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lemonhemlock · 2 months

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Hi,I've recently discovered your blog and I Iove it.

I would like to know if you have any predictions regarding the second season of HotD. Do you think that the pessimistic attitude of many show watchers,especially TG fans, is warranted? Imho, if anything could irreversibly harm the greens is Rha*nicent. Not the ship itself, but the way the showrunners seem incapable of letting that ship sink after the time skip and are pushing it even after everything that has happened in season 1. Idk, the mere possibility of Alicent betraying her family and forsaking her children in any way to ingratiate herself to Rhaenyra is so illogical and outrageous, especially after B&C. The thing is, I'm almost certain that we are going to see a lot of Rha*nicent in the following season in some form and it could really irreparably ruin not only Alicent's character, but the greens in general. And, ofc, the show. What's your opinion about this and do you have any other predictions regarding the future seasons?

Thanks in advance :)

First of all, thank you, anon! 🌞🙏🌻

Preferences aside, I just think that white feminism sells in media. It manifests in tropes such as girlboss narratives (I know everyone is tired of this word by now), women warriors, female sexuality relayed through a male gaze-ish lens, overcoming adversity in an easily digestible way, scoring against some obviously misogynistic obstacle, framed in a way that appeals to a basic sense of justice etc. Lots of female characters that became popular in the last 15 years embody some of those markers, from Natasha Romanov to Katniss Everdeen to Arya Stark to Lagertha. And they're not even necessarily ~bad things~ or elements we shouldn't ever have in our fiction, it's just that this kind of tried-and-tested formula is what film executives think will bring them easy popularity and quick money.

Daenerys was such a hugely popular character that that it's to be expected (in this capitalistic hellscape we live in) that it would make monetary sense for HBO to try and recreate a straightforward empowerment narrative with the character of Rhaenyra. On paper, she has all the superficial storyline elements that could be converted into a blockbuster: powerful in some badass way (she is a competent dragon-rider), is A Rebel, owns her sexuality by sleeping with whomever she wants, which translates into 21st century mentality as empowerment, and has to overcome an obstacle posed by The Man.™ All wrapped up in a nostalgic package that reminds viewers of their beloved Daenerys.

So, unfortunately, I expect them to continue to build on these marketable points instead of focusing too much on finesse details, such as how Rhaenyra's already immense privilege and power as a princess of the Realm and a dragon-rider negatively impact those around her, how she can be both victim and perpetrator, how she perpetuates the cycles of violence and abuse + her less than palatable traits. Certainly, I'm not going to stand here and declare that they WON'T touch on those aspects either, before even watching the new season, because that would be silly. I DO expect them to address at least some of those issues and I'm sure there will be many moments which I will enjoy and even scenes that will be well-crafted explorations into certain questions. I do like this show a lot, at the end of the day, and will probably love S2, as well.

But, overall, I can't say hand-on-heart that the marketable concerns won't prevail in the end either, and I expect the framing to fall in the direction of "yeah, she did some bad stuff, too, but ultimately Rhaenyra had the right of it and was Betrayed by power-hungry woman-hating misogynists". Which does get frustrating in this media climate, because it is essentially the same message being delivered without much nuance or refinement: women* can't ever be wrong, anything a woman does is automatically great and should be supported, all delusions are valid if they're produced by a woman etc. I hope to be proven wrong, but only time will tell. Which is not to say that we should go back to making pro-patriarchy and pro-gender roles stories, which is kind of the vibe I'm sometimes getting from some "anti-woke" HotD critical pieces. An intersectional HotD - is that possible? At least a little class commentary on these people.

(*Of course, this only applies if the character fits into, what essentially is, another type of Ideal Woman: the acceptable amount of progressivism deemed appropriate at the current time, with the acceptable attitudes and interests. But that's a discussion for another day.)

So this is where rhaenicent falls for me. I've always thought it was an interesting addition and the change never bothered me, but there is a certain point at which it becomes unbalanced and, as you say, illogical. When is love ever "logical", though, you might question? Well, I think the prospect of losing your children + grandchildren + father + brother vs holding on to an unrequited lifelong crush might knock some sense into someone. Realistically speaking, the vast majority of people would nope out of that equation and the choice would be clear. How much can you truly love a person at the expense of literally your entire family? (including your extended family, because the Hightowers in Oldtown risked their lives for King Aegon). The reward is also so small, what exactly would Alicent be trading for? Yearning gazes and holding hands? Rhaenyra has not exactly been shown to reciprocate these feelings post Alicent's marriage to Viserys.

I think that the showrunners are holding onto this aspect because they're trying to make Alicent sympathetic to the general public, who are mostly on Rhaenyra's side, as a result of the show's framing. So their logic is that the viewers won't hate Alicent as much if she displays how sorry she is for everything, how reluctant, how much she loves Rhaenyra. And they think that her contradictory actions are a fair trade-off. So I do expect us to get more rhaenicent in the coming seasons.

All in all, this wouldn't be so bad, because indeed it could be framed as very romantic, a lot of pathos, star-crossed lovers etc and human emotions are messy and complicated. Our desires can often be contradictory in nature. Literature and mythology are filled with passionate love stories that defy all rhyme or reason. Doesn't Jaime tell Cersei he would kill every single person in the world for her? I just hope it'll get the presentation it deserves, delving into the complicated nature of love and difficult choices, and not turn into "Alicent would sell out her kids to save Rhaenyra from her self-inflicted predicament, all the while Rhaenyra is not sparing her a single thought or concern".

#not only that it would make little sense at this point #it would be an unsatisfying story if you ask me #are we really putting alicent in the cuck chair and calling it a day #ask #anon #hotd meta #hotd speculation #anti rhaenicent #anti rhaenyra targaryen #<- for filtering #alicent hightower

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polkadotjersey · 6 months

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Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

finally doing this :) thank you for tagging me @kingfisherprince <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

currently 22. hopefully more soon :)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

243,150 (kinda crazy to think this is proper novel length by now)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

i currently have wips for formula 1 rpf and cycling rpf, also write football rpf (slowly making my way through all sports tags, i suppose.)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

top spot for every other sunday (crazy kudos count, i still can't quite believe it). next are an evolutionary theory of the soul (seb/charles), algorithm (max/charles), little lion man (lewis/max) and in the dark you can't see shiny cars (max/charles). nice pairing mix as well!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Usually, yes. (although i confess i had a rough patch last year and let many go unanswered just because i had no energy to interact anywhere, but i still love each and every comment i get.)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

that... has to be lonely hearts club (seb/charles), i think?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

hard to figure. i realize i write a lot of endings as begginings, so... which one is the happiest? I suppose in every other sunday they're quite happy (and also kimi is doing the macarena, so there's that.)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

nope. i love that these fandoms are so chill <3

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes. the boring kind (sorry!)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

never did. not sure how i'd go about it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

erhm actually yes. wattpad debacle of 2022.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! (thank you to all the lovely translators of my fics, you are the best <3)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no. but i am open to.... 👀

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

no OTPs, i am all about spreading the love

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

charles lifeguard AU (main pairing to be determined). i wrote a lot of the setup, just mainly charles, alex and carlos being chaotic best friends working at a fancy beach resort.

16. What are your writing strengths?

who knows? I think i am good at storytelling (pace, etc). ooh also non-linear narratives. i am quite proud of those.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i write at a snail's pace. can't do past tenses to save my life. still not confident writing in english, so i get stuck a lot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i only ever did it when it's relevant to the fic (like in a matter of expression (seb/charles), which is all about languages)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

12 year-old me writing bad harry potter fanfiction counts, i suppose? the evidence must still be lost somewhere on the internet

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

time and again (seb/charles) is my all time favourite.

i am tagging @sebchal, @kritischetheologie, @antimonyandthyme, @astronomical-light and @cupidskissx (no pressure to do it, i am just sending my love to you)

#f1 rpf

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 10 months

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Wondering if I should put the elf marriage wip up on Wattpad again ... She's so silly but I love her <3

I remember when you talked about this wip a while ago. Omg I would love to read her 💅💅

I also had to ask: what's your favourite genre for books and games/IFs? Do these genres differ from what you write or are they relatively similar in terms of its genre?

I think I'll slap it up on Wattpad again just for shits and giggles. I've written like 60k and it's probably barely halfway into the story so like. Lmao. What am I even doing???

ANYWAY.

My favorite genres of IFs? I dunno, I kinda vibe with whatever in terms of genre, my pickiness comes from writing style and story focus.

I prefer ones that are more specific in scope and focused on character development and plot progression.

So games that describe themselves as "open-world" I shy away from, as well as like big, stat-based RPGs. If I wanna play something where I can fuck around and be a rogue-mage-warrior elf, I'll just play Skyrim, not read a fuckin 100k word book about nothing at all except stats and action scenes and interchangable bit characters. I come to IFs to read something interesting and to make choices that impact the narrative in interesting ways. To me, IFs are interactive books, and to me the pleasure of reading a book is about characters, narrative, and story. Adding interaction to that means I get to influence things, but not that I get to derail it like I can in Skyrim by ignoring the main quest line and fuck about collecting cheese wheels.

I do also gravitate toward ones with romance, obviously, but it's not a requirement if the story is good enough. Generally I also prefer fantasy over sci-fi, though mainly because sci-fi tends to frontload all the exposition and wordbuilding and is generally harder to get into. I also think that shooting lightning from your fingers is objectively cooler than shooting laser guns.

As for books, it's a bit more complicated, because I read mostly romance nowadays (don't have the spoons for anything heavier because I have brainrot), but I generally dislike romance as a genre. Not because EW GIRLY FEELINGS or EW SEXY MEN, but because mainstream romances tend to be very formulaic, both in terms of characters and relationship progression. And I get why that is, and that's probably why I keep finding them so easy to read. But for someone who loves to explore weird dynamics, funky tropes, new twists, reading romance gets kinda stale. I have fun writing romance, but when I read it, I feel like the authors don't? Like they're just boxing themselves in because that's what the genre says.

I also love fantasy romance in particular, because it lets you add a bunch of different layers to your relationship dynamic, plus it's just fun with elves and fae and shit. It's fun! But I love to also put some emphasis on the stuff that's outside the romance, but also keep it relevant to the romance? Idk how to explain it. Like my dragon wip where the princess dates a dragon sounds really tropey and stupid and it is, but I also touch on like ... culture differences, and generational divides, and prejudice and cycles of violence and stuff.

People always say "If you like romance in your media but hate the genre itself, read fantasy/sci-fi/etc with romance in it!" not taking into account that 1) That shit's really hard to find unless you mind spoilers because "[genre] with romance in it" doesn't always advertise itself as such and you'll need outside sources to recommend it to you and 2) the romance sometimes is so minor in these books that it's not really worth your effort, or it's prominent but entirely disconnected from the main plot, so it feels tacked-on even if it's well-done, which it isn't always.

I want romance where the romance is the main plot, but it's not the only plot, but other plots are also relevant to the romance. I want characters who are there to be smashed with other characters, but they're also their own characters, and the plot would still happen even without the romance, but it's only happening because of the romance.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY DILEMMA?! I can't even define what it is I want, so finding it in the wild is pretty much impossible.

I have decided to call what I write "epic fairy tales" because I want that focus on romance that fairy tales have and true love wins but where everything else also matters and is impacted by the love but also impacts the love in return, where the couple are the main characters but not because they must be in love but because they fell in love. AUGH. I don't know man my brain is broken!!!!

#basically like your average dragonfucker book is 'omg he's got a huge weird lizard cock and follows weird omegaverse mating rules!'#and that's your lot for all of them #but i want the fuckin cerebral brain-fuckery of questioning and realizing that the only person you have ever been attracted to #and who has ever claimed to truly love you #is a blue man who can turn into a huge lizard and breathe fire #like yeah that's hot and cool and all but like?? isn't it FUCKED also??#that your own family hates your ass and you only found love by chance because some guy on some island was also hated by his family???#anyway #i'm insane keep scrolling

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giftofshewbread · 2 years

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Let’s Get a Grip on Reality

By Dave Hubley Published on: June 15, 2022

For quite some time now, I have watched and listened to many, many people in many, many venues talking about the myriad of events and “news” that abound in this country, and I am not surprised that we, as a nation here in America, and the world in general, are in the mess we are in.

In addition to God’s prophetic warnings contained in His Word, there is the overwhelming weight of world history that provides all the proof anyone could reasonably need as to the patterns we see developing.

Cognitive reasoning and simple application of common sense seem to have been abandoned. This is not the least surprising, both in a world that is in open rebellion against God and as the fruit of modern “education.”

If, as a population/nation, current events noted below (and this is a very short list) don’t stimulate people to wake up, the consequences will be staggering.

This is not “out there.” No, it is at the door.

Let’s take a few examples into consideration. I am not an educated man (perhaps that is a blessing in the current times), and I don’t think it requires a degree or some alphabetical suffix to make these associations and draw these elementary conclusions. It simply requires the most basic form of situational awareness.

Am I imagining the elephant in the room? Or is it about to trample people to death under an avalanche of reality? I’ll let you decide.

1) This country is constantly referred to as a democracy! It is not! It is/was a Constitutional Representative Republic! There is a PSYOP being perpetrated in this narrative, and people don’t seem to see it. Referring to America as a “democracy” plants a subliminal association with “Democrat” and implies that that party is more in line with our country’s founding principles than the “rebellious” Republicans (not that the majority of “Republicans” are in line either).

Let me ask you, does the current Democrat Party ideology and actions have even the faintest resemblance to America’s founding principles?

Worse, you almost never hear the Republican “legislators” call our Constitutional Republic by its proper nomenclature. You would think that they would know better. “Democracies” eventually turn into a reversed form of mob rule with a fluffy name that evolves into some depraved aristocracy. Like now.

This link (https://bearstatebooks.com/blog/2021/03/07/the-tytler-cycle-suggests-a-democracy-only-lasts-200-years/), I believe, will make the case well, especially if considered in light of the current state of things.

2) Biden is referred to by both Republicans and Democrats alike as “the president”! Based on the overwhelming evidence that has come to light, do you think that is even remotely true? Yet, some sort of warped legitimacy is assigned to this travesty by the very people who should be stopping it.

3) Cadets in US Army uniforms marched wearing women’s red high heel shoes! This debacle can be readily viewed by a simple internet search. It happened twice! America’s enemies are rightly mocking and laughing at this sickening absurdity WHILE they are cleaning their weapons and sharpening their bayonets. Make no mistake about it.

4) The Afghanistan “withdrawal”; No stronger message could have been sent to our enemies (and they are many) than was sent by this action. But the greater harm is that:

a) These advanced weapons will most likely be used against us at some point. By “us,” I don’t mean American troops only. I mean US! Potentially all of us!

b) We don’t have some sort of unlimited supply of weapons within our borders. These will be badly needed for the defense of the homeland in the not-so-near future (in my opinion), and they will not be here.

c) The “coincidental” loss of food processing factories, agricultural production, and destruction of animal resources (cattle, chickens, pigs, etc.), dearth of fertilizer supplies, and farmland taken out of production. The lack of baby formula! The general population is clueless as to the end result of these events. It is ongoing worldwide even now. How does anyone expect this is going to end?

If you have ever cut down a dead tree and found it infested with carpenter ants, then you saw that when the nest is exposed to the light, the ants immediately scramble to protect the nestlings. They grab their eggs and run for cover.

However, that is not what the globalists are currently doing. They see that their tactics and plans have been exposed. And now, instead, they must “go for broke.” That is what is really happening.

It is common practice (because it is common sense) to correctly diagnose any illness before treating it.

The world’s diagnosis is clear. The verdict is in with all necessary evidence. This is all being intentionally engineered!

Anyone who actually accepts that this is all coincidental needs to have their head AND heart examined.

According to Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

The reality that we need to get a grip on is that the God of our creation has been ignored and His word trampled. And worse, His Son, Jesus Christ, has been made a mockery of by so many people for so long that this world has become like a compromised ship, burdened with the rust and decay of sin that eats away at the integrity of the hull until it leaks. Once that hull has taken on more water than it can displace, it will sink.

Consider for a moment how many times over the course of a single day that the Name of God and of Jesus Christ is used as a common epithet or intentionally mocked and abused.

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave anyone unpunished who takes His name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).

I believe that the final events prophesied in God’s Word are now set in motion, and they are irrevocable. The Word of God has been available for many centuries, and its accuracy is 100%; yet, for many centuries, it has been ignored. Just like an approaching storm, it will soon break and run its course.

“Although you wash with lye and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before Me,’ declares the Lord GOD” (Jeremiah 2:22). There is no “God of the Old Testament” and no “God of the New Testament. There is only the One True God who has made that fact clear:

In the Old Testament – “Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me” (Isaiah 46:9).

In the New Testament – “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

The mountain of fulfilled prophecy is abundant evidence of this fact.

I would state that this mountain of evidence is irrefutable, but at this current time of delusion and depravity, where truth is (relative??), anything, no matter how obviously true, will be vainly disputed by someone or, unfortunately, multiple someones somewhere.

However, that secular, worldly argument does not put the slightest dent in reality.

The reality, as I believe this world will find out soon, is Truth from God’s perspective.

So, what am I offering as a solution? I don’t believe there is a solution in human terms. It is human activity, sin, rebellion, and depravity that has led us here.

“But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. God ‘will repay each one according to his deeds.’ To those who by perseverance in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger” (Romans 2:5-8).

And now to the crux of this article.

To you who call yourselves Christians but have fallen under the spell of the modern, “progressive church,” easy believism and its focus on this world instead of the Lord Jesus Christ, I say with all love and compassion, GET OUT THE DOOR OF THAT CHURCH NOW BEFORE THE DOOR OF THE AGE OF GRACE IS CLOSED FOREVER! Find a church that preaches the unsullied Word of God, or if you can’t find one you can attend in person, you are better off to stay home! There are still numerous churches that are true to Jesus and stream their services online. Heed this warning by the Lord:

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.

‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches'” (Revelation 3:14-22).

For anyone who may read this article and has not trusted in Jesus Christ and therefore has no hope or peace in your life:

You can have hope. You can have the peace that Jesus has promised to all who have made Him their Lord and Savior.

It requires that you come before God on His terms.

And, what are His terms according to His Word?

Genuine repentance (turning to God instead of continuing to reject or ignore Him).

Confession of sins (that you are a sinner and acknowledge that to God).

That you understand that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

To acknowledge to God that you are unable to pay that debt.

Belief that Jesus Christ paid your death sentence for you on the cross.

To believe that Jesus is the Way, the only Way, that God has established by which humans may be saved from the consequences of their sin and rebellion.

God has made it absolutely clear that there is no one who comes before Him, under His terms, that will be refused.

No one: no race, no color, no country of origin, regardless of any previous belief system: no one.

No matter what your past sins have been, God can and WILL forgive you because He says He will.

Salvation is available to everyone without any exceptions.

If you put all your trust for salvation in Jesus and Him only, you can follow that prayer up by simply saying, “Thank you, Father God, for hearing my prayer and saving me,” because we can trust Him to keep His Word. He always has. He always will.

John 5:24: “Truly, Truly, I say to you that he who hears My words and believes the One who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He has crossed from death to life.”

There are no answers and there is no hope in the world by governments, organizations, politics, or politicians. There are only lies and deception. But you can have the Truth and the peace you seek.

The answers are in the Word of God – the Bible. If you ask God with all your heart, He will hear you.

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

Pro Salvator Vigilans

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multicarinata · 2 years

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FINALLY saw the green knight and i didn't enjoy it as much as I expected. still a solid 3/5 but herein are my thoughts and criticisms

- introducing the knight itself as terrifying and silent only to have it deliver quips next year was jarring, especially when they did exactly the same thing with the fox right next to it. & given the magic extant in the setting, the castle's reaction to its arrival seemed completely unhinged like Why was it necessary to do that to the queen + nobody around really cared.

- on that note divorcing the entire setting from arthur was a reasonably sexy move but I do have to wonder how much of it had to be done to preserve plausibility for the future sequence. LOVED seeing the king and queen's credits. Yet the synopsis still discussed "arthur's" nephew fsr? PS: thinking about it it seems the concept of hospitality is gone in this movie. weird for me (literature reader) but consistent - no welcome for the knight or for gawain re: winifred and his stay at the contest castle was only due to . you know

- The king. Head in hands emoji the themes he needs to feed on a story. when nobody offers he asks until the narrative literally throws the green knight at him. he does everything in his power to produce a story. his tooth hurts. he'll die when future gawain doesnt actually have one. insane concept for a character I loved it so much

- i feel like the film in general miscommunicated the "cyclical time" thing- it was definitely there but passed over a lot of moments that could've given it power. like this only clicked watching at this point but imagine "the king killed 960 men the day that his son died". gawain's items being returned and "are you sure you're not that man" etc. were great but I don't think the future timeline did anything with it that substantiated the "this will continue until he breaks the cycle". also the distorted voiceover intro was weird as hell

- the colors I have the same problem with elden ring the saturated colors were nice but made the environments look too similar. did enjoy the chapel being gawain's symbolic yellow and not Green it was very hell of your own making -> knight is someone you know but there's too much to unpack there atm. Also just realized I don't remember anything being red besides blood in this movie?????? which would absolutely rule if it was true. looking at it.

- think it was somewhat confused between "enjoyable movie pacing" and "art film" and the literary structure of "a series of events happening" and this is a tangent but the coming of age formula stapled onto it re: honor and why knights quest doesn't gel with nobody else having names in the court. how can you even answer that question without a broad community of reference points for gawain to be slightly outside. while his answer is the 1 point of development in the film it starts off as "my uncle told me to" / "story needed something to feed on" which is not Bad per se it just doesn't fit the context it gives itself

to conclude. if anyone'd like to watch this with me (preferably in the next 2 days) Please let me know I would love to condense further thoughts :-)

#excuse me if this shows up in the tag. i'm a criticism lover #Slightly more visible bonus thought: many people were attractive in it #showsposting

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tyrantisterror · 3 years

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I forget if you've been asked this question before, but a friend of mine is trying to write a kaiju story for kaijune, but she doesn't have much experience writing kaiju or with kaiju media, and she asked me a question I figured you'd be better at answering: What is it that makes a kaiju story truly feel like a kaiju story other than the focus on a giant monster?

That's a very difficult question to answer, so I can see why she's having problems with it. It all depends on how you define the kaiju genre, and that's a highly contentious subject. I mean, defining things always is - every definition will have people who say it's too loose for including x and other people saying it's too narrow for excluding y, and definitions of the "kaiju genre" are no exception.

I guess let's start by setting up the to extreme ends of this definition.

The most liberal definition: A Kaiju Story is any story where a giant monster/kaiju rampaging around is the central conflict of the story.

The most(?) conservative definition: A Kaiju Story is any Japanese story where a kaiju rampaging is the central conflict of the story.

Our first big takeaway here, and the thing all kaiju genre fans can agree on, is that a kaiju needs to be integral to the plot of your kaiju story. Lord of the Rings isn't a kaiju story, because while it has a big monster in it, that big monster is an incidental encounter rather than the core focus of the conflict. That's our minimum requirement for a kaiju story.

Now, I lean towards the liberal side of this issue (which is unusual for me when it comes to defining literary shit), but I'm gonna explore on the conservative side here first, because I think there's some important points to consider there. The term "kaiju" doesn't just conjure up images of any giant monster when you hear it - it brings to mind Godzilla, Power Rangers, Gamera, Ultraman, men in rubber suits, bad dubbing, etc. And what those franchises have in common that other giant monster media doesn't is a shared background in Japanese culture and history.

When I think about why I love kaiju stories even more than most other monster-focused fiction, a lot of the things that come to mind have their roots in Japanese culture. The complex characterization of the monsters has its roots in Shintoism and various folk religious that treat all things, be they human, animal, plant, or even inanimate objects, as having souls. The emphasis on living in harmony with nature comes from those same beliefs, from Buddhism, and from the mercurial nature of Japan's environment and weather. The firm themes of opposing warfare and breaking cycles of violence are born from the pioneers of the genre despising the horrors they witnessed in World War II and wanting future generations to never repeat that great mistake. Et cetera et cetera.

I think it would be mostly accurate to say there are a great many details that make Japanese giant monster stories feel more alike to each other than to non-Japanese giant monster movies. ...mostly.

But not entirely.

Because defining "the kaiju genre" as solely being a product of Japanese culture ignores the unignorable fact that Japanese kaiju movies, from the very beginning, took some inspiration from American giant monster films. There are elements of King Kong (1933) in Godzilla (1954), and the film-makers have acknowledged that much. Rodan has this great twist at the end of the first act that depends on the audience expecting it to work like an American giant bug movie, which most of the first act functions almost identical to. The movie that cemented the "Monster vs. Monster" formula at Toho was King Kong vs. Godzilla. It goes on!

And it also goes both ways - Gorgo, a film made by the creators of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth, has more in common with the Godzilla franchise in tone, themes, and its approach to its monstrous stars than it does to its Western predecessors, and the creators were open about it. Hell, they even work in explicit nods to it in the film - the island Gorgo is discovered on is called Nara Island, a Japanese name despite the island itself being off the coast of Ireland. Pacific Rim, Colossal, and Cloverfield, some of the most prominent modern American giant monster movies, were likewise explicitly inspired by Japanese giant monster films. Video games like Rampage and War of the Monsters draw influence from and make homages to monster films of both the East and West.

There's also a sort of inherent fallacy to assume all kaiju stories from Japan end up having the same themes and motifs. I don't think the Showa Godzilla films would agree with how, say, Attack on Titan portrays war. Japanese giant monster stories aren't a monolith.

If a Japanese giant monster story has content that unilaterally contradicts the content of a classic kaiju work like Godzilla, but an American giant monster movie hews to that content very closely, which is the true kaiju story? Is being made by Japanese people all that matters? Or is it the content - the themes, the tone, the approach to the monster, etc.? Where do we draw the line?

...I don't know, dude, and I don't think it's my place to be the arbiter of that.

But, in an attempt to give you something that could be vaguely helpful, here is my short list of criteria for a kaiju story that I personally would like, which isn't quite the same thing as "what makes a kaiju story a kaiju story," but is as close as you're gonna get to that when asking me:

1. The monster(s) is a character and has at least one moment of sympathy in the narrative.

2. The dichotomy of nature and civilization is at the crux of the narrative. Neither is presented as uniformly good or evil - civilization has started the conflict by causing wanton and unnecessary destruction, and nature strikes back at civilization unilaterally without distinguishing the guilty from the innocent.

3. The rampaging monster(s) is a direct consequence of civilization fucking things up - bombs waking up prehistoric monsters, greedy CEOs steal a monster's egg to make a profit without a care for what the parent may do to get it back, genetic engineering creating deadly mutants, aliens who represent the dark potential future of humanity if we keep going down a selfish, warlike path set loose monsters as their personal soldiers, etc.

4. The story is explicitly anti-war, anti-capitalist, and pro-environmentalism.

5. Conventional weaponry is incapable of defeating the monsters.

6. No matter how things shake out, humanity is humbled by their encounter with the monsters, and either learns to do better or suffers for their hubris and arrogant desire to dominate the world.

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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ESSAY: How Does My Hero Academia Fit Into Global Superhero Culture?

In 1989, Batman became the first film to make over $40 million in its opening weekend. In 2002, Spider-Man became the first film to make over $100 million in its opening weekend. In 2007, Spider-Man 3 hit over $150 million. In 2012, The Avengers nabbed over $200 million. And in 2019, Avengers: Endgame got over $350 million. Despite the fact that there have been concerns over “superhero movie fatigue” for literal decades now, it’s a genre that shows no signs of slowing down. As its universes expand on streaming services like Disney+, it’s apparent the age of the cinematic hero might be an indefinitely lengthy one.

As Marvel Comics luminary Stan Lee once said: “The pleasure of reading a story and wondering what will come next for the hero is a pleasure that has lasted for centuries and, I think, will always be with us.” In that quote, it seems our destiny is almost sealed — we crave heroes and we crave their stories and we crave their sequels.

This is the environment in which My Hero Academia was born.

My Hero Academia is, first and foremost, a superhero story. One could argue that most narratives of its ilk are superhero tales — anime like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, and others are full of good guys shutting down malicious attempts at local or world domination — but My Hero Academia embraces the iconography, both thematic and physical, of the superhero in a way that many other stories don’t. In fact, it might be one of the purest explorations of that kind of universe ever in fiction. It’s a world where heroism is practically currency, where roughly 80 percent of the earth’s population is imbued with some kind of inherent genetic power.

Populating your superhero story with powerful people instead of going the typical cinematic route of having one or two supernatural characters with a supporting cast of everyday folk might have been subversive 20 years ago. But in the age of the Avengers, where multiple heroes cross in and out of each other's storylines and the narrative objective was to eventually wrangle them all in one mega-movie, My Hero Academia fits comfortably. That doesn’t render it as uninteresting, though. Instead, rather than build to the issues that will inevitably crop up in a world full of Supermen, these themes are inherent in the story.

As such, most of the plotlines have to do with the idea of rampant heroism and the backlash that it would create. Plenty of superhero films address this (multiple Batman movies make the case that if there were no Batman there would be no Joker), but in My Hero Academia it is a constant struggle. Overhaul, wearing a variation of a 17th-century plague doctor mask, looks at these “Quirks” as if they’re a disease. Stain is against superheroes using their status for fame. Tomura Shigaraki wishes to destroy society as we know it, hating its values and its borderline divine treatment of figures like All-Might. These patterns are not just repeated in My Hero Academia, but inevitable. They are anime embodiments of that “superhero fatigue” article I shared above, except in this case they hurt and destroy in their attempts to find an alternative to the super status quo, rather than write essays in The New York Times.

It’s certainly an enthralling formula, though: My Hero Academia continues to be a best seller and has won numerous awards. Its anime has been similarly well-received. Despite the fact that superhero films very rarely have the same box office prominence in Japan as they do in America, My Hero Academia has been able to make an impact. That might be because, at its core, My Hero Academia adapts the ethos found in a hero that many Japanese creators really do enjoy: Spider-Man.

Kohei Horikoshi, My Hero Academia’s creator, loves Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films. Creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Hirohiko Araki gushed over his love of Spider-Man 2 to director Sam Raimi during an interview. Yusuke Murata, illustrator of One-Punch Man, has done some absolutely amazing work when it comes to posters for Peter Parker’s cinematic adventures. Hideo Kojima, a video game designer whose creations are absolutely inspired by anime, called Into The Spider-Verse a “great masterpiece” and was “moved” by Spider-Man 2. After it became the best-selling game to be developed in the West but funded by Sony since 1998, Japanese game developers voted Marvel’s Spider-Man as their 2018 game of the year. So why the embrace of this particular character?

Journalist Kuremasa Uno told the Japanese site Business+IT that it’s because Japanese youth are more accustomed to embracing younger heroes. Since so much of Spider-Man’s Hollywood journey deals with him experiencing problems as a teenager and young adult, he fits in among the protagonists of series like Gundam or Naruto. Hideo Kojima even told Famitsu that Spider-Man is “similar to Japanese heroes,” as he has “worries.”

The aspect of youth is particularly interesting, as it’s what often renders heroes like Spider-Man to be the most relatable of all of their peers and rivals. In the comic book world, age tends to warp characters, turning them into beacons of impossible standards rather than troubled everymen. We have little in common with the hulking, aging Batman snapping bones in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. We are enthralled with the story on a narrative level. Even the legendary curmudgeon of the comic book industry, the supremely talented Alan Moore, found The Dark Knight Returns fascinating because it gave a hero a chance to end, rather than cycle through an eternal series of escapades. If you know Moore’s stance on heroes, that’s high praise, but it’s hard to connect with him no matter how cool he looks taking down the Mutant Leader.

In youth we find common ground. We all grow up, and for the most part, we all experience that mix of angst, desperation, and uncertainty that comes with finding yourself on a bullet train to adulthood. In my interview with Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered The World, the writer/historian affirmed these feelings as especially true in anime: “It doesn’t look at adolescence as a lesser form of adulthood and it doesn’t condescend to the young people experiencing problems.” That is true of My Hero Academia, which treats Midoriya’s teenage problems as valid and worth concern, and is also true to Stan Lee’s affinity for Spider-Man: “He’s the one who’s most like me — nothing ever turns out 100 percent OK; he’s got a lot of problems and he does things wrong, and I can relate to that.”

So perhaps it is in collecting a cast of characters that, like Spider-Man, are all dealing with youthful problems that Horikoshi found the fantastic formula for My Hero Academia. It’s a world with teachers and Pro Heroes, but there is no real equivalent of a Justice League, no impenetrable class of demi-gods to impart moral lessons on not just younger heroes but the world at large.

Instead, much like in real-life youth, the characters of My Hero Academia and the class of 1A must discover those lessons for themselves. With that, the reasons for the aforementioned creators’ adoration of films like the Spider-Man trilogy and Into the Spider-Verse seemingly become more clear. Though these films feature a ... ummm ... supportive supporting cast, the integrity must come from the hero alone in the end, no matter how tough their obstacles become. You are born with Quirks, but how you choose to implement them for the good of mankind is up to you. Great power, great responsibility, etc.

My Hero Academia and Spider-Man are not a 1:1 comparison as, again, the basics of its world and the attributes of its cast fit it more firmly with late-term Avengers films where dozens of heroes interact in a spectacle created by the sheer existence of their number. My Hero Academia rarely feels as lonely as Spider-Man tends to be. But in capturing the relatable qualities of adolescence and focusing on the “quirks” of what is essentially high school life, it does manage to hit some of the same high notes, notes that I imagine contributed greatly to its popularity.

Does that mean All-Might is an Uncle Ben character, with his “Now it’s your turn” point to Midoriya serving a similar purpose to the “Great responsibility” speech? Eh, a little bit. But in relating it to the superhero genre that currently forms an entertainment monolith around the world, especially when it has to do with the character of Spider-Man, we start to unlock some of the reasons why My Hero Academia has been such a powerhouse series over the past few years. You can see just as much of Midoriya in Peter Parker as you can in guys like Naruto or Asta — characters that aren’t relatable simply because they’re young, but because we connect to their experiences of youth, experiences that are somehow both deeply specific and also beautifully universal.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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opalescentegg · 5 years

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‘Princess Tutu’ and the Absent Fish: An Informal Essay

Anyone familiar with Princess Tutu will recognize and appreciate its masterful melding of diverse fairytale and sometimes mythic elements --- may the record show that I’m no different. Nevertheless, there is one particular sequence in Ahiru’s heart-shard-hunting quest that never felt quite right: the heart-shard of Curiosity (alternatively, the Desire for Knowledge). Or, more precisely, it’s the River that always bothered me.

As a one-off magical narrative conceit there’s really nothing wrong with the River having the heart-shard. Thanks to the episode regarding the heart-shard of Affection, it was already established by that point that non-human(oid) entities could become bearers of pieces of the Prince’s heart. So the River as heart-shard-holder was at least consistent within the narrative’s internal logic. What I think I was recognizing through my dissatisfaction with the River, though without even fully comprehending it, was instead a sudden break with what I will term the “chain of motif.” To put it another way: every other heart-shard, up until the final five from the town gates, is connected is some way to a recognizable fairytale motif and/or structure; all except for the heart-shard of Curiosity.

For an illustration of heart-shards and their associated motifs, with the specific elements that identify the motifs (where sources give different translations for the known heart-shard emotions I will provide both), I present the following:

1. Disappointment/Bitterness -- Swan Lake: admittedly, this is mostly in the music and “set design” of the episode which, along with the short-lived (one-sided) dancing rivalry between Anteaterina and Rue, are probably mostly meant to serve as a introducing the central motif of the show. Additional possible foreshadowing of the thematic conflict between Ahiru/Tutu and Rue/Kraehe later on, though this claim is much more tentative.

2. Loneliness -- Hansel and Gretel: a house in the woods, a story revolving around food, fear (though here ultimately unfounded) of being eaten

3. Sorrow/Sadness -- Giselle: taken directly from the ballet, which itself draws from the folklore of willis/vilas that, depending on the tradition, are variously described as ghosts, fairies, nymphs, etc. I’d also like to point out that the design of the willis fulfills the visual requirements of the White Lady of so many European (and Euro-influenced) countries.

4. Affection -- Not a single tale-type, but calls upon a conglomeration of magical light folklore, i.e. will-o’-the-wisps (leading people astray, as the Lamp’s riddles led Ahiru not so much astray, but certainly to where the spirit wanted her), the genie in the (oil) lamp, etc. (I also recall someone once posting about an Andersen tale in which an old street lamp reminisces on all the things it’s seen in its life, much like the Lamp-spirit. However, while a strong argument can certainly be made for this story being the inspiration for the Lamp, it’s a pretty obscure one from HCA’s repertoire, so I believe the strength of the lamp motif comes mostly from the examples I have highlighted.)

5. Fear -- Sleeping Beauty: for obvious reasons. (There are also shades of the Grimms’ “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was,” but that’s a real stretch to fully justify, even for me.)

6. Curiosity/Desire for Knowledge -- ??????

7. Devotion -- “The Red Shoes,” Andersen: since the magical black pointe shoes Rue slips into seem to have a similar unsettling degree of autonomy to Andersen’s eponymous footwear. The fact that they cause a transformation that slashes at Rue with thorny vines is also a nearly sadistic inversion (intentional or not, who can say?) of the Anderson story, wherein the sinful girl is at last relieved of her suffering when an angel, carrying a branch blooming with roses, finally grants her mercy and takes her up to Heaven. I can also see possible shades of Pygmalion in Malen’s obsession with drawing Rue, though her fixation may be argued as serving more to highlight the themes of lack of control and destructive self-sacrifice implicit in the HCA tale, which I still see as the overriding motif here.

8. Regret -- Cinderella: the episode musical motif, plus the element of the “ball,” or at least a gathering of multiple people (and crow demons?) in a single location. Charon even plays the part of, first, the “step-parent” who refuses to let his ward attend that event, but eventually transitions into the role “fairy godmother” who furnishes the ward with the physical necessities he needs to go out and do what he wants. (Amusingly, this makes Ahiru either a bait-and-switch/red herring Cinderella, OR makes her and Fakir a kind of composite Cinderella, each one fulfilling different aspects of the motif -- possible foreshadowing for later partnership, courage described as “two hearts as one,” etc.)

9. Love -- The title of the episode introducing this heart-shard is “La Sylphide,” though it doesn’t have much in common with the eponymous ballet. What it does have is the first very recognizable instance of full-on witchcraft in the show, which is undeniably a strong and instantly identifiable fairytale element. The curse Rue places on this shard also positions her as the “false bride,” from such tales where one woman either kills, curses, or brings low and supplants a “true bride” in order to take that woman’s lover for herself.

10. Pride -- The Flying Dutchman: In which a man is punished for his sins usually implied, and sometimes outright stated, to be a slight against God performed in a bout of hubris; and cursed to wander and/or continue their mortal duties without rest for all eternity. Whether they were cursed with immortality or simply exist as spirits unable to enter Heaven or Hell varies between tellings, but the framework is essentially the same. (This is almost certainly a later variant of a story type I would prefer not to call by name, but involves “Wandering”; though since that protagonist is always cursed with immortality and never becomes a spirit, it’s a tale-type that is at best tangentially related to the motif I’ve chosen anyway.)

11. Hope -- Swan Lake; The Little Mermaid; The Ugly Duckling; etc.: for obvious reasons again.

Fairy tales and folklore rely heavily on patterns. In adopting and adapting these stories to craft its own narrative, PT also inherits those formulas. But the heart-shard of Curiosity does not fit the pattern --- in fact, it seems not to have parallels with any recognizable tale pattern at all.

What is particularly strange is the presence in the episode of many of the building blocks of a very famous folklore motif, and one made all the more conspicuous by its absence from the narrative. That is: the motif of the ring in the fish.

As far as age is concerned this motif goes back a long way, along one of two variant branches. One: the ring that is lost, despaired of, and miraculously returned to great joy (and often used as a token of recognition). Two: the ring that is the catalyst, lynchpin, etc. of some undesirable future event, which the owner tries to throw away in an attempt to dodge destiny and which inevitably comes back to him, the ring here being a tangible reminder of the inescapability of fate.

Of these variants the first is by far the most common. Arguably the most internationally famous tales of this variant is that of Solomon’s ring, which provides the basic structure many later tales of the branch: King Solomon’s (magic) signet ring was stolen by a demon and cast into the ocean, whereupon it was swallowed by a fish. Years later, a fisherman caught a fish which was then cooked and served to Solomon, who cut it open to find his ring in its belly. (The ring here also acts as an indisputable identifier of the true Solomon, who had been reduced to a pauper by the aforementioned demon after losing his ring, since the demon could shapeshift and had assumed the king’s form. The retrieval of the ring restored Solomon to his true form, allowed him to vanquish the demon, and retake his rightful place as king. Many ring-in-fish stories conclude with the ring acting as absolute proof of a character’s identity, often in a “recognition” or “reveal” scene.)

In contrast to this story is that of Polycrates and his ring. On the advice (and possibly prophecy) of the king of Egypt, Polycrates the tyrant of Samos is told to cast away that possession which he values post, lest his overabundance of success raise the ire of the gods and cause them strike him down. Polycrates attempted to do so, casting into the sea his prized emerald ring, which caused him much grief. However, not long after a fisherman brought a fish as tribute to the tyrant; when Polycrates had it gutted his ring was found in its belly, proof that he could not escape his disastrous fate (indeed, he was eventually overthrown and assassinated, possibly by being impaled and his corpse then crucified).

The object cast into the water (typically a piece of jewelry) varies depending on a story: a ring, a necklace, a bracelet, and anklet, etc., though I think the particular emphasis on encircling jewelry is an important detail. Sometimes the object is simply a gemstone --- also important in this discussion, given the curiously jewel-like appearance of the heart-shards.

In any case, the basic plot of “[thing] in water - [thing] in fish - capture of fish - [thing] back in hand” (or, even more simplistically: a valuable object lost in water and found later in an unexpected place), is found in sources ranging from Sanskrit dramas to Irish mythology. Even Hans Christian Andersen famously refurbished it in his “Steadfast Tin Soldier.” And speaking of Irish mythology, the Fenian cycle famously includes a tale about culture hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge.

(For the uninitiated: A salmon ate nine hazelnuts that fell into the Well of Wisdom, gaining all the world’s knowledge, and the first person to eat of its flesh would likewise gain that knowledge. The poet Finegas/Finn Eces, to whom Fionn was then a servant, caught the fish after many years and told Fionn to cook it while he attended to other matters, but not to eat it. Fionn (surprisingly) followed this directive, until he poked at the fish to check its doneness and burned his finger in the hot fat --- a finger which he immediately stuck into his mouth to soothe, only to thereby ingest the drop of the salmon’s fat and gain the knowledge contained therein. Upon learning of this, Finegas gave Fionn the rest of the fish to eat, and Fionn gained all the world’s knowledge.)

The motif of a fish associated with great knowledge lends itself well as a base element for a hypothetical holder of the heart-shard of Curiosity, especially when combined with that of the ring in the fish/returning ring. The latter motif is essentially part of the episode anyway. After all, there’s a clear instance of jewelry being cast into water --- when Ahiru throws her pendant (an encircling necklace) into the River so that she’ll no longer have to act as Princess Tutu and bring pain to Mytho. While her necklace is never miraculously returned to her, she nevertheless recovers it, and so fulfills the bare-bones conditions of the tale type.

The fact that this outcome was exactly what Drosselmeyer wanted would have paralleled the theme of inescapable fate we find in the story of Polycrates’ ring. In doing so, it would have raised the stakes of one of PT’s central conflicts (do these people even have free will, and if they do can they exercise it successfully to escape tragedy?), making the push and pull that much more dynamic and the tension even more taut. Because the returned ring motif would have (seemingly) implied an early answer: No. The “ring” always returns, and the fate it symbolizes is therefore set in stone. It’s a pattern we’re all familiar with, even if our recognition of it isn’t always conscious. But therein lies the problem. For seemingly no reason, in this episode PT decides to disrupt the pattern.

These are the fairy tale element building blocks we have to work with in the episode:

Water

Something lost (two somethings, in this case: the necklace and the heart-shard; one is lost purposefully in the water, the other by happenstance)

The return of things lost

Later on (continuing into a couple of the following episodes), we are even given:

A recognition scene, brought about by the thing lost in the water

The heart-shard, once recovered and then stolen by Kraehe, leads to Rue’s eventual “recognition” of herself as Kraehe. It keeps asking her who she is and why she wears black feathers, forcing her into a psychological conflict lasting two episodes. Unlike a returned ring the heart-shard is not itself hard proof of her identity, but it nonetheless forces the question of identity to the forefront of Rue’s consciousness from the depths of her denial --- it is the catalyst of revelation, if not its direct agent.

(This isn’t even touching on Ahiru’s pendant becoming the element by which Fakir later identifies her as Princess Tutu, and which was also retrieved from the water.)

But, curiously, no fish to be found anywhere. Very odd, considering that the fish is most often the narrative element that ties all the others together. It’s the device that keeps the plot from stopping dead after the valuable “something” is lost.

The closest we get is, well, Ahiru herself. She is the one who retrieves her necklace from the River, after all. One could say it’s also when she’s at her most fish-like, since it’s one of the few times we see her fully submerged in water. But I find this an unsatisfying answer for the absence of the fish. If nothing else, it lacks the gestative image of a shining ring (or necklace or jewel) sitting quietly in the cold of a piscine belly, generating all sorts of connotations relating to rebirth, fertility, protection, and so on. While not strictly necessary to the function of a returning ring story, the image nevertheless strikes me as wonderfully evocative and symbolic, which may well account for so many returning ring tales coming down to us as ring-in-fish tales.

No aquatic creature of any type is part of the encounter with the heart-shard of Curiosity. (Unless we again count Ahiru, though her being in her mostly-human Tutu aspect --- the one most removed from her aquatic duck form --- strains this interpretation past the point of credulity in my opinion.) Perhaps the most perplexing thing about this heart-shard is how the River itself is what holds it. Not even a personification of the River, i.e. a nereid, nymph, kelpie, undine, rusalka, or a few dozen other types of aquatic folklore creatures. Other aquatic animals were eschewed as well, though if the writers didn’t want to use a fish is would have still been a good opportunity to include a frog, already associated with retrieving golden balls from wells (speaking of valuable round things lost in the water). And as far as I know, there just aren’t that many stories which feature sentient, non-anthropomorphized bodies of water; the element is obscure at best if it exists at all, certainly isn’t part of any recognizable tale types. It does not fit the pattern presented by the other narrative building blocks.

It’s a conundrum I can’t quite parse. If the writers were already including so many of the elements of a common and well-known tale type, why the glaring omission of the element second in importance only to the lost object itself? The truth is, I don’t have any good answers.

I mean, I can still theorize of course. For example, it’s entirely possible that the heart-shard was swallowed and held by an ordinary fish at some point (the show establishes that regular, non-anthropomorphic animals live in the town as well), but then the fish simply died and the heart-shard then reverted to the River. The only problem with this theory is that there is absolutely nothing within the text of the show to support it, and in no way impacts the story we see play out in the show.

And so, what are we left with? There’s a hole in the story structure with nothing to fill it; a fish story that, like all those tall tales that inspired the idiom, never produces a fish. But perhaps that, itself, is the best conclusion we can draw from this incomplete tale; the definition of the colloquial “fish story”: a great big lie. Whether as intentional foreshadowing or just a glitch of human error, by omitting the fish the show writers tipped their hand. If a ring-in-fish story can so conspicuously become just a variety of “fish story,” then the credibility of all the fairytale structures we see in the show must be called into question. If the fish is missing from its own tale type, what else might be missing? If essential elements are missing from certain established story structures, how are those stories still progressing beyond their natural lifespan? If fairytale plots, with all their adherence to patterns and formulas, are the “truth” of this reality, what might it mean when the pattern is so obviously disrupted?

If Drosselmeyer meant to trap a town in a fairytale for all eternity, he overestimated the sturdiness of traditionally oral story structures. The tales they produce are narrative bricolage, held together with the spit and chewing gum of predictable conventions and the skill of the storyteller. Lose one key element, and unless you can convincingly slot another in post haste the entire fabric of the story will unravel in your hands. Drosselmeyer cast his Story’s net wide and strong, but I suspect even that turned out to be subject to degradation and decomposition. Holes were inevitable. This one was just big enough for a single fish to slip through, and with it the first hint about the truth of the Story, carried like a ring in its belly.

#princess tutu #my writing #meta #folklore #the ring in the fish #the returning ring #trust me by my standards this is almost uncomfortably informal #if i had my way i'd use only the most thorough of scholarly texts for this research #and provide footnotes and an annotated bibliography #instead i churned out 3000 words in a wild bout of insomnia with about twenty wikipedia tabs open #scholarship!#(someone please tell me i was still making sense at the end i was getting kinda loopy)

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naltlacusi1982-blog · 5 years

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orpheus-type-beat · 5 years

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Percy Jackson part 1

Confession time: I was a gigantic Percy Jackson and the Olympians fan as a kid, so this book is very nostalgic to me. I haven’t reread the series in a long time though, especially not the first book, so it’s very interesting to read this stuff again as an adult. I was struck with a couple of observations. First, It’s a pretty good book, which is a relief. I can defend my 11-14 year old self’s tastes, this is mostly a solid kids fantasy novel.

More relevantly, it’s very different in tone and in execution than Rick Riordan’s later books, especially his sequel series Heroes of Olympus. Those books bounce between different perspectives, and the whole thing is written in a close third person. Moreover, they are so caught up in the lore and the universe and the Percy Jackson formula that they, I feel, lost touch with something the original series had that made it feel special to me. Rereading the first book in the series, I think I have a better understand why.

Perspective

I’m a sucker for first person narration in novels, I’m realizing. Another one of my childhood favorites, the Animorphs series (shoutout to anyone who read those), was also written in this same sort of first person. Each book began with a very post-modern, “if you’re reading this it’s too late,” exposition machine that explained the premise of the series, who the important characters were, and set up the events of the book. The meta, post-modern framing device is never fully explained (why were the characters of the Animorphs, or Percy Jackson himself, writing any of this down?), but are used as a framing device to enhance suspension of disbelief, and to enable humor (through snarky asides).

This close first person, a sort of refined stream of consciousness that feels like a combination between a movie shot entirely in one characters’ POV and a letter written to a friend, is missing in the later Percy Jackson series, I think to its detriment. Not only does the first person narration makes sense in a Greek setting — it emphasises orality, putting this book in conversation with orally transmitted greek myths — it also enhances the series’ humor. A lot of the humor comes from Percy’s wisecracking during fightscenes, which gives the series an action-comedy feel. The comedic portrayal of many of the gods and supernatural beings adds to that, but much of the comedy comes from Percy’s reaction to events, not from the events themself. This enables the events to be able to be taken seriously while simultaneously being mocked and used for humorous purposes.

The first person perspective also differentiates this series, tonally and technically, from Harry Potter (which is a much more obvious influence in this first book: he goes to boarding school, has an abusive home life, and lives in the legacy of a mysterious parental figure). In many ways, this book reads like post-modern Harry Potter — the sense of wonder and fairy tale magic is replaced with humor and a system of magic that feels more logical and rule based. Stuff like the Mist, as an explanation for how the magic in the world remains hidden, and the fact that monsters explode into dust makes this an urban fantasy, akin to sci-fi as much as fantasy. Harry Potter, in contrast, is firmly rooted in fantasy.

The second Percy Jackson series moves to a close third person narration style, and while there are benefits to this (for example, there isn’t the need for the dream sequence exposition hack, and the series can accommodate diverse perspectives more directly) I think something tonally and structurally is lost. It loses the sense of orality, the primacy to the action and humor lent by a first person narrator with a “unbelievable true story” framing device. That blending of the border between fact and fiction is what myth accomplished in Greek times, and what the original Percy Jackson series accomplished for a lot of people, and surrendering that means surrendering something special.

Disability

I had forgotten what a big deal disability is in these books. The thread of all demigods being troubled kids with mental disabilities, specifically learning disabilities, is I think really interesting and radical. We still live in a world where mental illness is taboo, but some mental illness are less taboo than others. In particular, when people say “mental illness” they usually aren’t referring to all mental illness. Usually, they are referring to a subset of mental illnesses, issues like depression, various types of anxiety, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, etc. — mood, personality, or anxiety disorders.

Of course, those illness are all still massively stigmatized, but all of those disorders tend to leave cleverness, speech, and some behavior intact. It’s easier to “pass,” in a sense, with those disorders, than it is with other mental illness. We can understand the troubled genius better than we can understand someone who is intellectually disabled.

That’s what makes the learning disability angle so interesting. In theory, these demigods aren’t troubled geniuses, they’re normal, unexceptional kids (discounting the water bending and sword fighting) who can’t read or write well, can’t focus, and don’t always succeed in the classroom. They aren’t brilliant, but fragile minds. They’re just C, D, and F students, with gifts that are incompatible with our school system’s expectations about the pace of learning and what achievement looks like.

These are the kind of kids we don’t tend to recognize as valuable, and worthy of being written about and made heroes. And if I remember Riordan’s impetus for writing this series was his son’s own struggles with learning disability: dyslexia and ADHD. But in the Heroes of Olympus series, this disability angle is really de-emphasized, and I think to its detriment. It loses the “it gets better” message and inclusivity to people who, even in narratives about mental illness, often get left out.

Myth Making

This brings me to the interesting ways this book is in conversation with Greek myth, and myth in general.

First of all, having all the demigods have dyslexia and ADHD is a clever inversion of the typical Greek hero’s childhood. Usually, Greek heroes were preternaturally gifted, succeeding in and out of school, and are immediately recognized as different and special. In this book, the heroes are recognized as different, but not as special, but as lesser than. This transform the Greek hero’s sense of inevitable destiny into an underdog story — one that works for modern audiences, the way a gifted noble’s path to glory worked for ancient ones. This reflects modern conceptions of democracy, and the mobility of class, that didn’t exist in ancient times (reminder that Athenian democracy was for rich, landowning men).

Second of all, there is a distinctly non-Christian concept of cycles at play in this book, and in this series. Threat to Zeus’ rule by Titans is thematically compatible with ancient Greek succession myths. And the bit about monsters turning into dust and then reforming eventually creates an overarching them of balance: the war between good and evil is eternal and constantly shifting. The best anyone can do is try to shift the balance, temporarily, in a positive direction. This makes all of the fun bits, like locating the modern Mount Olympus in New York City, having the gods adopt modern trends, work thematically as well as humorously. There an almost Eastern theme of yin and yang, which in all honesty is reflective of Eastern influence on the Greeks and Romans.

Thirdly, Rick Riordan has one mode, it’s just the Odyssey, and that’s fine. The road-trip rompy with constantly shifting objectives leading up to some climax that reveals itself to have been behind the scenes all along is a classic narrative structure that is very ancient Greek, and so works in a story so deeply in conversation with ancient Greek myths.

Conclusion

Finally, by way of conclusion, the thing that makes this first Percy Jackson book/series work, and interesting in conversation with fantasy, myth, and stories about heroes, is one of its central themes: the deification of humanity. The gods in this universe are static, comic figures. Humans are the ones that are able to change things — that’s why the gods love them, and keep making demigods all the time — and humans are the ones, in the series, that are capable of real good and real evil.

(Semi spoiler alert) In the last book, it is the human capacity for love, sacrifice, and good that saves the day, and produces positive change in the world. The gods are powerful and eternal, but the real source of beauty in the world is humanity, in its capacity for change, rebirth, and renewal. Gods get bored, get cynical, get complacent. They decay, eternal and unmoving. In contrast, humans die and new ones are born, and to them the cyclic war between good and evil remains fresh. Humanity can continually change without movement or exhaustion, constantly relearning the same lessons and experiencing the same joys and sorrows afresh. Gods, locked in a cycle, go around once and are bored and numbed forever, while the human experience stays continually vital and alive.

That’s why this series, despite being so rooted in Greek myth and fantasy, feels so modern and sci-fi influenced (as a huge sci-fi fan, that’s probably why I like it so much), and why this story — despite its post-modern trappings — reaches for sincerity. Gods, in the Percy Jackson universe, can’t survive on their own. They are immortal, but they can grow tired. They can be broken by endless living, and fade away. The gods rely on people to break up the monotony, to remember them and keep them alive: humans are the source of life in this universe.

(real spoiler alert). The series ends with Percy being offered godhood, immortality, which he rejects. That’s the thematic conclusion to the entire series, and its significant. Besides true love or whatever, the reason Percy rejects immortality is that he realizes that to live and die, taking part in the cycle, is more meaningful than eternal life. Becoming a god would mean forfeiting that meaning. This is a series about gods and monsters and nymphs, but the real magic in this world is humanity.

Our magic is thus: unlike the gods, as time streams past, we remain untouched by eternity. And I’d argue, like this series does, that that’s real immortality.

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weclick4me-blog · 5 years

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teritcrawfordca · 6 years

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The Invisible Leader

Every week as SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with experts on my Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. The show takes place every Wednesday on Twitter from 8-9 pm ET. This is excerpted from my recent interview with Zach Mercurio. He is an international speaker, trainer, and purpose and meaningful work consultant. Zach is the founder and author of PurposeSpeaks.com, the popular blog on purposeful leadership, work, and life. For more info: www.ZachMercurio.com.

SmallBizLady: WHAT EXACTLY IS AN “INVISIBLE LEADER” AND WHY IS IT THE MOST POWERFUL ASPECT OF AN ORGANIZATION?

Zach Mercurio: One of the biggest misconceptions about what both motivates employees and attracts customers is “what” an organization does (it’s products or services); what an organization “gets” for what it does (profit, metrics, paychecks); or a charismatic person (CEO, supervisors).

However, compelling research finds that a clear purpose – the reason for which the company exists – is actually the most powerful motivator of our behaviors, attitudes, and commitment to businesses as both employees and customers.

The common purpose of a business is that “invisible leader” and when we can make the purpose more important than a metric or a person, results follow.

SmallBizLady: ISN’T THE “WHY” IDEA OF “PURPOSE” TOUCHY FEELY, WISHFUL THINKING? IS PURPOSE A BUZZWORD OR FAD? WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT?

Zach Mercurio: When a business no longer serves its purpose or demonstrates his human value, it dies.

Perhaps more powerfully, psychological research since the 1950s has found that we are all wired as human beings – both employees and consumers – to search for purpose.

People crave being a part of something bigger, of having a story to connect their work and lives to. Small businesses are especially primed to connect people to purpose both because of their size and connection to many stakeholders in their communities.

SmallBizLady: WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE LEADERS MAKE WHEN TRYING TO MOTIVATE/INSPIRE THEMSELVES/PEOPLE WITHIN THEIR ORGANIZATIONS?

Zach Mercurio: We still seem to live in a time where business leaders think people are motivated by results. Research finds this is not the case. The problem with results is precisely the fact that you can achieve them. Then what? We can meet that goal, get that salary increase, increase profits – then what? When you follow the “then what” to its end, we often find an emptiness – an emptiness that the bigger purpose fills.

As business leaders, when we can clearly articulate our reason for existing – what human problem we exist to solve through our products or services – we create an everlasting goal that can’t be fulfilled. We don’t just build a business. We build a legacy.

SmallBizLady: HOW WOULD I INITIATE A CHANGE TO A MORE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE OR ORGANIZATION?

Zach Mercurio: For small businesses, I would recommend starting with these four steps:

Clarify your purpose for performance. Businesses with a purpose beyond profit have been found to be no more profitable than other businesses. However, businesses with a clear purpose that is consistently communicated and proven both internally and externally tend to outperform peers by 6:1 on average.

To clarify your purpose, make sure you have a clear answer to the question: Outside of what we do, how we do it, or what we get for what we do – why do we exist?

Write it down and make it visible.

Then, test that purpose with employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Does it emotionally resonate? If so, you’re on the right track.

Engineer the expression of purpose. People are the medium of an organization’s purpose. Ensuring there are shared, clear expectations of what the expression of the purpose looks like at each level of the organization is critical.

Make purpose the “boss” of your strategic decision-making. To understand whether your organization operates from purpose, examine your decisions. Instead of being one factor in strategic decisions, purpose should be the determining factor. Ask other organizational leaders and members: “How do we make decisions here?” Have them draw out the process. If the process of making decisions is unclear and not controlled by purpose fulfillment, you may be at risk for purpose misalignment.

Optimize your business culture for purpose. Research finds that when people have regular contact with the beneficiaries of their work they are more productive and motivated. The key to creating a culture of purpose is to make sure the end user stays at the center of it. For example, before you tell employees what to do and how to do it, show them why it matters. Be a story-collector and a storyteller.

SmallBizLady: IF I AM LOOKING TO START LEADING A LIFE/ORG W/MORE PURPOSE, WHAT’S THE 3 CORE BELIEFS THAT NEED TO BE IN PLACE TO THRIVE?

Zach Mercurio: To lead a business from purpose, everyone involved in the operation should:

Believe that the work matters

Believe in a bigger, human-centered purpose, and

Believe in proving that purpose everyday through policies, procedures, and practices.

SmallBizLady: SIMON SINEK WRITES A LOT ABOUT PURPOSE IN THE WORKPLACE. WHY IS YOUR BOOK NEEDED? HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?

Zach Mercurio: Purpose has become popular and stimulating as an “idea,” which makes it easy to misuse. And, much of the work on purpose and business is theoretical. I start where thought leaders like Simon Sinek leave off. Purpose is useless unless it is practiced. And research finds there are key practices, like the ones I just mentioned, to building a purposeful company.

SmallBizLady: YOU SAY IN THE INVISIBLE LEADER THAT PROBLEMS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN SOLUTIONS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?

Zach Mercurio: Ultimately, people aren’t emotionally moved by the solutions your offer. Anyone will be able to copy what you do or how you do it, but they can’t copy, at your core, why you are.

When business leaders are able to stay focused on the human problem they solve or human need they fulfill, they speak a common language among diverse stakeholders and can inspire emotional commitment.

And, research finds that emotional commitment is the most sustainable type of stakeholder commitment.

SmallBizLady: MILLENNIALS/GENERATION Z TALK A LOT ABOUT NEEDING TO WORK FOR AN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS A POWERFUL PURPOSE. WHY IS THIS?

Zach Mercurio: A study that just came out seems to indicate that our upcoming generation, Generation Z, is prioritizing purpose in work over almost anything else. The same is true when it comes to purchasing behavior.

One example of this is that this generation is indicating that they prefer to work in the public or non-profit sectors over the private sector. This is indicative of the desire to make a difference that has been stoked by generations seeing their parents disengaged at work and an interconnectedness to others facilitated by technology.

But while many talk about purpose as a generational need, it is important to understand that the search for purpose and meaning is a human need that is universal across generations. These younger generations are just more vocal about it.

SmallBizLady: HOW CAN LEADERS CREATE A CULTURE OF SIGNIFICANCE AND MEANING?

Zach Mercurio: In addition to re-humanizing the everyday narrative of the business, two other critical ways of fostering a culture of significance in the company are:

Rewarding purposeful behaviors such as helpfulness, customer focus, etc. versus simply performance is key. Your culture is ultimately the behaviors your reward. Traditional organizations tend to reward self-serving behaviors.

Ensure that the communication of the purpose is clear throughout an employee life-cycle and that shared language is used to communicate it among managers and supervisors.

SmallBizLady: WHAT IS THE FORMULA FOR FIGURING OUT YOUR COMPANY’S PURPOSE (AND YOUR PERSONAL PURPOSE, TOO)?

Zach Mercurio: First, it is critical to uncover why the company was founded in the first place. What was the market and human need? Why did the founder start the company? Is that “why” still clear?

Second, it is important to clarify and crystalize that purpose. Make sure it is clear to all stakeholders. And make sure the purpose is detached from what the company does or what it gets for what it does.

Third, ensure that core values and principles are in place to maintain purpose alignment. How will you know if you are straying from your purpose? What will you do to course-correct. Building purpose into your strategic planning is powerful.

Finally, ensure that the purpose is delivered at all levels of the company. After any in-person or digital interaction, can people know and feel why you exist? This is the standard of a purposeful organization.

SmallBizLady: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE EFFECTS OF LEADING MORE WITH PURPOSE? WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND THROUGH YOUR RESEARCH?

Zach Mercurio: Because the search for purpose is characteristic of all employees and stakeholders, research has found that businesses with a clear purpose beyond profit outperform the market by an average of 6:1. Globally, purpose-driven brands are 15x more profitable.

Research has also found that people with a strong, pervasive sense of purpose at work…

Live up to 7 years longer (NIH, 1998; Carelton, 2014)

Are twice as likely to learn something new each day (Gallup, 2013)

Are 42% more likely to regularly experience contentment (Leider, 2009)

Are less likely to be clinically depressed (Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1980)

Are less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression in teenage and college years (PNAS, 2014)

Have a 20% longer tenure where they work (NYU/Imperative, 2015)

Are 50% more likely to be leaders, be promoted (NYU/Imperative, 2015)

Are 64% more fulfilled at work (NYU/Imperative, 2015)

Quadruples the likelihood of being engaged at work and in school (Gallup, 2013)

Is ranked the #1 factor in job satisfaction, and is more than 2x more important that the next factor, organizational leadership (Happiness Research Institute, 2015)

If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9 pm ET; follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter.

Here’s how to participate in #SmallBizChat: http://bit.ly/1hZeIlz

The post The Invisible Leader appeared first on Succeed As Your Own Boss.

from Teri Crawford Business Tips http://succeedasyourownboss.com/invisible-leader/

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brucebai · 7 years

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Everything is Changing; So Should Antitrust

Everything is Changing; So Should Antitrust http://ift.tt/2wFW5jB

Late last month WPP, the largest advertising group in the world, announced results and forecasts that were sharply down. Those results, though, were not what I found striking about CEO Martin Sorrell’s remarks on the group’s earnings call; after all, I argued last summer that such a decline was inevitable.

Rather, it was striking just how feeble Sorrell’s proposed response was:

So what’s our response to all this? Well, further focus on our 4 strategic priorities. Horizontality, which we moved up from, I think it was #4 a year or so ago to #1, is our first critical priority. And it really means ensuring that our people work seamlessly. They’re accustomed to working vertically and by agency brand, but they work seamlessly horizontally across the group together through client teams, I’ll come on to those, and country managers and subregional managers to provide an integrated benefit for clients. And clients are pressurizing us for more effectiveness and more efficiency, this is the way, probably the most significant way that we can respond.

Make no mistake, I’m a student of organizational structure and the importance of aligning an organization to the challenge at hand. Moreover, WPP’s conglomerate nature make any sort of cross-agency collaboration challenging; that, though gets at the real problem. If WPP must change the way it works internally, that by definition means the environment in which it is operating is fundamentally different than the one that existed while WPP grew into the organization it is today.

Ad Agencies and the Internet

I wrote about ad agencies earlier this year in the context of complaints about ads appearing next to objectionable content:

Way back in 1841, Volney B. Palmer, the first ad agency, was opened in Philadelphia. In place of having to take out ads with multiple newspapers, an advertiser could deal directly with the ad agency, vastly simplifying the process of taking out ads. The ad agency, meanwhile, could leverage its relationships with all of those newspapers by serving multiple clients:

It’s a classic example of how being in the middle can be a really great business opportunity, and the utility of ad agencies only increased as more advertising formats like radio and TV became available. Particularly in the case of TV, advertisers not only needed to place ads, but also needed a lot more help in making ads; ad agencies invested in ad-making expertise because they could scale said expertise across multiple clients.

Over the past few weeks (here and here) I have been revisiting Clayton Christensen’s Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits, a theory I first explored in this 2015 article about Netflix:

Breaking up a formerly integrated system — commoditizing and modularizing it — destroys incumbent value while simultaneously allowing a new entrant to integrate a different part of the value chain and thus capture new value.

Commoditizing an incumbent’s integration allows a new entrant to create new integrations — and profit — elsewhere in the value chain.

This starts to get at what is happening to WPP: the very idea of an ad agency arose from the opportunity to integrate the creation and placement of ads across disparate outlets, creating a one-stop shop for advertisers.

Those outlets, though, were only ever a proxy; advertisers don’t run ads for the sake of running ads, but rather to reach consumers. And on the Internet, where distribution is free and content abundant, more and more consumers found themselves relying on two services that focused on discovery and personalization: Google and Facebook. From that piece on ad agencies:

There are really only two options for the sort of digital advertising that reaches every person an advertiser might want to reach:

That’s a problem for the ad agencies: when there are only two places an advertiser might want to buy ads, the fees paid to agencies to abstract complexity becomes a lot harder to justify.

In fact, the issue is not even really about the money, but theory. Google and Facebook are the new integration points in the advertising value chain; it follows, then, that the rest of the value chain will modularize itself and re-organize around the integrated players. Or, as Sorrell put it, “horizontality.”

The problem for Sorrell is two fold: first, fundamentally re-orienting a business away from a vertical integrative approach to a horizontal modular approach is extremely difficult, both in terms of company culture and the effect on the bottom line. In truth I expect WPP to continue to lose business to digital agencies structured from day one with the assumption that Google and Facebook are the integrators in the advertising value chain.

The second point, though, is worse: what is happening to WPP is happening to the rest of WPP’s ecosystem — media on one side, and advertisers on the other.

The Reorganization of Everything

There used to be a limited number of media outlets — newspapers, radio, and television, primarily — all of which had substantial barriers to entry. That meant these outlets had a monopoly on reaching customers, leaving advertisers no choice but to pay up.

Now, though, there is an effectively unlimited amount of media: countless web pages, streaming music and podcasts, and services like Netflix and YouTube that, unbounded from the constraints of linearity, offer far more content than was ever accessible before. That, as noted above, meant that discovery mattered most, which meant Google and Facebook.

The parallel should be obvious: the clearest manifestation of how the media value chain has been fundamentally reconfigured is the fact that advertising has fled newspapers in particular; in other words, the media story is an advertising story, which is to say that given the upheaval in the media industry, the most surprising part of WPP’s struggles is that it took this long to manifest (thanks, primarily, to television’s resilience).

The exact same value chain reorganization is happening to WPP’s clients: major advertisers like consumer packaged goods companies which built their businesses on integrating the creation and distribution of consumer staples. From Dollar Shave Club and the Disruption of Everything:

P&G leveraged these resources in a simple formula that led to repeated success:

Spend significant resources on developing new products (more blades!) that can command a price premium

Spend even more resources on advertising the new product (mostly on TV) to create consumer awareness and demand

Spend yet more resources to ensure the new product is front-and-center in retail locations everywhere

In a world of scarcity this approach paid off time and again: P&G grew not only because its markets grew, but also because it continually justified price increases due to its innovations.

The most obvious change has been the rise of Amazon: instead of limited shelf space, the selection is orders of magnitude greater than any bricks-and-mortar store, and integrated with a scaled fulfillment operation. That new integration means that suppliers and merchants have no choice but to modularize and build their businesses around Amazon.

Of course that isn’t the only option: new, smaller companies, like the aforementioned Dollar Shaving Club, can leverage the big platform providers — YouTube, Facebook, AWS, etc. — to compete with massive companies like P&G on far more equal terms than before.

A New Reality

For long time Stratechery readers this analysis isn’t that novel; the shift in value chains that result from the Internet enabling zero distribution and zero transactional costs are the foundation of Aggregation Theory. It certainly is gratifying, in a way, to see the theory play out in what has long been the part of the value chain most resistant to upheaval (TV advertising and TV advertisers).

There is another context, though: the increasing appreciation outside of technology of just how dominant companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even Netflix have become, and more and more discussion about whether antitrust is the answer. The problem is that much of this discussion is rooted in the old value chain, where power came from controlling distribution.

What is critical to understand is that that world is fading away; the fundamental nature of the Internet is abundance, and the critical competency is discovery. Moreover, the platform that harnesses discovery also harnesses a virtuous cycle between users and suppliers that leads to a winner-take-all situation inherent in two-sided networks. In other words, to the extent these platforms are monopolies, said monopoly is much more akin to AT&T than it is to Standard Oil.

This matters for three reasons:

First, the fact that newspapers, for example, or perhaps one day WPP, are being driven out of business is not a reason for antitrust action; their problem is their business model is obsolete. The world has changed, and invoking regulation to try to change that reality is a terrible idea.

Second, the consumer-friendly approach of these platform companies is no accident: when market power comes from owning demand, then the way to gain power is to create a great experience for consumers. The casual way in which many antitrust crusaders ignore the fact that, for example, Amazon is genuinely beloved by consumers — and for good reason! — is frustrating intellectually and eye-rolling politically.

Third, the presence of these platforms creates incredible new opportunities for businesses that were never before possible. I already described how Dollar Shaving Club was enabled by platform companies; Amazon has also enabled a multitude of merchants, Facebook an entire ecosystem of apps and personalized startups, and Google every possible service under the sun.

In a 30-second commercial, of the sort that WPP might have made, drawing clear villains and easy narratives is valuable; the reality of aggregators is far more complicated. That Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other platforms are as powerful as they are is not due to their having acted illegally but rather to the fundamental nature of the Internet and the way it has reorganized value chains in industry after industry.

Moreover, these platforms have far more positive outcomes than distribution-based monopolies ever did: the consumer experience is better, and there are huge new opportunities to build new businesses (especially serving niches completely ignored in a distribution-based world) on top of them. That is a good thing, worth preserving.

To that end any antitrust regulation, if it comes, needs a fresh approach rooted in the reality of the Internet. I agree that too much concentrated power has inherent problems; I also believe a structural incentive to provide a great customer experience, along with the potential to create completely new kinds of businesses, is worth preserving. Antitrust crusaders, to whom I am clearly sympathetic, ignore these realities at their political peril.

BruceFav Bloggers via Stratechery by Ben Thompson https://stratechery.com September 6, 2017 at 10:25PM

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15 Minute Manifestation Reviews Legit Program - My Fair Comparison

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