the interjection of ‘good luck’ and the slang ‘peeps’, the author ends the text with enthusiasm, and this attracts the reader’s final attention as it indicates the intimacy the reader and the writer can share. And the final use of ‘enjoy!’ reminds the reader that the author wishes them positivity and the use of the exclamation mark helps emphasize the writer’s cheerful feeling, creating a content atmosphere.

To conclude, the author achieves his/her aim of giving an impression of teenagers leaving their home for university by adding humor to lower the formality to capture and maintain the readers’ attention. Although it might be chatty, the author delivers the advice as meaningful information to the audience by giving hypothetical situations, giving them a moment to reflect. Hence, the author had a good balance of formal and informality in the text, which effectively accomplished the purpose of the leaflet, asked by the head teacher.

#commentary essay #irene

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ahusaka · 4 years

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hey! this may be a super random question but im curious as to how you plot/outline your wips? im obsessed w into the haze

Thank you so much! Honestly this is gonna be pretty long because I’m self indulgent in worldbuilding so oop.

This isn’t necessarily an outlining technique as it is just for writing in general but be willing to consume other people’s works. You don’t even necessarily have to be a critic or anything but the consumption of different stories really helps a person develop their own tastes (not even just in genre but in the development of prose too) and aligns themselves with whatever themes and messages they want to deliver themselves. Into the Haze evolved and grew because I got to read so many things and adapt them into my own writing. You’ll also know what to avoid when writing too.

Secondly, the big worldbuilding. Now, quick PSA but you absolutely do not have to be elaborate with world building but for me, I’m always been big on it. Worldbuilding is all in the details where the details can be big or small. I’m personally a very big fan on exploring politics/linguistics/war history but a lot of people make their expertise on agriculture, religion, art, and so on. That shit’s hot as hell is all I can say and when you play up to your interests, you get some cool stuff.

I take the angle of politics and see where I can use schools of thought to really dig into it. Societies are just a bunch of dudes walking around and screaming about philosophies of rule and then some other dudes countering it. Those things resonate with me (lmao I’m literally a weirdo I’m sorry) because FOR REAL, you got so much things to go off of with literal schematics of how rulers can be “good” (not morally but they monopolize on things such as charisma or they’re just really good at suppressing debates same thing) or “bad” (fucking those guys who use fear and just make everyone hate them). You have different landscapes of how a “rule” is designated (it doesn’t have to be rooted in feudalism for fantasy!! Make some democracies 2020) and the motivations of which the rulers encompass and how they reflect onto their ruling societies.

ALSO GEOPOLITICS ARE PRETTY IMPORTANT!!! They tie into trade and economics with neighbouring countries, important for alliances to be made, how war is conducted and executed (An example is how Germany invaded Belgium to get to France in WW1), what resources need to imported or exported, where major hubs are, and etc.

Class order/hierarchy. This is one of the biggest elements I like to talk about. You can go absolutely monkey with this (assuming you’ve laid the structure down of your ruling class to justify this). Class can be dictated by socio-economic structures (nobility = rich, peasantry = poor), religion (only certain people are mandated by god(s)), race (but people clown this too much so I don’t recommend this unless you are personally acquainted with the culture dealt with or like you have sensitivity readers), magic (most common, magic is banned and magic users are oppressed) and so on. Basically power and privilege stems from the historical basis of this class order/hierarchy which befalls the writer to create, connecting to the above political ruling because it’ll directly benefit their interests.

War is another thing I write a lot and want to say a lot of people don’t really write about the devastating effects of war. Once writers write a war they’re like “well the good guys won and everything was peaceful!” If only. The aftermath of war efforts is very gruesome and involves everyone just kind of traumatized, an influx of refugees of war, poverty, destruction of the environment, and in some cases, causes uprisings or the very least, protests if the war efforts continue. I’d really like people to consider those factors when war is central to their plot because it seems to be glorified a lot.

Culture is a big thing I also focus on and culture is basically the catch all for the cool stuff humans decide to make when things are relatively chill (or not chill in the aftermath). Usually culture is an export that can be shared and you’ll see influences in other countries if they’re relatively close together or if they’ve had a history of being invaded/occupied. ALSO SUBCULTURES EXIST SO!!!!!! Consider if your world is a melting pot, if there’s a dominant culture, if cultures co-exist, and you know so on. Culture can find itself in pretty much everywhere but the biggest would be the following:

- art

- theatre (ok but the coolest thing I’ve learned about Vietnamese theatre is their water puppets??)

- food

- language * (which I’ll mostly talk about)

- the dominant religion

- architecture

- clothing (ESPECIALLY the fabrics used)

- weapons

- stories (whether they tell them by mouth or writing them down, how they decide to enact these stories, etc)

Language is my biggest interest too because it’s really complex and not many people focus on it. It has ties in class hierarchy (people speaking in higher class tongue, the different dialects indicating class / schooling disparities) and the development of language can have roots in cultural shifts due to occupation of other countries and so on. Like the creation of language is so amazing honestly and if anyone needs resources hmu.

Magic systems have their own line of being categorized with rules and classified as hard and soft but I don’t necessarily limit myself to thinking about those and rather, think about the basis of their existence in relationship of them being culturally significant to the society. Basically, I construct a history of magic before I go into the details. My favourite way of constructing a magic system is by relating it to science (it’s what makes chemistry bearable sad emoji). But it really depends on how I want to write my story because, like I said, I find regulations on magic and laws on magic interesting and relating it back to the idea of political power. But culture (ESPECIALLY RELIGION) is important consideration and I would implore writers to think about the way magic is utilized (as a tool, as a weapon, as both, as a shortcut, etc) and how it relates before you really digest the nitty gritty of magic because you can do so much with it.

This is a vomit word post I’m so sorry but yes this is the general mess going on in my head when writing my wips. I was so tempted to go into characters but that would be a GARBAGE fest. In conclusion, read too much books and scream.

#ask | answered #im sorry i dont know what i did here #im crying #worldbuilding

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madscientistjournal · 5 years

Text

Fiction: Excerpts From the Audio Notes

An essay by Jim Dennath, P. (Eldritch) E., as provided by Jonathan Ficke Art by Leigh Legler

Day 1

Finally, a place where my desire to dream beyond the bounds of what a rational engineer may dream, to build that which ought never be built, to be the mad engineer that breaks down barriers, and possibly ends the world–Fimbulvetr Industries. I confess that I saw their job posting and sent my résumé to them on a lark–who would have thought that the premiere apocalyptic science and engineering conglomerate would want me? But they did, so here I am walking the austere gunmetal hallways, seeing the laboratories where the cutting edge of apocalyptic science is conducted. And everything is so clean! It’s the platonic form of Nordic design. I couldn’t imagine a better place to undergo hours of trite human resources onboarding nonsense.

At least they have a slogan: Building a Better End of Days, Today.

It’s perfect.

Fimbulvetr is not screwing around. I’ve been here a day and have access to the development lab of my dreams. Good devils below, there’s an entire team of assistants at my beck and call. The job is simple–as simple as engineering a possibly world-ending device is concerned that is–build a device to create a stable planar gateway to the nether realm to allow the creatures of the dark beyond access to the mortal plane of existence.

Should be fun!

Turns out the ancient Assyrians were super into the nether realm. The Fimbulvetr archives have hundreds of original clay tablets recovered (read: stolen or plundered) from archaeological sites across the Levant. As it so happens, however, I cannot read cuneiform.

Good news, though! Ivan, a twitchy Russian ex-pat with an eyepatch, has been the most useful in that regard. He tells me he studied and taught ancient languages at a university in Kiev, stumbled on something he’s only muttered about as “the impossible realities,” and they fired him for gibbering too much during lectures. Their loss is my gain.

There’s also a linguist to help interpret the texts, Bernice, an Alabaman with absolutely the sweetest accent and the keenest eye for the dark logic employed by the forces of darkness. Who would have imagined that demons employed passive aggressive language? When I expressed my disbelief, Bernice said “bless your heart,” and told me it makes her feel right at home. What a lovely person.

With Ivan and Bernice’s help, the task came into focus. We have a great deal of work ahead of us.

There’s also Jeffrey. He doesn’t talk much, and near as I can tell, he’s mainly here to pick up heavy things at my direction. He does so at a languid pace. He must be hourly.

Day 3

This was prototyping day. Based on Ivan’s translations, and Bernice’s helpful interpretation of archaic Assyrian linguistics, we needed both a lot of eldritch energy and a focusing medium to stretch the planar gate across.

First thing first, we measure eldritch energy in crowleys, like proper modern folk who are concerned with repeatable design. Ancient Assyrians? No such luck. They simply killed an absolutely mind-boggling number of people until they got what they wanted. I’m honestly a little impressed by their can-do attitude. It worked for them, so what grounds do I have to criticize? I can, however, complain that it makes their cuneiform tablets as hard to use as blueprints in a modern workshop.

Anyway, since we don’t know exactly how many crowleys we need, I’m ball parking the sum at: a lot of crowleys.

Also, we need something to channel the crowleys into a cascading web of interconnecting focus points–essentially a matrix of dark energy that can fray the boundary between our world and the eldritch void we seek to contact. The ancient Assyrians came up with an answer for this too. That answer is femurs. We need a lot of femurs.

If we need a lot of femurs, then we’re going to need a lot of volunteers. After all, each one can only contribute two femurs, and we’re going to need twenty-three femurs. That means approximately twelve volunteers, assuming our pool of volunteers does not include too many above-the-knee amputees or people with low bone density. This might be tricky.

Day 4

Not that tricky! You know what was tricky? Getting Jeffrey to gather all of the human thighs and separate the meat from the bones. It was a simple request, Jeffrey!

But, I digress. Did you know there’s a group of people on the internet who call themselves “thigh enthusiasts?” Naturally, I gravitated toward this group of people, as I figured that anyone so enthusiastic about thighs would likely have high quality femurs.

This was not, in fact, the case. The yield of quality femurs from a single thigh enthusiast, which one could reasonably assume be close to, if not precisely, two femurs, is actually much closer to 1.1 per enthusiast. Most are men in their thirties; how is their bone structure and density so bad? What comprises their diet that they have the bone density of an elderly person with a severe calcium deficiency? This is, of course, not the question I’ve been hired to solve. It must remain a mystery for another day.

What we lacked in quality, we were able to make up for in quantity. Thigh enthusiasts are an easily baited group. Promise an internet message board an abundance of thighs, and like ten grand each, and boom, even with the comically low femur yield, I’ve got all the femurs an engineer could possibly desire. Really, it’s almost a problem. I’ve practically got too many femurs. Jeffrey certainly thinks we have too many femurs, but that is a Jeffrey problem.

So, with a massive stockpile of femurs at our disposal, it’s time to begin constructing a web of twenty-three femurs arranged in a circle with a radius precisely calibrated to focus crowleys!

Day 6

Well, I’ve summoned a demon. More on this later. At least I won’t have to worry about Jeffrey slacking anymore. More on this later as well.

I rate this experience as a qualified success.

Day 7

Good news! We’ve sealed the demon in my original development lab. Fimbulvetr has given me a new workshop. It’s buried farther underground.

The boys upstairs have also given me a squad of armed guards at all times. Hans Jürgen leads the team of barrel-chested men with assault rifles and bandoliers of grenades. Seems a touch of overkill, but it wouldn’t do to have a demon ruthlessly dismember a useful member of the team.

(Oh … right, Jeffrey was–literally–pulled limb from limb by a seven-armed reptilian beast with eleven mouths and three wings. As it happens, and this would be a subject better suited for a mad evolutionary biologist, demons have very strange anatomy.)

In any case, we have a very solid prototype planar gateway generator in existence. No idea how to control it. No way to manage what passes through. No clue what’s on the other side, and the boys upstairs tell me it’s not nearly big enough.

On account of me not being dead, I am willing to increase my assessment of this situation from qualified success to moderate success.

Add in Jeffrey’s demise and we might be flirting with major success territory.

Day 5

Yes, out of chronological order, but I was far too busy fleeing a rampaging hell beast to take proper notes on the actual Day 5. So let’s all be aware that it was recorded on Day 7, but ought to slot in at Day 5. Deal? Deal.

So, get this, turns out virgins, not super effective conduits of eldritch power. I know, really came out of left field to me too. It’s all you ever read about: virgin sacrifice this, the world’s running out of eligible virgins that. Guess what, virgins, you’re not that special!

Turns out, the sanguineous humors of debauched people–now that’s the blood you want to charge a planar gate. So we threw an orgy. Well, we advertised an orgy, lit some candles, provided massage oils and a room full of impractically sized pillows, and once we had a room full of good old-fashioned debauchery underway, that’s when we threw a massacre. It was all very efficient.

I was able to capture thirteen crowleys of spiritual energy in the blood agony harvester (which we constructed mostly from tibias and fibulas, the ancient Assyrians–a very efficient people when it came to human sacrifice–were big on using every part of the sacrificial victim, particularly leg bones). Granted, we’re still getting a handle on precisely how many crowleys of energy will be necessary to sustain a transplanar crossing, but I figured what we had was a good first effort.

Naturally, excited as I was from that success, I couldn’t help but turn to my assembled femur matrix and plug in all that sweet human suffering. It worked, and after experiencing the fabric of realty shred before my eyes, and hearing the distilled shriek of millions of disembodied souls, a demon ripped through the planar gate and started absolutely taking Jeffrey to town.

I ran, sealed the door, and changed my drawers.

Day 14

Good thing I had all those femurs, because the boys upstairs want a lot of transplanar gates constructed. Without Jeffrey (typical Jeffrey, even in death he’s slacking off), it took more than a week to build a whole bunch of gates in reinforced containment cells. That way, when the demons rip through, we’ve got ’em right where we want ’em. Locked up nice and tight until we can figure out how best to unleash them on an unsuspecting world.

So here we are, two weeks into the job (they’re paying me in arrears, which means I don’t get paid until the second pay period is complete, truly barbaric; hopefully my benefits are already accruing. I don’t want to miss out on any compound interest.), and I have twenty-three individually contained planar gates made from five-hundred-twenty-nine femurs. I wonder if I hunted thigh enthusiasts onto the endangered species list? Each planar gate sits in a specially constructed holding cell built of concrete and steel.

The holding cells themselves are all on a central corridor buried deep underground. At the end of the corridor is the control room, where I work. From there, I have the ability to route crowleys into the planar gates, as well as control each individual cell door.

Behind the control room, a twenty-three-foot diameter vault door that is twenty-three-feet-thick seals the whole operation off from the access shaft that leads to the rest of Fimbulvetr headquarters.

We are so ready to summon some demons.

Or, we would be ready to summon some demons, if we had enough crowleys. This is going to take a lot of massage oil.

Day 20

It’s been a tiring but productive six days. I like to think we’ve done the ancient Assyrians proud. Good thing we got a bulk rate on massage oil.

The blood agony harvesters are practically humming with energy, and the boys upstairs have quintupled my detail of armed guards.

A few keep very close eyes on me, and with the exception of Hans Jürgen, they communicate exclusively by way of hand signals, and are frequently checking their weapons and ammunition. It’s as if they assume that at any moment a demon might leap into this world. I asked Hans Jürgen about the increase in guards, and he says that they’re here to prevent anyone from being Jeffried.

Jeffried. His laziness has been immortalized by becoming a verb in the Fimbulvetr lexicon. Where’s the justice in that?

But let’s not let Jeffrey’s perpetual incompetence interfere with our objective. In the morning, we get to channel distilled human suffering into a series of arrays constructed from human long bones. What could possibly go wrong?

Day 21

A lot can go wrong.

Holy shit, a lot can go wrong.

I threw the switch and opened the crowley reservoir. The hair on the back of my arms stood on end as the cables that ran from reservoir to the holding cells and attached to the transplanar gates inside writhed like live serpents with the energy.

As had been the case with the first rift, reality shifted in front of my eyes, and an otherworldly howl threatened to burst my eardrums. The screams faded, but then a series of sounds like the piercing chime of twenty-three bells rang through the corridor, and I heard it even in the control room. A tiny red light blinked on the control panel indicating lock failure on each door.

Hans Jürgen flashed hand signs to his men and everyone spread out, rifles at their shoulders, covering the cell doors. It didn’t matter. Moments later, the cell doors ripped open and twenty-three demons tore out of confinement into the corridor.

Ivan and Bernice had volunteered to check each containment cell, so they were in the hallway and were the first to die.

The snare drum report of automatic weapon fire filled the air, grenades provided a tympanic percussion beneath the gunfire, but none of it mattered.

Everyone got Jeffried.

Everyone but me. I’m sitting in the control room behind a pane of glass staring into the nearly countless eyes of twenty-three demons and hoping they don’t realize that the control room door doesn’t actually have a lock on it.

Oh, shit.

[Inarticulate screaming]

Jim Denath, P. (Eldritch) E., holds the distinction of being the only youth scout to be dismissed from the national organization for designing an autonomous drone that hunted down and cooked ants with a magnifying glass. He parlayed that (minor) infamy into a scholarship to attend the Polytechnic Institute of Apocalyptic Studies, and subsequently a position at Fimbulvtr Industries, where he is now the only person with a professional engineering license currently being used as the torture plaything of twenty-three demonic fellbeasts.

Jonathan Ficke lives outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his beautiful wife. He graduated from Marquette University with a degree in public relations, which (in a manner of speaking) is another form of speculative storytelling, His work appears in Mad Scientist Journal Spring 2018, Writers of the Future: Vol. 34, and Tales of Ruma. He muses online at jonficke.com and on twitter @jonficke.

Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.

Fiction: Excerpts From the Audio Notes was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Demonology #Jonathan Ficke #Leigh Legler #Science Fiction #Xenobiology

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maiji · 6 years

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Thoughts on Grasses of Remembrance (The Tale of Genji through its poetry)

Finally had some time this weekend to sit down with A Waka Anthology, Volume 2: Grasses of Remembrance Part B by Edwin A. Cranston. This book is the last in an impressive and intimidating collection translating a number of major classical poetry anthologies. It’s basically a speedrun through Tale of Genji (if such a thing were possible) filtered through all 795 waka poems written or uttered by the characters over the course of the novel.

Poetry was a Really Big Deal during the Heian era. If you were an aristocrat, not only were you expected to compose decent poetry, you had to be able to do it off-the-cuff appropriate to the occasion. AND to do this properly, you were expected to be able to recognize and respond cleverly to references to a ton of other existing classic poems from memory that people would just mention casually in conversation or writing (kinda like how people quote the Simpsons today lol). This was a prime marker of how intelligent/competent and - no joke - how sexy you were. So not surprisingly, these poems are extremely important to the development of character interactions and themes in the Tale of Genji which has a lot of romance and relationship plotlines.

However. Translating Heian era Japanese into modern Japanese is already challenging. Rendering Heian era Japanese waka poetry into modern English is, as you might imagine, harder for a bunch of reasons. Considering how dense the actual novel already is, it’s super easy to gloss over the poetry, and some modern translations simply integrate the basic intent of the poems right into the main text/dialogue.

I was really interested in finding something specifically focusing on and analyzing the poetry, and this book appeared to fit the bill.

Short review: IT TOTALLY DOES. If you’re into Tale of Genji, Heian era, classical Japanese history, classical Japanese literature, Japanese poetry, or just love reading translators articulating eloquently while sassing characters or flailing through linguistic complexities, I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK

Long review: blah blah blah thoughts follows, including some quotes/poem for reference.

The book starts with a quick 2 page intro setting the context of the Tale of Genji, then goes straight into the poems. TBH I personally found it more flowery and redundant than necessary (it repeats a few poems that are then explained later). But it’s only 2 pages, we’ll live.

Then, the poems. For every poem (or poems, in the case of an exchange - sometimes a flurry of them with multiple characters speaking or dashing letters off to each other) there’s an intro and summary of context followed by an analysis, including notes on meaning, narrator and character intent, structure, symbols and wordplay. The original Japanese is included in romaji alongside the English translation. The commentary also flags known references to other classic poems (WITH those poems in-line! This is awesome because I don’t have the rest of these books!), and even mentions poem and folk song quotations from the rest of the novel where the characters have not composed new poetry, but are reciting other existing known pieces.

Overall, I have only three real “warnings” about Grasses of Remembrance Vol 2b:

1) It’s very academic and flowery in tone. If you’re not used to it, it can be hard to read. But then again, if you’re not willing to get past that, how are you reading Tale of Genji? lol. In any case, I personally thought the commentary was a lot of fun. Cranston definitely has opinions and can get pretty sarcastic in places, which I found hilarious. Here are a few sample quotes:

“Tamakazura has remarked to herself how superior the Emperor [Reizei] was in looks to all the courtiers in his train (It is a principle with this author that superior people be dashingly handsome or ravishingly beautiful).”

“The ruefully witty poems exchanged between Yugiri and To no Naishi [Koremitsu’s daughter, the Gosechi Dancer] are rather more to my taste than the soggy ones Yugiri and Kumoi no Kari exchanged on their wedding night. Might it be the case that a totally sanctioned relationship is literarily uninspiring?”

“The old lady reaches for the melodramatic ultimate and dies just as Yugiri’s letter arrives.”

The overall effect is like an exceedingly well-educated, gossipy and sassy ride through the entire novel hahaha.

2) Minor typos. I noticed some speckled throughout the text every so often (e.g., Tamakazura being rendered Takakazura, Akashi as Asashi, instances of accidental extra letters, etc.). It was pretty clear what the correct spelling was supposed to be, and TBH considering this is the last of a huge-ass series of over 1300 pages I think it’s forgiveable. Maybe a few that spell-check should have caught, but oh well.

3) This book is NOT CHEAP. As I mentioned in a previous post, not only did I not buy the entire collection, I didn’t even buy a complete Volume 2 - I only bought the last half of the second volume lmao. And the Tale of Genji translations are only HALF of this half of a book. The rest is actually the footnotes, appendices, notes to poems, glossary, bibliography and indices (including indices for every poem by author and by first line) for this beast of a translation/compilation project. This includes a lot of additional commentary and other poems and makes for pretty interesting reading itself, even without the rest of the volumes/parts. The price can definitely be scary and an issue for a lot of people, so if you’re interested in it, I suggest try checking it out at your library or on Google Books first. (In fact, Google Books is how I learned of this book in the first place.)

For me, the depth of insight for the poems was fantastic. It gave me a lot more appreciation for the scenes, including the mental state of the characters, plus a million more symbols, metaphors and ideas for my own creative works like the Genjimonogatari illustration series, North Bound and other original stuff.

It also clarified several fuzzy translation questions I had that relied on specific knowledge of Heian culture and history/evolution of the use of the language and wasn’t easily found in Google searches or online language resources. And even if you’re already familiar with common allusions, metaphors and puns/homophones in Japanese poetry, it’s still helpful to see them all summarized. And sometimes lamented by the book’s author too. SO MANY PONIES EATING GRASS. SO MANY PINES. Especially the pines. (It IS an amazing pun though, especially because it works in both English and Japanese. Pine [tree] -> to pine, matsu/pine tree -> matsu/to wait)

In term of the actual translations themselves, you may still find them coming off a bit roundabout in some cases when comparing to the original Japanese. But overall I find Cranston’s translations more direct/flavourful than how they were rendered in the Tyler translation, partly because of how Tyler chose to juggle his set of translator’s challenges for rendering not only meaning but also more technical aspects of the poetic form. So the imagery ends up being, to me, a lot more vivid. The overall effect usually ends up more colourful, more emotional, more erotic, more cutting, more entertaining, and whatnot.

For example, Kashiwagi’s suitor’s poem in the Kocho/Butterflies chapter. When reading the novel, I was like, uh-huh, yah, OK. When I read it here, I was like whoa, dude, that’s a little intense lol. Cranston’s translation amps up the connotation of the heat of the water based on the rest of the line. For comparison:

(The original non-romaji Japanese in the samples following are thanks to the Japanese Text Initiative from the University of Virginia Library Etext Centre and the University of Pittsburgh East Asian Library. Their Tale of Genji page has a FREAKING AMAZING side-by-side comparison of the novel in original Japanese, modern Japanese and romaji. Bless them and the people who had to organize and wrangle that text together.)

Original Japanese: 思ふとも君は知らじなわきかへり岩漏る水に色し見えねば Omou to mo / Kimi wa shiraji na / Wakikaeri Iwa moru misu ni / Iro shi mieneba

Tyler version: You can hardly know that my thoughts are all of you, for the stealthy spring welling from the rocks leaves no colour to be seen.

Cranston version: Hardly can you know / Of the longing that I feel, / For the boiling wave / Is merely colorless water / As it drains away from the rock.

Here’s another example. Oigimi (Agemaki in the book, as Cranston used Wayley’s names for the sisters) telling Kaoru that he’s the only one who’s been actually visiting them and Kaoru is like all riiiight :Db! From Shii ga Moto / Beneath the Oak chapter:

Oigimi’s poem 雪深き山のかけはし君ならでまたふみかよふ跡を見ぬかな Yuki fukaki / Yama no kakehashi / Kimi narade Mata fumikayou / Ato o minu kana

Tyler: No brush but your own has marked the steep mountain trails buried deep in snow / with footprints, while back and forth letters go across the hills.

Cranston: Over the bridges / Clinging to the cliffs along / Our deep-snow mountains / No letter-bearer leaves his trace: / Those footprints are yours alone.

Kaoru’s reply つららとぢ駒ふみしだく山川をしるべしがてらまづや渡らむ Tsurara toji / Koma fumishidaku / Yamakawa o Shirube shigatera / Mazu ya wataramu

Tyler: Then let it be I who firsts ride across these hills, though on his mission, / where ice under my horse’s hooves crackles along frozen streams.

Cranston: In the sheets of ice / Covering the mountain streams / My steed crushes / Such letters as form my reason, / My first, to cross as a guide.

In other examples, Genji’s “*throws hands in the air* I give up” poetic reply to Suetsumuhana about how she keeps using Robes of Cathay/Chinese cloak imagery in her poems in the original Japanese alongside the translation cracked me up even more. And one of my favourites is a pair of poems between the future Akashi Empress (as a child) and her birth-mother the Akashi lady. It’s really sad, sweet and cute all at the same time and completely flew under my radar when I read the novel originally.

The poetry analysis for the Uji chapters is especially intriguing. The plot pointedly pits Niou against Kaoru as opposing personalities with particular similarities and contrasts that drive their relationship with each other and with the woman they’re competing for. Especially in the latter half of the story, a lot of their poems, even ones written independently (i.e., to Ukifune), are specifically composed to highlight those attributes and play off of each other.

Finally, it’s also super interesting to see my experience with the narrative changes through the lens of the poems. Obviously, as I mentioned, some things I easily missed without paying as much attention to the poems in between the rest of the story. But also, some prominent characters have very few poems, so the narrative shifts away from them. Meanwhile, a number of otherwise very minor or usually overlooked characters stand out even more, thanks to the fineness, loveliness, resonance, and sometimes just sheer consistent presence of their poetry. This book definitely gave me a lot of additional perspective on the Tale of Genji, and enhanced my appreciation of the novel and the skill behind its crafting!

#tale of genji #genji monogatary #waka poetry #a waka anthology #grasses of remembrance #edwin a. cranston #royall tyler #japanese #translation #japanese tranlation #heian period #kaoru chujo #oigimi #agemaki #kashiwagi

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hyperbolicpurple · 4 years

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Jane Espenson on humor: types of jokes, part 1

Compilation of joke-telling advice from Jane Espenson’s blog. Yes, I’m just copying and pasting. These are all about screenwriting in particular, btw. I found them interesting, so maybe you will, too.

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Hang on, everyone. I’m about to take an unpopular position. I’m going to advocate analyzing comedy. This is, in general, thought to be a very bad idea. Even dangerous. Once you start trying to figure out why something is funny, the reasoning goes, you lose the sense of whether it is or not. The enterprise is, at best, fruitless, and at worst, a path to the numbing loss of comedy sensation.

Well, it’s true that once you start taking apart a joke to learn how it works, you do lose track of your natural unselfconscious sense of what’s funny. The sensation of it is unmistakable. And, to me, very familiar. Before I was a comedy writer I was a student of Linguistics. We had to talk about language all the time, asking ourselves questions about which utterances were a part of our own natural idiolect and which ones weren’t. Even a few minutes of this kind of thinking tended to lead to blunted judgments about what one could or could not say. I have heard this referred to as “Scanting Out,” the name coming from the result of trying to figure out when one would naturally use the word “scant.” Would you naturally produce the utterance: “His entrance was greeted with scant applause”? “I had scant time to prepare”? How about “there was scant butter in the storehouse”? Or “She gathered her scant dress around her”? Or “He was a man of scant talent”? Or “Any loss of water will reduce the supply to scant”? Hmm-- lose your sense of it yet?

And still, we do not stop analyzing language. It’s valuable and worth the effort. I think joke analysis can also be worth more than a scant effort. (See-- the instinct is back again. It bounces back!)

I would love, someday, to create a Field Guide to Jokes. A real inventory of types of funny with lists of examples. Much of the skill that makes a good joke writer is clearly subconscious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be sharpened. And for those of you who are new to joke writing, I think this kind of guide might help you a lot, giving you a mental check-list of possible funny approaches to a moment.

So let’s start.

One of the entries in the Field Guide would have to do with taking cliches and altering them, usually by simply reversing the intent. For example, when Buffy was battling an especially ugly monster she once said: “A face even a mother could hate.” And I vividly remember Joss pitching that in another script someone should say, “And the fun never starts.” In another, I riffed off the old Wonder Bread slogan “Builds strong bodies eight ways” to describe a weapon that “Kills strong bodies three ways.” This one was less successful since no one but me remembered the old Wonder Bread slogan. They can’t all be winners. The headline of this entry, a punnish play off a title, is one that I simply cannot believe we never used.

It’s a fun type of joke. Breezy, a little dry, kind of smart. You might want to play around with it. If you’ve got a character who needs a wry observation on what’s going on around them, this might be the joke type for you.

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I recently received such an interesting letter from Gentle Reader Maggie in Brooklyn. She writes to point out another variety for our menagerie of joke-types — a favorite of her and her boyfriend. She says:

We were wondering if there’s a specific writers’ room term for a type of joke that we love. It happens when you cut to a scene and someone is in the middle of wrapping up a story, and the only line you hear gives you very clear, very funny picture of what the rest of the story was about.

She goes on to give some examples. One of them was from that Charles Barkley Super Bowl ad in which we hear him say, out of a cut, “…and that’s why I never eat shrimp.” Another is from “Pirates of the Caribbean” in which we hear Johnny Depp wrapping up a story with “…and then they made me their king.”

Maggie is right that this is certainly a distinct type of joke. I love this joke. I remember particularly taking note of the “shrimp” line when I heard it. I don’t think this kind of joke has been given a particular name, although every room invents some of their own terminology — if a particular show used this kind of bit as a running gag, I’m certain they’d come up with a name for it. Maybe it’s a Fragment Joke, since it’s based on only hearing a fragment of the whole. Note that it’s certainly the same joke if you only hear the start or the middle of a story. If you open a door just long enough to hear, “Now if I was to show you the OTHER buttock…” for example. That’s the same joke.

These jokes are so effective because they make the audience do the work of inferring what they missed. They’re certainly related to jokes like those in the old Bob Newhart routines in which we’d hear one side of a phone call or even an in-person conversation and have to infer what was being said or done. From his Driving Instructor Routine: All right, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second… well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early….

Any time you can get the audience to do some of the work, you’re getting them invested, and that’s a great thing.

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The day that Harvey Korman died, I heard a little excerpt played on the radio of a comedy bit that I’d never heard before, taken from a sketch he performed with Danny Kaye. I’ve located the whole sketch here, but you don’t need to watch the whole thing since other than one funny joke — the one I heard excerpted for the radio — it’s pretty dire. But the joke worked for me. Here it is:

HARVEY Class, for a baby’s bath, what’s the most important thing you absolutely need?

DANNY A dirty baby?

Now, listening to this being performed, it’s clear early on what the joke is. It’s one of those “Stating the Obvious” jokes that I’ve talked about before. Once you hit “the most important thing,” you know that’s the joke. You probably already know that the answer is some version of “the baby.” And yet the joke made me chuckle. Because of the adjective.

It’s not just that adjectives make things funnier, although they often do. Moist, bendy, pointy, itchy — they are all great words that spice up any sentence. But in this case, “dirty” is doing something beyond that. Can you bathe a clean baby? Well, if you take bathing to include the idea of removing dirt, then, no, you can’t. So the answer makes literal sense, but it also raises the idea of NEEDING a dirty baby — needing something that is normally undesirable. For me, it even raises the image of someone purposefully dirtying a baby so that they can bathe it. Funny!

The joke isn’t in the words, of course, but in the concept. These are all the same joke (even though they don’t all work exactly the same way — since you can’t purposefully make a chicken raw, for example, it doesn’t quite resonate the way the baby one does):

What do you need to cook a chicken? Raw chicken. To fix an engine? A broken engine. To censor a movie? A dirty movie. To cure the common cold? Well, first you need a cold…

If you wanted to use these, you’d massage the language a bit, but those are the hearts of the lines, right there.

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Friend of the Blog Alex Epstein sends along an interesting contemplation on a certain type of joke. I’m going to let you see his explanation and then present mine, which differs on a certain point. Here is how he explains it:

Sometimes, I see good writers make fun of bad, obvious dialog and cliche. Saw a bit on Steven Moffat’s JEKYLL, ep. 3. A bunch of suits and techies watching the usual assortment of screens tracking Dr. Jackman:

Shot of a dot moving along a drawing of a railroad track.

Technie: He’s moving. American agent: Of course he’s moving! He’s on a train!

We don’t really need “He’s moving” to tell us that he’s moving, unless we’re washing the dishes and listening to the TV out of one ear, or we are very, very stupid. The American agent makes that point for us.

But wait, there’s the retort:

Technie: He’s moving. American agent: Of course he’s moving! He’s on a train. English agent: You obviously haven’t got the hang of England yet, have you?

Joss does this a lot, I think, subverting our TV viewer expectations:

Buffy: Puppets give me the wiggins. Ever since I was 8. Willow: What happened? Buffy: I saw a puppet. It gave me the wiggins. There really isn’t a story there.

I bet that sort of retort comes up a lot in story rooms; I wonder how often it makes it to the screen. (Network exec: “But how does the audience know he’s moving?”)

Oh, this is very interesting. I agree that this is totally about subverting the expectations of the listener. It never would have occurred to me, though, that this had to do with a response to exec-driven overwriting. I would have taken this (at least the first joke) more as a response to the real-life human tendency to state the obvious. And the second one I take as a response to the expected structure of normal conversation (i.e. “ever since” is supposed to lead to a anecdote.) So for me, both of these are about someone reacting to a statement that was deficient in some way, but deficient because of the foible of a character.

However, I’m open to Alex’s interpretation, now that I hear it. Certainly, the first joke illustrates an excellent way to turn a “make it clearer” note into a benefit — have someone hang a lantern on the over-clarity and then, if possible, slap a topper onto it! (So much writers’ slang! Yay!)

By the way, the Buffy example reminds me of another classic Joss joke, in which someone tries to deflect a question by saying “it’s a long story,” only to have another character quickly sum up the situation, leading the first character to lamely say, “Guess it’s not that long.” The standard conventional rule is that “it’s a long story” ends any discussion. To go past it and deflate it is funny.

It’s making me curious about other jokes that do this. Oh! How about the Princess Leia/Han Solo moment: “I love you.” “I know.” That’s certainly a violation of how we know that exchange is supposed to go. If you’re writing a comedy or a drama with wit, it’s worth doing a bit of thinking about this kind of joke since there’s something so ingrained about conversational assumptions that these jokes always pack a nice punch.

#on writing #writing #jane espenson #humor

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dillydedalus · 4 years

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december reading + top10 of the year

books.

a feast for crows, my main man grrm (#4 asoiaf) tbh i think this one is underrated - i understand feeling a bit underwhelmed on a first read bc it’s so much slower than asos & half the major characters aren’t in it & you get a bunch of new ones instead, but the thematic depth here! brienne seeing the devastation of the riverlands, thinking about outlaws & broken men & vigilante justice, sansa & arya both embarking on their apprentice arc & losing their identity in the process, the political intrigue in dorne, & the fucking hilarious shitshow that is cersei’s kings landing.... love it. 4.5/5

herkunft, saša stanišić (audio, sadly abridged) really good memoir/reflection about belonging, origin (national, ethnic, linguistic, familial, emotional), family, and living in germany as a refugee. it’s really smart, really heartfelt, really funny, and i’m sooo annoyed that my library only has the abridged version. oh yeah it won the german book prize shortly after peter ‘serbian war criminals’ #1 fanboy’ handke won the nobel prize, which was nice. 4/5

a brief history of seven killings, marlon james (uni) marlon james probably laughed his ass off at calling this 700-page book (very small print) a brief history. anyway, this is about the attempted assassination of bob marley in the 70s, the cultural and political context in jamaica at the time, and the fallout of that event. honestly, reading this on a tight schedule for uni was just wrong for this book bc i had to rush thru it & ended up skimming quite a bit. it’s an impressive achievement, but i can’t say i enjoyed it very much. 3/5

she would be king, wayétu moore a magical realist story about the foundation of liberia, told thru three characters - an indigenous woman, an ex-slave from the us, and a mixed-race jamaican - all of whom have magical abilities. i really wanted to like this, but while there are a lot of good ideas, structurally this is kind of a mess (the first part, which introduces the characters is way too long & not very interesting, the connection between the three is supposed to be super significant but it really doesn’t come across, one character gets way more page time than the others), the writing is occasionally p awkward, and there is an odd thing where the narrator (kinda a ghost, kinda the wind) intrudes literally only to call one of the characters her darling or whatever & it’s irritating af. 2.5/5

a dance with dragons, grrm (#5 asoiaf) tbh this is by far my least favourite of the series.... it’s just way too long, a bit of a slog (especially the tyrion chapters...) & there is not a single sansa chapter which is fucked up. a lot of the storylines are really good tho (jon, THEON, asha, jaime...). i ended up liking the parts i used to dislike a bit more this time around tho if i ever read it again i will probably do the combined affc+adwd read bc that sounds fun & interesting. 4/5

the sellout, paul beatty (uni) smart & pretty funny satire about the idea of a post-racial america, in which a black man in the LA region tries to segregate the local community. there’s a lot of cool stuff in here and i really liked the ambiguity & refusal to present any clear-cut answers, solutions, or closure. 3/5

tamburlaine must die, louise welsh fun little novella about the last days of kit marlow, which made for an entertaining 2 hours altho the ending is pretty weak imo & the language slips into entirely too modern occasionally. kinda disappointed because based on the blurb i’d assumed that tamburlaine actually, literally came to life out of marlow’s plays which. is not the case. but would have been super cool. 2/5

radiance, grace draven not to reveal how profoundly problematique i am: this is a book about a human noblewoman entering into an arranged political marriage with a dude from the off-brand dark-elves dynasty & it is. way too wholesome, there is little angst, ildiko & brishen get along very well from the start & like, where’s the fear, the tension, the delicious, delicious ANGST?? 2.5/5

water shall refuse them, lucie mcknight hardy atmospheric witchy folk horror set in a small village in wales during the '76 heat wave - narrator nif’s family comes to live in a cottage there to take some time off after the accidental drowning of nif’s younger sister - the mother is consumed by grief and guilt, the father is trying to hold everyone together, and nif is constructing a witchy creed out of bird eggs and bones and magical thinking to cope, comparing weird witchy practices with local outsider mally. i liked this & altho i saw the twist coming miles away, it still makes for a pretty disturbing ending, and the way the book evokes the dizzy blurry heat and nif’s state of mind - detached, angry, confused, compulsive - is really effective. 3.5/5

a knight of the seven kingdoms, george r.r. martin dunk! is! babey! (except for moments where he displays staggering BDE) anyway these are three novellas set about 100 years pre-asoiaf, about dunk/duncan the tall & his squire, egg/aegon, the OG secret targaryen. the stories are wholesome, funny, cute, have a lot of dunk being a true knight but not a real knight which is extra-sweet when you realise that he’s almost definitely true-but-not-real knight brienne’s (great?)grandpapa. 4.5/5

my cousin rachel, daphne du maurier philip ashley, our narrator, really is like ‘hmmm have i been misogynistic yet today?? better get on that’, he’s awful & so is his older cousin ambrose, who marries distant cousin rachel in florence & then gets ill and dies, making phil rather suspicious about rachel. did rachel poison ambrose? is she trying to seduce and/or poison philip? or are they both just paranoid assholes who hate women (they def. hate women)? this is some good psychological thriller type stuff, what we can construct out of philip’s distorted view of rachel is intriguing (and like, if she poisoned ambrose? #goodforher), the narrator is an ass but well-written, and the first/last lines.... chills. 3.5/5

top 10 of the year (no rereads!)

antigonick, anne carson

a canticle for leibowitz, walter m. miller

dedalus, chris mccabe

the complete maus, art spiegelman

the artificial silk girl, irmgard keun

o caledonia, elspeth barker

the sparrow, mary doria russell

sleep of the righteous, wolfgang hilbig

how to survive a plague, david france

rain wild chronicles, robin hobb

(the last three are kinda randomly picked from the high-4s based on my mood in the moment but they’re all really good so.)

#the books i read #long post

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dearfoucault · 5 years

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Reading III Intro by Aliisa

Reading III (The New Materialism of Design)

Intro by Aliisa

9/10/2019

In this Intro I will cover standardization, a relationship between humans and nonhumans and the definion of ‘nonhumans’. I also try to reflect these to visual communication design.

Standardization

Workers of the World, Conform! was interesting opening to standardization and how it is used in everything we do and are. The essence of its is to connect and communicate with other humans over language, culture and society: the most important duty of standards is liberate humans from ‘the burden of information management.

The idea of standardization was very noble: less waste, higher moral, cultural and linguistic neutrality and freedom. However, standardization for example ended up to be used by right-wing extremists, Nazis. Where standards were supposed to free humans they ended up in this content to marginalize and define design and especially culture, society, religion and all in all human rights and freedom.

Nazi Germany was known from standardization and I wonder if this is why the article did not mention Bauhaus which was also highly oriented to standards and from Germany: I wonder if the author wanted to avoid the misunderstood connections between Bauhaus and fascism. However Bauhaus has still very big influence in design and has a big role in standardization. It is also interesting how standardization ended up to Switzerland and created its own school and how this way visual communication design is tied to standardization.

This also lead to how standards spread from design to politics and society and how dangerous standards have become in nowadays' society and this leads back to the talk of freedom. Even if standards are wanted to see liberate they are limiting and we do not even need to go back to fascist Europe but observe our own time and society: standards always leave something out and this way center authority and this makes standards so dangerous.

Standardization: Language

Societies have always had standards and standardization where both verbal and written language are good examples. In order to work language has to be same to everybody: we need to use same words, grammar and orthography to understand each others. However we cannot understand the other languages with our own language (in most of the languages). The interesting example is Chinese. In China there are actually more than one language but they are all called Chinese like they are dialects together when they are actually their own languages as far as French and German are from each other. However, all the Chinese languages have the same notation. Written Chinese is one of the biggest creations of communist China: the problem with many different languages was solved with the same written language: one shared notation enabled one strong national identity. I see this very interesting example of the power of communication and standards.

Standardization: Comics

Language also makes me think comic as storytelling and how comics especially in Japan use these standardized symbols ‘internal effects’ (not sure about translations, in Finnish: sisäiset tehokeinot). These are visuals that means always the same things like feeling, emotions and reactions. In European comics the most known are f.e. starts over the head when the character is hurt but in Japan this has been taken to the next level like the whole meaning of the comic. However, there is no dictionary nor grammar to these effects but everyone who has read comics will understand them at the same way no matter the culture or country. We do not even have to go to comics what it comes to standardized visuals: we need to find the nearest EXIT sign to understand how standardized our visual language is even there is no clear structure to everything.

Now when I am talking about one of my favourite topics, comics, I also want to mention standards and reiteration. In the earlier reading (do not remember a name of the text) there was one sentence that has left haunting (not straight quote): the director ends up doing the same film over and over again: every film is just a new version of the same idea. I see this happen a lot in comics and especially in Japanese comics that are directed to teenage girls: there is one standard plot with standard characters. If these comics were put next to each other there would be visible and clear similarities in dialogue and visuals. Of course this is also seen in anything mass produced like super hero movies but these shōjo comics have especially catch my attention.

Standardization: Waste

I also paid attention to the comment of waste and this very minimalist idea of standardization: ‘actions that minimize waste are good, those that unnecessarily cause waste are bad’: at the same time standards were supposed to ease mass production but also use materials wisely and economically but nowadays mass production is one of the biggest problems in our society and actually is especially the waste of material. ‘Quality control’ is also interesting output of standardization but how this is more like ideal than reality when we observe mass production: most of the objects are badly produced without no ‘quality control’. And this leads me to ‘nonhumans’ (I liked Bruno Latour’s term ‘nonhuman’ to objects so I am going to use nonhuman when talking about objects, material and technology).

Nonhumans

Object-oriented ontology seemed really interesting theory and how the term ‘object’ also contains material like stories (Harry Potter) and electrical files. Even if nonhuman means something that is not human I felt like it gives something humane to the term and this way makes the connection between humans and nonhumans. As Latour said: ‘we cannot understand how society work without an understanding of how technologies shape our everyday lives’ we have no history without technology and this way we are tied to it forever.

When talking about nonhumans, I was thinking about visual communication designers all the time: ‘here they are, the hidden and despised social masses who make up our morality’: this was like straight from the essays about the identity crise of visual communication designers: at the same time we create the messages and language but also deliver it: we are not the messengers but also something else, designers with authority. However, it seems like we do not really know where our authority lays and that way we seem like lost.

Between nonhumans

The essay also made me think how tied nonhumans are also to each others. To have one nonhuman there almost every time needs to be another different one. This is ongoing circle what is really hard to break and shows how tight we are connected to nonhumans and also how tight nonhumans are together. I am going to use my new phone as an example: i bought iPhone 7 Plus from Swappie (used phones). However, even if the phone is used it is almost like new (and expensive) and that is why I want to protect it as well as possible. This means I had to buy protective glass and also protective covers: so instead of one thing I have bought three things. These connections makes me feel anxious: having one more nonhuman make me need another nonhuman and another one and another one… Of course this also makes me think what I actually need and what I simply want and how capitalism and mass production is connected to this.

I am really interested in minimalism and all in all the Eastern philosophies (minimalism as itself is not Japanese but American philosophy collected and merged from Japanese philosophies, religions and aesthetics) and how these cover the relationships between humans and nonhumans.

Graphic design and nonhumans

‘When humans are displaced and deskilled, nonhumans have to be upgraded and deskilled’. This made me think how sometimes there is conversation about how all practical works are replaced by nonhumans so humans can concentrate to other things like, I don’t know, thinking? Being happy? This also means that visual communication design would change more like giving different kind of orders to nonhumans. In the softwares all the tools are basically orders to the program to do what we want but still we are the ones using the tools: however, in the future we do not even have to use the tools but some other ways of communicating and getting out the practice we want.

In general, I feel many designers do not want this: this is basically being AD giving suggestions and orders instead of working themselves. At first, I also felt this repelling but now I have started to think what kind of possibilities this gives us? We would not have to know how to do it by ourselves but we could use this nonhuman to do it for us but even better and clearer and easier. For what kind of things we would get more time?

However, this is again ethical question as we have seen in nowadays’ technology where we try to program nonhumans to communicate with humans: there was a time when Snapchat’s face recognising tool did not recognise other than white people and also how this same tools is used in armed practices. The same programming problem with algorithms is happening in Instagram right now: Instagram is programmed to censor automatically all the violating material. However, this has been started to censorship especially the body parts of women like nipples, even if it was a picture from the picture or illustration. Even if this is always justified as “human mistakes” it is always a choice, a tone of speech: how we want to connect with humans with nonhumans. Nonhumans do not make the decisions, humans do.

This arise the question how ethical it can be to try to create communication between nonhumans and humans without content, emotions and other social aspects, like Latour pondered how to prevent people getting bloody noses while going through the door. Not forgetting that every nonhuman is created by human somewhere in the world and what kind of ethical questions this arise about working and human rights.

This is also why I see visual communication can never be completely made by nonhumans: we would need very complicated nonhumans to design messages to as complex creatures as humans that have physical, social and mental ways of thinking and communicating.

Empathy towards nonhumans

As social creatures we want to connect with each others but also with the world around us. We are very self-centred and this is why we always try to see someone like us in everything we are watching (Scott McCloud has really interesting theory of this and how it is used in comics and more accurately in caricatures). Like Latour said himself he talks to his computer: we try to humanise things that are nonhumans. I think this is also connected to materialism. I have always seen myself as very materialistic person: I get attached to material (and that is why I cannot throw anything away or it is super hard) and I try to fill my own personality with nonhumans (about this little bit later). However, I am not very good with taking care of my nonhumans: they get broken, dirty and messy very easily. My computer’s filing system is a disaster and I have too much stuff in our apartment. And I am pretty sure that I am not alone with this: it can be seen for example in KonMari method and how popular it has come.

In Konmari method you give away the things that ‘does not spark joy’. You hold every thing you have one by one and try to feel does it spark joy. If it does not, you thank it and give it away. Marie Kondo herself also greets and thanks her apartment every time she comes home. She connects with nonhumans and appreciate their existence. Many people had said it goes too far to greet and thank objects because they are not humans or even living things. However, in my opinion this is the most important and practical part of the method and should rise awareness more: when we appreciate what we have, we start to take care of it and kill the need for new things. I see it is very important to think nonhumans as spiritual creatures to understand our problematic ways to consume.

Cyborgs

In this content I use ‘nonhuman’ to describe something that is intentionally created by human.

Latour said: ‘We believe that there exist “humans” and “nonhuman”, without realizing that this attribution of roles and action is also a choice’. I find this very interesting thought: like I said, I have always seen myself very materialistic person like nonhumans are the extension of myself and my personality. But like Latour also said we are nothing without our nonhumans: they are supposed to be part of us. This way I am not actually that materialistic as anybody else but I think, see and pay attention more to the connection with nonhuman.

We are not much without our nonhumans. My classmate made this very interesting work about utopia where normal people are designed like brands: they have rules, personal features and coherent whole of personality and lifestyle. This was a lot based on relationship between nonhumans and humans. I found this very fascinating because this has actually been something I have tried to achieve for a long time: the complete and perfect relationship with my nonhumans to understand myself better.

Cyborgs are half machines and half humans. Cyborg robots are often primarily machines but also primarily human cyborgs exists. Cyborgs are often shown that part of the human is replaced with machines like leg, eye or hand. Cyborgs were ones this interesting utopia but nowadays everyone of us is somehow cyborg. Without technology and machines we cannot survive: they are the permanent parts of us.

#introduction #aliisa #reading3

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helshades · 5 years

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Thank you for this beautiful answer! Evidently, it inspired me a few things, gathered thereafter if you feel like having my opinion. It remindeed of multiple aspects of the red cap crisis that I had forgotten, eg. the start of it on a (kind of) fuel protest, as with the current protests. I want to underline that you mark the beginning of the movement on the June 18th. As I remembered, there was protests before that and the free distribution of headwares by Armor Lux. Concerning that, ---

I think that it provided mainly free Mützen, which is an offer few are able to turn down =) Anyway, I didn’t feel that the implication of company leaders was felt like a more decisive factor than a welcome but potentially uncomfortable support to the protesters, particularly the slaughterhouses employes and FO. So as usual there, it’s a awkard alliance between regoinal politics, laborers forces, and capitalists interests. Personnaly, I wasn’t more thrilled by the quite anti-eco mindsetsthan I’m now. I’ve no sympathy for the mass-producing low-quality FNSEA. If they’re backed into a corner, too bad. Yes, I lament the loss of the eco-tax because of it.

However, at this point of the text, I feel the need to tell that I’m breton. However, I won’t tell you a thing more, please imagine yourself how I reacted to what you wrote. If we thought we’re Wales politically, what does it have to do with the language? By the way those 3 are brythonic celtics, as close as french anditalian. No, we mainly don’t dream of independence. Now sadly I see in your text the old mindset, “province is a playground of aristocrats/medef since they can’t think of what is good for them i.e. the nation.” Of course these forces try to play on other interests. Maybe the difference is that in Brittany we are ready/forced to ally with unsavory characters to advance our (whatever) goals. It’s always like that. Melenchon has good points here. Comparing with today, I agree that the reforms are now not at all emerging from a deputies consensus unlike in 2013. But in Quimper protested far-left independantists and not far-right. Troadec is not far from being a Melenchon twin. He ends on a dismissal though, as he doesn’t see the compromises that are in place. So who have a less popular basis?

I didn’t speak about legality of protest. Nationalist as in considers the nation as it’s defined by it’s ideology and I’m sure you now how the french nation is defined. And why care about the upper echelons, nation or federation of nations, as long there’s a reasonnable say on a smaller scale. France is not a more logical/natural/whatever structure of control that the EU is. From Brittany, Marseille isn’t more local than Frankfurt is. Well, consider the french institutions as supranational and they indeed decide globally, removing power from the populations. Is it a good or a bad thing? If only it could allow a differentiated application of the eco-taxEU institutions let differentiation happens all the time. Only time will tell how it turns out. Sorry for the discombobulation and thank you for your time.

P.S.: I saw your addndum and understand. You correctly pointed at the differences between the two movements and have been of great assistance to help me refine my thoughts on these subjects. Thank you again.

Thank you! It was a good exercise to brain this, considering I hadn’t given enough thought to the bonnets rouges in a while either, which was a mistake. We shouldn’t let comparisons like this slide when they are being made by politicians such as Édouard Philippe, who I suspect is less politically clueless overall than Emmanuel Macron himself.

Concerning the intent behind the 2013 protests, I think protesters who came to demonstrate freely to defend their rights cannot be held responsible for unsavoury groups joining the free cortège. Manipulated or not, the protesters in 2013, with or without a red cap, were sincere, and I’d wager there were many more ordinary citizens than big business honchoes demonstrating. And they were making many salient points. Where I get Mélenchon’s probable frustration is that ‘awkward alliances’ have historically hurt the French Left quite a bit, and it always takes a lot of time to reconstruct.

I tend to approach the eco-tax issue more from an economic and political perspective than from an environmental one, I’ve come to realise. I didn’t translate it in my previous post but Mélenchon in the same text I quoted (‘The bonnets rouges farce’) made a few crucial remarks about the tax itself:

‘Let us observe the facts. The contract is allowing for proper plunder of the State, which has committed itself to pay [private company Ecomouv] a monthly rent of over 18 million euros a month, starting from 1st January 2014. This makes 20% of the expected takings of the eco-tax, around 85 millions per month. 220 millions a year! And that rent must be paid even during the ‘suspension’ the Prime Minister announced, whereas the State will not perceive a penny. Customs officers have explained they would have been able to set up and manage the very same tax with 5% management fees at best. Resorting to the private sector will therefore cost 4 times more, at least, than public service!

Considering the 650 million initial investment, after 14 years, the pick-up would have been especially costly. Ecoumouv would have collected 3.2 billion euros. In other words, all expenses paid, a total return of 2.5 billion euros! A complete scandal! From now on, it goes with another one, just as insufferable: were the government to suppress this tax altogether, it would have to pay the company 800 million euros! What are François Hollande & friends waiting for to demand a judicial inquiry or to create some parliamentary commission? A flock of bleating sheep is governing the country!

This week, Marianne published a column which I co-signed with other elected representatives, against the pillage that the privatisation of motorways by the Villepin government constituted. The eco-tax is another example of State looting. Both subjects are related. The main goal of the eco-tax was to generate takings that could help finance transport infrastructures. Why is that? Because privatising motorways effectively reduced the takings previously destined to do so! The benefits that [private companies] Vinci or Eiffage are making from the French motorways are as much money as could have either remained in the motorists’ pockets or gone to finance road infrastructures. Once again, here is proof that privatisation is a foe to the general interest. Liberalism doesn’t work when it comes to run any civilised society with a taste for efficiency. Liberalism costs much to society, and nothing works well.’

On a side note, I did mark the beginning of the movement as 18th June, which had me hesitate for a while, actually; not that I elected to ignore, notably, Christian Troadec’s involvement, but I had decided to focus on the 2013 movement only because it was at once what made the government back down and what prompted Mélenchon’s ire.

Now, let us clarify the ‘Welsh’ comment, shall we?

That paragraph was mostly fond irony, in the hope that some Bretons would be reading and get entertainingly titillated. ‘They believe they are Wales’ was a jibe aiming at the independent-country-within-a-country vibe, also based on, precisely, the linguistic relationship between Welsh and Breton, and their foreignness to, respectively, English (a Germanic language with heavy Latin influence) and French (a Latin language with heavy Germanic influence, and some very moderate Celtic influence as well).

On the subject of language—of Brittany being incapable to masquerade as Wales because of its Brittonic language—I was mostly drunk on fatigue and concluding in another window another post on etymology, which led me to write probably the obscurest linguistic reference I have ever made on this blog: linguistically speaking, Breton and Cornish are more closely related than they both are to Welsh. They still pertain, all three of them, to the Brittonic branch of the Insular Celtic languages group—except Welsh has a name that literally means ‘Gaelic’ and this is, like, super annoying. It is, also, completely England’s fault (when is it not) since the actual name of Wales is Cymru. But there you go: you know it’s a Germanic root when English writes it with a [w] but French writes is with a [g].

On the subject of regionalism… It might surprise you, but I’m actually quite divided on this. On the one hand, there are my personal Robespierrist inclinations, and also, mostly in fact, my being the daughter of a History teacher and being a, erm, language specialist, with a certain attachment to the Idea of France as a historic entity because… well, it is the result of centuries of events that cemented our regions into a political unit…

On the other hand, well, half of me is from Isère with strong ties to Lyon, and the other half is firmly, ferociously ardéchoise. From the south. In the mountains. I know very little about pig farming but I’m pretty sure I’m related to at least a couple goats—and, much more seriously, I have always been torn on the question of regional identity because it is of great importance in my family, not least of which because I come from two endless lines of peasants. I have a notion of family roots that is pretty literal, in fact. And, technically, I ain’t French, on either side. My grandparents learnt French in school; it was my parents’ generation that grew up hearing patois at home and speaking French at the same time.

And Ardèche is a very beautiful, but very poor region. I have always been divided, without too much fuss to be honest, between it and Lyon, and I am very well placed to know how unequally financial resources are shared—and, incidentally, the harm it does to the environment, as righteous city-dwellers are rather prone to ignore the fact that most farmers have been constrained to productivism in the first place, expected to feed an ever-growing urban population…

I am, anyway, in favour of a greater, if relative, autonomy for regions, and I’m not necessarily talking about the ginormous, meaningless ensembles that were reinvented recently. I do believe that national institutions are paramount, because they allow us, quite simply, to set up a functioning national insurance system to finance public infrastructures and services for all. However, I may be much of Republican, and I may truly dislike communitarianism under all its shapes, I think we must address Parisianism for what it is.

#pavé césar !#long post #answers #nonnies #french politics #brittany #regionalism #france #gilets jaunes #bonnets rouges

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uniteordie-usa · 7 years

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It’s Time to Question the Modern Nation-State Model of Governance

http://uniteordiemedia.com/its-time-to-question-the-modern-nation-state-model-of-governance/ https://uniteordiemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/UniteOrDie-Spain-600x324.jpg It’s Time to Question the Modern Nation-State Model of Governance Michael Krieger Oct 3, 2017 I typically try to avoid news on Sundays, but I spent much of yesterday in complete awe of the extraordinary strength and fortitude of the Catalan people in the face of totalitarian violence from the Spanish state against citizens attempting to vote in a peaceful...

Michael Krieger Oct 3, 2017

I typically try to avoid news on Sundays, but I spent much of yesterday in complete awe of the extraordinary strength and fortitude of the Catalan people in the face of totalitarian violence from the Spanish state against citizens attempting to vote in a peaceful referendum. Before you start telling me about how the vote is illegal and goes against the Spanish constitution, let me be perfectly clear. That line of thinking is entirely irrelevant to the point of this post.

Specifically, I believe humanity is reaching a point in its evolution, both from a consciousness perspective as well as a technological one, where we’ll begin to increasingly question many of our silly contemporary assumptions about how governance should work. The primary one is this absurd notion that a nation-state should be seen as a permanent structure of political governance which only becomes dissolvable in the event of violent revolution or war.

When it comes to great leaps in human progress, a crucial component to lasting change is convincing enough people that a particular way of organizing human affairs is outdated and harmful. I think if we take a step back and look at how people are governed across the world, there are very few places where “the people” feel they live in societies in which they exert any sort of genuine political self-determination. When we look at the last few decades of political governance in the Western world, a march toward more and more centralized political power has been a facet of life in both the U.S and Europe. I believe this trend is being pushed to its breaking point, and groups of humans with common culture, language and interests will increasingly question whether massive nation-states (or wannabe super states like the EU) make sense. In the past five years alone, Scotland held a referendum on UK membership, Great Britain voted to leave the EU, and most recently, Catalonia took a major step toward independence with yesterday’s banned referendum.

Those who favor centralized power see these events and movements toward decentralized political power as inconvenient, intransigent outbursts from the ungrateful, unwashed masses. Movements which would best put down one way or the other in order to carry on with the business of further centralizing power. They view such burgeoning drives for political self-determination as temporary storms which the wise elders of centralization must merely ride out. Unfortunately for them, this is not the case.

If anything, we can expect many more movements for decentralized power in the decades ahead for two main reasons. First, the current system is simply not working for most people. Second, as we become more connected and conscious, we will invariably conclude that all human beings deserve to have a real choice in the type of governments they live under. The prevailing assumption that we’re simply born into a particular nation-state and must accept this situation for the rest of our days irrespective of how brutal, oppressive and dysfunctional it may be, is an irrational, inhumane and outdated perspective.

As things stand today, humans essentially have two choices when it comes to political life. We either accept the nation-state we’re born into and play the game to the best of our advantage, or we try to become citizens of another country with values that more align with our own. The only way to really shatter existing political power structures and form new ones is through violent revolution or war, which is an insane way of reorganizing matters of human governance. One of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s key arguments in casting the Catalan referendum as illegal is that Spain is an indivisible nation under the 1978 constitution. Let’s think about what this means in practice.

Anyone who’s spent any time in Spain understands how culturally and linguistically distinct many of the regions are when compared to Madrid. These are differences that go back centuries and can’t be brushed off by a constitution created a few decades ago. The idea that these various regions must be part of a centralized Spain even if the people within the regions want political autonomy is ethically preposterous, as well as authoritarian and evil in every sense of the word. If done properly, human governance should always be a voluntary arrangement. If an overwhelming majority of culturally distinct people within any nation-state decide the super state is no longer working for them, they should have every right to leave. Anything else is bondage.

As the U.S. Declaration of Independence so eloquently states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The key aspect of the above declaration is that governments instituted among humans derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

…

Read More: https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/10/02/its-time-to-question-the-modern-nation-state-model-of-governance/

#Catalan #Nation-State #Spanish #totalitarian

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vileart · 7 years

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Dramaturgy of Wittgenstein: Blair Simmons @ Edfringe 2017

Blair Simmons and Nathan Sawaya Productions (NY / California, USA)

Staging Wittgenstein

by Blair Simmons

Staging Wittgenstein is about language, but it will leave you breathless.

With her blonde hair cascading down and her large expressive doe eyes, Annie Hägg pops her head out of a life-size inflated balloon that engulfs her entire body. The Yale graduate, with an MFA in Acting, and her balloon will join Russian castmate Nikita Lebedev for the premiere of Staging Wittgenstein – a breathtaking and dynamic combination of physical art, comedy and suspense.

Venue: C, Adam House, Chambers Street, EH1 1HR, venue 34, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Dates: 2-28 Aug (not 9, 16, 23)

Time: 19:40 (0h45)

What was the inspiration for this performance?

The inspiration for this performance was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The structure and content of this philosophical work is very playful, contradictory, and strange. Additionally, the text actually defeats itself in the end. I knew this philosophy had to be a play.

To create a play that structurally fell apart at the end was beautiful idea to me. And not in that it was just inspired by this piece of philosophy, but actually embodied it. I was not really interested in doing what is typical, which is that someone writes a play and then theory is written upon that play. I wanted to see what would happen if the play itself was a piece of theory and what sort of natural inherent storyline would emerge from it. In terms of the balloons though?

Nikita Lebedev (one of the actors in this show) and I tried many different things to create a physical structure that would destroy itself in the end (i.e. ping pong balls, ladders, etc.). But then we were watching a Russian talent show on YouTube, and one man’s talent was to climb inside a giant balloon. We knew this was our solution. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

Absolutely! In this play, we are staging the propositions, or logical claims, present in the Tractatus. These include: “the world is everything that is the case,” or “roughly speaking: objects are colourless.” We attempt to stage these propositions, but of course one cannot really stage a philosophical proposition.

What you can stage is their imaginative properties. So in a way, by staging this philosophy, we are making claims in the play. And that is unavoidable. When you represent something, you cannot avoid taking some sort of physical or linguistic stance. There are implications, bad or good, in translating text onto the stage. How did you become interested in making performance?

When I was three years old I obsessively watched Cats the Musical on VHS Tape. Strangely enough, that was the beginning of my tumultuous romance with theater. As I grew older, I realized that the permanency of that VHS tape was uninteresting to me, and what really began to interest me about theater was its bleeding temporality. I love that it is something that neither audience nor makers can control.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

I did a lot of writing and imagining for this show, but in many of ways it is a devised piece. I’ll sit down with my actors and we will talk through the script, then we walk through it, because it is impossible to know what these balloons can do until we try it out. I can imagine one particular outcome in my head, but we really don’t know if that works until we are in the rehearsal room, and in balloons.

It can be kind of frustrating sometimes because the balloons will pop in the middle of trying things and we will have to do it again. It is a difficult piece to perform, make, rehearse and seems impossible every time we do it. I think that is something that is really wonderful and exciting about it. It is hard, it is frustrating, but in the end, we always seem to make it work. And I have the most amazing actors-- they are strong, imaginative, playful and are really what makes this play as amazing as it is. They come up with incredible ideas every rehearsal. I think we make each other better. We are really diving into the physicality of playmaking. It is impossible to look away from this kind of living art. The piece actually highlights and points to theater’s temporality. This is because of the function of the balloons in the play. They could pop at any moment, rupturing the built in structure of the play. In this way, the play is different every night. The play lives in a confusing place between scripted theater and improv. The balloons will pop, but nobody knows when.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Um, no! Ha! I mean this is not a traditional play, you know? It is not dinner table theater. It has a storyline for sure, but it is not spoken in super discernible English, and so I think in so many ways this play is weird and does not really fit anyone’s expectations, including my own. However, I will say that this play is all of my interests combined. I am completely obsessed with physicalizing anxiety, logic and communication.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience will experience the playfulness, the fun and the anxiety behind this show. And honestly, I think that that experience is a bit unavoidable. These balloons can be tense, funny, intriguing, and awe inspiring in so many ways! I want them to experience all of that.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

This show started as an undergraduate research project my senior year at NYU and because of that, it has continued to be a research project. I have never stopped reading about Wittgenstein; I have never stopped trying to use theater as a form of research.

The first time I did this show, I had to stand up in front of a panel of professors and colleagues and tell them why I didn’t write an 80-page thesis, and chose to do a piece of theater instead. Theater, unlike classic forms of research, is emotional and experiential and all the things that are often not present research. I intend to continue to push up against the idea that research should be cold, formal and unbiased. Theater is active; it is living breathing research. Because of this, the most effective strategy for us right now is just performing the show. The show has moments that we, as a company, think are funny and sad and impactful but until we perform them, we never know. We have staged it a few times and every time we learn something new. Things happen that we never could have possibly anticipated.

Recently a balloon popped at the top of the show, before anything at all had been established, and Annie Hägg was standing there, looking like a human and not a balloon. It changed the whole tone at the beginning of the show. And we can only anticipate so much. Though, I think that’s what is so exciting about getting the opportunity to do this show 24 times at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We really relish the opportunity to change it over the course of the Fringe.

This is literally a pressure-filled performance sure to make the audience squirm, as they witness actors arduously squeeze into human-size, white latex balloons. While encased in metaphorical speech bubbles, the troupe celebrates the creation of language while stretching the restrictive bounds of their balloon world, not knowing when they will pop, and they will. Making the most comfortable, uncomfortable.

Staging Wittgenstein was created and directed by New York-based artist Blair Simmons. As a New York University MA candidate, Simmons created Staging Wittgenstein as part of her undergraduate research dissertation examining the physical manifestation of language.

As a 3D artist and Dramatic Literature major, in this performance Simmons physically interprets the nearly 100-year-old linguistic theories in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus written by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1921.

Simmons said: ‘The uniqueness about using the enormous balloons is that they are both props and costume pieces. They also add a comedic tension that builds and builds in anticipation of the inevitable bursting, resulting in an adrenaline rush for the entire theatre, actors and audience alike.

The balloons give a bold imaginative power and physical reference frame for Wittgenstein’s philosophical propositions about the creation of language and the rules we create around it – Wittgenstein said it best, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”.’

Staging Wittgenstein is a modern and innovative stage presentation that comes to Edinburgh after previews in New York City. Produced by Los Angeles-based Nathan Sawaya Productions.

Ticket prices: £9.50-£11.50 / concessions £7.50-£9.50 / under 18s £5.50-£7.50

C venues box office: 0845 260 1234 / http://ift.tt/2u78htbaging-wittgenstein

Fringe box office: 0131 226 0000 / www.edfringe.com

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2sNUX9d

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