#probably thought too much about how education works and the depths and scholarly debate than i needed too

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p25 reaction

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Though, we might jump to Roxy & Calliope again. It might be that, now her Reload self is... verschwunden, she's going to regain consciousness to a certain extent again. We'll just have to see if her condition is any better than Rose's, but I would hope so.

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"ROSE: Customarily, we speak in favorable terms about “getting to know each other” as people." Uh, wut? Rose... is talking coherently? I thought post-victory Rose would mostly have stayed to short sentences, in that discourse Dirk referred to. Talk about "working through the pain".

Well then! I suppose their discussion is more related to the ultimate self than Dirk was letting on. Of course it would be, I mean, Dirk is trying to get Rose in a favorable state of mind, maybe to break down her resistence to the ascension by convincing her of the validity of his point of view.

"ROSE: The more we learn about each other, the more the barriers between us fall and the closer we become." So, is that part of the ultimate self ascension, too? The more you understand other people and vice versa, the more even the barriers between your distinct ultimate selves fall away? ... Are they all evolving into their own story's version of Godhead Pickle Inspector?

"And to question this in any way is to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological sin. ROSE: It is to renounce humanity itself, is it not? DIRK: Yo, hold on a sec. This shit is dynamite, I promise. DIRK: Gotta take care of something..." Pffff, Dirk is half distracted. And Rose was having her groove on, too! For a moment I thought he was grabbing for a pen to take notes. :P

"Rose’s phone is ringing, and I know I’m in for an encore of my last dead-end conversation with Kanaya, so I block her number. I’d like to be able to attend to Rose in peace. It’s only cordial for me to give the greater percentage of my attention to someone I actually invited over. The nagging wife can hold her horses." Oh Dirk. You garbage bag of a person, you. He's quite literally full of himself, lately.

"Rose isn’t speaking to me directly. She’s been relocated to somewhere in the workshop a little more comfortable than the fucking floor." Having her talk out loud, drowning in her own thoughts. It's almost as if he's inviting her to become like him.

"Her head is in her hands again, hair falling over her shoulders. Her face is entirely hidden from me." It's as if it always comes back to Rose biting through her issues while hiding her face. An allusion to the blindfolded Seer?

"Her shadow has faded to light behind her, assuming the shape of a Rose-like apparition. I nod to her, and she continues. When she speaks, it’s almost as if it’s the apparition that’s doing the talking." ... Is her shadow slowly detaching from her as a separate being?? That's some Peter Pan-type shenanigans. I'm not even surprised this came back to be referenced. So, what if that's what's happening, and it isn't just that her shadow is fading due to the light changing outside? If the ultimate self detaches from the body, doesn't that mean they're, like, closer to ghosts? Does Dirk have his old body stashed somewhere, if this has happened to him? I doubt it, since he was perfectly capable of fighting Jake, earlier.

"ROSE: If two people were to know each other in such a complete way, what remains of their individuality? DIRK: If you’re going there, we might as well start at the bottom and define what an “individual” even is. ROSE: Oh dear god." Rose might be afraid to let Kanaya in any more than she already is. But in the grand scheme of the ultimate self, it might also have a double meaning. Maybe Dirk is convinced they're all shards of the same self.

"I place my hand on my chin and broadcast the appearance of being deeply pensive about philosophy all of a sudden. She gulps hard, broadcasting her grim realization that I have indeed become serious as shit about this. Literally any kind of intellectual pablum could pour out of my mouth any second, and she’s not prepared. For all she knows, I’m about to start quoting Kierkegaard." Is Rose afraid her biological father is going to lay the philosophy aside and slamming psychology? ... No wait, Kierkegaard was a philosopher, I find. Then, she might not be prepared for philosophy as much as psychology, when I thought the former was taking place already, but apparently.

"DIRK: Hey, where I come from, Wikipedia is a venerated literary resource. So if I told you I boned the hell up on his pages, you gotta believe me. That’s not meant as like, a punchline or anything. DIRK: I’m a really, really well-read dude." His education came from Wikipedia. Well, it beats Uncyclopedia, I guess.

"ROSE: But there were only two human beings alive where you came from. ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable? DIRK: That would be me, obviously." Rose already ruled out trolls at the beginning of this page to have a valid opinion in this matter, so )(IC was already out.

"DIRK: I suppose you’re going to tell me you haven’t read enough Wikipedia articles on loads of scholarly shit to fancy yourself an elite academic by 25th century standards as well? ROSE: No, I guess I have. ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that measure. ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making himself feel clever." This. Such a good burn.

"apparently in any given era the standard for depth of intellectual mastery is inversely proportional to the depth of the ocean." Well, we don't know that it's true for ANY given era. I'm not sure the proportion of intellectici vs. plebs in ancient Greece was proportionally higher than in the 21st century. We just have a lot of philosophy of that age survive until today. Also, heh, ocean, makes me think of LOLAR and her denizen at the bottom of the sea.

"DIRK: Let’s have a totally amateur debate on philosophy. Hit me with the classics. ROSE: Um. DIRK: I’ll go first." Well, heh, okay, at least Dirk is aware his assessment of himself is full of crap. That continues to be one of his most endearing characteristics.

"ROSE: How about, ROSE: “Subjectivity is truth.” DIRK: Wrong, but valid. DIRK: Try this on for fucking size. DIRK: “Late 19th century existential phenomenology pre-supposes that free will is a thing.”" For all that these might apply to the ultimate self... They're just quoting/paraphrasing the Wikipedia page now, aren't they?

"ROSE: I don’t think I bookmarked that page. ROSE: Can’t back you up there. DIRK: But what if there’s no free will. ROSE: You didn’t put that in quotes." How does she even know? :P His tone of voice, presumably. And yeah, this starts coming back to the discussion about the alpha timeline and pre-destination in the existential framework of Paradox Space. I suppose it would make sense that the Ultimate Riddle comes back in the discussion of the ultimate self.

"DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident? DIRK: Our lives were meticulously planned from clone-ception up through this very post-canon moment we find ourselves riffing in about the very free will we probably don’t even have. DIRK: Don’t you think it’s all a little too convenient?" He's acknowledging his state as a fictional character again, without stating it outright. Does he want Rose to come to the same conclusion as him by herself? Though it is ironic how, post-realization, he's had so much more agency in the nature of his own life. Unless he realizes he still doesn't. Wow, that's really getting meta.

"ROSE: This seriously is just a conversation between two stoned people now." ROSE: The bad kind, where neither one even gets to be high."PFfffffff. Yeah, actually, we need Gamzee's input up in here. 'have you ever, like, really LOOKED at your life?'

"DIRK: Seriously, Rose. Do you think that you have free will?" Is it in essence the question that leads to ultimate self realization? That Dirk is hammering so hard on it? Ironic though, that the question is twofold no: one outside of the story, and one inside of it.

"ROSE: I... DIRK: Stand up." WOOOOW. He's going to show off his powers now, isn't he? What's that even going to do to Rose, realizing he can do that without so much as breaking a sweat?

She might resist similar to John though, which is proof that his influence isn't total.

"She tries to stand up, but I haven’t narratively allowed it yet." That's another application of his powers, apparently - to offset, to negate action. He hasn't used it a lot yet, though.

"She attributes it to exhaustion, an all-encompassing sense of weakness due to her condition. Of course, she has been weakened by her condition, and thus she suspects nothing." I like Blaperile's theory, that what Dirk can allow them to do is limited to what they believe they're capable of OR which they can rationalize away. I hope it's only the former.

"It’s done deftly enough that she doesn’t notice how close I end up sitting to her. To be honest, I don’t even notice myself until I’ve done it. I continue speaking, and she remains rapt. But now even I can’t help but wonder where I’m going with this." Uh... Has he really started to lose track of his own motivations? More proof that he isn't omniscient and still being narrated instead of being his own narrator.

"DIRK: Logically speaking, individuality is a collection of processes and properties, interrelations of matter and experience all bundled together. DIRK: Your experience and processes don’t want to be bundled together anymore." So, is it only that her selves are trying to merge, or that even her own 'self' is trying to become something more, merging with others? And if so, is that Dirk confessing to what he's going through himself?

"A moment goes by, and she’s quiet, perhaps puzzling over what I said. Then I remember I haven’t narratively permitted a response. I’m forgetting myself, like a fool. Distracted by the surprise my own actions have caused me. I resolve to stay focused, remain in control. I let her speak." He's getting distracted again. You can't be both a character and an author, at the same time, for an extended amount of time.

"ROSE: I don’t understand. DIRK: You do, though. DIRK: We’ve been talking about it, but using different concepts." I wonder if Dirk is trying to retroactively tell Rose what they've been talking about, filling in the unshown conversation.

"DIRK: Your Ultimate Self, that which is revealed when the mind’s partitions are stripped away, and all potentiality of who you are and what you could have been flow together. DIRK: Those are the experiences and processes that are refusing to stay bundled, that’s what your body can’t endure." Ah, okay, so not like her self is trying to merge with his and other people's.

"The unbundling itself is your mind coming apart. DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not yet. DIRK: But you can be. DIRK: I’m working on that. DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you with my own expanding consciousness." Aka, with his narrative powers, he's stopping her body from breaking down further, because he doesn't allow it. Does she have to stay near him for that to keep working?

"DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But I can help you. DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a little while. DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes." I don't think her shadow is going to develop eyes. ... I like Blaperile's theory, that he'll give her limited control on the narration, guiding her to further understanding. It would allow her to develop her own idea about what her Ultimate Self should look like, with less influence from him.

"Rose opens her eyes. Not her physical eyes. She opens the others easily, internally, beholding a field of perception elsewhere entirely. They see what I want her to see. That which quietly desires to be seen." Rose's mind quest begins. 'That which quietly desires to be seen', is that the story, or at least the part of it that is narrated, aka relevant, true and essential?

"We’re not in my workshop anymore. Physically, yes, we’re still here. But on a higher textual plane, we’ve pulled back from that, from Earth C itself. Rose takes a shuddering breath and runs an invisible pair of hands afforded by her new sight over the narrative whole cloth, and begins smoothing out the wrinkles. ROSE: I see... John." Cooool! She's starting to gain the same understanding as Dirk, here's to hoping she does a better job with it than him. But hey, Dirk still acknowledges his physical form on Earth C, so he isn't a ghost, and he still thinks of the body as important, at least that's something and he hasn't started to think of himself as some immaterial conscience.

"DIRK: Doing exactly what you told him to do, like a good boy." Not sure if he's actually done everything John planned. Plus, yeah, Dirk's been influencing him along the way.

"ROSE: ..." She might notice that, too.

"DIRK: What’s there to be upset about? You knew this was how it was supposed to go down. ROSE: He could have made another choice." And he did, in the Candy path. I wonder how that influenced the rest of the story, and if Hussie really went and showed us that. Maybe Dirk 'knows' about the Candy path and the difference it would have made.

"DIRK: Then where would we be? ROSE: Who knows." Meanwhile, in another narrative context, at the same time... :P

"DIRK: If it can happen, then it’s been written. And if it’s been written, you can read it right now. ROSE: I... don’t know if I want to see." ... PFffff, that's directed to us. No, Dirk, not planning on viewing that path just yet.

"I’m not going to describe what she sees. First of all, that would be spoiling it. Unless you already know, in which case, I guess what’s taking place here qualifies as something closer to dramatic irony. But if you really want to see it for yourself, stop what you’re doing, flip the whole thing over, and begin again. I’ll be right here when you get back, waiting. Trust me, no one’s going anywhere." ... In the Candy path the people are also going to be thinking about what could have been, aren't they? :P I do hope this isn't implying we should read the Candy path now. I mean, it's a bit awkward, navigating back, plus I would rather think Andrew'd bring the two paths together or add a REAL indication, before making it relevant to have read both.

"DIRK: So, what do you think? ROSE: It’s difficult to say. ROSE: I suppose there are negatives and positives. I can’t say if that option would be any better or worse than what we’re experiencing now. ROSE: Whichever way our fate unravels there’s too much of... something. ROSE: Too much blood, too much sugar." I think there might be a bit of a 'sugar overload' in the Candy path, in that it might seem there's too much fluff? Maybe inertia is taking hold of them over there, and people are slowly coming to regret not taking control of their lives. Even though, in a meta sense, only John could and did.

"ROSE: I almost can’t see through it. ROSE: It’s as if our extra-canon reality, our surroundings, our actions and their consequences... ROSE: They’ve all lost the ability to blend the ingredients responsibly. ROSE: Do you know what I mean?" It's like their fate has split like a cherub: a violent and a passive path, no inbetweens. But then, like a cherub, will one path 'devour' the other?

"It’s growing dark around her again. The apparition she’s been projecting behind her fades, and she starts to bleed light and shadow in all directions. Her physical eyes are open now, and shining bright. It’s a striking sight. She’s beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity." She's literally starting to project light. Cool! And if she overcomes her current issues, it would definitely be a useful tool, and something to bond over with Kanaya.

"She’s my daughter in every sense of the word. My equal, my mirror.

It used to be odd to consider it. A technical fact I’d accepted as a genetic reality, but nothing that could ever quite penetrate down to the soul. But in this moment it doesn’t feel strange at all. It feels right, suddenly. And I know she must feel the same way. There’s no way she doesn’t. All she needs is a nudge in the right direction." Is that Dirk knowing, or projecting? Still weird how Homestuck made it so parents and progeny can interact as equals in age and demeanor alike.

"We’re family. We belong together. And after years of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who understood me?" ... He really wants to co-narrate with her.

"ROSE: But what if the person you catch... ROSE: Isn’t me anymore? DIRK: Who gives a fuck. She’ll be better." I hope and suspect Rose will be a better omniscient narrator than Dirk. But I understand her concerns. If your influence is so total, it can become totalitarian.

"Would it not be to renounce humanity itself?

And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.

Her body should be dead now. But I’m holding it together until I can implement the more permanent solution I have in mind." Has he done that to himself as well? Made a connection between his ethereal ascended form and his corporeal body? If so, he at least had the good sense to want to remain grounded. Still, Paradox Space, what the fuck? Having people die at 23 is only marginally better than 13.

"She regards me with an almost unbearably bright adoration. The kind that’s difficult to look at directly, but you can’t manage to look away either. It’s like the first time you see the Green Sun. Of course it is, because that’s the way I’m describing it. The truth belongs to me. And as of now, so does she." ... Eeeesh. I hoped he'd say, the truth belongs to Rose, too, but this. It's as if by ascending, she gave away a part of her agency to him??? He planned that, the bastard. Dirk, I really don't know what to make of you and your intentions.

"ROSE: I see it now. ROSE: You’re right. DIRK: Have I ever not been? ROSE: You...

A wrinkle in her brow. It smoothes out quickly. She murmurs to herself, trailing off quietly." Him, okay, I hope that means she can still cut loose in due time.

"ROSE: What... time is it...?

I step forward and steady her, hand firm but gentle against her cheek. That’s all she needs: a stable anchor. DIRK: Rose, does time even exist?" Dave (and Aradia, and Damara) would disagree.

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Wow. I mean. Damn. Nice way of keeping us on the fence on Dirk's motivations. At least it should be a good thing he's no longer alone on that plane of existence. I'd rather have seen Rose immediately take control of the narration, but I can only hope it's due for the next page. It'd feel like reading her draft of CotL all over, her narrating in her longwinded fashion. :P

#homestuck #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #rose lalonde #dirk strider

[writing-talkadvocatesul-blog]

When is a Title a Tail Wagging the Dog?

By Lawrence Cleary, Co- director, Regional Writing Centre, UL.

Is there anything more frustrating than conjuring a title that communicates everything you want it to communicate? It seems that most of the online wisdom about coming up with a good title is from bloggers, an anxiety that appears close to every blogger’s heart. A close second is from those online who have cracked writing titles for scientific papers. We won’t even go into the number of title generators you can find online. The Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota is the only writing centre that I found in the first five pages of my search results that provides some thoughts on creating a good title. A good title ‘predicts content’, ‘catches the reader’s interest’, ‘reflects the tone or slant of the piece’, and ‘contains keywords that will make it easy to access by a computer search’.

The problem that I had with manufacturing a good title for the Regional Writing Centre’s upcoming symposium on writing was, at least, three-fold. One, it doesn’t help if you are not clear in your mind about what the symposium is intended to do—what ideas and concepts will be debated, what conclusions those attending might leave with. Two, my audience is to be from diverse, even opposing backgrounds, technical language no doubt posing difficulties for some. And, three, when there is depth and breadth to the concepts and issues involved, it is difficult to get it all in.

Our 2012 symposium was titled The role of the higher education in preparing writers for the workplace: encouraging real engagement with writing at third level. The problem was that, this year, we will be inquiring into the same thing, so the new title had to distinguish itself from our 2012 symposium. One difference was that in the 2012 symposium there was an unstated assumption that if we could teach students to write well in their discipline, we would be preparing them for writing in the workplace. This year, we will be challenging that idea that writing in one context transferred easily and transparently to the next. This was, in the parlance of the UofM’s Center for Writing, the ‘slant’. My first attempt at a title was composed for a letter seeking funding:

An inquiry into how the writing know-how that brought students academic success fails graduates when writing for industry?

Because the intended audience is to consist of equal numbers of three groups, academic subject specialists, academic writing support specialists and communication specialists in industry, I felt the need to resist overly technical language. ‘Writing know-how’ avoids more technical phrases like ‘competency’ and ‘proficiency’. Altogether, the title would be hard-pressed to be less technical. Lacking, though, is any inclusion of key words that would show up on a computer search. Who searches ‘writing in industry’ or ‘writing know-how’ when looking to find scholarly works on the concepts covered by this symposium? And we haven’t even begun to talk about how long the title is. Initial feedback from colleagues was that the title was ‘a bit long’. A good title, colleagues confided, shouldn’t be more than 10 to 12 words long; mine was 18 words if we count the hyphenated term as one word.

I got the title down to 15 words with Writing Transition for Employability: Replicating the Complexity of Workplace Writing in a Higher Education Context, but I felt like the title was communicating that it had a hard and fast solution to offer, when in fact, what I wanted to convey was that the audience should expect to leave not with a framework, but frameworks, ways of thinking about the problem, giving them ways of approaching writing situations in which transfer was problematic, but not sure fire ways.

My next iteration was conjured with that wish in mind: Why writing competency often doesn’t transfer: What can be done to ease the transition? I hated this title almost instantly. My title was getting shorter and closer to conveying the idea that transition was something towards which both sides could work, but it wasn’t exactly catchy. In fact, it sounded a bit like an aspirin commercial, whiney.

Then I had a brainstorm. My thought was to give the symposium context by linking it to a forty-year old conversation. I began thinking about how many of today’s conversations on writing began with Merrill Sheils 1975 Newsweek article entitled ‘Why Johnny Can’t Write’. Though the article’s attribution of a decade long decline in the reading and writing skills of students, from elementary all the way through to third-level graduates, to greater access to television eerily parallels today’s grumblings over the intrusion of texting and sexting and snap-chatting into today’s novice writers often ill-suited writing style, there is little today to parallel the other attribution made: that “subtle shift of educational philosophy away from the teaching of expository writing”. If anything, today, the pendulum has swung perhaps too far the other way. But that’s another argument for another time. Another current parallel to the environment to which that article responded was the fact that many of the complaints registered by the industries of the time also sound, perhaps less eerie, but disappointingly familiar. The article was almost a metaphor for the situation that our symposium was meant to address.

My first attempt at a title that linked itself to that Newsweek article went thusly: Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Debunking the notion that writing competency in academic contexts prepares graduates for writing in workplace contexts. Without denying that the title is too long, I liked it because it stated the issue in plain English and it had catchy elements. Everyone would understand the terms ‘writing competency’, ‘academic contexts’ and ‘workplace context’. If it had a failing, it was that the symposium was more than just about debunking that fallacy. It was about understanding those contexts, how writing worked in those two seemingly incongruous contexts, who wrote, who ‘authored’, what ‘authorship’ meant in each context, how the texts functioned—their purpose, how production proceeded, what strategies assisted writers in moving the texts forward… In essence, given ours and our colleagues’ assumption that all writing is socially situated, the symposium was about assessing each context to learn the extent to which workplace situations could be replicated in academic contexts, where there is an obligation to measure student competencies in terms of both subject knowledge and the associated literacies on which the acquisition, storage and dissemination of that knowledge rely. We wanted to identify what situations could be replicated as a way of preparing students for those situations, and we wanted to specify some typical workplace situations that were impossible to accommodate in academic contexts.

My next attempt, Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Can third-level education teachers and business communication managers develop a framework for teaching writing that transfers across contexts?, communicates that the responsibility for change was not only that of academic and support staff in writing centres, but of industry representatives as well. I avoided phrasing like ‘teaching writing transition’ for fear that not all attendees would know what that meant. I said ‘teaching writing that transfers across contexts’ instead, ‘third-level education’ and ‘business communication managers’ hopefully clarifying the meaning of ‘contexts’. At least, that was my thinking. But, alas, feedback from colleagues confirmed that it was way too long—27 words, too much of a mouthful.

Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Developing a framework for teaching writing that transfers from 3rd-level education to workplace contexts, my third iteration, stayed with the idea of ‘a framework’. I was avoiding ‘pedagogical framework’, but that was what I had hoped was inferred. I wanted the audience to come away with ways of framing their conversation about teaching writing that transferred across contexts. I took the title down from 27 words to 23—still too long, but less of a mouthful.  The worst news possible, however, came from a colleague who interpreted the title as suggesting a pejorative view of Dr. Johnny, inferring from the title that I was claiming that PhDs can’t write. The one thing that had not occurred to me was that this iconic, mid-seventies American essay on the then present decline in US reading and writing competency and prospects for the future of an ‘educated’ workforce did not translate into an iconicity with which the Irish psyche was familiar. I had to lose the allusion.

Exhausted, I came up with Why good academic writers perform poorly in the workplace: Teaching for transfer across contexts of writing. Still very long at 16 words, ‘Dr. Johnny’ displaced by ‘good academic writers’, the ‘good’ performance of these writers in academics was starkly contrasted with their ‘poor’ performance in the workplace. ‘Teaching for transfer’ was back in, but in the context of the prepositional phrase that followed, ‘across contexts of writing’, the meaning could be easily inferred. It was technical, but there was enough in it to make in clear to even the uninitiated. I resigned myself to the notion that representatives attending from industry would probably not see any value in teaching transfer from their side, but at least they could evaluate our proposed frameworks and identify what might work and what might not and way.

My colleague can attest to the number of hours I spent trying to come up with a title that did the job. It was hours and hours over days and days. Each of the titles that I present above also went through their own evolutions, iterations, changing phrases and wording, back and forth, just trying to get it right. I didn’t want anyone attending to have any other idea of what the symposium was about but that stated in the title. With months to go, one more speaker to identify and, it is hoped, a slew of abstracts for presentation, my hope is that this title says it all as I am now committed. It has been advertised. If it is wrong, will the symposium be revised to fit the title? Such is the anguish of titles.

#academic writing #college #writing