#actual english major lise
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sometimes I think people think "narrative parallels" means "exactly the same" and like...that's not the point, actually, the point with narrative parallels is that they're variations on a theme that are meant to illuminate something about each variation. a narrative parallel that is just a precise reiteration of another thing isn't saying anything. it's just redundant.
#important text posts#actual english major lise#this one really grinds my gears actually#'it can't be parallel because they're not the same' no...no that's not what that means i don't think#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters#mildly! but i'm still feeling bitchy so it gets the tag
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Okay, I've been living for the Lucille Sharpe appreciation society, so:
a) Do you think that a happy ending is even possible for the CP triad?
b) If so, HOW? Because barring any dramatic & ooc personality changes I feel like that would be... er, not easy
c) (Do you have ot3 fic recs 🥺)
(To be clear, I am also in the Edith Cushing Appreciation Society. They're both amazing and I want good things for them. Also for them to kiss.)
A. I...can suspend disbelief enough in fanfic to imagine it. In the strictest possible interpretation of canon, I doubt it. I do think the hypotenuse pairing- Edith/Lucille -has more canon support than one might think, given that JChas played Lucille as queer, and Alan warns Edith about her fascination with "the Sharpes," not just Thomas. If a lot of things were different, maybe.
But like. Even if Edith "Gothic Novelist With Secret Dark Side" Cushing could find it in her heart to be down with coping-mechanism incest (and that's honestly less of a stretch for her character than one might initially think, in my mind), the wife murders are going to be a problem. Especially since they also tried to murder her, and killed her father, and lied to her, and gaslighted her, and shoved her off a balcony- there's just too much water under the bridge now.
B. Basically, if the Sharpes hadn't murdered a bunch of innocent women + Carter and tried to kill Edith, I think it could be possible even if you kept things totally canon otherwise.
In fanfic, the usual way is to have Edith be a bit more amoral than she seems in canon. I say "seems," because you can still write things that are easy to imagine the character saying/doing even if they're technically OOC.
Edith is an interesting character because, while she's a generally good person and kind to others, she's not without an edge to her personality. She can be every bit as stubborn, resourceful, and willing to dirty her hands as Lucille is, when the chips are down. And even in Buffalo, she's pretty quick to pass judgment on the other people around her if she considers them inferior. I don't think she WOULD make peace with multiple cold-blooded murders and shack up with incestuous serial killers, in canon. But I think it's easy to imagine a version of her that might.
Or it's a total AU where the situation is completely different.
Or Edith is varying degrees of drugged/brainwashed and doesn't know about the murders. I've read and enjoyed all three flavors.
Interestingly, you don't see a lot of "the Sharpes work on their issues and get better" fics. Possibly because that takes away half the appeal of exploring messy, unhealthy, transgressive relationships in a safe fictional setting. Which is mostly what brings people to the CPeak fandom.
(It's a very understanding fandom by necessity- if antis have ever found it, they didn't stick around long. I've seen things that are past my limit even for dark!fic, but I just read the tags and keep scrolling.)
C. I do have recs, yes! Normally I'm not big on polyshipping (or, you know, incest), but in this specific case, I'm very down for the OT3 situation.
Of Light and Shade, by xahra99 (no major non-canon content warnings)
AU. Edith, Lucille and Thomas visit Venice, and somebody dies. Written for the prompt 'they should have traveled around Europe taking turns to be the black widow.'
Lullaby and Variations by kvisan (no major non-canon content warnings)
A traditional English lullaby, arranged in the romantic style for viola and piano, by Lady Lucille Sharpe in collaboration with Lady Edith Sharpe.
For Thomas, beloved of us both.
Strike Release orphaned (explicit. CW for dubcon and drugging, as well as the usual canon stuff)
The hands of a clock are funny things, they swing back before they go forth. Stories, too, swing back and forth. In this one, you do not kill the girl.
You keep her.
What Desire Will Make Foolish People Do by Heather (spicy, but only as far as second base. no major non-canon content warnings. one of the few "Allerdale Hall is destroyed" fics I actually like)
What if Edith didn't like tea?
we too (three) could be glorious by Lise (explicit. no major non-canon content warnings)
Lucille makes a different choice, when it comes to Edith Cushing. They leave Allerdale Hall behind, but without an anchor Lucille thinks she might drift away.
Thomas and Edith will provide that anchor.
the whole is greater by marypsue (another one that involves some touching that verges on explicit, but doesn't quite get all the way there. CW for drugging and VERY dubious consent, as well as the usual canon stuff)
“She called us monsters,” Lucille says, breaking the rhythm with a moment of contemplative silence.
Thomas shakes his head. A single stray curl falls away from his face, and Edith wishes she didn’t feel compelled to reach up and tuck it back behind his ear. “We don’t know if she ever knew how right she was.”
mother, we are well by rosedamask (explicit. no major non-canon content warnings)
Edith wondered, then, what a black-breathed beware could ever have meant to her. She could have been the daughter who heard her mother’s warning, or the daughter who heeded it.
The Cherry Hung With Snow by Hermaline75 (explicit. also 84 chapters and still going. content warnings for drugging, descriptions of past child sexual abuse, and reproductive coercion, as well as the usual canon stuff. not one I recommend unreservedly, since it's not my usual thing and has some characterization I disagree with. but...somehow it turned into my comfort fic. the only excuse I can offer for that is that the writing is excellent)
Fresh out of her journalism major, Edith is shocked when she gets the job of a lifetime, following British brother/sister band Crimson Peak on their epic tour to break America, even if it means temporarily leaving her life behind.
But eccentricity is one thing. The Sharpes may be quite another.
#long post#ask#sheathandshear#incest mention#crimson peak#fic recs#character meta#csa mention#reproductive coercion mention#drugging mention
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I got tagged by @ameliarating and @veliseraptor to do this writer meme thing!
How many works do you have on AO3?
Six. I only started posting fic on AO3 last year. Before that, many long years ago, I used my own websites and LiveJounal.
What’s your total AO3 word count?
177481. The absolute majority of which is of course Heaven Has A Road.
How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
On AO3, only The Untamed.
But before that, I've written for Disney Afternoon's Aladdin, Slayers, Kingdom Hearts, Assassin's Creed, and one-shot fics for my own original verses as well as my friends'.
What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Heaven Has A Road But No One Walks It at 1194, unsurprisingly. It's my magnum opus on AO3.
Blanket Statement at 302. The first fic I wrote for the Untamed, and the first thing I posted on AO3 (Thank you, Lise, for holding my hand and walking me through it!)
And To Many More at 169
High Noon In Deserted City at 96, which is sort of funny, since it's just a picture and about 1000 words. But the premise is fun! Still hoping for some hungry writer to adopt it and write something for it. :)
Self-Inflicted at 75.
Which checks out, I guess – the longest fic with the most readers comes first, then the fluff, then the funny and finally the angsty and fucked up. XD
I still suspect The Plotbunny of Doom / The Renegades for Kingdom Hearts would score as my all time highest, though, if LJ likes and comments translated to the AO3 format. That fic took me and two friends three whole years to write together, was 104 chapters long and over 300k.
Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I really try! Comments mean everything to me, and I want to reply to them all! But when I'm low on spoons (which is unfortunately often) I fall hopelessly behind, and then the catching up becomes an impossible-looking chore in and of itself.
I should really set some time aside every day to catch up on the last few chapters' worth of comments... I do love the interaction and discussion a good comment can spawn!
What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
Hm... I write a ton of angst, but only a few actually have sad endings. I'd say Eaten counts, as does Self-Inflicted, I guess. TPBoD had a very open ending that was still definitely on the somewhat hopeless side.
Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?
Mm, it's not usually my favourite genre (though I mean, the whole Kingdom Hearts verse is a crossover in and of itself) but it depends a lot on the source material. I guess TPBoD might soft-count, since we tossed in a bunch of non-canon references with all the world-jumping.
Have you ever received hate on a fic?
Not as such? Oh yeah, I do recall getting a very upset comment on a non-con fic I wrote back in the KH days, by someone who couldn't conceive how you could claim to love a character and then write such horrible things happening to them. But you get those occasionally. Look, crushing my favourite characters is therapy. Doesn't mean I don't love them.
The Russian fandom are loudly aggressive in their comments on some chapters of Heaven Has A Road, but that's more focused on the characters, not me personally.
On the whole, I've been pretty spared. But then, there's little point in sending hate; I just block.
Do you write smut? if so what kind?
Oh, absolutely. Haven't really gotten to that point in the posted chapters of Heaven Has A Road yet, but we're about to unleash it aplenty in the upcoming ones.
What kind? Most kinds, I guess? Soft and fluffy, aggressive and snarly, consensual, dubcon, non-con. Mostly mlm but I've written het, too. Can't remember if I've written wlw, but I've certainly headcanoned/drawn it. A bit of kink is nice.
I prefer focusing on the chemistry and sensations when I write porn, rather than detailed physical smacking and squelching and body fluids, but that's just my personal preference and writing style.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know of? Not that I can remember? I have my art stolen regularly, and I've had my online identity stolen, but I don't think anyone's stolen anything I've written...
Have you ever had a fic translated?
Yes! Heaven Has A Road is being translated into Russian, and I'm insanely honoured and flattered!
Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Yes – TPBoD aka The Plot Bunny of Doom, aka The Renegades, for Kingdom Hearts. I wrote it over ten years ago together with a friend and my now wife. It was a monster of a fic, I think about 320k, and the fact that we were three people helping and pushing and encouraging each other really helped keep it going!
I don't know if I would have the focus for something like it now, but it was an amazing experience I'll always treasure.
What’s your all time favorite ship?
Oh man, that changes with each hyperfixation... I may have to say Marluxia/Vexen for Kingdom Hearts, simply because it's a ship that's been around in my life for so long. I still occasionally go back to read favourite bits of the fics I wrote for them, including TPBoD.
Currently it's SongXueXiao from The Untamed, of course, and a very strong contender overall! I've dabbled a bit in poly ships before, but this is the first time I have one as my main, and I'm love them.
What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
Uh. I don’t really have any? Because of my burnout-brain, I can only really focus on one major project at a time, and that's currently heaven has A Road. And I'm really, really hoping I will be able to finish it!
It's all plotted out, I just need to write the stupid thing. Working on it.
What are your writing strengths?
Hm, I'd say that I've developed a voice/prose over the years that I'm actually quite happy with! And I'm good at conveying/invoking emotion, if going solely by how many people comment that I've made them cry. :D
I enjoy writing dialogue, and I love working with layers of symbolism.
What are your writing weaknesses?
The actual writing process. 🙄 I'm extremely uneven and unstructured in getting the actual words down. Also convoluted and inflated text at times - sometimes I write a lot of words without actually saying anything. And English is my second language, so just nailing the correct phrasing and grammar can be a headache at times.
What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
If it impacts the plot – like the POV character not understanding it, then maybe. And using terms that can't be translated, absolutely! Other than that, there's little point in making a text harder for the reader to grasp by tossing in whole sections in another language for clout. Is my personal view, at least, of course other writers may disagree.
What was the first fandom you wrote for?
My first online fandom that I wrote fic for was Disney Afternoon's Aladdin show. Before that, I wrote original fic. And before that, before the internet was A Thing, I'd write and draw for stories that captivated me, just for my own entertainment. If you count that, I'd probably say Phantom of the Opera was my first – I had a whole ”everyone is a horse because that's what I know how to draw” AU when I was about 10 or so, that I'd draw lots of pictures for. When I was even younger, I used to make up stories for my younger brothers, based on movies and series we had watched together. I've always been a storyteller, one way or another, if only in my own head. I wouldn't know how not to.
What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?
I would have to say Heaven Has A Road, even though it's still unfinished. It's the first work of that sheer scope I have ever attempted by myself, and I'm honestly insanely proud of myself for what I have accomplished already!
Second would be TPBoD – The Renegades. Even though that was a shared effort, it's a very long fic that we managed to bring all the way to its intended conclusion, and I'm very proud of that, too!
Plus there are bits of both these fics I really like, and that I will go back and read for my own enjoyment occasionally.
tagging: @orodrethsgeek, @ebonykain, @fromaliminalspace, @chigrima, @soawen
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"...what is gained in granting characters some say in their own destiny might easily be lost in dimunition of audience sympathy. It seems to have been a risk that Shakespeare deliberately elected to take. In his last few tragedies, he made increasing demands on the humane tolerance (or perhaps on the Christian charity, in the most radical sense) of his audience. We are not expected to agree, in every case, that the protagonist is more sinned against than sinning; we are expected, on the basis of our common humanity with the offending protagonist, to offer sympathy unqualified by the necessity for exoneration. It is a demand too radical for Aritotle, for Farnham, for most audiences. Most are too ready to rue the absence of less deeply-flawed heroes, too ready to accuse Shakespeare of having sat down to eat with publicans and sinners."
L.T. Fitz, "Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism", Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 1977)
#this is concerning protagonists but i think it applies to sympathetic antagonists as well#very interesting article in general#but also just. yeah. 'unqualified by the necessity for exoneration' here btw isn't talking about the impulse to exonerate#it's talking about the impulse to refuse sympathy#to characters who are not necessarily 'more sinned against than sinning'#and also the relevance of the idea that a character must necessarily be 'more sinned against than sinning'#in order to qualify for protagonist status#anyway. just struck me#quotes#actual english major lise
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somebody linked this blog post on my post about "cozy horror" a little while ago and it was a very interesting read, particularly from a publishing industry/marketing perspective. I don't know that I agree with every word of it but it was certainly interesting and elucidated some things that I was aware of but hadn't fully articulated.
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Hello ! I've read a lot of the posts you shared or wrote about horror, especially in reaction to "pearl-clutching" discourse against the whole genre.
It was very though provoking (thanks!) but I was wondering if/how you draw the distinction between that and, well, honest and "legitimate" bad review / negative analysis of some individual stories who happen to be horror ?
Oh, for sure. Of course there's legitimate criticisms to be made about individual horror works, or even about horror as a genre on the whole. I'm never going to claim that there isn't. While I do feel like there's a place for the "let people have fun" school of thought around media criticism, I don't think it should be a blanket smothering of all criticism - mostly, as with so many things, it is worth considering your time, place, and audience. For your own sake as well, I find.
I do think that sometimes the language of "criticizing" or "being critical" has become a handy mask for people to say whatever they want in some of the same (though less pernicious) way that people use "I'm just asking questions" to shut down discussion of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Again, #notallcriticism, much of it is good and beneficial and keeps things fresh (and me thinking), even the criticism I ultimately might end up disagreeing with. And at the same time, I do see the tendency popping up sometimes to use the idea of "legitimate criticism" as a way to shield a person from disagreement (the somewhat infamous "think critically about x" translating to "and you'll agree with me" comes to mind.)
As far as the how, well, it's certainly a little your mileage may vary - what I might read as an unfair review of a book I liked, for instance, someone else might read as a well-deserved ripping to shreds of a mediocre work, and it's certainly possible for neither of us to be "right" about which it is. Some of this - maybe even a lot of it - is a matter of perspective.
I guess I would think of two things that shape my perception of how someone is talking about a work or a genre, in general and in particular with horror:
1. Is the writer familiar with the genre? Do they have at least a passing familiarity with the conventions, tropes, and other narrative tics that tend to crop up? If not, are the criticisms they are making marked by that lack of knowledge (ime some of the discourse about the A Song of Ice and Fire falls victim to this, sometimes). I'm not saying that criticism is invalid coming from someone without genre knowledge, but I am saying that I'm more inclined to be skeptical of criticism that comes from someone who clearly dislikes the specific genre they're discussing, because it sometimes feels like a willful lack of curiosity and unwillingness to engage with a text/genre on its own terms.
> Addendum to this: is the writer familiar with the genre as it stands recently? Horror now looks rather different than horror fifty years ago, just for instance.
2. Is the argument or point they're making actually coherent? Is the analysis solid and grounded in at least some kind of evidence or source? (Is the author using screenshots of tweets in lieu of actually writing about the phenomenon they're discussing?) I can't always but I'd say I can usually at least recognize, even if I disagree, when someone is actually taking what they're engaging with seriously and when they're not (in terms of the work put in to convince me what they're saying is true, relevant, and important), and if they're not taking it seriously then why should I?
And one more, I guess, which feels obvious but sometimes on the internet isn't, because people love to have opinions (I get it! so do I!):
3. Has the writer actually read (or watched/played/whatever) what they're talking about? This ties in a little with point one but is slightly divergent, because someone can to an extent be familiar with a genre without having read it. But someone talking authoritatively about the problems with something they haven't actually had direct contact with, based purely on a set of cultural osmosis and related assumptions, is frustratingly common, and people will assume that they know what they're talking about from that alone and are qualified to make a sweeping judgment from that position. And I'm just not going to take criticism made from that perspective very seriously.
That's how I'd draw my lines, anyway. I don't claim to be an authority, certainly; I'm a gal on the internet with a big mouth and a lot of opinions. I think the important things here though are a. I certainly don't think that there's no such thing as legitimate criticism (in the negative sense) of horror works or horror as a genre, and b. I have particular standards for how I judge that criticism based on content and context.
I guess it's also worth noting, with this particular example, that the other question is "how much does this feel like it aligns with the present moral panic around dark or disturbing content in fiction?" and if the answer is "a lot" then I'm significantly more likely to dismiss it.
#conversating#social justice fire mage#actual english major lise#lise has opinions#look an actual post that required brainpower ma#i still have that i guess!#now i'm going to sleep yikes i'm tired
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sort of related to that last post but I didn't want to put it on the actual response to the ask, I also don't think grimdark as a term is a useful label with any coherent definition except as it is used as a term to define things against or in opposition to, but that is also another post, and a personal bugbear of mine.
back in the early 2010s I never thought I'd be in the position of defending so-called "grimdark" fiction. what has the world come to.
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Would you say there is a significant overlap between tragedy and nihilism in fiction?
Do you consider Frankenstein, for example, to be nihilistic? A lot of Junji Ito's stories often have bad endings and his stories are considered pessimistic — would the nihilism label fit his work?
I'm still trying to find my personal difference between 'nihilistic stories I find compelling' and 'nihilistic stories I find boring/distasteful/frustratingly pointless'. I think I have relegated 'stories I like' to the tragedy categegory, while putting stories I don't under the nihilism or grimdark labels. But the ones I don't like tend to just sort of drone on miserably after the foregone conclusion has been revealed, with cynically-written anti-hero protagonists that give me neither ideals nor characters to root for because it has been established that my faith in either is pointless.... I wish there was a label for that specifically but maybe I'm just a bad fan.
Eek, sorry for word vomiting in your inbox. Criticism fair and understandable!
Interesting question! I think that there is overlap but I don't know that I'd call them the same thing; a pessimistic work is not the same as a nihilistic one in the same way a pessimistic person is not necessarily a nihilistic one. But I think that trying to parse out a line between the two of them - just as trying to parse out the distinction between what makes something "grimdark" and what makes something "tragedy" - is going to be an ultimately subjective designation with very fuzzy boundaries. One person's catharsis is another person's pointless misery. One person's miserable droning may be another person's compellingly dark. And so on.
A while back I read a book called Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn which remains one of my favorite works of literary theory on the fantasy genre, which introduced me to Brian Attebery's work by extension, who describes the fantasy genre as a "fuzzy set." A "fuzzy set" is actually a mathematical term that refers to a set where, rather than the elements being either in or out of the set, elements have degrees of belonging and can be partially in/partially out. It's something that I think about a lot and I think was particularly informative to my thinking on genre more broadly (and also categories as a whole). Categorizations in literature/art, I find, are always going to be a little fuzzy, the boundaries a little porous, the distinctions a little vague. I think that's perhaps even more true when the categorization under discussion is emotional. The difference between the terms you're describing here (nihilism, grimdark, tragedy, pessimism) is a matter to at least some degree of how does this make me feel, and the answer to that question is going to vary wildly. You can try to excavate the purpose of the text, try to make an argument about what the author is trying to say - about the world, about people - but even in that case the interpretation of what that statement means is going to be emotionally inflected through an individual lens.
So I guess what I'm saying here is that I think the entire project here is...if not pointless, then maybe only as productive as you feel it is? I don't know that you'll ever find a simple, categorical way of designating and labeling "work that I like with dark themes" from "work that I don't like with dark themes" in a broad sense. Which is not to say it's not worth looking at what you find engaging or not in a work! It's a very worthwhile project in my opinion to look at what you're reading and try to figure out what particular themes/narrative tropes/stylistic quirks you vibe with, and what about them you vibe with, and consider those as interesting pieces of information both about yourself and about the work you're engaging with. But I think trying to name and define those distinctions, especially in a holistic and determinative way, is likely to just be frustrating.
(And the trap there, too, is that if somebody does come to a conclusion about that sort of thing, and then runs into a contradiction in their taste that doesn't fit that conclusion, they might end up twisting themselves into knots trying to prove there is no contradiction - a reaction which I personally think is the source of a lot of very poisonous discourse/rhetoric on the internet. When people decide that their identity is this one thing, and then encounter something that contradicts that conclusion, sometimes it is more tempting to try to force the contradiction to fit in the existing paradigm rather than to resolve the paradigm. But that's a different conversation.)
Ultimately while there can be merit in trying to look at a genre/typology/category of texts as a whole, I find trying to define it too strictly or looking for firm boundaries is a less fruitful exercise than examining a work on its own terms, or in conversation with the texts it is in conversation with.
No need to apologize for word vomiting in my inbox, particularly since I just word vomited on your ask! This was fun, though, thanks for giving me the chance to sink my teeth into this and shake it a few times.
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on my text analysis wishlist: less "is this good" "is this bad" more "is this effective"
#actual english major lise#important text posts#it's a much more generative and interesting conversation imo
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@mayedays replied to your post “Sometimes I get immensely sad that you're not in...”:
What do you see as the other options? Bc the alternatives to defanging or death that I can see are (1) the author subjecting the antagonist to serious suffering/punishment (up to and including 'fate worse than death') to appease readers' sense of justice or (2) the fandom becoming so much more toxic towards the character (and their fans) bc of rage that justice (read: punishment) "wasn't served". (And I hate those options too! This feels like a no-win situation!)
I feel like you are talking about something a little different than I am, first of all, in that you seem to be talking about the canon fate of characters in-universe whereas I was specifically (in this post) talking about the way characters get written in fandom. But since I'm here and this does feel relevant to my interests, I'll take it!
Firstly, I don't think that avoiding a storytelling choice because "readers/fans will react poorly" is...a good way to do writing. An understandable way in this day and age, certainly! But I also think it's generative of...well, you know how people talk about the phenomenon of media being bleached of its color for the sake of not offending potential advertisers? That's what I see happening as a result of this kind of implied emotional terrorism, or fear of emotional terrorism on the part of writers.
Like I said, I think it's understandable to be scared of how people are going to react to something you write, whether that is for your own sake or the sake of a hypothetical reader - it's human to want to avoid unpleasant experiences. But I think caving to that fear, or accepting that as a stifling force on the creative decisions a writer feels at liberty to make, is neither desirable nor inevitable.
Secondly - it is relevant that I was talking about fandom here, because in a canon setting the antagonist is probably going, in some form, to have to lose. But if I'm engaging with this purely on the personal level of "how do I like to see writers handle their antagonists," there is a wide variety of ways for a narrative to treat its antagonists with grace. Even if an antagonist dies horribly, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a narrative decision that I by nature have a problem with. (I have discussed before the internal conflict for me between 'but I want this character to live :(' vs. 'it makes for a better narrative if they die', including with several of my own original projects.) But the way that defeat or death is handled can make a world of difference in my (personal) response to a text.
I have read books where it feels like the aim of the text is specifically punitive: it wants to punish the bad character, it wants to make them suffer, it wants to illustrate that they deserve it. I tend to not enjoy that. It's not the only way to write an antagonist's defeat, and not even the only way to write an antagonist's death. It feels miles better to me, as someone who tends to get invested in antagonists, to read a text that doesn't come with a punitive mindset baked in. (Punitive texts aren't inherently bad, they just tend to not be for me.)
But that isn't the only way to write a conclusion, and there are ways of hurting or even killing an antagonist that don't have to feel like the goal of the narrative is specifically to punish them. (I wrote a whole essay about an example of this! There were footnotes and everything.)
But I think the bigger thing here, that is perhaps just a distinction between the way I approach this question and the way you seem to be, is that the question you're asking is predicated on the understanding that the question of "how a text handles its villain" is a matter of how readers/fans will react to a text, and that is a major determining factor in how a story should be told. I just fundamentally disagree with that, and I think a story that is written under those premises is going to suffer.
#mayedays#lise has opinions#christ that got long#i need to eat dinner#i wrote this instead of doing havdalah whoops#actual english major lise#does this make sense? i hope so
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occurs to me that I do have quite a resource that I could share with people who might find it interesting so: here’s a gdrive mirror of my article hoard, a compilation of academic articles (and a couple books) on:
superhero comics
popular culture
norse mythology
tolkien, particularly the silmarillion
various sci-fi/fantasy literatures
two or three articles on danmei
hp lovecraft
go forth! and if you have article recommendations please send them to me
#i do not vouch for all of these being good btw. if you were wondering#presence in this archive is not a recommendation just a 'this looked interesting'#actual english major lise#i wish i'd saved all my college readings as pdfs and not just kept the interesting printouts :(#maybe someday i'll scan them back into digital format
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“The contrast is there, even though you can’t really bring the Middle Ages into the modern world. Michel Foucault makes that lesson clear, about the inaccessibility of the past, in his archaeological siftings through prior modes of thought. So does Jorge Luis Borges in his parable about “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” The past is irrecoverable but its traces are all around us. Texts from the past no longer speak to us as they spoke to their original audiences, but they still lurk in our libraries, challenging us to provide them with new voices and new meanings. Borges’ Pierre Menard rewrote two chapters and part of a third of Don Quixote. They are identical to the chapters in Cervantes’ text. Yet Borges convinces us that Menard’s Quixote is completely different from Cervantes’, because the same sentence written in the twentieth century cannot mean what it would have meant in the seventeeth. The twentieth century text is subtler, more ironic, more self-referential, more relevant to its twentieth century readers.
So it is when we read Beowulf or the Kalevala. We are not tribal Saxons or Finns. When we read these texts, we make twentieth century transcriptions of them, but our transcriptions are complex texts, interwoven with the other twentieth century texts that we have constructed about Medieval technology, religion, and society. Our texts are also marked “old” and “other,” which are meaning shifters like “if” or “imagine that...” They change the meaning of every sentence, so that, while the reference is still to our own lives and world, the reference becomes one of contrast and commentary.”
-- “The Politics (If Any) of Fantasy” by Brian Attebery, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 4, No. 1 (13) (1991)
#i don't 100% agree with everything in this article but it was very interesting#and this in particular i was like#oh! oh!!#'we make twentieth century transcriptions of them...interwoven with the other twentieth century texts constructed about medieval etc.'#gonna be noodling on that a while#anyway finally starting to read through some of my article hoard#quotes#actual english major lise
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buried somewhere between the “stop calling everything fanfiction” club and the “everything riffing on another story is fanfiction” club is an interesting point to be made, potentially, about intertextuality and the nature of how people respond to texts in different ways at different times but we seem to be stuck in a cycle where people are angry and offended at both ends of the spectrum and nothing interesting or new is ever said
#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters#and i for one am tired#and like. i understand both sides!#sometimes i find the former insufferably snobbish#sometimes i find the latter just insufferable#mostly i just am very bored with the whole thing and wish i didn't have to read people yelling about it anymore#i'm just going to tag this#actual english major lise#because i feel like that's kind of how i relate to this whole...gestures. thing
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☕️ American SFF
wow so how long ago did I do this meme? too long probably to be answer this ask now is probably the answer, but I found it in my drafts and felt like it, so sue me. and also I have fresh hot spicy opinions* on this now so *fingerguns* here goes
So I’ve been looking over “most anticipated” lists for 2022, and...I think I referenced a while ago the way that I’m feeling kind of detached/alienated from the state of much of the new SFF coming out right now (at least, that gets a lot of press/attention), and I’m still very much feeling that - it seems like what is “in” right now is just not what works for me.
To elaborate on that a little - I feel like some of it can be summed up by my reflexive grimace whenever I hear the word “hopepunk,” or the fact that as far as I’m concerned Becky Chambers has overstayed her welcome by several books, or the fact that I am very tired of reading book blurbs that talk about how sweet and tender and soft it is.
It seems as though (and this is anecdata and personal, please don’t take me as an authority) there’s an impulse in SFF lately to offer stories that serve as solace or comfort - that, if they’re not utopias, gesture toward the concept. I can understand that impulse, certainly - the world is a mess, things are scary and miserable and, per Tolkien, it is peoples’ right to want to escape that and find reassurance where they can. And some of it, too, is I think a correction/backlash against “grimdark” works. Which...yeah, grimdark was a Thing, and it was a thing that drove me nuts, but I also feel like the definition (as with so many things) gradually expanded to cover a lot of ground, and became sort of “dismissive way of categorizing a thing I don’t like” sometimes. Consequently, from my perspective it feels like an overcorrection. It feels...toothless. It feels like the book version of the sensation of trying to squeeze a very soft pillow.
Of course this doesn’t cover everything on the shelves, but when I turn the other way what I find is a lot of stuff that feels very...Single Dude Protagonist, if that makes sense as a shorthand. And that’s not what I want either! I just find that boring; generally speaking there’s not a lot there to draw me.
And the thing is that I feel like I can’t talk about this, because people are going to hear it as, like, me bitching about SFF becoming a more diverse publishing field, the uptick in books with queer characters and romances, more mind being paid to how things like race and gender are handled. That’s the association that I feel like gets made, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I think about that genre of Tumblr post that was like “why would you ever put homophobia in your fantasy world, that’s horrible.” It’s this idea that writing darkness into a fictional world, writing pain and suffering and inequality, is somehow perpetuating the wrongs of the real world, as opposed to it being a way of examining those things, responding to those things. Not just I read this to cope or whatever but I read this because it gives me something to think with.
I feel like there was this brief window of time where there was this influx of writers and books that were doing some very interesting things with the genre, particularly thematically. I think of Broken Earth, and Imperial Radch, and The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and Machineries of Empire, and Divine Cities. Books that were grappling with heavy shit, that could hurt you, that offered a challenge of one kind or another. But now...I just feel like I don’t see those kinds of works popping up as much anymore.
This isn’t universal, obviously! The Poppy War and its sequels came out recently and certainly were not this; same with the Green Bone Saga. There are still books coming out that are wrestling with the kind of things that I want to read about, that feel like something I can sink my teeth into, and that sink their teeth into me. But I feel like they’re getting harder and harder for me to find.
*citation needed
#anyway this got longer than i expected whoops#lise has opinions#sometimes i read things#actual english major lise#(sort of)#conversating#elwing#opinions meme
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☕️ books vs fanfic
ohhhh man you mean one of my least favorite debates? (not directed at you! more just like...augh I'm so tired. I'm so tired.)
because like...I feel like this post puts it really well talking about the ways that it falls into a sort of...binary, opposed categories, hierarchical trap. where one side is trying to legitimate fanfiction like:
"fanfiction has a long literary history and isn't just a modern phenomenon!" (the '[x] is fanfiction' thing that was very popular a few years ago and now thoroughly derided) or maybe "fanfiction is better than published fiction because it is more inclusive/less gatekeepy!" or variations on these arguments, which are usually aimed at a combination of telling people that fanfiction is a real literary genre, actually, so shut up and stop looking down on 'us' (fandom, fanfiction writers, etc.), and/or telling people that fanfiction is actually better than any original work, because traditional publishing is racist/bigoted/full of problematic (to be clear: this is true! however you will find so is fandom.)
and then there's the response to that which goes, variously:
"fanfiction is just a lesser form of writing, you're insulting original works by making the comparison, deal with it and accept your place" (sometimes put more nicely, but that might be the gist of it), or "fanfiction is a culturally distinct phenomenon that is only relevant in modern day concepts, and calling, for instance, myth fanfiction is fallacious" or "fanfiction is more like literary analysis than it is like writing fiction" (which I actually like! as an argument! though I don't think it is blanket true in all cases, again, allergic to universals)
and honestly my response to all of this is that I find it incredibly boring.
I don't think any of it is asking interesting questions! I don't think it's a conversation that, on either side, is going anywhere! like...to begin with, attempts at organizing forms of creative work into hierarchical structures is (a) doomed to failure and (b) completely pointless.
where are you going to go from there? what are you going to say? what point are you going to make?
there are so many more interesting questions about the relationship between original fiction books and fanfiction, and the dynamic between those two things, the dynamics that give rise to the latter, the anxiety/ecstasy of influence as it plays in postmodern (or post-postmodern) creative work. you could talk about why some works generate fanfiction and some don't. you could talk about what work fanfiction is doing in its communities, what need it fills. you can talk about what differentiates an adaptive work from fanfiction! what is the distinction? is there a different in motivational force? a difference in execution? or what about the form? I would be hyped to read some kind of...formalist analysis of cross-fandom language (like the "toed off his shoes" thing or similar). and I don't even particularly like formalist criticism.
anyway I could keep going but my point is that the back and forth about what's "real" writing and which is better and whether Hadestown counts as fanfiction or whatever is a conversation that exhausts me and bores me to tears and I'd like to start having a different one.
(would you look at that, I wrote shorter and probably more coherent versions of this post here and also here.)
#tried to find the 'fanfiction as lit crit' post but could not#ah well.#lise memes#opinions meme#lise has opinions#because this is just coherent enough to merit that tag maybe#conversating#crocordile#actual english major lise#arguing over merit and categories out please i'm begging you
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What kind of plot lines and main characters do you like?
This is...a very big question, anon, and I feel like I can’t encompass it fully without going on for a very long time, because while I am very predictable there are a lot of different things within that predictability range that I like, and sometimes I like unexpected things, and really my list of narrative kinks when you factor in things like plot and style is as long as my arm.
But like, a few things that come to mind as sort of...characteristic Lise Bait in a work of fiction:
Depressed and/or fucked up protagonists. If your protagonist isn’t a mess of mental health issues then what is even the point!!!
Ends-justify-the-means protagonists. This one is definitely not an always - I’m picky about it, and how it works, but I do really like a ruthless protagonist who has a very definite end goal and will do a whole lot of bad things getting there. Bonus points if the thematic angle is the question of when it crosses the line.
Mirroring/parallels, particularly between a protagonist and their antagonist. I’m a sucker for parallels. They make me lose my mind every time. Shadow/reflection parallels are even better. Dark mirrors! Distorted reflections! Like, I know the “we’re not so different” thing gets a lot of flack, and I understand why, but at its base it’s something I find very interesting, particularly when it doesn’t come with a straightforward rejection or repudiation of that comparison.
I want people to be uncomfortable. I want there to be questions. I want there to be recognition of the fact that it’s not as simple as “one person made good choices and one person made bad choices.” I want the parallels to be uneasy and not entirely resolvable.
But also just like. Narrative parallels and reflections. Cyclical time, things that have come around once coming around again. Not just parallels between characters but parallels between events.
A strong relationship between a protagonist and an antagonist. By which I specifically mean a personal relationship. I want them tied together in some way beyond “we want different things”! I don’t care if that means they’re related, or exes, or old friends, or...whatever. But I’m always going to be more compelled by a story that has, as part of its central conflict, an interpersonal dynamic that has to do with the protagonist’s personal investment or emotional connection to their antagonist.
Too-clever-for-their-own-good protagonists. I love a good chessmaster or just very smart protagonist, and I especially love it when it gets them into trouble. People who think themselves into corners! Like, he’s not a protagonist at all but the iconic motivation that is Elan Morin Tedronai’s thinking himself into a nihilistic spiral leading to his becoming one of the Forsaken? *kisses fingers* perfect.
So actually really this is just “too-clever-for-their-own-good characters” because it’s also a thing I love in a good antagonist, where part of their problem is a tendency to overthink.
I’m pretty sure it’s an anxiety thing. I like characters who vibe with me on an anxiety level and “overthinking yourself into knots” is a very Me thing.
Corruption/redemption arcs. Either direction! Even better is both directions. It’s just that...arc of change, and choice (I’ve talked before about how apeshit I go over themes around choice and agency, yeah? cause...yeah), and seeing how step-by-step someone can either collapse (see below) or rebuild. The redemption arc part of this is a very gut-level desire for me in a lot of ways, particularly in the hard work of it. But a corruption arc can also be...mmm. Tasty. Love to see, as sort of explored above, someone starting out with the best of intentions and sliding gradually, little by little, into something very different.
And if they come out of it afterwards? Also fantastic. *waves at book four Xie Lian*
A good downward spiral. I mean, this is kind of aligned with the “corruption arc” but it is also just about the tragedy of it. Watching the gradual collapse of a person or structure, how things gradually just...gather into an almost inevitable seeming crash even as you can see, meticulously, every step that led there. People trapped between bad and worse choices and not being able to find a good way out. I’m a sucker for a “this is terrible but it is very hard to see it going anywhere else, there were all these roads off but because of who everyone involved is, no one would’ve taken them” story.
Tragedy! In the classical sense! Yes thanks.
I mean, also love to see how people pull out of it after, but sometimes you also just fuckin’ love the trainwreck. Like...I will write 1 million Yi City fix its but what pulls me toward that arc in the first place is how miserably doomed the whole thing is.
Prideful and narratively doomed. This was originally something I think I used to refer to the Feanorians, but it really is just a thing generally. As much as I love the absolutely lethal combination of arrogance and basement level self-worth, I also love Lucifer-type figures - full of pride, and stuck in a narrative that’s going to punish them for it. Not because I want to see proud characters humbled, either - that’s not the button that’s getting pushed here. It’s a tragic catharsis/hubris thing.
I don’t really know how to explain it, I just know that I like it and it’s also very frustrating to me.
Other thematic things...I gravitate toward, like, works about imperialism/colonialism but also more generally about power and power dynamics, choice/agency (like I said before), explorations of narrative and how the power of narrative drives people in various directions...that’s a few cursory thoughts, anyway. Engaging with questions of what makes a person good or bad, things about perception/reality...idk, a lot of this is sort of ‘I know it when I see it and lose my mind over it.’ Oh! Narratives of futility. I have a thing sometimes for narratives of loss and futility, particularly of the ‘but keep going anyway’ stripe. *waves at thesis about The Silmarillion*
Honestly, when it comes to like...plot, I tend to be pretty interested in a variety of plots, and tend to prefer when they feel at least somewhat unfamiliar. When I read fanfiction I will seek out story tropes over and over again, but I think I’m less inclined to do that in my other reading. I’m much more likely to seek out themes than I am to seek out plots.
Loosely speaking I think my hierarchy of how much I care about a thing tends to go more or less like:
Characters
Theme
Prose
Plot
With prose sometimes taking precedence if it is very good, or theme coming higher on the list if it’s a particularly compelling exploration.
Anyway this is a very long-winded way of saying that I don’t actually have a list of plot tropes I feel like I seek out, unless you count certain types of character arc in that category.
#anonymous#conversating#like obviously all these things are important but#i feel like i am just less often picky about specific plot elements#than i am about theme and character#and how something is written is also a huge determinant of if i'm going to enjoy it#what do i even tag this#actual english major lise#sort of???
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