#this is all i can articulate into somewhat sensible words

[letterstodreams]

I'm On Hold

Maybe it feels like I'm on hold, waiting for my sensible, clear, logical mind to pick back up and talk clearly. And all the while, in my life I've been sitting here, waiting on hold, for days on end, in a surreal way. But while I am waiting, it's not like life is standing still, either. It's very lively and full and rich and deep, and even logical and insightful too.

But it's not my logical, clear mind that's having the insights, or at least, not the part of my mind that can speak in words and articulate. Or if it is that part of my mind, which it feels like it is in a way, then it's not clear. I can only hear it in this way that barely registers, on the tip of my tongue, felt but not really sensed, like a dream that's going too fast and too jumbled up. I'm too half-aware or dreamy to scramble up the words and they flutter through, fragile. I know they're too delicate in this state for me to touch, like butterflies and I don't have the right net or place to house them and feed them.

And yet I can see the insights that I need, solutions to o many of my problems. I can see them in understanding, in ideas, but not always in words of any kind. If they do form into words then the words are soon gone, and even sooner gone and distorted if I try too hard to focus on or articulate them. Bu if i leave them alone, they eventually flutter away, like butterflies. And they might return, like butterflies, circling about the garden. But I am likely to not see them very often, and they are likely to eventually leave me forever.

But after they are gone, I can still feel the traces of these insights, the evidence of these butterflies, the way they shape my life and linger in my heart and mind. They pollinate my garden. They are there in my memory. They shape my thoughts, feelings, ideas, creative inspirations and intuitions. They shape my future insights, which become more articulate and verbal and able to be written down, even, sometimes.

But even if they never are able to be put into words, they still shape my choices, my worldview, my hopes and dreams and sense of what is real, possible, what makes sense, what is true or not true. It helps me pick apart the lies and manipulations and distortions of the world and so many people, so many ideologies and groups and even the experts and professionals and great minds, as well as popular opinion and so-called common knowledge, supposed taste and style, little disputed values and wisdom and so on.

With these butterfly insights, I don't feel all that bad that I can't speak or write or think them in words. These are little insights (or big ones, it's hard to tell since a feeling or insight might come in a flash, but take paragraphs or books to fully articulate in words). They manage to remain on the periphery of my life and I carry on without them being fully formed or graspable. even though if I let myself, they could oftentimes sweep me away with the sheer power of their meaning and implications.

But like in meditation practice, I just let them slip in and through my mind and out again, because I can't try t hold them without damaging them. If I fixate and emote too much they can become misshapen, distorted, and lead me on wild, dangerous paths, far into the tangled woods of confusion. So even my emotions I have to just observe, let be, not interact with, like some half-wild, yet somewhat tamed creature, who is volatile and dangerous when approached. But when I just observe these thought-beings, they are peaceable, somewhat fascinating, sometimes scary, but so real.

I do sometimes find myself still wishing I could hold on to them, more clearly, more of the real thing that is obvious and that I know what I am holding on to. I'd rather have that if I could catch it without it changing to some dangerous being instead. Or some damaged wisp of decay, instead of the pure, clear reality I see, before my very eyes, before I touch it. I want these insight to be pure and preserved, not slipping away like dreams and returning like half-formed insights. I can see they could sometimes seem to transform my life, give answers to the deep longings, confusion, pain and dilemmas that fill my life. But maybe I'm overstating that. And since I can't hold on to the thoughts clearly enough and long enough to really examine and analyze them too well, it's hard to say. I do feel they are answers, wisdom, rare and precious, important, though.

Yet I can't feel too bad, letting them go. All around me I see people who can't see these insights, and I see that I still feel them, even if I can't quite articulate them clearly at all. I see wise, smart, and good people, experts and so on, all grappling with ideas that my butterfly insights could resolve. I see distorted and confused and harmful ideas that could be replaced with the clarity of these insights. I see that many people who are happy with the distorted and harmful ideas, but I can't be, though. I see nowhere are these ideas clearly articulated, almost nowhere, that is.

But sometimes it feels I do get a glimpse of the truths that I sense. Here or there, a piece of it, or a hint, too. Sometimes I think that others might as well get these half-formed butterfly-beast-chimeras of insights, even if they too can't express them. But they might be able to hint at them, or partially express them. It gives me hope, and a sense of solidarity and being a little less alone in the problems that these insights try to solve, in the pain that I feel that the standard solutions can't soothe or heal. All the while so many people seem perfectly thrilled with and adamantly defend the wrong, distorted points of view.

I do have trains of thought, and deep, complex and real ideas, ones that I can articulate in words. I have many, often too many of them, even when I'm put on hold by my mind. But those thoughts and ideas which come through tend to oftentimes be the wrong thoughts for me.

They are too loose, confusing, too volatile and the wrong priorities. Letting me lose track of what matters most, if I go down that path. Leading my emotions into storms that make me lose track of my clarity and vision and values and goals and habits and all that.

If I'm not so very careful, meditative, intentional, I'll lose it. I'll lose my mind, my heart, my direction, my hard-won yet ephemeral sense of my true self, what I believe, value, what I should do. It's not so easy to find it all once again, and it can take a lot of time what an instant of carelessness can lose track of. Because if I'm not careful, I'll lose touch with the most important things, which are the things that I can't sense clearly, but only see as these butterfly-beast-dream creatures.

No, I can't indulge in the normal, common habit of regular verbal speech, thought or writing. Though I used to do so every day, for so many years of my life. These days, that leads me inevitably down the track of disorderly, excessive wrong paths of thoughts. Then I will sooner or later lose all sense of proportion and become distorted, both in my thoughts, emotions and logic.

So I just wait it out, living in so many ways, but mostly not verbally expressive ones, feeling and sensing and doing so much of importance, but the words won't form in my mind, or in my mouth. But I still write here today, even though no really good, worthwhile thought directions have presented themselves to me in words. A little foray, a small way off the path, will be ok, this time, and help me, even if it's not in any clear, logical way.

Because I just wanted to and thought that I would write all this as if I was writing someone who likes to read what I write. And that's illogical, irrational, not grounded in any real, clear, real-life result and goal, I know. And yet, it's that star to guide my ship by, the mind-trick that someone who I adore is reading and loving this and wanting more, waiting for more, waiting, on hold, too, like me.

It's still important, because this blog is a thread to the future me, future friends, a gamble that I hope will build something real, from letters to dreams to accomplishments. And if it fails, well, this is my effort, my best attempt and hope, however hard it would be to explain, defend or prove my methods and process to convince most people.

I hope it will keep my dreams and heart and motivation and clarity alive. So maybe it is logical, just not directly, clearly so. A skip and a jump away from logic, a rock tossed across the pool of my inner being, making ripples that I hope will last long enough to reach the aim I am trying to bring into effect. The softest of touches, slightest of chances, beyond words manipulation of my inner being and feeling and mood.

[goddessjuliawicker]

I'm working on a theory because based on what I can tell there are clocks everywhere in The Magicians. Clocks in the forest of Fillory, clocks in every home, apartment, classroom, office, tree. Whatever they could stick a clock in they did.

Then there's Castle Whitespire.

I could be wrong but I don't think there's any clocks in Castle Whitespire. The only exception is in Timeline 23 when Quentin is The Beast and within his hoard of Fillory there are clocks. However, from what I can gather there's none on Timeline 40 in the castle.

So, why? I'm working on articulating this theory but Jane Chatwin's discipline is Chronomancy or time magic. She became the Watcher Woman, wearing a clock adorned with pocket watches. She resides in the clock barrens. The dwarves gave her a magical watch to keep Martin from taking over Fillory.

The thrones weren't the only thing cursed in the castle. Clocks, watches, anything Jane's could use to defeat Martin are cursed within the walls of the castle. Martin wanted to feel powerful, so he cursed his sister's power, took his away and essentially banished her from the castle to make her feel as powerless as when Fillory banished him.

The title of Watcher Woman is both a pun and a warning. It's a title Jane would expect Martin to recognize. Tick tock on the watch, watch the woods for the Watcher Woman.

#someone's gonna find one goddamn clock and ruin this #the magicians #quentin coldwater #jane chatwin #the beast #martin Chatwin #i have more on this about hiw Quentin was able to beat the curse #but for now #this is all i can articulate into somewhat sensible words

[davidmann95]

RWBY V8E12?

* God that fight was so many different kinds of perfect. The satisfying THWACK on the first kick (after two seasons of bootlicking: the boot comes around on him), Ironwood’s first blow resulting in his unrelenting force being turned against himself, at least 3 or 4 times his tunnel vision brutally costs him, that someone finally did “passes through someone with a sword swipe but actually hit them fifty dozen times faster than the eye can perceive and it takes a few moments for them to react”, the cross-cuts, that it’s overlaid with the Nora song that’s I think at last the first JNPR solo(-ish, bits also apply to Emerald) track, that half of Ironwood’s downfall was that he traded his pistols representing justice for a big dumb Liefeld canon as the ultimate articulation of his mindset...beautiful. Only way it could have been better is if Harriet’s super-speed burst took her within an inch of Robyn and Qrow before she was stopped.

* (Ironwood still did better than I would’ve expected though; with how much trouble a single nerd gave him before I’d assumed he was a so-so combatant whose real value was his military mind, but I guess he’s simply a tank who does better in a brawl than a chase.)

* Last week’s movements for Jaune as he left the room, now Emerald’s afterimages/Winter’s finishing move/Marrow’s eyeline/the gleam in Penny’s eye; it’s really going all-out anime at the last minute in a way that’s usually reserved for the premieres.

* Speaking of Emerald, I’m really curious where things are going with her. She found a breaking point in not wanting the extinction of all life on the planet - including her - and her need for attachment seems to be breaking in a healthier direction now, but while she’s clearly made at least some moral realizations given her line here I don’t think given her priorities and how quickly everything went down she’d reasonably have made a total 180. She was onboard with the idea of a global revolution undoing kingdoms and huntsman academies even if she was mainly there for Cinder, and given “undo the monarchy/borders and stop training kids to be war machines” aren’t exactly unreasonable takes I really hope her arc at least somewhat involves reconciling all that with the rest of the team alongside the rest of her issues, especially since the founder of half those social systems is riding shotgun with the kid who vouched for her.

* I don’t think we’ll get Ironwood suddenly becoming sensible because of his aura being broken and his semblance being deactivated, but if this series felt like making a sudden pivot into pure comedy you could do worse than “I’m gonna be a good guy again, you just have to beat the absolute shit out of me every morning!”. The vibe I’m getting is he’ll die in the next two episodes after some kind of emotional wrap-up, while Jacques lives but is essentially off the table - Ironwood being convicted for war crimes while the kingdom drops on the shitty dad would be more satisfying for my money, but the former seems more narratively appropriate.

* In volume 7 I was adamantly “we’re not gonna see redemption for the Ace-Ops and specifically Marrow’s gonna stay on their side to illustrate the point”, but I think this did his shift really well by not making it a cutesy “well, he was the good one all along!” thing, but rather making clear all of them while complicit had self-doubts and regrets about the whole thing...but once the situation had no remaining arguable justifications, he was the only one who wouldn’t brush them aside anymore. It works for me because it’s done in a way that highlights their guilt as much as his turnaround.

* Ambrosius said himbo rights. God, him vs. Jinn is like a “well, male superheroes are oversexualized too!” meme come to life except he actually is - true equality folks, glad they made this course-correction. And after how happy I was when Nora pointed out a loophole with the vague wording Jinn had used in the past, my autistic ass was delighted that half this episode was about the team being so precise with making sure their genie wishes couldn’t go ironically awry they were using literal schematics.

* I’m seeing speculation that when RWBY and any others inevitably fall they’re going to find themselves in the afterlife, and not only will that be the focus of the briefer volume 9 but it’s how Pyrrha will temporarily come back into play. I can definitely see that broad setup happening, but I think the afterlife journey would mostly be confined to the finale, simply because I don’t see them doing another ‘split the party’ season right after this one. If I’m wrong though and it’s a long-term proposition, even if I’d be very happy if 90% of her role would have nothing to do with him there is the question of Pyrrha comes back for more than a brief vision in the series finale or something but doesn’t STAY back how Jaune would deal with that. He’s already found at least some degree of closure, having him be sad about losing her again would be redundant, and after a season of buildup with RWBY in the afterlife and JNR waiting you couldn’t really get away with “Hey, we ran into your lost Lenore, she says hi!” “Well that’s nice!” Very curious how they’ll thread that needle if this ends up what happens after all.

#RWBY #Emerald Sustrai #Opinion

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Books for Kids - the Superlinguo list

Over the years I’ve been keeping an eye on the much-neglected genre of linguistics books for young people. This post is an aggregate of links to all of those reviews.

I’ll update this post whenever I have a new book to review. If you know of any books about language for kids and teens that aren’t on this list, let me know!

Where available, I’ve added affiliate links to Bookshop.org and Amazon. Buying through these links provides financial support to Superlinguo.

A Little Book of Language, David Crystal

From one of the most prolific authors on the topic of the English language and linguistics. Incredibly sensible and also charming and engaging. This book has 40 short chapters of 3-4 pages, with many featuring a separate breakout with a related story or example. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent & Sean O'Neill

The book takes a tone of playful exasperation that never gets too heavy-handed. There are 40 chapters of around 5 pages each, with or or two of O'Neill’s illustrative examples in each chapter. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

Language Books for Kids: Words in My World, Nandi Sims (series of 4)

Introduce elementary/primary school aged children to fundamental concepts of how language works in the world.Each of the books shares an introduction from the author, Dr Nandi Sims, introducing readers to linguistics and language variation. 

The Word Spy, Ursula Dubosarsky

We get brief dalliances into hieroglyphs and cuneiform as well as morse code and printing presses. There are half a dozen chapters on ways you can  play with English, and each is broken down into mini-sections that are  rarely more than a page or two long. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

The Return of the Word Spy, Ursula Dubosarsky

The Word Spy loads her books full of fascinating facts about language and how it works. They’re my default recommendation for budding linguists.

Frindle, Andrew Clements

If your language loving kid isn’t into factoid-based books then this is not only a lovely little tale but it manages to slip in some basic ideas about how words work. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

Wicked Words, Terry Deary

It’s silly, rude and occasionally has a few too many exclamation marks, if I had a time machine I would send it back in time to myself when I was in late primary school. (Amazon affiliate link)

Grammar: Write Here, Write Now (Basher Basics)

The overall effect is somewhat like hallucinating while reading a reference grammar. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn

Don’t even get this one for your kids, get it for yourself - and if you do just have a word-ish teenager around to pass it on to they’ll love it too. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

How You Talk, Paul Showers & Robert Galster/Megal Lloyd

How You Talk provides a brief introduction to the development of speech in children, the use of breath in producing speech and the basic articulators that are used to make different sounds. The 1992 version is re-illustrated and slightly edited.

The Dictionary of Difficult Words, Jane Solomon & Louise Lockhart

The definitions of even the most fiendish words are given in language accessible to a child and rarely longer than twenty words. Although I’m not normally one for wanton book destruction, I will say that my overwhelming compulsion to turn the letter pages into a giant wall alphabet speaks to how adorable the illustrations are. (Bookshop.org affiliate link, Amazon affiliate link)

#language #linguistics #review #meta #fiction #non-fiction #words #grammar #english #games #facts

[killingeveperspectives]

Perspective: Did Villanelle’s character arc in Season 3 get lost in translation?

Killing Eve Season 3 became something of my object of fascination by the odd disjointed experience I have watching it. It feels like it makes sense at first, but the whole lot is rather off. The more I revisit it, the more it appears that what we see on the surface is but an attempt at telling a very different story. But precisely by failing to convey their intended story (Or not committing to), the authors inadvertently created a slate with enough inconsistencies that it fits any rationalization the audience wants to impose on the final product. Its lack of clarity and internal logic made it adaptable to several points of view. I can impose the interpretation that Villanelle was given an irreconcilable redemption arc, or that she is still a psychopath and it will still somewhat work.

However, when the season is consumed stripped from our expectations, there is a dissonance between the narrative and the other elements of storytelling which sends mixed signals, especially in the most developed storyline in the season: Villanelle’s character arc. In the midst of this confusion and inability to get a hold of the character, I tried to grasp the intent of the author instead of the material itself. Upon reading interviews with Suzanne Heathcote, Sally Woodward and Jodie Comer, many of my initial interpretations of her arc were challenged. They seemed to never seek to rectify Villanelle’s psychopathy or nature, but to explore her deep need to belong. There seemed to be an awareness towards the truth of the character, and the journeys they have been on so far. It appears that their idea is that her impulses are her true self and the tension arises from the inescapability of her own nature and its exploitation, which becomes the sole designator of her worth as a being. This is indeed much more interesting than what I initially interpreted. So, I want to revisit Villanelle’s character arc with new eyes... in more detail... and see if I can find something new.

Villanelle’s initial motivations set-up a “ Self-affirmation” arc, not a Redemption arc 

Initially, the show seems to set two main motivations for Villanelle: a search for autonomy and a search for belonging, which will prompt her desire to become a keeper and find her family. Objectively, her motivations set up a journey for authentic self-identity. 

The opening wedding sequence is a good way of introducing her search for autonomy. Six months after Rome, Villanelle is gold digging her way through life, still very psychopathic of her. This is the first time we see Villanelle exist without a parental figure and without the tight control of ‘The 12’, and it turns out she is doing just fine. Where her wedding represents her agency and autonomy, being dragged into ‘The 12’ by Dasha has her sitting in the back of the car like a moody toddler. Her relationship with ‘The 12’ is infantilizing, controlling and coercive. It does plant the seeds for her struggle by visual storytelling, which I dismissed for a silly comedic effect.

Villanelle seems more aware of the power plays behind her bargain to come back, contrasting with her previous aloofness. This time, she seems keen on cutting her own part of the deal which is to become a Keeper (which oddly never involves getting the names of ‘The 12’). Her request is so absurd, and their agreement to make her a keeper so obviously fake, that it shows how Villanelle is truly unaware of the magnitude of what she is dealing with and how little leverage she actually has. But her effort to carve some degree of freedom and agency within her world is an authentic motivation. Her overall disinterest for the job also helps to solidify the idea that she is dreading being controlled, and only agrees to perform the kills as part of her promotion process. Which should not be confused – although it easily is – with a lack of enjoyment in Killing. In fact, Villanelle thoroughly enjoys herself in the kills she performs before Episode 5, be it improving on a relic, stealing a baby, or scaring hiccups away. Villanelle isn’t opposed to killing, she is tired of being ordered to kill. As welcomed as this development is, in many moments her motivations could be mistaken by childlike Villanelle just being capricious.

Parallel to her self-affirmation comes a search for a sense of belonging. This is a deep foundational motivation for the character that had always been in the subtext of the show. There is a fascination towards family and normal life in Villanelle, that she tries to recreate with those she “loves”. Arguably not even the character can articulate this urge, so when Season 3 sets to explore it, it feels forced. Villanelle seems intrigued by the gratuitous affection the baby elicits in people, including those that don’t own it, leading her to kidnap the baby as an experiment, then literally toss it away. It did not elicit in her the gratuitous affection it elicits in everyone around her. She is a psychopath. When the baby is reunited with their father, she is once again puzzled at the happiness in the dad’s face. The baby belonged to him. Did she ever belong to someone? This question will lead her to seeking her own family, taking her to Russia. 

Being so far removed from the events of season 2 and considering that Konstantin and Villanelle’s scene was completely overshadowed by the subsequent events, I found it hard to add weight to this motivation. A large part of the audience is understandably eager to learn about Villanelle’s past, however there wasn’t enough development to justify why the character wanted to learn about her past. Instead, she enunciates her newfound fascination with babies, without elements or events to convincingly move the character in this direction.

Villanelle’s journey home: nuanced and conflicted story telling got lost in translation

I have broken down how I believe this episode not only retcons her background, but soft retcons Villanelle’s psychopathy and her entire character – and I still believe in practical terms it inevitably does - but it’s a shame, because the episode in itself doesn’t. It’s all about perception and expectation tainting interpretation. The writer’s original idea was to have the audience go on a journey with Villanelle to this disconnected corner of the world, as she is surprisingly charmed by the oddity of what she finds. It was the perfect escapism from her claustrophobic world of ‘The 12’. We wrestle with the nature x nurture question as Villanelle wrestles with it herself, we feel at home, we connect with the family and feel rejected and deceived as Villanelle does herself. This episode was written from Villanelle’s perspective alone, she is the voice telling the story, we are literally asked to see it from her eyes:

But there is a catch: Villanelle is an unreliable narrator. The writer did plant elements that challenge Villanelle’s narrative, mainly as glimpses of other characters perspectives: Bor’ka has a normal loving drawing of his mother on the fridge; Pyotr likes his mother alright and challenge’s Villanelle’s perception of their mother meanness, by stating Villanelle herself used to be mean to him, implying a connection between the two; the husband reveals that Tatiana still cries every night because of the whole thing. All of which becomes the core problem with this episode: Villanelle is an unreliable narrator but we don’t perceive her as such because of our emotional investment in the character. Who is to say Villanelle’s tendencies and behaviour didn’t genuinely scare and tear the family apart and without knowing what to do after her husband died, Tatianna abandoned Oksana in the orphanage, despite genuinely suffering from the decision? Tatianna is a very flawed mother and Oksana is a very troubled child, both these realities are valid and interconnected, in the most nuanced, emotionally challenging and complex episode of the entire show. 

Underneath Villanelle’s standpoint, Suzanne Heathcote managed to hide a sensible and honest perception of that family’s complicated past: the heartbreaking reality is that deep down, despite all the layers of pain, trouble, blame, shame and guilt, both characters wished it was different and they could somehow connect, but the truth is that they were, and still are, unable to. Thus, both characters were speaking their truths, however we are not afforded a chance to truly see her mother’s perspective because we are stuck in Villanelle’s world and Villanelle has empathy for no one (Except for her little brother but I don’t want to beat on this dead horse). Despite her manipulative and violent behavior towards her family, from where Villanelle stands - and within her own perspective rightfully so - her mother was simply neglectful, abusive, and worse: saw her as something alien. Thus, having her mother admit her own “darkness” was so important: This darkness I carry belongs to you, therefore I belong to you. Ingenious. Upon revisiting this episode, I truly appreciate it as a showcase of the potential of Suzanne Heathcote’s writting, with beautifully crafted storytelling that seems straightforward at the surface but invites us to dive deeper. Unfortunately, this gem is lost in translation.

The episode was all about how Villanelle made sense of herself and her past, not about what really happened, as the writers claimed they didn’t want to excuse Villanelle’s actions nor erase her psychopathy. It wasn’t about the authoritative writers explaining Villanelle’s past to the audience and deliberately painting Villanelle as a child tortured into becoming a monster because of her upbringing… the problem is that it feels like it was. And when later you add Dasha’s abuse to the mix, the retcon of her psychopathy is irresistible to the audience, but the creators are not naïve and especially as the word “psychopath” seem to have vanished from their vocabulary, when previously it was the selling point of the show; something doesn’t add up. Killing her mother marks a turning point in Villanelle’s character arc, and here things start to get complicated...

Killing her mother sets Villanelle in an identity crisis but what is it exactly?

When Villanelle gets rejected, she kills her mother and sets the house on fire mirroring the orphanage arson. In the train scene, we see Villanelle wearing her mother’s clothes and listening to crocodile rock while crying, smiling, jamming, reminiscing. Despite her efforts to wrap herself in the elements that symbolize the moments she felt like she belonged with that family, she is still alone and there is a lot of pain – fair, psychopaths are not painless. But what that scene represents for Villanelle is an enigma, and I believe not Jodie Comer, nor Suzanne Heathcote, nor anyone, actually knows what this scene is really supposed to mean emotionally for Villanelle.

I want to contrast this scene with another scene in a movie where we watch an actress cycling through many emotions in a long shot as she listens to music: the final 2:30 minute long take in Portrait of a Lady on fire. The scenes parallel each other, and kudos to the unafraid acting of Jodie Comer and Adele Haenel. However, there is a key difference between the two: Celinne Sciamma (screenwriter and director) knew exactly what she was looking for and walked the lead actress Adele Haenel through all the emotions she would be evoking, their succession order and meaning. All the emotions conjured in the scene were carefully crafted in the audience throughout the entire movie, generating a deep connection and understanding of the characters, the story and its symbols, that culminates in an apotheotic cathartic release. That scene was not just a beautiful, emotionally loaded scene: it had intent, it had a clear meaning. And from there on is where Villanelle’s emotional scenes start to break apart.

The display of a person suffering through emotional pain will obviously evoke feelings of compassion, care and empathy in the audience, but this level of immediate reactive connection does not equal an understanding of characters’ emotional reality. It’s important that audiences not only know that the character is in pain but what that pain means, even more so when you are exploring the boundaries of emotion in a character that has a fundamentally different subjective experience than the audience. Given the lack of build up and more extensive exploration of the mother and daughter relationship, it’s not only harder to add the appropriate emotional weight as it is to understand it’s ramifications. Thus, despite lots of tears, Villanelle remains an emotional black box after coming back from Russia. 

On the other hand, there is this interesting motif with Villanelle that death brings freedom: once a person is dead, they cease to have a hold on her, allowing her to reinvent herself. For example, when Eve hurt her in the season 2 finale, she kills her to break free from her hold. In her own words: “I’m so much better now my ex is dead”. This motif is again brought up in her conversation with Bertha Kruger in episode 04. As Villanelle tries to reinvent herself after killing her mother and whatever that meant, she learns she was being tricked by ‘The 12’ and that her promotion was a farce, bringing her full circle. She went through these journeys and still didn’t break free: she was still controlled and still rejected, thus her only solution was escape literally and metaphorically. 

Her mother rejected her because of her violence, which is precisely the only worth ‘The 12’ see in her. Both of her Nemesis reduce her to the same image: she is a violent kid that kills. Thus, her shifting relationship with killing becomes more interesting when it is framed as a desire for self-affirmation and not as a rectification of her nature as the result of a new found moral compass and compassion, which places Villanelle in the same territory as traditional female assassin characters before her. She is reclaiming her identity, from her past and from her subjugators, hence the motivation to not kill could be seen as a deliberate act of rebellion. However, it is unclear how concrete this motivation is, given that she does indeed keep murdering, and how it interplays with the emotional changes we are shown the character is going through, altogether making her distancing from killing narratively elusive.

Character development couldn’t commit to a narrative, going from nuanced to disorienting

Part of the charm in Killing Eve is what is left unsaid and implied, but nevertheless registers, connects. This relies on the smart use of character expositions and film language to efficiently get the audience on board with the character’s world organically. All previous season’s made good use of monologues and dialogue to flesh out the world and specially characters. In Season 1, Villanelle was explored and developed through excellent dialogues, and in Season 2, when exploring her intimate inner reality, the writers opted to use the AA meetings for a direct exposition via a monologue that tied together previous visual and narrative set up elements. 

This type of efficient character exploration doesn’t lend itself well to the nuanced layered exploration the writers set out to do in season 3. And still, they stubbornly committed to it, withholding characters from fleshing out information through dialogue, while overplaying ‘show don’t tell’ trying to convey character’s inner realities with fragmented elements scattered over a disjointed plot, thus relying heavily on the actors to create a semblance of coherence out of the cacophony. I truly believe this choice was extremely detrimental to the season, since it created unnecessary challenges for the main goal which was character exploration. The result is an unsettling gap between the writers’ vision of the characters and their arcs, and what we, the audience, experience. 

I want to take a moment to explore examples of storytelling choices that I found confusing in developing Villanelle past episode 05, by taking a look on her 3 murders after she comes back from Russia.

In the Romania kill, we see Villanelle sitting on the bed halfhearted, downgraded into taking this job after her promotion debacle. The title card links us back to the scene in the beginning of the episode when she realizes she was conned. This is bullshit, this job is bullshit, and yet she has to do it. All elements are underlying the conflict in her search for autonomy, but then the song in the background evokes sentimentalism, underlying Villanelle’s growing feelings, subtly implying she feels bad about the act of killing. The scene composition sends mixed signals. Then it cuts to Villanelle ready for the kill with the upbeat recap intro music playing (????), she can’t focus, gets stabbed and cut to an angry tear-eyed Villanelle stitching up her own wound in the bathroom floor, fleshing out how she felt used and that she wants out. Then for a moment, the scene gets more intimate and she says - or even confesses? - she doesn’t want to do it anymore. We look down to a defeated and vulnerable Villanelle underlying the characters impotency or is it a moral struggle? The entire sequence purposely avoids committing to whether she failed because she didn’t want kill, or because she couldn’t kill. These two conflicts have completely different implications in interpreting and understanding the character development, but we remain in the limbo, confused as to what it could be.

To make matters worse, both these motivations: quitting ‘The 12’ and stopping killing, will be flipped when Villanelle pro-actively asks for a job and decidedly kills Dasha (who survived out of plot contrivances luck ). The scene with Helene is also interesting. When Villanelle meets Helene there is a conflict around identity and belonging. A particularly childlike Villanelle is again falling into tears as Helene breaks into her personal space with an embrace. Villanelle gives in to the embrace then pulls away at the mention of the word monster. That is not the identity Villanelle wants, nevertheless it feels good to be accepted. Then Villanelle asks an exasperated Helene for another job, not before being reminded she is a child, again powerless.  

“Look what you made me do” playing in the background.The song alludes to the power domination she is under and her motivation to break free, but the entire scene alludes to her conflict over her self-perception and belonging with Helene as a mother figure. I’m nor sure I follow what the character wants, I’m hanging on a spiderweb on the wall, Villanelle is crying, and can we please stop torturing this character into feelings for five minutes? Who is this reformed character? Jokes aside, there is one message that emerges, which is Villanelle doesn’t want to be a “monster” (violent killer, or more subtly violent in general) but she is forced to do it. This scene does succeed in softening Villanelle by emphasizing this new narrative leap following her seeming new found conscience: that Villanelle was made into a violent woman, but she is not naturally one. Her brutality is not transgressively hers anymore, it is a burden imposed onto her, which again places Villanelle’s character back into the comfort of the place designated to violent female characters: sad broken woman went murderous. Which stands in sharp contrast with Villanelle characterization so far, and what made her character iconic in it’s own right. The only way to make this narrative work is assuming killing her mother erased her psychopathy and gave her the whole bag of feelings and empathy. But if episode 05 fails to sell that, then the following episodes feels like tumbling down a rocky narrative slope. But the seed still lingers on my mind after reading paratext from the creators and cast: if you’re not trying to retcon Villanelle, then what does this all mean?

Rhian’s murder is a pivotal moment in Villanelle’s arc that fell into obscurity by jarring storytelling. Here the narrative seems to finally address the elephant in the room: when push comes to shove, can she control her violent impulses, which, no matter if inherited or cultivated, became a core part of herself? The ballroom tea dance effectively distances Villanelle from killing, but Villanelle and Rhian’s exchange show things aren’t so simple. More overtly so, Rhian and Villanelle subway brawl is all about giving Villanelle a chance to fully articulate the conflict around her subjugation to ‘The 12’ and her self-agency. Villanelle beats up Rhian, which could symbolically represent her refusal to be an obeying “sheep”; but, despite trying to get a grip of herself, her nature takes over and she kills, which could represent the uncontrollability of her impulse.  Thus, the interaction between these two scenes, ballroom dance and Rhian’s kill create a conflict surrounding Villanelle’s nature, self-control and capability to change that goes beyond the central conflict of each scene alone. Interesting, better explore it late than never, right?

The next scene seems to give us the resolution of this conflict, as Villanelle exits the subway, marching forwards, defiantly looking at us while we hear “Nothing matters if you bury it deep” in the background. It sends a message that Villanelle ultimately embraced her nature, and perhaps herself, and by doing so symbolically broke free from the oppression, emerging victorious. One could say she found her mojo back by killing on her terms. However, this never has any effects on the character, Villanelle is still as conflicted about her self-identity and still expresses her desire stop killing when we meet her again in the final scene as if her march after killing Rhian never happened. so what was the writers trying to say with the Ryan’s kill sequence when, despite disconnecting and contradicting the previous and following scenes with Eve, it seems to have no effect on Villanelle herself? What narrative are the writers committing to?

Villanelle’s character arc: the faithful translation of a uncommitted vision

Villanelle’s character arc, not that it is her privilege, gets muddled by deliberate ambiguity, character isolation, confusing motivations, and overall disconnected narrative as the writers refuse to commit to a vision. Thus, set-ups, pay-offs, conflicts and cause-effect are muddled, devoiding the character development of tangible meaning or aim – nuanced or otherwise. Despite it all sort of working moment-to-moment, it’s hard to keep up with what is being established overall, the ever shifting and clashing elements making it impossible to crack these characters and their journeys. In threading the fine line between the said and the unsaid, Season 3 had its characters bottling up so much that we are alienated from them. Simply saying “something changed inside her, and she is facing lots of things” doesn’t mean anything. Having the character state that she doesn’t want to kill (be it in general or for ‘The 12′) only to have have your character still actively killing both for ‘The 12′ and for personal reasons and ignoring the conflict it creates, shows the character’s motivations don’t mean anything. Villanelle was in search for an authentic self-identity but in the end who is she? What was this journey all about? Honestly, fixing Villanelle to allow a romance no one really knows. 

So my overall impression is that Villanelle’s character wasn’t lost in translation because there wasn’t any coherent vision behind it, but a succession of floating undecided moods and motivations tied together by powerful performances that leaves you feeling like Villanelle was redeemed. Thus, the audience  - and arguably the cast and creators - are left relentlessly rationalizing Villanelle so the character doesn’t fall apart. Some see Villanelle truly in love, some see her as obsessing, some see her as emotionless, some see her as a pastiche, some see her as blossoming into her true self, some see her as two different characters (Oksana/Villanelle), some just think she cries a lot, some think she is remorseful, some think she isn’t, some believe she is a psychopath, some think she matured, some think she was never a psychopath and some think she is outright cured. No one fully grasped what is happening with Villanelle, not because her character is complex beyond comprehension but because her character remained conveniently inaccessible. Ultimately, Villanelle’s character growth is a mystery the show teased at but did not commit to crack. 

#killing eve #killingeve #killing eve review #killing eve analysis #killing eve season 3 #killing eve s3 #killingeveperspectives #ke #ke s3 #villanelle #villanelle analysis #killing eve retcon #villanelle retcon

[montagnarde1793]

Ribbons of Scarlet: A predictably terrible novel on the French Revolution (part 3)

Parts 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Style Issues

 Stylistically, there’s a great deal of “tell don’t show” in this book, especially as regards the actual politics. The only things that are really concrete are the characters’ romantic entanglements and scenes of violence. This is a flaw that runs so deep that correcting it would mean writing a completely different book.

 One thing that they could have done that would have made it somewhat more bearable, however, regards the use of language. In a book written in English but that takes place in France and where all the characters are French, please, I’m begging you, do not randomly (and often ungrammatically) insert whichever French words and phrases you half-remember from high school French class into descriptions and dialogue. It doesn’t give the characters a flavor of being French, it gives you a flavor of ignorance.

The key word here is “randomly”: note that I’m not talking about things like terms of address, exclamations, etc., for which there is an established convention, or terms for which there might not be an exact equivalent in English. No, I’m talking about this kind of thing: “[…] running a hand through his short-cropped noir hair” (p. 352). Please, resist the urge!

 Also, this isn’t strictly a style issue, as the grammar is the least of the problems with it, but I don’t really know where else to put it... Each of the six parts opens with an epigraph. Here’s the one for Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe’s (p. 437) :

 “It was a sensual delight for l’homme rouge to see fall in the basket these charming heads and their ruby blood streaming under the hideous cleaver.”

—Archives Nationale [sic]

 I can’t believe I have to say this to a fellow historian, but just saying a quote is from the archives is bizarrely and baffling amateurish. It’s like saying a quote is from the library, or from a book or from the internet. Without further information, it’s about as useful a citation as saying it came to you in a dream. Why? Because it tells us nothing about the author or the date or any kind of context and therefore gives us no real way of evaluating it — though the lurid, sensationalist language doesn’t inspire confidence. Since the author of this section more than any other seems to take as a principle of novel-writing that whatever is the most over-the-top makes for the best fiction, I would say sure, why not, but as the authors also apparently want their depiction of “history” to be taken seriously… I mean, what is there to even say?

  Writing What You Want to Know

 There’s a problem throughout this book with characters talking about 18th France like it’s a place they’ve only read about in books rather than the only place they’ve ever lived and therefore the only reality *they* know firsthand. Now, obviously, the authors, like the rest of us, *have* only read about a 200+ year-old setting in books (or come to know it through various types of primary sources), but good historical fiction should be able to make you forget that, or at least come close.

I can’t entirely decide whether we’re looking at a failure of research here or of imagination — or just clumsy handling of exposition. I suspect it’s some mixture of all three.

 Allow me to explain. The clumsy exposition is a result of the aforementioned lack of trust in the reader as well, I suspect, of the few pages allotted to each author, which don’t allow for a more natural immersion of the reader into a world that is entirely alien to them but is made up of both new and familiar elements to the characters.

 The research vs imagination issue is more complex. I’m a firm believer in the updated adage “write what you want to know,” but if you’re going to do that, the intermediate step between wanting and writing is inevitably research. And well, there’s research and there’s research. For a novel especially, you don’t just want to be researching what happened, the concrete material facts such as who was present for what event or what a given figure’s relationship was to the people around them, but also people’s mentalities/sensibilities. To plausibly write from their point of view, you also have to investigate the reasons they might have believed what they believed and to take that investigation seriously, whether or not you agree.

 This was achieved better with some characters than others and again, I’m not entirely sure whether it’s for lack of research or lack of ability to empathize with certain points of view. Ironically, the chapter on Mme Élisabeth is probably the best handled. The author of that section says she wanted to be “fair” (back matter, p. 12) to her subject and I think she succeeds better than her co-authors, while showing that Mme Élisabeth, convinced of the absolute validity of the divine right of her brother, advocates at every turn for violently repressing the Revolution. She’s allowed to articulate her (frankly pretty abhorrent) beliefs in a plausible manner.

 Perhaps the author of this section is just a better writer than her co-authors, but I think there’s more to it than that. I obviously can’t read minds, but from the text of the novel itself as well as from the authors’ notes, I get the impression that we’re dealing with a dual problem of epistemology (i.e. how do you know what you know?) and politics. In either case, it’s not a coincidence if Mme Élisabeth is the best drawn character… and Reine Audu and Pauline Léon are the worst.

 First, on the epistemology side: whether consciously or not, it seems to me as if the authors largely started out with the assumption that they already basically understood their protagonists. Sophie de Grouchy is so ahead of her time she might as well be a modern woman, got it, no problem… Reine Audu is an avatar of the “mob,” (the author of her section’s words, not mine, back matter, p. 8), pitiable because of her poverty but with no real politics beyond that of hunger and resentment… Pauline Léon is a “well-intentioned extremist” to use TV Tropes parlance — you would think that label would apply better to Charlotte Corday, but the latter ends up being so saintly she basically converts Pauline Léon (in what is quite possibly the most maddening moment in the whole damn book)… and so on. If I’m right, the authors’ assumptions about these archetypes made them not really feel the need to dig too deeply into the question of what made these women tick, either through research or empathy.

 We don’t know much about Reine Audu or Pauline Léon, but there has been a fair amount of research into the beliefs of the popular movement and revolutionary crowds from Georges Lefebvre onward (most of it tending to dispel the lazy stereotypes on display here). The authors either didn’t bother with it or made poor use of it (as is evidently the case with poor Dominique Godineau, who does figure in the bibliography).

 The book does Pauline Léon a disservice on both sides, mischaracterizing her beliefs for good and for ill. They make feminism as a contemporary audience would understand it her primary cause and her support for the rest of the popular movement’s program (in which we learn that women and people of color are to be included, but not actually what it consists of...) accessory and easily disposable so Charlotte Corday can be proved right and “radical” men can prove to be the real enemy.

 (Which… I could roll with it if the idea was just that men of all political flavors can be misogynists, but as usual, the message is all men are potential rapists (except Condorcet, Buzot, La Fayette and Louis XVI, of course) but the further left they are the rape-ier they get. That’s not how that works.)

 Anyway, the point is, these are characters the authors seem to have gone in assuming they understood, either because they found them relatable or because they thought they knew what archetype they corresponded to. The author of the section on Mme Élisabeth, on the other hand, writes that this was a character that it took some effort to understand because the character’s worldview was so different from the author’s and that of her presumed readers. This was also the case to some degree with the author of Manon Roland’s section, who writes about having to grapple with her protagonist’s not being a feminist (a position that this author bizarrely seems to think was rare at the time). Regardless, in both cases, the effort to understand, along with the existence of more sources produced by the character they were attempting to inhabit, produced better results.

 But again, I think there’s also a political element. Remember how I mentioned that this book’s main flaw is its feeling of artificiality? (I mean, to the point that the rest of this critique is really just about understanding why it feels so artificial.) One of the moments that felt the most authentic to me was Mme Élisabeth’s extravagant shoe-buying habit, her feeling bad about it and her confessor reassuring her that it’s fine because she hasn’t taken a vow of poverty, after all. And I don’t mean ‘authentic’ necessarily in the sense of ‘historically accurate’ — I don’t know enough about Mme Élisabeth off the top of my head to comment on her shoe collection. But I did think: there, consumerism and guilt about consumerism are in fact much more relatable to the middle class authors and their presumed middle class audience than hunger and privation — or activism relating to socio-economic issues, for that matter. Which is how we end up, here as in a lot of other media, with a relatable royal and revolutionary caricatures.

 This is also a good demonstration of how research and imagination or empathy play off each other. Marge Piercy didn’t have more information about Pauline Léon than the authors of this book. In fact, she had less: she writes in the preface of her book that she learned that Léon’s mother was in fact still alive at the time of the Revolution when it was too late to change what she had written. Credit where credit is due, once again, this new book corrects that error.

But in every other respect, Piercy’s version is far superior, because Pauline Léon’s views as well as her experience are taken seriously. This is no doubt due in large part because Piercy herself has been an activist for various left-wing causes. Her activism surely allowed her to relate to her characters, but far from writing a simple projection from her own experience, it allowed her, just as importantly, to entertain the notion that there was something there to be taken seriously. And therefore, that it was worth researching what precisely these figures were fighting for and not simply the question of why people get caught up in “extremism.” That’s why Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe’s chapters are the best in City of Darkness, City of Light, while Pauline Léon and Reine Audu’s are the worst in this book.

Next time: inaccuracies big and small!

#en anglais #French Revolution #Révolution française

[bombardthehq]

Deleuze and Empiricism Bruce Baugh, written 1993, read 10/06/2020 - ??

a short article which characterizes Deleuze as an empiricist.

1. intro

Deleuze was an empiricist, but wanted to meet Hegels challenge to empiricism - so rather than arguing all knowledge is generalized from experience, he wants to "search for real conditions of actual experience" - he does not provide foundations for knowledge claims [Hume: Empiricism & Subjectivity, and an article on Hume in Histoire de Ia philosphie (Paris: Hachette, 1972-73) - find this!]

Deleuze takes as his starting point that "there is a difference between real difference and conceptual difference”

this difference is in "the being of the sensible" [difference & repetition]

2. non-conceptual difference

the 'naive' statement:

the concept makes 'repeatable experiences' possible, experiences which are identical to each other

the sensible is 'the actuality of any given experience' - something sensible can never be repeated, so there is always difference between actualisations

the sensible 'as a specific actualization' always falls outside the concept

the concept 'determines the equivalency among actualization', so they are all actualisations of the same concept, while the sensible grounds their difference

[this is a somewhat straightforward statement of particular vs abstract entities, and Deleuze seems to say that abstract entities, as generalities (every red thing is the same 'red', etc.) are never instantiated in particulars, at least not fully; ie. a nominalist view -- although perhaps what is considered significant here is the ordering of the world into the 'different' (each particular different from another) and the 'repeatable' (these particulars all instantiate the same thing) in the first place]

but...

if this were all, the sensible would just be a platform for actualizing the concept - our representations are just determined by the concept [as it is in Sellars, 'theory-laden observation', etc.] (so the sensible isn't noumena, its 'sense-perception'?)

in this case the sensible is 'explained by' the concept, ie. 'a priori conditions of experence', and therefore the a priori that constitutes knowledge

so whatever particularities of a representation aren't covered by a representation are just extrinsic & accidental, as are sensations themselves [don't quite understand this - wouldn't we require an a priori concept to grasp them in the first place?]

baugh offers a justification in parentheses: 'since..' other qualitatively similar sensations can be 'synthesized into a representation' that would be equivalent 'from the standpoint of knowledge' [confusing to me - different things are synthesized into the same representation? are representations repeatable?; I might need to read more about 'representations']

brief aside~

Representation, in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy ‘T.C.’, written 1995, read 10/06/2020

I couldn’t find a good explanation online so I took the opportunity to wipe the dust off of a physical book I had upstairs, using it for the first time in ten years. Trying to read it and type on a screen almost made me sick - perhaps I should have looked harder for an online explnation...

everything that represents is a representation, so... words, sentences, thoughts and pictures are all representations

representations can represent something that doesn't exist (lets say the word 'unicorn') - but all representations nonetheless do represent *something* [this problem isnt resolved in entry]

so we might say: a pictoral representation represents something by resembling it - but this encounters problems. Resemblance is reflexive (everything resembles itself) and symmetric (identical twins resemble each other), but a representation is neither.

Resemblance doesn't guarantee representation: this newspaper does not 'represent' all the other similar issues... [Nelson Goodman argues resemblance is not relevant to repr., Malcom Budd claims he can defend some resemblance theory of pictoral representations...]

Words obv dont resemble the things they represent, but we might see words as representing by linking to mental pictures

but pictures do not represent intrinsically... Wittgenstein gives a fun example: a picture of a man walking uphill could equally be a picture of a man sliding downhill. Nothing about the picture of itself tells us its a picture of the former or the latter.

So we have three choices:

the picture represents by virtue of being interpreted, so representations represent by being interpreted (not resembling something)

mental pictures 'self-interpret' - in this view representations are primitive & unexplanable

representations represent everything they resemble, so one representation represents countless different things - this too makes representations unexplainable

the 'mental pictures' theory also encounters problems, eg. what does a 'prime number' look like to my mind? how could 'we'll go to the beach next sunday' be a pictoral representation?

so there are many sorts of representation which each require their own explanation

recently representations have become very significant in philosophy of mind & there is hope that neuroscience & psychology could uncover a naturalistic explanation of them

back to Baugh~

so a representation isnt anything special - just anything that refers. Its most relevant to knowledge in the form of 'mental representations'... Deleuze seems to endorse a representation-centric theory of knowledge, where we only come to know things through our mental representations of them (I think this is quite common)

so if the naive account holds, similar particulars can be synthesized into a single representation, eg. several bluebells into one mental picture of 'the bluebell' (this being different from an abstract entity, eg. 'bluebells' as a class?)

so there are a few relevant steps: noumena, then I have a sensation of noumena, then I make a mental representation of that sensation (and might synthesize similar sensations together), and I finally know this representation

[I'm reminded of Ayer discussing Hume here, where impressions (ie. sensations?) must be 'brought under concepts' for us to recognize them by associating them with one another -- but this is a slightly different theory, ie. we have direct acquaintence with noumena and make concepts... This is perhaps really similar to some rationalist who stressed the a priori w/r/t sensation, who I'm not aware of - perhaps Kant! -- this would be why Baugh is careful to say 'a priori *conditions of experience*'] (reading this summary is probably much harder than reading Difference & Repetition)

so basically, a representation can be different from the concept (universal), and this is considered something accidental or extrinsic to it, ie. that this bluebell is shorter than the other is just accidental & its still a bluebell, I know it because it is a bluebell to me. The same operation plays out between sensation and representation (I don't really understand how) [its possible he actually means to explain the same thing in two ways, rather than describe two operations at differnet levels, ie. in order to create a representation (which 'leans on' the a priori concept) I have to discard the particulars of the actualized sensation and grasp only what is general to it, ie. I cannot know this bluebell, only what is 'the bluebell' in this bluebell

Baugh describes this view as 'the Kantian challenge to empiricism' (nailed it) he says there is 'an even greater Hegelian challenge' lurking behind; for Hegel, the particularities of the sensible are not dicarded as accidental, they are instead 'the self-articulation of the Idea', elaborating itself in particular form

for Hegel the concept already contains its particular empirical manifestation, that the two are together the way 'form' and 'content' are in a painting - the form is a 'synthetic organization' of the content

(so the concept is the 'content' and each particular its 'form' - just a particular way of organizing the concept)

Deleuze objects that even if the concept includes empirical content, it cannot already include this actuality (particular)

so for Kant, the empirical is 'what the concept determines would be in a representation if it occured' (so, the flowers of the bluebell would have to always be blue); for Deleuze, the empirical is this actuality itself (the bluebell before me itself), not 'the possibility of existence indicated by the concept' [Baugh writes: see pg 36 of 'Expressionism in Philosophy'; reading this page I dont really understand how its related... Perhaps "substance is once more reduced to the mere possibility of existence, with attributes being nothing but an indication, a sign, of such possible existence." - he's summarizing Spinoza's criticism of Descarte, but we might assume approvingly. Attributes are maybe the 'empirical', the particular - Spinoza argues against treating Substance as a 'genera' of which the attributes are 'species', [ie. where there are attributes 'of' susbtance(?)]; are we to take it that substance is a 'sum of attributes', ie. just empirical reality itself? if so, as Substance empirical reality is undivided, there is no distinction between things in it... (we're back to our point about the ontological equality of all divisions of noumena, ie. the tennis ball, half a tennis ball, etc.; in this case 'attributes' are proper to me, substance has no attributes because there are no distinct 'things' in it, its *just* substance, things are only distinct to me...) - but this seems to be the opposite point than Deleuze's, because for him everything empirical is different, and we make things the same by seeing the concept in them]

Against Hegel we argue that the difference between two performances of Beethoven's 7th Symphony cannot be included in the Idea, because the content (what is performed) is identical but the actual performances differ [is this a good argument? wouldn't the idea/content be 'a performance of the 7th Symphony', and the form be 'each particular performance'?]

for Deleuze the empirical is the difference between each actual performance; this difference makes the repetition of the same work possible

empirical actuality is therefore not possibility -- it is 'the effect of causes' ... 'which are immanent and wholly manifest in the effect through which they are experienced', as Spinoza's God (substance) 'is immanent in his attributes' [now the connection makes sense]

therefore, (here's the juice) "instead of being explicable through the concept ... empirical actuality, 'difference without concept'... [is] expressed in the power belonging to the existent, a sutbbornness of the existent in intuition" [cites Difference & Repetition pg. 23]

difference is a proprety of empirical reality itself, ie. each particular/actualization is different from the others, & it is the concept that organizes them into things which are the same as each other, ie. repeatable entities. each bluebell is already different from the other bluebells, the concept organizes them and declares that they are all bluebells, ie. have some 'being-bluebell' which repeats in them. [I feel like this doesn't overcome our objection to empiricism, ie. what makes this particular the particular? ie., what makes the tennis ball a particular and not half the tennis ball, the ball + some air, etc.? More generally: does it overcome Sellars, 'theory-laden observation', etc.? ie. do we really get the non-foundationalist empiricism promised?]

actually, is Deleuze talking here about noumena or sensation? earlier Baugh says Deleuze "locates difference in the 'being of the sensible'." this might change how we see it, ie. if noumena is undifferentiable stuff - not different or similar in any way - which sensation picks out as 'different stuff', and which are organized into representations which assume similarities between the 'different stuffs'... this makes sense to me.

I think this is the case: "[difference] is first given in sensory consciousness, a receptivity which grasps what comes to thought from 'outside' (DR 74)"

so 'empirical actuality' does NOT = empirical reality/noumena, empirical actuality = the world as grasped by sensation actualities =/= particular just-so, but where particulars are only existent in sensation

is this a 'third way' between foundationalism and 'theory-ladenness'? that noumena does not yet have particulars, but that my sense-perception organizes it into particulars, but this organization is *not* yet inscribed by the conept (theory, etc) - perhaps instead by my perceptive apparatus, the retina and so on? - the concept inscribes only the representation I make of this sensation. Sensation is a sort of passage between noumena and mental representation, perhaps the organization of the 'hailstones on the window' into associations, and their being 'brought under concepts' is their becoming representations, as Ayer says of Hume?

[calling this empiricism feels a little like splitting hairs by now, esp. if there isnt a foundationalist account of knowledge waiting - I'm not sure that Deleuze did call himself an empiricist, though]

Hegel all of a sudden makes our argument about the tennis ball! or something like it.

Hegel believes that the empirical ['pure actuality'] is 'empty' if it is not organized by the concept; every 'this' is as much a this as any other (ie. tennis ball, half a tennis ball...), so there is only 'indeterminacy'. but he takes this as a criticism of the point, ie. empirical reality cant exist without the concept because it would be empty, a 'negative universal', which cannot have being, is nothing. [This goes for both noumena & sensation; ofc Hegel feels that everything in nature is part of the Idea and so on]

This is where Deleuze disagrees with Hegel. Deleuze "rejects the epistemological model on which Hegel's argument is based", that "whatever does not make a difference to knowledge makes no difference" -- rather "the empirical must be thought even if it cannot be known, at least if knowledge is regarded as knowledge of phenomena" [does this line defeat my earlier conjecture about the empirical not being noumena, ie. the empirical is here not phenomena - but does that mean it is noumena, or simply not yet phenomena?]

for deleuze concepts are possible because of empirical actuality, in two senses:

actualities are "the condition of the application of concepts over different cases & so for universality in general" (different actualties are a platform for universal concepts)

it is the "real condition of experience" (I'm guessing: what we really experience; whatever we can expeirence is empirical actualities)

page 4, btw

NOTE: update 15/06/20 I think the bluebell example I use here may have been uninstructive. For Deleuze the sensible that is difference-in-itself is not objects - it is things like ‘substance’, ‘matter’, ‘energy’ (in their scientific uses); MATTER is difference-in-itself, which we coordinate into repeatable objects via the concept

3. multiplicity and externality

taking a siesta...

[whnvr]

Brain Drain

Ah yes, hello. It is once again time to drain these brains of mine. A couple of more thoughts on this ‘Morning Pages’ process. Firstly, I’ve decided to take the Artist’s Way wording to heart and think of this as a non-negotiable exercise and, at least for the time being, I am going to do the full 1500 words as a block before I move onto anything else in my day. I’m still going to take the approach of retroactively editing them before I sleep in order to be more formatted, but the main body of text will be done first as, based on yesterday, I think this will focus me far more than spreading the writing out. Secondly, the more I think about it the more experimental I realise this entire process is for me. It’s probably best thought of as a heavily modified and specified version of the ‘Artist’s Way’ approach, as one of the stipulations offered up by Julia Cameron is that these are to be for your eyes and your eyes alone - even then going so far as to suggest that these should be sealed away in an envelope so that even the practitioner does not read them. So in that sense I am both taking a more documentative, methodical approach to the process and I am altering the formula by hosting these in a public forum. I understand that privacy helps to remove any filtering one may do but I also believe that the potential for these to be read comes with its own benefits. To that end this feels like an experiment of being creatively candid in public which is simulatenously exciting and daunting given that it runs so counter to the common approach of creating behind closed doors. I’d love to explore these ideas further as this journal progresses and see how my relationship with creativity changes due to these factors. So, I guess I’ll start by taking the measure of my day, as I am very much enjoying the ‘touching base’ element of these Morning Pages. I definitely feel a lot more blocked than I did yesterday, and it seems as though there’s somewhat of a hump to get over when I do these within the first 500 words or so before I get into a state of flow with it - this was true of yesterday also. Maybe that is one of the possible benefits of this exercise, that 'ramping-up-to-flow’ stage is one I likely experience whenever I sit down to create and the Brain Drain may be a way of me overcoming that before I come to do any of the actual creative work of my day. It seems as though forcing myself to do all 1500 words yesterday put me into the same sort of flow-state I gain from working on a really successful piece of music, and then today I am once again reset back into that familiar place of being 'blocked’, which even now I am slowly working through and unpicking purely by writing these words. Looking back on previous creative work this would seem to make an awful lot of sense. How much more demotivating it is to have to wake up and untease the same blocked feeling each morning on projects that I care deeply about and am heavily invested in than it is to instead get that part of the process out of the way on an off the cuff exercise like Brain Drain each morning. Maybe attempting to ease such a block through the work we care about is where all feelings of 'I’ve lost it’ and 'this project is hard now. Therefore how much better it must be to work through those blocks in a format that we’re not quite so invested in. Even right now there is a part of me that is very much resisting this process. It is an anxiety that masks itself as restlessness and tells me to 'go and watch a film, Aaron. Why put yourself through something so hard?’. As it is the creative enemy I have decided to call this my personal Antagonizer. Other thoughts of the Antagonizer, or the 'me’ that feels uncomfortable and uncreative: - 'Go and make a milkshake Aaron. Don’t do this. It’s 30 degrees outside today. You really need to just cool down.’ - 'Get up and walk around. You really need to release some of this tension that you’re feeling.’ - 'Go and talk to a family member. Telling them about what you want to write would be much easier than simply writing it’. That’s right Antagonizer, I WILL use your criticism in order to help me hit this wordcount. Checkmate. Yesterday has taught me that past this feeling is where enjoyment and flow lie if I can only push through it. I imagine some days will be significantly harder than others, and I imagine that I will even have days where 1500 words won’t begin to scratch the surface of this block, but I would so much rather try to push through this block writing whatever comes to mind over-and-above pushing through this block attempting to create whatever passes for a masterpiece in my world. On to next steps then. I would like to select a new artist to listen to today as I get on with other work. This would also be a good opportunity to show off a little of how I organise my inspiration, despite how embarrassingly over-elaborate it is.

On Spotify I keep a folder of artists who I’m either interest in, inspired by, are important pieces of musical history, examples of current artists who are doing what they do incredibly successfully, or artists that I feel would be generally useful to experience. For each artist, I will create a playlist, and in each playlist, I will save that artist’s entire discography chronologically. I will then slowly work my way through each of the artist’s discographies, deleting what I’ve listened to and categorising songs that jump out to me either in terms of whether I love, like, or dislike them, the emotional qualities that I want to emulate in my own music, or the technical qualities that stand out as exemplary within each song. This allows me to simultaneously build a picture of what my musical tastes are, keep an accurate record of my listening history, and create song palettes for different emotional qualities that I wish to put into my own work.

(Above: the technical qualities of music that I have categorised. This forms up a reference library that I can use to further refine these qualities when I’m working on my own music)Here are the criteria I use to define each of these categories. Idea: the concept behind a piece. Narrative: the story told. Lyrics: how ideas are expressed through words. Mood: the emotionality of a piece. Expression: how ideas are framed and delivered through the articulation of the music. Musicality: the use of harmony, rhythm, and theory to communicate those ideas. Rhythm: the measure, speed, flow, and cadence of a piece. Timbre: the overall texture, tone, and sonic palette of a piece. Structure: the flow of a piece over time. Mix: how the timbre has been arranged as an ensemble. Master: how the piece has been polished. Delivery: the title, artwork, context, presentation, and moving image that contain the piece.

(Above: the emotional qualities of music that I have categorised as a reference library for how artists that I look up to achieve specific emotional qualities in their work). These are decidedly more abstract and are generally more subject to the songs themselves that are being added. For reference, here’s the current list of artists who’s work I want to study, all at various stages of listened to, completed, or not listened to at all: - Labelle - Car Seat Headrest - Snail Mail - Japanese Breakfast - Let’s Eat Grandma - Soccer Mommy - LCD Soundsystem - Big Thief - Have a Nice Life - Beebadoobee - Animanaguchi - 100gecs - Courtney Barnett - Chromonicci - Owsey - Dark Cat - Valentine - SOPHIE - Kamasi Washington - Prince - Aurora - Massive Attack - Haywyre - Maths Time Joy - Counting Crows - Jack Strauber - Blossom Calderone - Goldfrapp - Janelle Monae - Meteorologist - Easyfun - Saint Lewis - Julian Gray - Jade Cicada - Blake Skowron - 92Elm - Maxime - Stereo Cube - Chuck Sutton - Gemi - Queen - Laxcity - Duumu - Oh Wonder - Galamatias - Umru - Underscores - Brockhampton - Fleece - i Monster - Deaton Chris Anthony - Amy Winehouse - The Beatles - Sumthin Sumthin - Radiohead - Flume - Knapsack - Dodie Here are the artists who’s discographies I have completed via this approach: - Sidney Gish - M.I.A - In Love With a Ghost - Bowie - Pink Floyd - Baird - Rudimental - Iglooghost - Madeon - Porter Robinson - 100gecs I use a similar system alongside this over on Pinterest for visual work in order to better inform my visual style and aesthetic sensibilities. Here is how I define my visual observation: Interior & Exterior, the space of dwelling.

Colour, of which idiosyncrasy and primary colours are a main focus.

Tone, subtler than colour. An intangible quality communicated by shifting hues and gradiated layers.

Mood, the way an image feels.

Looks, clothes, & apparel: personal artistic image and identity.

Desolation, a quality not currently present in my own work, but one that I often observe and love within other work, as well as in storytelling and other environments.

Layout, the way things are arranged in relation to one another within a space.

Idea, the concept behind a thing.

Texture, the tactile quality of visual elements.

Form, the shape and bounds of a thing.

Presentation, the context a thing is placed within.

Render, the quality imparted by computer generated imagery.

Type, how words are displayed.

Pattern, the use of repetition.

As you can see, how I define sound and visual art share a fairly common language between them. Anyway, I divert. I’m going to select SOPHIE as the next discography to tear through and I am also going to continue working through the UE4 Beginner learning path, though before either of these I have some university paperwork/admin stuff to finish so I’d best crack on with that. Toodles!

#25.6.2020

[tonysopranosfeverdreams]

31. “Can I kiss you?”thank u @hyruling 💖

“Mac,” he starts, slowly, like explaining something very complicated to a very small child“it’s the middle of August. It’s going to be warm. It’s North Dakota, not the North Pole. There is literally no reason for me to bring a jacket.”

***

Dennis exhales heavily  as he feels the muscles in his back relax slightly underneath the heavy stream of hot water. He had been on edge for the better part of the day, having woken up at barely 5 in the morning, short of breath and only half-remembering his dream. He thinks he had been playing with Brian Jr. in a park that Dennis vaguely remembers from his own childhood, from countless afternoons spent with Dee on a pair of rusty swings during the summer days that their mother would sleep away with a bottle of gin (or wine, or Valium, depending on the particular day) on her pristine designer couch, leaving the twins to find their own sources of entertainment.

In the dream, Dennis remembers hearing Brian’s  delighted laughter, chasing him around the perimeter of the bright red slide that used to be Dennis’s favorite, remembers the sun glaring down so painfully bright that Dennis could barely see, the scene sun-bleached and searing in front of his eyes. Remembers turning the corner where he expected to find Brian, only to find his son was nowhere to be seen.

After trying in vain to fall back asleep for at least another hour, Dennis had  resigned himself to consciousness, opening his eyes to see the curve of Mac’s slightly curved back, inches away from where Dennis himself was resting. Bathed in the gray morning light, Dennis thought he could make out dozens of patterns in the smattering of freckles that covered his strong back and shoulders. He had wondered, absently, why anyone considered them imperfections, even as he remembered always covering his own with a generous layer of foundation, whenever a stray freckle dared to make an appearance after he accidentally spent too long in the sun without his sunscreen.

 Looking down at his soft, wrinkled fingertips, Dennis sighs and steps out of the shower, using a towel to dry off before stepping into a soft pair of sweatpants and  a worn shirt from some High School Baseball team (it must have been Mac’s, he realizes), before emerging into his bedroom.

He is greeted by the sight of Mac, hunched over the bed, fussing with the contents of Dennis’s navy vinyl duffle bag. He raises an eyebrow.

“Dude,” Dennis deadpans “what am I looking at here? Is this, like, some weird panty raid situation? If you were looking for some action, all you had to do was ask.” He ended the sentence with a playful smirk, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

Mac snorts, looking up at Dennis and grinning at him brightly for just a moment before quickly turning his attention back to the somewhat overstuffed suitcase, already filled with Dennis’s somewhat extensive collection of skincare products, along with all the other essentials  for a couple of weeks out of town. Normally, Mac would tease Dennis by saying that he needed at least three suitcases of his own just to hold his beauty regimen. Dennis, however, knew how Mac liked to watch him sometimes, when they were in the bathroom brushing their teeth for bed  or getting ready for the day, how his eyes would linger over Dennis’s reflection in the mirror as he lightly spread his night moisturizer over his face. Once, when Dennis had gotten really drunk at the bar, but refused to go to bed without finishing his skin care routine,  Mac had actually done it for him, sitting Dennis on the edge of the bathtub as he used the pad of one finger to softly, softly, dab his eye cream under his eyes. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Mac so concentrated, so still.

“In your dreams. Nah, man, it’s just I noticed that you didn’t pack a jacket yet, so I wanted to make sure you had one. I know you get like, cold, sometimes. So. You know.” Mac shrugged easily,  like it was the most natural thing in the world, although Dennis could see a patch of red coloring the tops of his ears. Mac cleared his throat and took out one of Dennis’s plaid button-downs, refolding it somewhat uselessly, before placing it back in the bag. Dennis furrows his brow.

“Mac,” he starts, slowly, like explaining something very complicated to a very small child“it’s the middle of August. It’s going to be warm. It’s North Dakota, not the North Pole. There is literally no reason for me to bring a jacket.”

“ You never know, dude,” Mac plows forward, stubbornly, placing his hands on his hips  as he fixes Dennis with  his most serious look. “I’ve been looking up a lot of weather forecasts for you and it’s like fucking russian roulette. One day it’s sunny, the next it’s snowing. I swear to God man, it’s like they don’t understand seasons out there or something. It’s fucked up.” He pats the neatly jacket lying at the top of the suitcase for emphasis.

Only then does Dennis realize Mac had packed one of his own leather jackets for him, which, although it does somewhat clash with Dennis’s own more elegant, refined fashion sensibilities, is bound to still have the scent of Mac’s cheap body wash and cologne lingering in the lining, and Dennis suddenly doesn’t feel so keen to press Mac further on the subject. Dennis raises his arms in mock surrender.

“Besides,” Mac continues, somehow managing to flatten out Dennis’s belongings enough to pull the zipper shut and flop himself down on the edge of the bed “you’re going to be out there for three weeks, so it’ll most likely be getting colder as time goes on. You’ll thank me later.”

Dennis sighs, sitting next to Mac at the edge of the bed. He didn’t appreciate the reminder of exactly how long he was going to be away. He knew, objectively, three weeks wasn’t a long time, and he had been the one to accept the invitation when Mandy had mentioned the possibility of  him maybe coming up for a few weeks to spend some time with Brian before he started preschool. Brian was his son, and he was charming, funny, and pretty fucking intelligent for a creature that who still wasn’t capable of putting his own shirt on right-side out. And Brian was kind. Even after it had gotten bad, and Dennis locked himself in his room all day, even after he had skipped every therapy appointment for the past three months, and come home at 4 in the morning reeking of alcohol and self-loathing, Brian, for some reason, still wanted to be near him. Brian  was probably one of the only people in the world who, no matter what kind of mood he was in, no matter what new extravagant way he managed to fuck up, still looked at him like he was one of his very favorite people in the world, like he knew that Dennis had something good inside of him still, even when Dennis couldn’t see it. He was the only person who had ever looked at him like that, except for-

“Hey,” Mac mutters, snapping Dennis out of his thoughts. He runs his fingers softly through Dennis’s hair, just pushing it back, before  lightly tapping the side of his brow with two fingers . “Everything okay in there?”

It’s hard for Dennis to put it into words. For the past few months, ever since he and Mac had crossed this unnameable, unmistakable line that they’d been hurtling toward for the past 25 years, Dennis has had a hard time articulating exactly what it is that he is thinking or feeling. The strangest part was how natural, how inevitable it all felt, waking up with some part of Mac’s body touching his, an arm flung over his torso, or his shoulder pressed against his chest;  Mac’s hand wrapping around his during their Lethal Weapon rewatches, thumb running soothingly over his knuckles. They don’t talk about it, and it’s not something they flaunt in public, simultaneously too different and too familiar for them to define, although Dennis suspects the rest of the gang must have picked up on it to some extent- must know them both too well not to have done. It would be easier to explain, comprehend, maybe if it had been more difficult, had come less easily to him.

That year he had been away, he had missed so much.

It’s hard for Dennis to put into words. So he lowers his forehead, resting it on Mac’s shoulder. For a few minutes they sit there in silence, Mac soothingly stroking through the hair at the back Dennis’s neck. Finally, Dennis lifts his head, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. He’s hit with the sudden reality that the night is about to end, that this is the last time he’s going to get to be alone with Mac for weeks.

“Wanna watch a movie?” he asks, groggily.

Mac glances at the clock on his bedside table, which reads half past midnight. Late, too late for a movie, really, considering Dennis needs to be at the airport by 7 AM for Dennis to catch his flight. Mac looks back at Dennis, studying his face for a moment, considering.

“Sure.” He stands up, offering Dennis his hand and leading him to the living room where he pops in one of their DVDs, some generic 90s action flick. Dennis doesn’t mind. Dennis falls asleep, faced tucked against Mac’s shoulder, during the opening fight sequence.

***

Dennis jolts awake, heart fluttering and bile rising in his throat, remnants of the same dream from the night before floating around his mind; Brian’s laughter, the bright bright light, the incomparable panic, realizing he had vanished. On the other side of the bed, Mac sleeps soundly, his chest rising and falling in a peaceful rhythm. Not trusting himself to lie still, Dennis pads out of bed to the kitchen, where the  oven clock informs him it’s just turned 3. Only  a couple more hours until he has to be awake.

Dennis pours himself a glass of water, and gulps it down, paces as he regulates his breathing, trying to remind himself how to inhale and exhale in a normal fashion.

“Dennis?” a soft, groggy voice calls him from the bedroom doorway, where he sees Mac. Confused, sleep-ruffled, Mac, features softened somewhat from the moonlight pouring in through the bedroom window.

Dennis is still, waits for Mac  to walk over to him, wrap one gentle hand around his wrist.

“Okay,” Mac says.

Mac walks him back to the bedroom, pulling back the covers on Dennis’s side and waiting for him to crawl underneath before he climbs in beside him, folding one arm carefully around Dennis’s waist.

“Mac,” Dennis whispers, an edge of panic creeping into his voice. The arm around his waist tightens.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

Eventually, he does.

***

This time, Dennis wakes to an alarm blaring, and to the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting in from the kitchen. The other side of the bed is unusually empty, for a change (Mac would always swear to anyone who asked that if God had intended for man to be up before 10 am, he wouldn’t have made it so fucking miserable). He dresses quickly, and emerges to find Mac sitting across from a cup of coffee, presumably for Dennis, while yawning into his own. Mac had apparently snuck out early to  pick up blueberry muffins from the bakery down the street, and Dennis picked at it on their way to the airport, mostly to appease Mac, who was insisting that the only way to fight motion sickness was to fly on a full stomach, something about an article he had read somewhere. He kept one hand on the wheel, resting his others on top of Dennis’s where it lay on his knee.

They end up making it to the airport just in time for Dennis’s flight to board, which was quite honestly a miracle considering the amount of time that Mac had spent fretting over whether Dennis had forgotten anything in his suitcase, almost insisting they stop at a pharmacy to buy Dennis a travel toothpaste before Dennis managed to convince him that Mandy was, in fact, a human person, who almost certainly had toothpaste he could borrow at her place until he managed to get out and get his own.

Their hands stay linked on the long walk to the main entrance,  where Dennis instinctively drops Mac’s, noticing the small frown  cross his face, unable to quelch the slight pang of regret he feels at the sight. Dennis has never understood the rules, with this type of thing. Dennis has never had anything like this. Maybe someday, he will be better at it.

They make their way to the security checkpoint nearest to Dennis’s gate with relative ease, the airport filled mostly with business people in crisp suits, and families heading south to their beach houses for their last trip of the summer, desperate to savor the last few weeks of freedom before they return to the dull drone of their daily lives.

“All right, well, this is it,” Dennis coughs, lightly, the two of them standing there, facing each other, seemingly at a loss for words. “Thanks, man, for like. Driving me in and stuff. I’ll text you when I get in?”

Mac’s wringing his hands, and he’s got this look on his face as he gazes back at him, like he’s taking in as much of Dennis as humanly possible in case he doesn’t get another chance. It makes something in Dennis’s chest ache. He has to look away.

“Yeah, dude.” Mac chokes a little on his words, “Of course. Any time.” He tries to play it off as casual, but  his eyes are unmistakably sincere.

“Anyway, I’ll be seeing you soon? Don’t you guys get too used to life without me again.” Dennis grins, very slightly, seeing something in Mac’s posture change, soften, with the joke. Mac gives a small, startled, genuine laugh. Dennis would make Mac laugh like that everyday, if he could.

“Never, man.” He promises, joking at first, but tone turning surprisingly serious when he adds “Not even if we tried.”

Dennis nods, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as he turns to enter the checkpoint, only making it a few steps before he pauses for just a moment. He  turns back around, somewhat wildly, making his way back to a very confused Mac, who’s currently looking at him like he’s lost his goddamn mind.

“Dennis, you’re going to miss your flight! What the-”

“Can I kiss you?” Dennis blurts out, interrupting him, before continuing, deliriously, like he can’t help himself, can’t keep the words from rushing out. “I really want to kiss you right now. Can I?”

In the span of approximately 3 seconds, Dennis swears he  watches Mac’s face go through an abbreviated version of every phase of medical shock, and just when Dennis is about to slink away with his tail between his legs, and quite possibly begin a new life as a recluse in the woods where no one will ever be able to contact him again, he sees Mac’s expression change into something so reverent, so happy it’s like he’s looking at one of the 7 wonders of the goddamn world, and Dennis thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Wordlessly, Mac nods, and the kiss is a quick, intense, thing, with Dennis clutching at Mac’s back like he’s the last thing anchoring him to this planet or else he’ll drift away.

Dennis boards the flight already dreaming about coming back home.

#macdennis #macdennis fic #iasip fic #what am i doing #who knows #my writing #my fic

[applebutterfemme]

If you don’t mind me asking: How many different auras are there? And what do each of them represent?

hi!! sorry it took so long for me to answer this! (been busy stressin). i’m not an expert from what i can tell there’s 9 main aura colors that are as follows:

yellow - logical, intelligent people with a tendency to be work-oriented. are content in their own company and do not get lonely often. usually great communicators and very perceptive. very drawn to intellectual pursuits and tend to favor eccentric interests and hobbies. their main fault is that they can be overly critical of themselves and others.

red - enthusiastic, energetic and adventurous people. they usually love trying new things and experimenting with different foods, locations, and partners. they tend to be quick to anger but are also very generous and always willing to help people they care about. people with red auras are usually very direct and upfront about their feelings and points of view. they also desire change and get bored being in one situation for too long. their main fault is that they do not handle authority well and feel the need to challenge leaders and authority figures. (i mean hey that doesn’t have to be a fault tho lol).

pink (that’s me!) - loving and giving people by nature, people with pink auras love being loved and giving love to others. they crave having a close circle of friends and family. they are very romantic and tend to stay loyal to one person. people with pink auras are highly sensitive to the needs of others and also tend to be very creative and imaginative. they usually have strong moral sensibilities that they stick by no matter what. their main fault is that they can be easily taken advantage of (boy i’ve been there).

green - highly creative and hard-working, with a tendency towards perfectionism. they are very determined and down to earth. their creativity takes the form of practical pursuits such as gardening, cooking, decorating, etc. they crave security, balance, and stability in their lives and seldom make spontaneous decisions. they are very generous and loyal and give practical advice easily. and naturally they are attuned to nature and love the outdoors.

orange - people with orange auras are gregarious, generous and social by nature. they love being in the company of others. they have a strong desire to please others and because of this make very thoughtful and generous friends and partners. they are usually good-hearted, kind and honest. like people with pink auras, orange aura individuals are also very attuned to others’ emotions. these are the type of people who make others feel at ease in their company. they can be quick to lose their temper, but they are also quick to forgive sincere apologies. in other words, they do not tend to hold grudges. one fault is that they have a tendency towards being impulsive and can rush into relationships and experiences too quickly.

purple - people with purple auras are also very attuned to the emotions and feelings of others, but rather than being social creatures like people with pink or orange auras they tend to be secretive and viewed by others as mysterious. they are very philosophical and love learning. they tend to be very interesting and knowledgeable. people with purple auras tend to prefer a close circle of friends who share their passions and interests rather than a large circle of friends. they are very loyal and loving partners. they connect well with animals and nature, some may have a propensity for taking in strays.

blue - this is the rarest aura type and tends to only show up with people who have strong personalities and a strong sense of self. they are very articulate and usually have little trouble conveying their thoughts, ideas, and views. people with blue auras are very good at balancing their hearts and their minds. they also tend to be great organizers and enjoy inspiring others. they are usually the ones who calmly and rationally solve arguments, and value truthfulness and direct communication in all of their relationships. they sometimes tend to take on too much and neglect their own well-being.

gold - people with gold auras tend to have a rich appreciation for beauty and art. they love entertaining and being surrounded by people. they enjoy being the center of attention and tend to attract many lovers and friends. they also enjoy giving their time, love and energy to others. they tend to be charismatic and have the ability to make others feel valued in their presence. some faults of people with the gold aura is that they don’t take criticism easily and have a tendency towards pride as well as a reluctance to ask for help if they need it.

silver - those with silver auras tend to be very gifted at whatever they choose to pursue. they have an innate sensitivity and intuitiveness and tend towards spirituality. they can relate to people easily and tend to be found in mentoring roles. these individuals are very versatile and adapt well to new situations. they are also excellent at making plans and following through with them. they tend to attract many admirers but they choose their company wisely. success seems to come easily to them.

these are just the main aura types; there are also different meanings for different shades of colors. for example, someone who has a crimson red aura may have different personality traits than someone whose aura is bright red. and many people’s auras are a combination of the main 9 colors. your aura can also change depending on where you are in your life and what’s important to you at the time! i used this link for most of my research (as well as some help from my best friend lol) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aura-colors-meaning-ginni-aneja

sorry for the super long answer, i hope it was somewhat helpful! 💟

[theinsatiables]

First Impressions: High Life

The way Wim Wenders tells it, it was his co-producer on the set of Paris, Texas who insisted she’d found her. The perfect assistant. A young woman who would, according to Wenders, guide him “safely through this journey into unknown territory.”

Thirty-six years later, and calling to mind Wenders’ West Texas desert—how it cites the pure vacancy of a lunar landscape—we enter real space. But not the sort of space one hurtles through, dutifully. And not the sort of space flecked with stars and dust, sanctifying some great, beautiful beyond. No. This space, as conceived by director Claire Denis—that young woman who once guided Wenders safely into unknown territory—is decelerated and grisly, spiraling yet carnal. It’s the filmmaker’s English-language debut, a difficult albeit awing movie cleverly titled High Life. In it, Denis administers somatic doom at nearly every turn, telling the story of Monte (Robert Pattinson), the sole survivor—along with his infant daughter, Willow—of a twisted, failed mission where the government has sent death row inmates into space to collect energy from a black hole.

Monte and Willow’s life is incremental. Hermetic and isolated. One tiny step at a time, one lullaby, one sleep. Like the three notes of a familiar tune, reprising over and over, Monte and Willow’s life is eerie-anticipant. Somehow amateurish. They are the only ones.

What is it about fathers and daughters that feels predisposed to imagery of what’s left? Or of what’s been left behind. Of winging it while on the road. What is it about a father and daughter that so easily resembles two souls on the lam? Seeking and lost in a lovely way, but not free.

**

Paper Moon (1973) is a movie played by a real-life father and daughter. Ryan O’Neil and Tatum O’Neil are Moze and Addie, con artists during the Great Depression. Polly Platt’s unequaled production design and her material vision of Midwestern flatlands, windswept and wide open, give rise to an environment—much like space’s inhospitable wonder—that evokes the end of something or the very start. The film’s poster features father and daughter, sitting on a crescent moon, cold sober among the stars. Theirs is a high life, too.  

The poster for High Life. Two hands, holding on. The tagline reads “Oblivion awaits.” Like some fugue-state invitation playing into that funny feeling which exists so long as the outcome isn’t fully known: anticipation. That the father-daughter pair are in space is clarified only through the father: his fingers are gloved in his space suit. Hers are pudgy. A baby’s wrist marked by how it doesn’t totally taper. A baby’s grip marked by its remarkable strength. We cannot help but remark on the baby’s grip. So strong, we’ll say.

While Moze and Addie are sitting on a crescent moon, as if the moon were a swing bench, Monte and baby Willow are holding hands among lush, medicinal-green growth. Little yellow mushrooms sprout. This zone is damp, misty, cared for. The sort of green not associated with space but with sativa. Green is High Life’s incongruous strange. It’s the film’s attempt at Arcadia, so long as Arcadia—in true Denis form—is portioned and untenable. Denis’ vision for High Life is both void and overgrown. This paradoxical, amazingly plotless torpor represents only a small portion of why High Lifedefies category. Of why High Life is near impossible to metabolize. Of why High Life’s use of green is matched only by its use of red and magenta (green’s opposites on the color wheel). The inmates’ uniforms are dyed a maroon-red. (André Benjamin plays Tcherny, an inmate who wears his uniform while nursing the garden.) The ship’s interiors radiate an oxidized red. (Juliette Binoche plays Dr. Dibs, a wanton doctor wearing a Renata Adler braid, who navigates those interiors, deliberately, lasciviously.) Red, in this case, represents what’s cosmic but also what’s bodily. Glowing, pulsing, planetary light. Blood, fluids, insides, throb. The red and magenta, and the green, recall Paris, Texas. Harry Dean Stanton as Travis Henderson, lost in the film’s opening, wearing his red baseball cap—a panorama of green mountains behind him. Nastassja Kinski’s Jane Henderson. Her bright pink sweater. That room with red accents like a phone, the lamp, the curtains. She’s separated by a pane of glass like Monte in space, in his red room, also separated by a pane of glass: his helmet, the shuttle.

**

Why does High Life feel like a Western? Its irreverence? Or maybe it’s all this talk of Wenders. Sam Shepard, who co-wrote Paris, Texas (finishing it over the phone), feels close to a Monte. That cowboy sensibility that neighbors monastic, that feels like poetry. Like Monte himself, who practices quiet, measured restraint. Who keeps to himself. Whose proximity to violence is indistinct.

In Denis’ Nénette and Boni (1997), Gregoire Colin, who plays Boni, also has shorn hair and sharp features. He is a brother caring for his estranged sister, Nénette, who re-enters his life seven months pregnant. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, “They form, if you will, a couple. Not one based on incestuous feelings, but on mutual need and weakness: Boni provides what emotional hope Nénette lacks, and her pregnancy adds a focus and purpose to his own life.” Denis gives the family a feeling of fringe. Denis portrays family as an impression; as the people we can count on to interrupt our lives.

**

What is it about fathers and daughters, in film, that seems suited for the sky? That certain stupor that being up there delivers. There’s Armageddon, for one. Fly Away Home and Interstellar, too. Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann was certainly, perfectly, out there. Monte is an outlaw. Moze is a conman. In one of High Life’s earliest lines, Monte is tending to Willow. He says, “Don’t drink your own piss, Willow. Don’t eat your own shit. Even if it’s recycled. Even if it doesn’t look like piss or shit anymore. It’s called a taboo. TAH-BOO. TAAAAA-boo.” The first word he teaches his daughter explains who he is, in part, or how Monte is categorized: someone, something, banned. And yet, the way Pattinson says TAAAAA-boo, seems to hint at what High Life raises and dismisses. The closeness between father and daughter. This isn’t a story of what gets passed down.

While Wim Wenders was preparing production for Alice in the Cities (1974), the first film in his road trilogy, a friend took him to see Paper Moon. Wenders—shaken by the film’s similarities to Alice (the black and white; the road; the searching men Philip and Moze; the girls, nine-years-old yet persuasive, tough equals)—nearly cancelled his film. Eventually, and thanks to the advice of Samuel Fuller, Wenders rewrote the script to differentiate it. His poetic, plainspoken script which brings to mind Platt’s dusty, terrestrial design for Paper Moon, is perfectly articulated by a line in Alice. Describing the view from a plane, as captured in a Polaroid—the plane’s wing, its shadow, the sky’s vast cozy of clouds—Alice says, “That’s a lovely picture. It’s so empty.”

**

In an essay by the writer Siri Hustvedt, titled “My Father Myself,” Hustvedt describes how as she got older, there was a shift in her relationship with her father. “He seemed unavailable to a degree that startled me,” she writes. “It could be difficult for him to say, so sometimes he would do.” Hustvedt recounts a tearful, painful visit to the orthodontist where she was fitted for braces. On the way home, her father stopped at a gas station, left the car, and returned with a box of chocolate-covered cherries — her father’s favorite. “I was eleven years old and, even then, I felt poignancy mingle with comedy.” She didn’t like chocolate-covered cherries and couldn’t possibly eat them having just been fitted for braces. “The mute gesture has stayed with me as one of infinite, if somewhat wrong-headed kindness, and as a token of his love.”

Monte calls Willow his “little package.” She was delivered to him; he carries her though he didn’t carry her. Monte is a reluctant father who studies his daughter’s approach to life, like some kind of loving, curious reconnaissance. The soothing doesn’t come naturally. There is no intense identification. He handles her undecidedly. Theirs is a solitude that feels both invented, but also, a means for recovery. Wordless gestures that seem to say, we’re in it together. The film’s last line—“Shall we?”—submits to this notion, as if answering High Life’s tagline. “Shall we?” is less of a question and more of a pact.

**

My father recently spent a month in the hospital, in isolation. One evening, I went to see him after work. I stayed with him for four, five hours, not saying anything while he slept. He was in agony—of which he tried to show little. But there it was—the pain—in how he slept, curled up and head covered by his blanket. He’d become thin. He wasn’t eating. There were tubes and beeping sounds, masks, and hospital gowns. I sat on a daybed near the window, my palms growing sweaty in latex gloves. It was dark and we felt deserted. Like the entire world outside my father’s hospital room no longer existed. Or if it did, once, it was now abandoned. That particular hush, like an aftermath, like the phone lines had been cut. That hush, like the science of a hospital room—engineered to monitor life, yet devoid of it, somehow. There was nothing to do but be the company and comfort my father’s subconscious needed. My mind wandered to a singsong Bengali refrain my father used to say to me before bed, when I was a kid. It went:

Akashey aakta chand, arekta chand koi?

(There is a moon in the sky, where is the other moon?)

And I would shout: Eiijey!

(Here I am!)

Sitting in the hospital, on the daybed just five or so feet from my father, I kept wanting to whisper, Eiijey! Eiijey, Baba!

In that dark room, we felt like two moons alone in the sky.

-Durga Chew-Bose

#Film #High Life #Claire Denis #Robert Pattinson #I'm Crying

[reeses-picks]

Ariana Grande’s thank u, next is a formidable display of self

In many ways, thank u, next feels like a sequel to its predecessor, but where Sweetener was a study in optimism and musical daring, thank u, next is a formidable display of self, centering on Ariana Grande the personality and the artist, marked by not only her contradictions but also her musical sensibilities. One is left with an admiration for her self-assuredness amidst such harrowing times.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ - a Reese’s Pick

The universe has a cruel way of functioning: five and a half months ago, Ariana Grande was coasting on the highs of the release of her fourth record, Sweetener, and her whirlwind engagement with comedian Pete Davidson, following her exit from a “toxic” relationship with Mac Miller. Sweetener itself, which contains 2018’s best song, was a masterful display of relentless optimism and musical daring, featuring a smile that never slips and some of Grande’s career-best work (with help from Pharrell, who was perhaps cleaning out his hard drive).

In the next two months, that would all change: Miller would die of substance abuse in September, and Grande and Davidson would dissolve their engagement the following month. Both men are haunting presences on thank u, next, Grande’s new album, whose title track, an ultimate ode to self-love, has already been considered mythic. In many ways, thank u, next feels like a sequel to its predecessor, but where Sweetener was relentlessly optimistic in its subject matter and remarkably audacious in its production, thank u, next is a formidable display of self in both senses. The record puts her front and center: a woman of human contradictions and precocious musical sensibilities, buttressed by fellow musical talents with a knack for capturing the times.

Not only is thank u, next an account of the next chapter of Grande’s life, but it also feels like a logical next step musically: after having help exploring the various facets of her voice (and, by extension, herself), she – still a relative novelty among her competition – is making her own Ariana Grande record, bearing a writing credit on every one of the record’s 12 tracks, on which she is also credited as an executive and vocal producer. It is her personality that the record orbits around, which somewhat accounts for the staggering thematic and tonal differences between some adjacent tracks: she confesses to constantly wanting companionship (“needy”) but later asks her beau for some space (“NASA”); she verges on manipulative on one track (“make up”) but earnestly apologizes on the next (“ghostin”); the vulnerable tone of the title track stands in stark contrast to the flippancy of “break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored”. These conflicting traits aren’t particularly endearing, but their appearance on the album humanizes the woman behind them, peeling back the curtain a bit, if only briefly.

In Grande’s company are some of her closest friends and most longtime collaborators, namely songwriters Victoria Monét and Tayla Parx, producer Tommy Brown, and Max Martin et al., who turn Grande’s ideas into clever turns of phrase and accompany them with up-to-date melodies. Standing next to Pharrell creations on Sweetener, the Max Martin half of that record always felt sort of inferior, never as risky or as smart as its counterpart, and while his tracks on thank u, next aren’t much different, the slick productions on highlights “bloodline” (brass section!) and “bad idea” (that outro!) are a reminder that we may yet see the end of Martin. Brown and Monét, who orchestrated some of Grande’s best songs (“Honeymoon Avenue”, “Moonlight”, “Be Alright” etc.), are instrumental in the making of thank u, next, making strange but intriguing wordplay in “NASA” and “make up” and turning therapeutic acceptance into chart-topper in “thank u, next”. Andrew “Pop” Wansel, who wrote Nicki Minaj’s stunning “The Crying Game”, helps pen the defiant thesis of Grande’s present M.O. (“fake smile”) and articulates falling in love with the idea of a person with equal parts grace and savagery (“in my head”).

Despite this number of people working on this album, thank u, next is easily Grande’s most sonically cohesive and consistent full-length effort. The album frequently toggles between tempos, temperaments, and musical schools of thought, but its soundscape is decidedly and reliably current with trap at the center, sprinkled with instantly recognizable references (“Highlight of my life, like that Fenty Beauty kit”) and Instagram-worthy lines (“You could say ‘I love you’ through the phone tonight”). This speaks to Grande and her team’s ability to capture the zeitgeist, in ways that most of today’s female pop frontrunners cannot. Also contributing to the of-the-moment nature of thank u, next is the comfort with which Grande moves between various vocal modes and ways of delivery, which she inherits from Sweetener and further hones on this record. Her usual acrobatics can be found on “imagine” and “fake smile”, but most of her performances on thank u, next feature her voice coasting lightly just above the production, a sort of weightlessness achievable only by an artist who, in her words, no longer has much to be afraid of. What truly places her in the new pop landscape, however, is her proficiency in styles previously inaccessible to vocalists of her ability, particularly rap, her capability of which she showed tentatively on some Sweetener cuts and which she shows with aplomb here. “7 rings” sounds like a rap song with a featured vocalist, Grande’s performance immediately drawing comparisons to Soulja Boy and Princess Nokia (rousing plagiarism accusations from them as well). Throwback or theft, that her rap is so convincing is a testament to her abilities. Elsewhere, “fake smile” uses the same sample as Wu-Tang Clan’s “Tearz” – Wendy Rene’s “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” – to preface a personal but presently universal refusal to hide one’s unhappiness.

Unsurprisingly, the cuts that feel the most weightless end up being the most harrowing. “needy” sounds almost like it’s designed to be fleeting. Done and dusted before the three-minute mark, the album’s second track is, in many ways, a micro-transgression unto itself: it’s a forthright admission of a want for emotional connection that society considers damning, but it argues that to criticize that craving would be a self-own (“I know how good it feels to be needed”); not least of all, it knows its job and that it’s achieved its objective, so it does away with the final third of the song entirely. Still, nothing on this record beats “ghostin”, where it feels something has clicked in Grande’s head. To an extent, “ghostin” is the converse to “needy”: “ghostin” almost purposely crawls through its 4 minutes and 31 seconds, and it seems designed to linger. In a particularly Swiftian move, the Mac Miller sample at the beginning of the track tells you all you need to know. With not so many words, Grande begins to break down her feelings of guilt for her still harboring feelings for another one and at one point even suggests feigning ignorance, which we all know now is impossible. The song’s emotional climax comes at the final minute, where words are long forgotten and we are left with the auditory equivalent of a bed of clouds that keeps ascending until it disperses, as if mirroring Grande’s own moment of catharsis.

Wrapping up thank u, next is the cheekily, instantly memorably titled “break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored”, whose position on the album closely mirrors that of “Formation” on Lemonade. But rather than taking on any social commentary, the former offers Grande’s own commentary on the preceding chapter of her life and a window into her humor, and might even serve as more fitting a conclusion to the record than the title track would. It is rather unexpected that after such a harrowing time in her life, she would be eager to jump right back into the game (with such a dangerous premise at that), but upon another look, the track’s appearance reveals Grande as remarkably self-assured, confident that she will never fall down such a spiral again – or maybe she will, sad as that sounds. Nevertheless, there’s not much she’s afraid of anymore.

#ariana grande #thank u next #7 rings #buwygib #buwygfib #sweetener #Yours Truly #Dangerous woman #reese's picks #music review #music reccs #album review

[fauxcreche]

Northanger Abbey: A self-aware satire

Throughout the entirety of Northanger Abbey, the reader is persistently followed by an omnipotent voice of Ms Austen. The use of satire and parody in Northanger Abbey gives a perspective into both the author’s opinion of the time, as well as the lengthy tedium of day-to-day life in the upper echelons of that same society. In hindsight, Northanger Abbey highlights not only the aforementioned tedium, but the social pressures on women to marry into prestige and the limitations of the imaginations brought forward by Gothic novels, particularly in the context of entertainment for young women. The objective of this essay is to illustrate Jane Austen’s use of satire and parody, in order to discuss how with the use of these devices, she comments on the absurdities and impossible formalities of the society at the time.

To further expand on the position taken in the introduction, it is necessary to state that that to an audience in the 21stcentury, it is not immediately obvious that Jane Austen is being satirical and parodying her own style of literature. As the novel goes on, it becomes evident that the choice of interactions and relationships formed upon Catherine Morland’s arrival in Bath, serves a specific purpose. The chosen secondary sources will further elaborate on this position.  

Catherine Morland is introduced to us as an unlikely heroine. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine” (Austen, 1993:3). It is not often that an author displays an outright contempt for their main character but, in in Northanger Abbey is plays the role of a writer mocking character types that they have often used in past works, referring specifically to Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, where both protagonists, who are also both women, take centre stage as the undeniable victors of each story. Northanger Abbey deviates from this by putting forward a society that is well aware of itself and the expectations placed upon its participants.

Tara Ghoshal Wallace makes the following statement in accordance with Austen’s style Northanger Abbey, “In Northanger Abbey, however, Austen does more than invite her reader to join in a collaborative effort to debunk the conventions of the sentimental novels, more even than to witness the emergence of a new kind of novel based on probabilities and psychological realism (1988:262).” While this essay will not delve into the psychological implications of the use of parody and satire in the novel, it can be said that Wallace points to the one of the important aspects of Northanger Abbey: it mocks itself.

The mockery is especially evident in Mr Tilney and Catherine Morland’s courting. While Catherine presents as exaggeratedly naïve, feminine and in awe of how different Bath is from her countryside upbringing, which, is a characteristic of satire, Mr Tilney is the calm, assured and kind young man, who instead of colluding Catherine, he rather treats her as somewhat of an equal.

Catherine’s interactions with the Thorpe siblings is the most obvious of the satirical strategies employed by Austen. Both Isabella and John Thorpe play their roles in Bath’s upper echelons dutifully: Isabella is graceful and gregarious, but not too loud and is never seen in a sombre mood. John is an exemplary man amongst men, unafraid to share his opinions- despite never really being asked to elaborate when in conversation with others. Following their introduction to Catherine, the Thorpe’s appear to be well contacted and respected in the circles that they frequent, which may be why Isabella takes such a fondness towards Catherine almost immediately- although, it is fair to add that both characters are also exaggerated in their actions and articulation.

As previously stated, Northanger Abbey is aware of what and who is it mocking. It is a novel of a young woman’s entrance into a more realistic and demanding world, but the novel does lack a certain structural consistency that makes it less believable as a serious satire. Much of the comedy can be found in character’s such as Mrs Allen, an aged woman concerned with her attire and not much else. Although Mrs Allen wishes to interact with familiar acquaintances in Bath, it is not for leisure or in order to elevate loneliness (since Mr Allen himself is often away from his wife, without much explanation), but rather to gossip about her dresses and the latest fashions of the time.

To continue with the line of thought that was introduced in the introduction, it is clear that Jane Austen is not only commenting on the lack of depth amongst the people in these higher societies, she is also quietly commenting on how imprisoned they all are by strenuous formality. This is especially evident in how casually everyone lies to each other, without second thought. Such an example is in Chapter 13(1993:75), where John Thorpe, in an attempt to steal Catherine away from her walk with Ms Tilney, goes to where the Tilney’s are staying and makes the Tilney’s aware that Catherine will not be able to join Ms Tilney on their previously scheduled walk.

This is a turning point for Catherine: previously, she had taken John Thorpe’s word, charmed by the promises of Blaize Castle, a place that Catherine is fond of seeing only because of her enjoyment of Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. Mr Thorpe had lied about seeing Mr Tilney driving round with another woman. “Well, I saw him at that moment turn up the Lansdown Road, -driving a smart looking woman” (Austen, 1993:59). Mr Thorpe was able to manipulate Catherine, as he knew, with added corroboration from Isabella, that her heart was set on brining Udolpho inti her reality, as she has been most comfortable inside the pages of a Gothic novel.

In the former part of this essay, I illustrated how the protagonist is a satirical device used by Jane Austen to comment on the feeble way in which female characters are portrayed in romantic literature; often, there is always a man who opens up a world of possibilities, and not the woman themselves. In this instance, and particularly at the proposed visit to aforementioned Blaize Castle, Austen now comments on the limitations of the Gothic novel.

I will re-iterate that this essay is not focused on the psychological aspects of Northanger Abbey, but its author’s use of satire and parody to comment on the society in which they existed. Continuing with the previously stated, Waldo. S Glock (1978:35) adds this to my position: “[…] we must still remember that Jane Austen’s practice suggests unequivocally that she is as much concerned with design and pattern as with the reproducing the fabric of human life.”

While celebrating her, Austen also mocks Catherine Morland’s lack of reality. While the protagonist is naïve and impressionable as a young woman would be at that age, Austen does appear to convey an irritation with Catherine’s fixation with Udolpho. Furthermore, when Catherine Morland is caught in Henry Tilney’s mother’s bedroom, a stark realisation comes over her: she is an ordinary, young girl, not destined for any sort of nefarious mysteries. She sees that there are consequences for living in books, there by becoming the example for not the limitations of the Gothic novel. “The theme of growth into knowledge and wisdom develops by way of contrasting layers of successive experiences, each contrasting variation on the theme affording a sense of balance and security to Jane Austen’s novelistic world” (Glock, 1978:36).

As a reader, Northanger Abbey may initially go over one’s head, with its fast pace and gregarious social climbers but upon close analysis, the audience are drawn into a self-aware staple of literature that employs satire and parody in order to discuss and comment on what was wrong, and in some ways, continues to be wrong within the upper echelons of society.

References

Austen, J. 1993. Northanger Abbey. Hertfordshire; Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Glock. S. W. 1978. Morland’s Gothic Delusions: A Defense of Northanger Abbey. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 32(1):33-46.

Wallace, G. T. 1988. “Northanger Abbey” and the Limits of Parody. Studies in the Novel, 20(3):262-273.

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[opaldirect-blog]

Gold Plated Opal Necklace

During the Cretaceous time allotment (65-140 million years earlier) deserts were an inland sea flooding with life. The sea a tiny bit at a time died down building up the system of silica that would shape the opal of today. During the mid-tertiary time allotment, changes on the planet's climate caused measures of dissolvable silica to be released from the leftovers, finding its way down through breaks and faults, over the long haul hardening after some time. This setting continued molding ordinary and significant opal. The striking group of concealing in the opal is from the uniform course of action of the silica particles. The degree of the particles chooses the concealing as light refracts through it. Rather than various gemstones, opal doesn't occur in long veins or core interests. Or maybe, little gatherings may be spread over an enormous district and isolated into profitable or pearl quality and typical. Opal is found in various combinations, anyway significant opal addresses only somewhat dimension of the hard and fast mined. 

Dim Opal:

Dim opal is the rarest and most significant everything being equivalent and is normally found as a bar of various shades in a dull body. Furthermore, there is in like manner Semi dim and dim Valuable stone.

Dull opals from Lightning Edge, Mintabie and Andamooka in Australia speak to 99.9% of all opals on the planet.

Shake Opal:

Shake opal, found in the fields of Queensland, is named a solid opal and occurs as thin veins of profitable opal in parts and sorrows of ironstone. During taking care of, the stone is cut leaving the ordinary host shake as sponsorship. The opal occurs as either a solid piece of concealing over the ironstone or showing up as bursting bits of concealing all through the stone.

Light Opal (White or Smooth):

Light opal can be found in Coober Pedy, Andamooka and Mintabie in South Australia. A full extent of tones can be found, with the establishment concealing either white or light blue.

Jewel Opal:

As the name prescribes, valuable stone opal has a stunning, diamond appearance, with a translucent or direct establishment. Exactly when seen on a dull surface the tones spring to life.

Picture Opals:

Picture opals are assumed in light of the way that their model casings an image of a thing or person. A respectable imaginative personality is now and again required to envision the article/person.

Fire Opal:

The articulation "Fire opal" is usually used to portray the unquestionable orange valuable stone opal that begins from Mexico, some of which have a play of concealing, though many have just an orange or blushing base with no play of concealing.

Opalised Fossils:

Canvassed in the layers where opal mining happens are the rest of the pieces of a world over a hundred million years old, brought to the surface by excavators searching for gemstones. These fossils join the rest of the pieces of dinosaurs, shells, all around developed animals, plants and fish. A segment of these fossils have been opalised, a system wherein silica-stacked waters have a tiny bit at a time replaced the characteristic material.

Ordinary Opal:

Ordinary opal is assigned non-precious stone quality opal, by and large dim and showing no play of concealing.

System Opal:

System opal is when opal is infused in the stone wherein it was surrounded. Veins of significant opal soak sandstone or ironstone filling openings and crevice of the host shake.

Built Opal:

Built opal as the name proposes, is conveyed in the lab and has a practically identical structure to that of important opal.

The going with discernments can be made to isolate among ordinary and made opal:

a. Built stones show progressively splendid tones and greater concealing patches;

b. In made opal, concealing grain cutoff points are outstandingly eccentric;

c. Fabricated opal has an undeniable snakeskin patter;

d. The material shows an undeniably mentioned bunch of concealing in light of the way that the diserse instances of standard opal can't be replicated.

Cruel Opal Groups:

Cruel opal packs are orchestrated into three assessments: Top, Center and Low.

Each Top group has a Master Stone (the best stone in the bundle). Concealing is the basic criteria for assessing.

You can buy undesirable opal in a couple of one of a kind conditions:

a. Mine Run – Direct from the digger himself. These stones have not yet been cut or assessed.

b. Off Cuts – The digger has emptied all alluring opal and you are sold what is left. With off cuts, you can as a general rule figure out what you will be prepared to cut.

c. Rubs – The opal stones have been cut and ground into basic shapes, in the wake of having removed most of the garbage.

Andomooke Framework:

An inexorably porous opal found in the mining fields. Out of the ground it is pale, yet in the wake of treating it with a carbon shading process doubtlessly an authentic, dim opal.

Yowah Nut:

This unprecedented and unusual opal, up to 5 cm over, looks like a round or oval nut and is an ironstone improvement.

Opal shapes inside the nut either as a solid bit or even more for the most part, in concentric layers infused with the host shake. The nut must be part open before the substance are revealed and it may be part with the objective that indistinguishable portrayals are conveyed.

Opal Doublets:

Opal doublets, as the name prescribe, is a thin layer of profitable opal set onto a help, when in doubt a touch of dim ordinary opal or ironstone. Conveyed in light of the fact that the opal is too thin to even think about evening consider creating a solid stone, doublets are a pitiful and unassuming way to deal with buy a striking piece of significant opal without the cost required of a solid.

Triplets:

Like a doublet, anyway has three pieces sandwiched together, with a small piece of important opal set up to a sponsorship and a sensible quartz top set on top to verify and draw out the shade of the opal.

That conlcludes segment 5. In the last instlament I have united Parts 6 and 7. We make sense of how opal is regarded and I have fused a dictionary giving implications of those terms and words which you may be new to.

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