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ms-demeanor · 8 months

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i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

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junosswans · 1 year

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Batfam headcanons: Report Writing

I was thinking about nonsense then it occured to me "how would the batfam write their mission/patrol report?" Like, they must have very distinct personal style that you could recognise even through the standard bat-computer font. So I wrote this!

Dick: When Dick was still Robin, he absolutely HATED writing reports. "I write enough reports at school, B-man! Why would you make me write more??" He would attempt to wriggle out of the task by bribing Alfred with snacks or offering to do chores in exchange, because anything is better than sitting straight in front of the computer and typing (they usually indulge him and let him be). He'd also slip in a few swear words and gloss over details when he HAD to write something. His reports were short and written in a slightly childish manner. However, after becoming Nightwing and moving out, his report have made drastic improvement because hey, you definitely get a lot of practice in writing admin papers as a cop. His writing style is now concise and straight to the point, filled with professional jargons and divided in clear bullet points. All the photos are properly numbered and labelled, in a typical forensic science style. (Though admittedly, he still hates writing reports. But it's something that he wouldn't let his siblings know.) He's however, chronically late in submitting his reports, because he always has a lot of things to do and he has a bad case of procrastinating when it's something he dislikes.

Jason: Jason entered the clan with a lot of anxiety (Will I be accepted? Will I ever measure up to Dick?) And a lot of insecurities. So he treats report writing very seriously and is very detailed and thorough. He tries his best to adhere to the format Bruce gave him, and would triple check his spellings and grammars (another insecurity of him). As Red Hood, he still writes his reports (reluctantly) in the same cautious manner, and he would spend a lot of time profiling the victims and the perpetrators, because it always feels personal to him. He sympathises with both sides, understands their struggles and darkness intimately, and it shows in his written report. His reports on the person of interest's background and psychological analysis is always the most detailed and on-point. He writes in paragraphs usually, and he has a broad vocabulary that leans more on the literary side. Tim comments that he feels like he's in highschool lit class whenever he needs to read Jason's report for something, since Jason's prose always has a poetic and emotional tone to it.

Tim: Tim writes his reports dutifully and very seriously, but his seriousness doesn't always translate to a piece of good report. As a kid who has the tendency to ramble, is nosey, AND has photographic memory, Tim's reports are filled with details that nobody knows whether they are necessary. He would go off and transcribe all the dialogues he heard (including the passers-by), list out all the items in the nearby trashcan, and note down how the fast food shop down the corner has a buy-one-get-one-free promotion on hotdogs. He digresses a lot, but since his eyes for details did help crack a case once or twice (definitely more than that), Bruce lets it slip. His formatting are a mess, sometimes using bullet points and suddenly switch into paragraphs and then somehow becomes a tree diagram, his reports are definitely an eyesore (Bruce, regrettably, doesn't let this slip). As Red Robin, he's made a lot of improvements on his formatting (company paperwork does that to you) and is a bit more brief, but he still has the tendency to note down the oddest things in his reports. His reports also has the most amount of photos.

Cass: Cass is still pretty new to this whole writing thing and computer thing, so she gets a lot of leeway in her report writing. She is allowed to hand this work to others (if she's on a teamed mission), or use photos, pictures and handwriting/doodling to make her point (Bruce would later code & transcribe them to make them searchable on the database). Though given the freedom to not do the work (which her siblings are deeply envious of), Cass actually likes to write her version of reports as she treats this as an opportunity to practice her literacy. Her reports look like a collage journal with very sparse, simple writing. She also has the tendency to just put in a few seemingly unrelated keywords and let others figure out the significance behind them. They're usually very insightful and useful to the case. She also likes to draw in her reports, which everyone finds endearing. Babs taught her how to draw scientific diagrams and label the items, which she puts good use to. Since she's very observant to the human anatomy and body language, the family relies a lot on her reading when there is multiple suspects.

Damian: As "the proper heir to the robin title", Damian has a no-bullshit attitude on his reports. He submits them on time, is clear in his writing, and the format is impeccable. He has a very goal-oriented view on things, so his reports tend to focus largely on the outcome of cases instead of the process (a polar opposite to Jason's and Tim's reports). He would write a lot on how and when the culprit was captured, and the consequences that await them, while some other members tend to focus more on the process of deduction and puzzle-solving. Somedays, when he is particularly annoyed with others, Damian would slip in complaints into his reports and make sure everyone KNOWS he's upset. It's like a public call-out post.

Babs: As Batgirl, Babs writes the clearest and most condensed report out of everyone, cause she learned the best from her father. She has a keen eye on analysing material evidence, and would notice the smallest scratch on things and document them faithfully in her report. She likes to use abbreviations however, and that often confuses Damian and Cass ("what does OAN even mean?? Is that a type of wire??"). Sometimes she'd abbreviate the weirdest things just to confuse everyone else and they can beg her to explain them. As Oracle, she doesn't write any reports. YOU write reports to Oracle.

Steph: Steph is passionately against the idea of report writing. In her opinion, if she delivers the result there shouldn't be a need to write pages long of boring, bland descriptions on how that result is achieved. To various degrees of success, she would bribe others into doing the work for her ("work smarter, not harder, baby!") But when she has to write something, she would write in a very casual tone and often types with voice input. Therefore, her reports are filled with odd typos and occasionally hilarious choice of words (not because she couldn't be professional, but she doesn't want to be). Bruce is mostly frustrated but is also secretly glad that she's not forcing herself to do something that she doesn't want to. And she is true that she always delivers.

Duke: Duke is mostly neutral towards the aspect of report writing-- he's not particularly fond of it, but he understands that it is something important. Thanks to his superhuman vision, Duke is very alert in observing his surroundings and the environment. He would map out very detailed diagrams about building structures as well as machine components, which makes his reports very reliable when it comes to any kind of crimes related to alien items and technological innovations. Duke also has a large network from his Robingang, so he's very informed in the rumours and hearsays on the streets. He would include most of what he's heard in his reports so that others could follow up on them at night.

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thagomizersshow · 11 months

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Content warning: blood, gore, sexual content, sexual assault, parasites and body horror

This is a heavily modified version of an essay I originally wrote for a literary theory class and then turned into a script for a video essay that I never finished.

Enjoy :)

One of the things that really bothers me about the critical conversation around Alien (1979) is the long-running idea that the alien and its various forms are so enduringly horrifying because they break the sexual/gender binary.

The worst example I can find is this excerpt, from Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ripley, by Ximena Gallardo and C. & C. Jason Smith:

The Alien species disregards the sexual difference that is so essential to our definition of what it is to be human. The male body is repositioned to correspond to the female body: the male mouth becomes the vagina, the chest the womb. The dichotomy male/female is broken down, as all humanity is female (a womb) in the face of the alien.

I get that this was published in 2004, but Gender Trouble had already been around for over a decade, so that’s not much of an excuse for weird ass gender essentialism in academia.

Art by AlexanDraxleean ↑

The idea that the xenomorph and its various stages are scary because the gender binary is being broken down is comically disregarded by the simple fact that trans people (like myself) ALSO find the damn thing scary. We are living embodiments of a shattered binary, but we aren’t shitting ourselves over our own existence (usually). I contend that the alien is scary not because of a violation of gender or sexual norms, but because it utilizes a much more widespread and visceral kind of horror: that of the parasite.

Most other animalistic horror monsters rely on the fear of the predator: monster wanna eat you → you run away → get caught → get eated. This is an oversimplification, obviously, and if you want a really good exploration of how the fear of predators effects us, read Val Plumwood’s Eye of the Crocodile. For real, my fav ecophilosophy book.

No, instead of the more straightforward horror presented by the predator, the alien uses the inescapable, cloying, and violating horror of parasites and parasitoids. Where the predator hunts, kills and eats, the parasite clings, defiles and tortures. When the predator catches you, you’re dead. When the parasite catches you, you don’t know what is going to happen. Is it going to bury inside you? Is it going to feed on your body? Is it going to lay eggs in you? You literally don’t know, and that’s what makes them so scary. Hell, they could get inside you without you even knowing. It isn’t just the fear of death, it’s the paranoia of violation AND the fear of the unknown. This makes Alien akin to a Lovecraftian horror in many ways, but instead of the fear of race-mixing or disabled people, it is the fear that whatever you do, wherever you go, there are beings that can enter your body and use it against your will.

Hell, the whole premise of the movie, at least according to the screenwriter, came from the thought “what if ichneumon wasps laid eggs in us instead of in worms?” That basic idea is glossed over constantly in analysis of Alien in favour of more Freudian explanations that rely heavily on antiquated notions of gender essentialism. When early screening audiences were throwing up in their seats in 1979, were they thinking about how “this monster really transgresses gender norms :/” or were they thinking “fuck what if that thing was growing inside me?!?!”

The only time I agree with these old school interpretations is when they view Alien through the lens of sexual assault. The fear of sexual assault and the fear of parasites are fucked up sisters in a way. They are both fears of bodily violation that induce a strong paranoia, and their symbologies easily feed off one another. Sexual imagery (e.g. a penis shaped head with a mouth on the end) combined with parasitic imagery (e.g. a creature grabbing a hold of you and doing unknown things to your body) are both niggling at the part of your brain that is repulsed by internal invasion.

However, I’ve seen arguments that Alien specifically targets fears for cis men being sexually assaulted, and I think that’s a very limited approach to the movie. The idea of a creature latching onto you, ignoring your autonomy, and using you as an incubator is pretty universally scary if you ask me, and I think for most people, that idea connects to a primal and often unaddressed fear of parasites far more than sexual violation. Just look at videos of botfly maggot removals and tell me you don’t get the same yucky feeling as when you watch Alien.

Even for people like me who find these creatures fascinating, I still get that skin crawly feeling when I look at images of them for too long. And it isn’t just a short-lived disgust reaction happening, it’s also that feeling of paranoia that it could be happening to you right this minute. This is all a part of what is called the behavioural immune system, which is the brain’s first line of defense against infection and why most people are grossed out by signs of disease on the body (pus, rashes, body odours, etc.).

We really don’t like thinking about parasites, and it shows across our culture. Deadly predators of all kinds have been worshiped all over the world, but is there anyone in history who paid fealty to the tick? Who invoked the name of the roundworm for strength? Are there cartoons about anthropomorphic scabies and their kingdom of flesh? (If any of these exist and I just don’t know it, please tell me.)

I’m not saying that this is an innate feeling in all of us (the human experience is about as diverse as it gets, and I’m sure some people just don’t have this reaction and never have) but I do think it’s widespread enough and so infrequently felt that when this parasite repulsion is triggered it makes for a horror that is far harder to shake than any socialized fear of gender violation. Far more than any Freudian psychosexual imagery, the horror of the parasite is what I believe has made the xenomorph such an enduring cinematic monster.

I wanna leave this post off with one of my favourite quotes about parasites from Annie Dilliard’s book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

It is the thorn in the flesh of the world, another sign, if any be needed, that the world is actual and fringed, pierced here and there, and through and through, with the toothed conditions of time and the mysterious, coiled spring of death.

#crit tag #movies #alien

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steampunkforever · 3 months

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On watching Strays I couldn't help but ask "How do these movies keep making money?" The answer to that is "they don't," as Strays has a reported box office ten million dollars under its budget. Even so, it wouldn't be a filmpost if I didn't subject you to several rambling paragraphs on a film you'll never see, so let's get started on a structural analysis of the talking dog movie where they get to say the F-Word.

The premise is basically "what if we took a children's movie like Disney's Bolt (remember Bolt?) or Homeward Bound and peppered in a bunch of sex jokes?" Not to fall into the same camp as people who get tattoos of innocent cartoon characters flipping you off, but I understand the novelty of the concept. Twisted hello kitty edits have been a thing for a long time on this site. And I'll grant you, it's funny! Just not in this execution.

The issue with Strays as a film is that despite the adult content within, it's still structured at the level of a children's movie. Which is to say that in spite of the mature content, the film itself is not set up to do more than passably amuse an adult audience any more than Madagascar 3's jokes that kids wouldn't get does. And that's fine for Madagascar 3, where the intent is for children to laugh at the penguins doing funny things as their parents appreciate being able to bring the whole family to the theater. I just can't see myself as an adult walking into my local cineplex and picking this one, even if I were the type to enjoy the humor within.

There are two target demographics for this film: 14-year-old boys having a sleepover at the friend with cool parent's house that are looking for an edgy film, and college age adults looking to get mildly high and have a pleasant experience that pairs nicely with their cold pizza. Which makes sense seeing that the Honest Trailers guy wrote the film. But there are better bro comedies with Will Ferrell in the leading role that you could put on instead. Heck, there are better bad Adam Sandler projects you could put on, and I say this as someone so snobby as to name all my pets after literary figures.

About ten years ago there was a puritan censorship video service (originally disc based, but has now transitioned to streaming and been joined by other services like Clearplay and Pureflix) called VidAngel that filtered your choice of objectionable content from popular films, sanitizing them. Were you to censor Strays like this you'd go from an edgy 90 minutes to a tight 45 that your 7 year old niece would love.

#filmposting #strays #strays 2023 #will farrell #honest trailers

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adarkrainbow · 7 months

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I am currently re-reading Jack Zipes' "Fairytales and the art of subversion". Well I am re-reading this book's chapter on French fairytales, and I do plan on reading the rest of the work. And I have to say I might have been a bit too harsh about Zipes. I still wouldn't recommend him as a way to understand French literary fairytales - but at least now I understand why he is wrong, despite seemingly getting so many things right.

Because there ARE many right and true things in this book's second chapter. The summarized chronology of French literary fairytales ; the double inheritage of French folklore and Italian literature ; the enormous influence French literary fairytales had on the 18th and 19th century Germany... It's all there, correct and good.

But the main problem of Jack Zipes' interpretation and description of French fairytales remain. However I don't blame Zipes for it because this book was clearly written in the 80s United-States, for the 80s Americans, and as such yes there are things debunked now and yes Zipes evokes things that "nobody" does when in fact some people have done them before - just in Europe (like the whole segment in the first chapter about nobody caring about the social or historical analysis of fairytales). Similarly, the main flaw of this second chapter is very simply put a widespread misinformation, a common incorrect belief, but that is unfortunately still surviving to this day, and that is no surprising to see in 80s works - this misconception still is seen today, and its debunking is relatively "recent", at least recent enough to not be widespread.

And here's the problem: Jack Zipes writes his chapter and his analysis with one preconception and one thesis. Perrault (and others like mademoiselle L'Héritier or madame d'Aulnoy) wrote their fairytales for both adults and children, but with a strong focus on children ; if they added morals to their stories it was because these fairytales were moralistic education tools ; and the main goal and nature of these fairytales was a social and cultural endoctrinment to shape the "adults of tomorrow".

The idea that Perrault and others wrote exclusively or mainly for children was indeed widespread thanks to the 19th century mishandling of fairytales as a whole ; but this is false. And from this false basis that fairytales were mainly aimed at children, Zipes creates an analysis that could have worked... But is actually false, or very, very superficial - because to consider that Perrault and co.'s fairytales were aimed at children is a superficial reading of the stories with a strong lack of critical view or context-knowledge.

The real deal of the thing is this - yes, the "wave of fairytales" started out for adults and ended up for children, as Zipes himself explains. But Zipes (and all the others he based himself on) are wrong in believing the fairytales were aimed at children since the beginnings. Perrault, madame d'Aulnoy, mademoiselle L'Héritier and the others, did NOT write for children - they wrote for adults. And yes, Perrault evoked how his stories were "for children"... But he also wrote about how his stories had been written by his teenage son and not himself - but a careful look proves that Perrault's fairytales were only aimed at children as a "pretense", as a sort of stylistic ornament, as a literary "game" so to speak, the same way Perrault had to pretend the stories had not been written by him but collected by his youngest son - it was all part of the... "persona" if you will. It was only by the mid 18th century, with the renewal of the "literary French fairytale (non-orientalist)" that some authors started to think "Wait... Maybe we could use fairytales to teach children while entertaining them! Actually do pedagogic fairytales instead of just "playing pretend" at being literary moralists!". The most defining and prominent of those authors was madame Leprince de Beaumont, the first to ACTUALLY write literary fairytales for children, as in REALLY for children, not as in "Yeah, we say we write for children but clearly only adults will read it". One might argue Fénelon did wrote, at the end of the 17th century, pedagogic fairytales for the child he was supposed to teach (THE ROYAL HEIR!)... But unlike Perrault or d'Aulnoy's fairytales, which were public, Fénelon's story were private and only published after his death, in the 18th century.

As for how Perrault and d'Aulnoy's stories, written by adults for adults, ended up as "classics of childhood literature"... Well its simple: the Blue Library and the peddling books. The Blue Library, the most famous and renowned collection of cheap books sold to the uneducated masses by peddlers, did their money by taking great classics or massively popular works and printing out heavily edited or simplified versions of them - and the Blue Library immediately took all the most successful literary fairytales of the salons, and printed them out, and shared them massively across France for the non-aristocratic folks, and the uneducated folks, and the poor peasants... Which is how the stories became part of French popular culture, but which is also why the entire literary context and socio-cultural meaning of these tales was completely lost. How could the barely-alphabetized countryside family understand the refined puns, the courtly caricatures and the book references made in these stories (often very simplified, chaotically edited or misprinted?). People only remember pretty princesses and talking cats and fairy godmothers, and thus they classified it all back into "children stories" and, in a full circle, these literary stories invented out of the folklore became in turn folktales of the French countryside...

So yes, Jack Zipes' chapter on French fairytales is wrong, and spread misinformation, but it isn't his fault - he just did with what was widespread at the time, and he did his best as a foreigner dealing with works even misunderstood in their own country, AND his work is simply a bit outdated. Its not bad, it just... Didn't age well

#fairytales #jack zipes #fairy tales and the art of subversion #fairy tales #french fairytales #perrault fairytales #madame leprince de beaumont #la bibliothèque bleue #french fairy tales

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decepti-thots · 9 months

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so re: death of the author in fandom, are you talking about fans theories that add to or ignore textual material in canon? This isn't something I've paid attention to at all in fandom and now I'm kind of scratching my head trying to figure out how you do Death of the Author Wrong.

Ohhh haha, people use it extremely wrong. The most extreme example I've seen is the person sincerely, not-smooth-sharking convinced it was people calling for "problematic" authors to be (at least metaphorically, in a social-death sense) killed, which is a very silly hyperbolic example, but common ideas include:

The idea that it is not possible due to DotA to provide a reading of a text that is unsupported and can be shot down; that DotA means "all readings are equally valid and true and canon is never real", and every reader can say whatever they like and it's "canon". (Think, idk, the text says the curtains are blue in a totally unambiguous way, a fan insists their reading the curtains are red is "equally valid" because "just because the author wrote that they're blue doesn't mean they are, death of the author!", for a silly example.)

The idea that death of the author is about stuff like "it's cool to still buy HP merchandise, because JKR being the author doesn't matter if we decide she's 'dead'!"- in other words, that "death of the author" means acting as though the author literally doesn't exist in real life. Discussions about boycotts of living authors are not about literary analysis, needless to say, and DotA has nothing to do with it.

A belief that DotA represents a kind of empirical fact about How To Correctly Do Literary Analysis and that if you are not taking that perspective, you are doing analysis wrong. The idea that literary criticism is like physics where you learn the fact of the second law of thermodynamics and it's always true and not taking it into consideration is a factual error. DotA, and poststructural analysis as a whole, is not exactly an uncontentious subject! (Nor does every post-Barthes theorist who uses it to some extent take it in one single direction.)

The first one, IME, is the most common thing, but YMMV.

I find the main issue tends to people hearing about DotA and being like "oh, this is A Fact that you get taught when you learn how to analyse texts and it's always true in every way it can be true". (I'd also say there's a lot of general confusion around the idea a reader can bring extra-textual knowledge of e.g. an author's biographical details that can influence their reception of a text even if it isn't necessarily inherent to the text itself, but that's the sort of thing I find poststructuralists argue a lot more about among themselves, lmao.)

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vivithefolle · 2 years

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The thing about Rowling is that she bases a lot of characters on people she knows or knew irl. So you have these perfectly decent characters and she just doesn't have a clue how they work internally.

Exactly! I've answered a Quora question on that, previously.

Below, the text of said answer:

Did J.K. Rowling base any of her characters on herself or people she knows personally?

Pretty much all of them?

She said there was “a bit of her in every of her characters". Which tends to happen naturally when you write.

(For example, being autistic, I tend to write characters as very introspective and remembering small details about a lot of stuff and being able to perform literary analysis in the middle of conversation. I've been informed that this is not how the “average" human works. So when I write a character, I often end up making them autistic because that's literally how my brain works. It's unfathomable to me that you wouldn't be paralyzed with fear by the idea of making a decision. Taking an opportunity on the fly, throwing your whole world off-balance with just one gratuitous action? What folly is this??)

According to Rowling, “I married Harry Potter. I married a very brave and gutsy person. And that's who Harry is”. Okay, so before Sauron and Acidic Virtuesignaller come crawling out the woodwork, I would like for us all to consider the implications: so Harry is “a very brave and gutsy person", and that's all. That's the only qualifier for Harry. To be Harry you need to be brave and gutsy. It's not like there's a construct in this series that's literally called The House Of The Brave. With a magic sword that only comes to those that are brave and gutsy enough to wield it. Which three people in the books have used that sword? Harry, Ron, and Neville. If only Harry was “very brave and gutsy" then what are we calling Ron and Neville? Hermione? Ginny? Luna? Snape? Dumbledore? Ok so there we go, if the requirement to be Harry is “be very brave and gutsy" then I can point to half a dozen characters that have the same characteristic ON TOP OF having an actual personality.

Ron was based on Rowling's childhood friend who owned a blue Ford Anglia. Based on Rowling's later comments about having “dated Ron" in her youth, we can infer that Rowling wrote into Ron some of the bad behaviours of guys she'd dated, probably with the idea of having him outgrow them (but considering how much she seems to enjoy writing Ron getting punished for these behaviours…). Some of the things she'd felt about poverty are spoken from Ron's mouth in GOF, and the Locket's tirade is a dead ringer (albeit with the genders reversed) for what she reported her father told her about how he'd rather have had a son.

Hermione is according to JKR a caricature of how she was when she was younger. “I wasn't that clever, but I was that annoying on occasion". I doubt JKR got invited to a ball by a super famous athlete though.

Snape was allegedly based on her chemistry teacher, John Nettleship, who was autistic and I can believe would have made jokes that wouldn't necessarily land as such (solidarity 😔✊). However I believe Snape was very much a caricature and an exaggeration instead of a “100% authentic" portrait of John Nettleship, even if he later came to call the character “me". Rowling needed her Mean Teacher archetype after all.

Cuthbert Binns, the ghost teacher of History that is excruciatingly droll and boring, seems to be a summation of Rowling's thoughts about his subject. Also a convenient way of forgoing worldbuilding.

Mothers are a very important part of Rowling's world. Lily's sacrifice defines the entire series, Molly Weasley is a strong presence through the books and sends Bellatrix's fanatic arse to Hell, Merope Gaunt's refusal to live shapes Voldemort into who he is, Narcissa Malfoy lies to Voldemort in exchange for her son's safety, even Barty Crouch Jr's mother made the ultimate sacrifice by switching places with her son in Azkaban. The only mother figure that isn't positive is Walburga Black, and even she gets to have a humanizing moment when Hermione theorizes that she was kind to Kreacher in DH. All this takes on a whole new meaning when you learn that JKR wrote the first Harry Potter in the wake of her mother's death.

By contrast, father figures are much less revered, and again it is directly a result of JKR herself: she had a notoriously bad relationship with her father, Peter James Rowling. One can postulate that Peter Pettigrew's name wasn't all a matter of alliteration, and that James Potter's redemption was the sort of thing Rowling might have wished of her own father.

Pansy Parkinson was a conglomerate of all the girls who bullied Rowling at school.

Umbridge was based on a work colleague - though she's apparently another conglomerate character - who hid nastiness behind a syrupy sweet exterior. Umbridge is often said to be the worst villain in Harry Potter - because while few people ever experience a genocidal terrorist stalking them, many have met someone like Umbridge who abuse their power just because they enjoy feeling in control of others.

The Death Eaters in general were based on the IRA, but took more cues from Nazi Germany in Deathly Hallows.

#vivi answers #harry potter #hp meta #harry potter meta #meta #jk rowling #ron weasley #hermione granger #molly weasley #peter pettigrew #james potter #severus snape #dolores umbridge #death eaters

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merrivia · 1 year

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your essays of literary analyses for captive Prince fascinate me, amuse me, entertain me (in the "wow, this is so cool" sort of way and "maybe I'll read this whole thing again"), educate me, and get me thinking harder about my own reactions to the books. I believe that I do my own level of analysis as I read, seeing many but far from all of the same things, and stopping as I go to say, "hey, waaaait a minute" or go back and reread relevant passages earlier in the book or in earlier books. but I am very far away from being able to put things together the way you do.

I do a few simple things, like collecting multiple examples of something (I did that for showing that Damon is the kind of guy who gets "annoyed" about things that might or might not send the rest of us into a rage), and another too-long one why I thought "I speak your language better than you speak mine sweetheart" comment happened.

… I do have a question. Here it is. How much of the content of your essays are you consciously aware of while you're initially reading,? How much prep do you do for your essays – – outline? A few of your own cliff notes😁? Or or do what I mostly do, to the detriment of my material but not yours, and just start writing?

Oh wow, thank you so much that’s such a huge compliment! I’m always so happy to hear people enjoy the metas/essays I write, genuinely. I would love to read the posts you mentioned you wrote! I’ll hop over to your page and find them after I post this.

So I don’t really do any prep at all! No notes, no outlines, no plans. I’ve re-read the books 4 times solidly in a row, and want to do a 5th soon (I’ve given myself a little bit of a break, so I don’t lessen my love of it through overfamiliarity!). I think at this point my mind just picks up on patterns and starts to weave things together, subconsciously? Something will just occur to me and I’ll get the urge to write about it. I’m a big believer in that coming from the texts; I still find lines or paragraphs in the books so interesting and intriguing and the way Pacat writes…it’s so rich that there are many aspects to explore.

I also really believe in the power of reading around and seeing where that takes you too. Originally my essays were completely just what came from my mind, but I’ve started leaning towards letting other ideas shine their light on the books too. With my latest post, I knew that Damen’s trauma was different to Laurent’s but I also knew that I was no expert in trauma responses and wanted to read more about it, happened to stumble on Tick’s work almost immediately which just felt like such a powerful connection as it draws partly on classical traditions and I started to put the essay together.

I always come from a point of ‘things are more complicated than they seem’ about pretty much anything and I’m always very wary about people that try to oversimplify discourse. A simplistic reading of Damen’s character would say ‘he’s not got emotional complexity, he’s just a horny jock dressed up in Akielon clothing’ and honestly that’s just so reductive and not true but also…boring, and is essentially a discredit to Pacat’s intelligence and skills. Once you start thinking there’s more under the surface here, you can start to plumb the depths.

I do follow a rough introduction/main/conclusion structure as per any essay, which helps? I’m pretty much trained mentally in the English way of writing literary essays so I do it automatically. I hadn’t realised this till you asked but because I really enjoyed the books and don’t really see myself negatively critiquing them, my conclusions reflect the happy ending of the books where I tend to see things positively? So the end point is kind of already in place. I think the points I make follow similar essay style patterns; start more broadly, then narrow down like a funnel or start a little more chronologically and then move forward (like establishing who Damen is first, and his warrior status is going back to how he was raised, then we can use that to inform his initial reactions in CP before following that thread all the way to The Summer Palace). I’m fond of what appears to be a tangent but is actually a loop back, that illuminates (like I talked about violence as an intimate act, having read that in Tick’s work, and how Laurent particularly provokes that from Damen but that led me to realise if you do choose violence over love as a form of intimacy, you are going to have to pay a price for that).

Ideas do reveal themselves through the writing. Once I’d read that warriors could heal and reintegrate through society recognising them (Edward Tick actually performs these “Warrior Welcome Home” ceremonies for combat veterans, as part of a healing process) I thought well Damen had that in Akielos, and then it was like a little lightbulb moment of ‘Ah but by being in Vere, and around Laurent, he’s gone from hero to villain’. And Laurent has suffered the anguish of being vilified and having his character destroyed, and actually doesn’t realise he’s doing the same to Damen (I didn’t put that in, as there’s only so much you can write! Sometimes holding back on your ideas is good too, to keep the essay tighter. Incidentally one day I am going to do more metas on Laurent and his feelings towards Damen but I’m so respectful of his labyrinthine mind that I want to be very certain of my ideas before I do!).

I hope that kind of answered your question! If you ever want to chat about CP stuff you can absolutely dm me, I love talking about the books ✨

#captive prince #thanks for the ask!

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loopingpyre · 9 months

Text

John Truby is an american writer who wrote several film analysis books on How To Write Stories.

We know he's very qualified because producers shill his books all the time, which we can back up with this list of things he's worked on.

As you can see, someone with such impressive literary credentials is the best person to trust when discussing how stories are made and constructed, and definitely not because producers and execs read a self help book and feel like they can write and interfere with the people employed to do the job.

WHICH IS WHY MY GAME DESIGN COURSE IS USING HIS BOOKS TO TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAME NARRATIVE DESIGN

'WRITE A GAME STORY THAT FITS INTO HIS 16 BEAT METHOD'

BESIDES THE OBVIOUS OF <WHY IS THIS YOUR STORY GUY IN THE FIRST PLACE>, WHY DON'T YOU LOOK AT A VIDEO GAME AND REALISE THAT FILMS ARE A WHOLE FUCKING DIFFERENT MEDIUM!

WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID? THEY ONLY OVERLAP IN PARTS! THIS SHOULD BE ABOUT MARRYING STORY AND GAMEPLAY TOGETHER SO THEY ENHANCE EACH OTHER!

INSTEAD WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HOW THE MORAL OF THE STORY IN BACK TO THE FUTURE (the film) IS THAT 'IF MARTY BELIEVES IN HIMSELF HE CAN DO ANYTHING'. WHICH IS A COPE TO FIT THE FILM INTO TRUBY'S STRUCTURE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

What kind of pea-brained coattails riding ignorant person designed this fucking unit?

No wonder it's such a Really Hard Unit that people struggle with, BECAUSE IT'S PARROTING A LOAD OF ENTIRELY TRASH BULLSHIT, WRITTEN BY PRACTICALLY A SCAM ARTIST. MADE EVEN MORE UNREASONABLE AND IRRELEVANT AS IT'S FOR A WHOLE DIFFERENT MEDIUM.

What a complete joke, I hate pathetic blights like this that stain the fun of narrative design.

#I am very normal about this unit #I will absolutely be filing complaints

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marypsue · 1 year

Note

Ahh also as an addendum to my previous ask about the age swap (which I might’ve accidentally labeled as the body swap fic due to the foibles of being awake unexpectedly early ), I was curious what your criticisms are regarding Robin and Will’s treatments by the Duffers? I know you’ve alluded to being bothered by both but I’d be curious to hear more ( if you have the time/hankering!)

Hooboy. Okay. Buckle in.

Obviously this is going to be a combination of actual literary analysis and Big Feelings That I Have, so like, please don’t take this as any kind of moral dictum on what to or not to watch, or how to or how not to interpret what you watch. Also, a lot of what makes me uneasy and unhappy about how canon deliberately handles queerness (as opposed to when it does queer things apparently by accident, which as you may have noticed, I have considerable amounts of fun with) has to do with behind-the-scenes context I’ve read about, so there’s a certain degree of Telephone involved. And I’m still only halfway through season four. There’s just so fucking much of it.

With all that said.

The behind-the-scenes context I’m most specifically concerned with are the season-one pitch bible(? I think that’s what it’s called) (which, it should be noted, ended up diverging in some quite significant ways from what ended up in the show) where the Duffers first raised the possibility that Will might be gay, and the anecdote that Joe Keery and Maya Hawke were the ones who decided Robin should be queer and had to really push for it and wrote and choreographed that scene in the bathroom. Put the two together, and it tells you that the Duffers planned that there would be One (potentially) Gay Character in their show.

And that character was the one they spent an entire season directing violent, vicious, eventually outright murderous homophobic hatred at through the mouthpiece of a couple of bullies. You can say what you want about revenge narratives and those characters ultimately getting their comeuppance, but for Me Personally, it sucks all the fun and escapism out of season one to watch it thinking that those bullies only got punished when they aimed that vitriol at someone to whom it didn’t literally apply. Also I still have to sit through however many episodes of that vicious homophobia onscreen regardless, so, like, that’s a walk in the park anyway. /sarcasm

And then there’s that whole bad business in season three, where it’s never been quite clear to me if we’re supposed to see Mike as having been in any way in the wrong. Kind of scuppers the argument, to me, that we’re supposed to be on Will’s side. And season four, which so far has had Will tagging along after people who are supposed to be his best friends but mostly don’t seem to give a single damn about him, doing absolutely nothing but looking morose and sullen and tragic and *coughcough* Artistic, and causing Problems for the nice straight couple.

(Tangential to the point I’m coming to, but also, my son deserves better than to be reduced to a soggy cardboard standee with ‘GAY’ scrawled across it in magic marker the way season four seems to be angling toward. All the Byers, but especially the Byers boys, deserve better than season four seems interested in giving them. But I digress.)

Also. I love Robin. If you follow me, you probably know that. I’m a hardcore, ride-or-die Robin girl. But. With Robin, from what I’ve heard of the context, the Duffers never intended for her to be queer. They wrote a girl who was smart and funny and sharp and talented and a little bit mean and a little bit insecure and a little bit weird but in an interesting, endearing way - as a love interest for Steve.

And then, as soon as season four rolled around, once they’d been pushed into making her canonically, on-screen queer (in a beautiful, tender, heartfelt, true-feeling scene that they didn’t fucking write), suddenly she’s had a complete personality transplant. Suddenly, she’s an awkward, bumbling, annoying loser who’s only funny when she’s the butt of the joke, who’s no good at anything and who nobody really likes except maybe for Steve, an outcast even amongst the freaks. When she does do something smart or competent, everyone around her reacts with shock, like it’s wildly out of character instead of how her character was originally written. One of these versions of Robin was written with ‘gay person’ in mind, and it unfortunately wasn’t the one we were obviously supposed to like.

In both cases, I get the feeling that the storytelling issues stem from this like...assumption that queerness equals isolation and misery and tragedy, and that there’s nothing to queerness outside of that. That there’s something inherent to queerness, something pitiable but repulsive, that causes the isolation and misery and tragedy (not that those things are imposed from outside, by, say, violent homophobia). That it would be absurd to imagine that queerness could ever be joyful, or playful, or that someone might ever, given the chance to choose, not choose to be straight instead. Or that there could be enormous friendship and community and heart and pride in queerness, or even that queer people might find friendship and community and strength in each other. Or even fucking talk to each other, ever.

Which is especially infuriating, because the whole central theme of season one (besides surface appearances being deceiving) is that community and care between people who are very different but discover they have more in common than there is that separates them is what saves the day! That love comes in all kinds of forms, and they’re all important, and that love can be stronger than fear!

But apparently, according to the Duffers, queer love doesn’t count and queer community doesn’t exist. It’s just isolation, misery, and tragedy, and I guess we the watchers are supposed to sit outside of it and pity Them for it (and be quietly, sneakily, a little bit nastily grateful that it’s not happening to Us). Because of course nobody watching the show is queer. Of course. This show is made for normal people.

It’s part of the same attitude I’ve also seen play out with the Duffers’ inability to just let a white dude be bad. Oh, they want to talk a big game about how they’re on the side of the freaks, and bullies are bad, and everybody should be respected and appreciated for who they are. But when it cuts down to the bone, when applying that precept to a girl or a person of colour or a queer person makes a straight white guy come off as a monster, they keep trying to dodge it.

The more antagonists they try desperately to rehab without ever acknowledging why they were antagonists in the first place, the more it starts to look like they simply don’t really believe that the people those antagonists hurt really matter. That, somewhere deep down where the assumptions that are so baked in you don’t even realise they’re assumptions live, they don’t really believe that girls, or Black kids, or queer people are as fundamentally human and deserving of respect and compassion as their beloved awful straight white men are. That what they really think about bullies is that bullies are bad because the bullies picked on them, instead of the kinds of people who deserved it.

(See also: that time a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Sadie Sink didn’t want to have to do a kiss in the Snow Ball scene, so the Duffers, who had just been joking about having her do it, actually made her do it. For multiple takes. Specifically because she didn’t want to. And then later related that anecdote to the press. Because they thought it was funny.)

Anyway. Personally, I’d prefer canon just never say anything definitive on the matter of Will’s sexuality and stop trying to push the narrative in that direction, so I don’t have to watch the Duffers spectacularly fumble yet another attempt at Writing About Marginalised Groups.

(Also, this is absolutely not me saying Watch A Different Show - I’m here writing fanfic for this stupid show, it’d be pretty fucking rich of me to try to tell people to stop watching it. But I’d really love for many of its fans to get some more exposure to less-mainstream, more deliberately queer literature and film, so y’all can see what it really feels like to be seen and acknowledged and loved by a story, on purpose. I get it! I do! I too have wanted very badly to feel like something I loved, loved me back.

But you don’t have to content yourselves with scraps. And you definitely don’t have to be so concerned with those scraps that you blame your friends, cousins, siblings, brothers in arms for ‘stealing’ some kind of ‘representation’ from you by asking to be seen and acknowledged and loved as well. The bastards who’ve been withholding that recognition from all of us would love nothing more than to watch with amusement, gorging themselves on a banquet, while we tear each other apart over a couple of discarded bones. Don’t give them the satisfaction. We don’t have to be isolated, pitiable, pathetic, miserable tragedies. Put the hollow promises of exclusionism and respectability down. There is queer art and literature and film and community and joy and love in abundance that you don’t have to beg anyone for, and you are invited to participate. This is me inviting you to participate.

And cordially inviting the Duffers to meet me in the woods behind the 7-Eleven.)

...

tl;dr the way the Duffers treat queerness when they do it on purpose feels like a combination of othering, contempt, and misery porn, and I hate it. And that, in a nutshell, is the rant I’ve been sitting on for the last two-and-a-bit years. I’m getting down off the cafeteria table now.

#chatter #stranger things #i have been first uneasy and then very fucking angry about all of this for Quite A While Now #but robin's personality transplant broke open the fucking dam #it's worse because they did such! a good job! with seasons one and two!#obviously Not Perfect but also painfully obviously Better Than This #and then I guess they'd made enough money for netflix that they stopped having creative reins and restrictions placed on them #and it all went to shit #just total anne rice/stephen king editor syndrome #anyway I won't be following anything they do after this bc i'm pretty sure I like the show in spite of its creators instead of because of th #*them #they also aren't applying season one's theme of appearances being deceiving when it comes to queer people!#they keep saying every shitty shallow queer stereotype is true!#(the tragic gay martyr #slash the obsessive possessive friend-borderline-stalker)#(the unfuckable lesbian)#(the predatory gay villain - I didn't talk about closeting and s2 Billy Hargrove bc hoo boy that's a can of worms #but I do think they took that angle with him on purpose #especially since his 'redemption arc' goes hand in hand with suddenly switching his focus from steve to karen #and he stands to gain nothing by manipulating karen in s3 so it's pretty obviously a cheap dodge #so the duffers can go 'what? no he wasn't sneeringly derogatory toward teenage girls bc he was so deep in the closet he could see narnia'#'nooooooooo he just...only likes ~mature women~'#which. yes boys jennifer coolidge was hot in american pie but please grow up.)#anyway yes that loss of sight of that central theme is exactly how we got the russians in season three #and we all know how much that fucking sucked #i do hope having the word 'fuck' in the tags still hides a post from search

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honeysweetcorvidae · 10 months

Note

hey would you like to do all the prime numbers for the ask meme too. :3

i WOULD i’m gods bravest soldier and i can answer questions

i am, like mango, going to put this under a cut, because good grief this is a lot of questions.

2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

lol. I tend to have a general shape in my head for what the whole thing will look like when i do multichaps, but no, i wing it; if i allow myself to do an outline then it will be Done in my brain & therefore dead in the water

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

1) go on swingset, play music on shuffle 2) put that bitch in a Situation in my brain 3) enter fugue state 4) hit post

5. Do you like constructive criticism?

ehh. i am very sensitive, but from people i trust & when i have time to brace myself it can be helpful? most of the time i am just sitting here though. love 2 have fun and indulge.

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

fugue state.

genuinely, it’s just whatever feels best at the moment! I have a taste for outsider POVs, but what i do for things that aren’t that varies from story to story— WTA flips back and forth from chapter to chapter where playing heroes is scattershot, etc.

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

oh geez picking “favorites” is an ASTONISHINGLY difficult thing for me— i have read probably hundreds of fics in the shuake tag alone, and the things I like I like for different reasons, and my MEMORY is so terrible that the word ‘favorite’ fills me with dread— so I’ll go with ones I immediately think to recommend? for p5, @malevolentmango’s what you’ve already buried and everything or nothing at all are phenomenal (i am marking this as One because mango is sooo specialwonderfulthebest and i could just list everything on their ao3. god wait how could i not also shout out no ballad will be written)

and then there’s interminable ballistics, which rewrote my brain, first step, which is frankly ASTONISHING, killing care and grief of heart by @jortsbian, which made me want to tear down an office building with my nails(honorific), and so on and so on and so on. this is way more than three. @ceilingfan5 has some of the best taakitz fics out there, if you’re into taz.

i would also, of course, be remiss not to nod to the fic i’m most insane about of all time, my guiding light my life my joy my favorite most special little enormous incomprehensible sadomasochistic bug alien clown porn religious worldbuilding space opera epic, @birchbow’s price of forgiveness. i’m super normal about everything they’ve ever written for homestuck tbqh BUT PoF is my darling. (it’s NOT the one i wrote a whole real actual literary analysis essay about. but that’s because it’s too long.)

okay moving on. i did not answer this question correctly.

13. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

uh. um. uh. does “don’t misuse punctuation too badly” count as a writing tip? man i don’t know i am an insane person about writing styles

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

if it sucks hit da bricks >:/. no but actually for real though, i tend to go out on my swingset, switch to a different project, or just Do Something Else for a while! i’m a big proponent of taking breaks.

19. What is the most-used tag on your ao3?

well,

23. Best writing advice for other writers?

please for the love of god punctuate your dialogue correctly

no, but sincerely— i think that the best possible thing you can do for your work is to write what you actually want to write. do the stupid self-indulgent bullshit! write tropey nonsense, write the same shit over and over in different permutations, who cares! if you love it it’ll show.

31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

the characters make the plot happen and the plot makes the characters act? so i mean i guess characters, but they’re interminably linked.

37 I already answered;

41: Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

ha. hahahaaaa. according to ao3 i have visited price of forgiveness one hundred and sixty-seven times. i know i have read it logged out at least twice. so, you know,

43. Do you take a sadistic joy in whumping your characters, or are you more the “If you hurt them I would kill everyone and then myself” kind of person?

i like recovery! I like to see people brought down and still swinging, and then for them to be happy again after. so i guess the latter?

47. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

that’s between me and god

53. How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

well it took me going back ~50 pages into my ao3 history to find PoF, and the last time i read it was in june, so i’d say i read more than i write

59. Does anyone in your personal life know you write fic? if not, would you tell anyone?

everyone i know knows everything about me because I have cannot-shut-up-ever-disease, yes. my mom has been forced to hear the plot of my NG+ au.

61. Why do you continue writing fics?

I enjoy writing, and I like to have a community! when I’m not writing fic I write original stuff, and I miss the engagement when I do that, but it’s still the same compulsive joy, I think. I doubt I could ever just stop writing forever.

67. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

independent ideas, generally! I am very bad at sticking to a prompt; my mind tends to wander ALL about the joint.

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

[LAUGHING]

(the answer is severe autdhd and being an extremely fast reader.)

73. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

um. uh. um um uh. someone told me the other day that i am a fizzy mocktail and i don’t know what that means but i’m gonna go with that. i think my style is pretty distinctive, and i know i’m a skilled writer, so I guess. that? and i mean who else would write quite so much deeply emotionally vulnerable tentacle content. really.

#my writing #SORRY FOR THE TAGS EVERYONE. i wanted to credit people whose tumblrs i knew

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faintingheroine · 1 year

Note

For the 7-question character ask: Nihal

1. Three facts about them from my personal headcanons:

1. She is autistic.

2. She has psychogenic non-epileptic seizures.

3. She will never marry.

2. A reason they suck:

She is a very jealous, bitter and emotionally manipulative person. She treats Beşir as a doll at points, she is nice to him but in a condescending way. She is disgusted with Firdevs Hanım in a sexually conservative way. She likes pitying herself and making others pity her. She likes thinking of herself pityingly and diminutively, “itty bitty Nihal” etc. Nihal, you are a teenager!

3. A reason they are great:

She is incredibly perceptive and while she often can’t see the whole picture because of her ignorance, she is very good at sensing the details and getting at the crux of the issue. She is good at reading herself and others. She is intelligent. She has a feminist edge: She explicitly thinks that arranged marriage is like women being sold as property and doesn’t want it. Despite often treating him like a doll, she is still the only person in the book who genuinely cares about Beşir’s illness.

4. A reason I relate to them:

I also have no wish to move forward in life. I can just live out my days in my house with my parents.

5. (what I consider to be) the top tier otp/ot3 for that character:

I don’t think she loves him romantically, and it is a very unhealthy dynamic, but I love her and Beşir as a concept.

6. Five things that never happened to that character that I believe should have happened:

I absolutely love the way she is written, she is my favorite fictional character, and I wouldn’t change anything about her in the book. But there are things that I would like to see in an AU:

1. Her completely getting over the memory of Behlül.

2. Her understanding Beşir’s value as a person.

3. Her being a bit more understanding of Bihter.

4. It is not really realizable in the social context, but I would love it if she could do something with her talent at piano, as @ariel-seagull-wings once suggested. She seems to be very talented.

5. Maybe I would like to know a bit more about her dynamic with her mother. We still get enough for a literary made-up character, I think I know her better than any other character in the novel and most characters in fiction, but to do a psychological analysis we could get a bit more about her mother.

7. Five people that character never fell in love with and why:

I wrote a meta about them all lol.

1. Beşir and Behlül

2. Her father Adnan Bey

3. Bihter

#aşk ı memnu #aşk-ı memnu #nihal #name a character #character ask #asks #7 questions

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infintasmal · 7 months

Note

what are your honest thought about your muse’s canon? (Ja'far)

Munday asks / Accepting

HE DESERVED BETTER.

So I take a lot of issue with p much everything that happens after the Alma Toran arc. There were a lot of rumors going around at the time that Ohtaka was being rushed to close things out bc interest in the series was waning or she was gearing to switch projects to Orient or smth, don't know how true that was but from what came out I think it might be reasonable. To keep this short and less literary analysis, I'll stick to my issues with just Ja'far and Ja'far centric things. And imma put it under a read more bc it got way longer than expected lmao

So I loved Ja'far as a character early on, I thought he was super interesting with his dual nature of the brutal assassin & loyal government official and he serves as a great counterpart to one of the most interesting characters in the series, Sinbad. He's someone who is resolute in his loyalty but unafraid to course correct Sinbad. He's a reminder to Sinbad's dark past and the primary motivator of a brighter future. But a lot of that gets lost in the final arc.

I think part of it has to do with Sinbad's character change from morally gray and emotionally complicated leader (something we don't see a lot in anime) to self-serving, fully corrupted 'villain'. I could write a whole damn essay on Sinbad. But in this shift, Ja'far becomes rather weak and disappears into the background.

He's no longer guiding Sinbad or reprimanding him when he goes too far. Instead, he seems suddenly blind to Sinbad's true motives and depressingly lost in the final conflict. Like if they had revealed that Arba had brainwashed him to stand down, I would believe it. Even in his final plea for Sinbad to come down from his high horse, we get a wishy washy, emotional argument that Sinbad easily charms his way out of. When you compare this to the scene at the beginning of season two or even in SnB at the end of the slave arc, it's like a totally different characters. In those scenes, Ja'far was unapologetically brutal, even slapping Sinbad to wake him up and give him a fierce reality check. He doesn't take any of the dour, half-assed promises to do better. He's mean and in SnB he reminds Sinbad that he promised to kill him if he veers too far from his path.

And this has always been Ja'far's role in the series. He is Sinbad's first and most loyal supporter but also his harshest critic. Ja'far, who grew up without any sense of morality, serves as Sinbad's conscious. It's what I love most about their relationship. But all of that seems to disappear at the end of the series. Sinbad becomes the corrupt capitalist dictator and Ja'far his secretary.

Not to mention that when the whole 'mind control' thing happens and we find out that people who were formally fallen are immune, Ja'far was such an obvious choice to lead the main group in their siege on Godbad, to be the guide that shows them the way to victory. He would have been immune bc of his status was a Black Djinn host and also would have been able to kind of fulfill his promise of killing Sinbad until he gets back on course. I cannot explain the absolute jawdrop that transcended the fandom when the final player was revealed to be Whatshisfuck from Reim. People were rioting and fleeing the fandom en masse when the final arc was coming out, it was Not Good.

I love Ja'far as a character and Magi had such a strong play at moral ambiguity and the ethics of global politics and I think a lot of that was lost in the final arc in favor of a shounen typical, he gets the girl and defeats the Big Evil ending and I will forever be bitter about it. Like at one point I wrote out my 'if i was in charge' ending lmao. The last scene of Ja'far standing in Sindria, saying that he's waiting for Sinbad's return was heartbreaking.

#there u have it my rant about why i should be in charge of all endings #thuganomxcs #∞࿚ ooc.

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thatscarletflycatcher · 2 years

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I know the whole author-narrator-form-matter complex in literature is... complex, but I do think it is very important to understand the difference between all those things.

When yesterday we were talking about the killing of the Bloofer Lady, what people pick up as strangely erotic and sort of disturbing and evocative of r*pe and honor killings is not the matter of the text, but the form: is not what happened, but how it is told to us. Which is also not necessarily what the characters mean or want, unless it is what they say in their own words.

And the thing is that one of the fundamental principles, if not the most fundamental principle of literary analysis is that form follows matter; the author chose certain words and turns of phrase to convey a certain message or scene, and that how of the thing reveals something. One event can be presented in many different ways and from many different perspectives. One way is the way Stoker wrote it. Another way would have been a short description such as:

“Arthur drove the stake through her chest; the thing struggled for a while, as blood gushed out of the wound, and then went still. Arthur, exhausted, reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him.”

Yet another way would have been something like:

"One, two, three, like the sound of a gavel, fell the strikes of the hammer upon the stake. A horrible scream, like the wailing of the damned escaped the lips of the thing in the coffin, and it writhed as if laying on a bed of burning coals; and then, silence. Arthur staggered back, and we hurried to hold him up; the air inside the grave felt lighter, and colder, somehow."

The matter is the same, but the form conveys theme. On my first example, the description is dispassionate, deliberately striped of metaphor, clinical; it is the way the decapitation is written in the book. It makes sense for Jack Seward to give a clinical description of events because he's a doctor and a skeptic who thinks in terms of plain and verifiable facts.

My second example extensively uses metaphor to convey the theme of eschatological judgement: the gavel, the damned, the burning heat, and then the sudden resolution of those sensations.

What I'm trying to explain here is that how something is presented is as important as the what is being presented. And how Stoker presented the fragment, is, at the very least weird.

But that doesn't mean the characters inside the story are carrying that weird meaning with them. It doesn't mean Arthur is having that sort of intent. Or even Van Helsing (although his use of RIGHT as a word to speak about hammering the stake is also weird.), at to some level, it doesn't mean that Jack Seward or Bram Stoker had that intent. Theme is always present, but it can be spontaneous as much as it can be deliberate.

The question is not "why is Arthur honor-killing Lucy?" but "Why did Stoker write the killing of the Bloofer Lady this way?"

#Dracula Daily

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