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aggressiveguitarnoises · 4 months

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i have media studies exam (although mock so its fine) that i didnt study for so im gonna force myself to practice by applying barthes narrative theory to season 1 hannibal (vaguely tbh cuz its the whole seasom but ok)

hermeneutic codes(how do u even pronounce this omfg) :

enigma codes, they are def crucial to this show as each episode raises more and more unanswered questions as the audience continues watching the show, questions like who is commiting the crimes, is will ok, does he know how fucked up his clocks are, is crawford fucking stupid, is abigail ok, what the hell is hannibal doing, why are they using cat guts for strings, are the dogs gonna live oh my god please can the dogs be okay for once

usually done by leaving cliffhangers for each episode

it drives the audience forward and interests them so they continue watching the show to find out the answers to their questions

its also a convention to use hermeneutic codes for horror crime shows like hannibal

Proairetic codes:

action codes, the actions done to drive the narrative forward, previous events drive other events into action. ngl this one is fucking stupid to apply i dont get if i ever apply it correctly

in hannibal, proairetic codes tie a lot with hermeneutic codes as the actions of the characters raise questions for the audience questioning their choices and makes the audience wonder what will happen next. the action creates tension and makes the audience wonder how the created problem(if there is one) will be resolved. for example when hannibal lecter called abigails father to inform him that "they know" and that fbi is on the way. this drives the narrative forward as then the audience wonders how the characters will react and wonder how the actions will affect the story. this action ended up with abigail becoming an orphan and their suspect dead, creating a few side plots and introducing new characters. this constant tension created by each action drives the narrative forward and engages the audience to continue watching the show

semantic codes:

connotations, things associated with something, the deeper level meaning of a symbol. this one is hard yet so easy cuz theres literally SO many of them

they basically give insight into the plot and characters, building personalities and maybe even starting the deep questions the audience will have

for example, for hannibal, hes quite sophisticated, the semantic codes for that would be how he wears suits all the time, his overall style and his acquired taste. those things connote sophistication, wealth and even control and power (especially the suit and his high respected position as a psychiatrist)

but another thing that can be derived from things like how hes always careful, always has a cloth that doesn't leave any fabric fibres, how he doesn't use anything digital, only physical things like journals to leave no traces, the fact that hes literally eating his evidence lmao, his knowledge and experience of human anatomy and mind connote that hes a careful, experienced, ambitious man and prob(definitely) is a serial killer

symbolic codes:

it has such an easy concept that its literally confusing to understand. its basically symbols, binaries, a thematic/structural device, but it's basically about themes and contrary signs specifically, which is ig why its kind of difficult to understand since its specifically binary symbols

some symbolic codes in hannibal would be life vs death, clearly a reoccurring theme with all of the crimes happening, good vs bad, murderers and their victims, health? both physical and mental? stability? work vs personal life? idk its so hard to pin point it even tho its so easy and common idk

a better example woukd be the bad vs good binary used in star wars with ghe colours of light sabers

Cultural codes:

literally cultural and social conventions, knowledge that comes from the outside world of the text, specific connotations used

example, FBI for crimes and america, religion and faith, the whole fbi units especially medical, even Christmas is a cultural code as its a celebrated event of certain social and cultural and religious conventions

bruv i cant think of any more examples even tho i know theres so many

hope yall enjoyed my silly analysis of hannibal as my media studies application practice if u read it all xx

#idk why i did this on tumblr instead of just writing all of this in my notes or smth #media studies #gcse #a levels #fucking british education system #media studies a level #nbc hannibal #hannibal #roland barthes #barthes theory #narrative theory #hannibal nbc

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twosides--samecoin · 5 months

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also, unsure if you ever read pokemon fic, but if you appreciate music informing the reader of a character's personality and diegetic music, you may enjoy "make you suffer" by girllikesubstance on ao3. i certainly did! it's written like an action movie but with solid characterization; i literally cannot recommend the author's work enough.

Oh, I have not, thank you for the recommendation!

"Diegetic music", for anyone who's never heard of it, refers to any in-universe music or lyric that is interacted with or acknowledged by the characters. The musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is entirely diegetic music, performed by the characters; however the intro theme of that show is not.

I consider music a main character in the fic. It started with choosing song titles for chapters and the fic title, then it snowballed into, "How do I indicate to the reader Music Is Happening in a natural way that doesn't always need me introducing, like, 'a guitar rang out/a solemn voice sang', etc?" How do you solve the characters hearing what the reader can only, well, read? Sure, I have some playlists on Spotify to follow along, but as Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message". It must be clear in the writing that music is playing. A new voice has entered the room.

One of my favourite novels is Ulysses by James Joyce. He had a masterful talent for cacophony and onomatopoeia. Several threads of conversations and voices and thoughts all happening at you on one page. And he just goes for it.

I chose to solve the problem by having my own style guide. Lyrics just happen as though they're a person speaking, they're just italicized to indicate it's a recording. Here's an excerpt of one of the most successful examples of diegetic music I have written in the fic, from the chapter Thunder Road.

The radio DJ’s voice interrupted the silence. “Hi, it’s Delia, we got the weather monitor fixed. It’s only a few degrees below freezing tonight and I’m not in a sour mood anymore, so.. Here’s a favorite, for my favorite. Here’s Thunder Road.” Olivia’s eyes widened as harmonica and piano played together. She turned towards the radio. “Are you serious right now?” “What?” RJ asked. "..The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways. Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays.." Jack smiled. He knew what this song was about and wondered just how well she knew it. He caught Olivia’s eye as she turned away from the radio. RJ saw Jack’s shit-eating grin and knew it meant he figured something out with her. A smile that could mean he was having fun, or he could checkmate you. The same glance Olivia and Jack shared about him earlier. "..Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, 'Hey that's me and I want you only,' Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again.." “I- what, why are you looking at me like that-” “Good song, huh?” he responded, smiling at her. "..Don't run back inside, darling, you know just what I'm here for.." RJ didn’t quite understand what Jack was getting at. The radio was low enough that he could hear the music, but the lyrics were harder to hear from across the room. “Bruce fan?” Jack asked her. “Yeah, um.. I like him.” Jack’s heart melted. “My wife, Nora, was a huge fan. We have the first seven albums on one holotape,” “Wait, no way-” "..So you're scared, and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore.." “Yeah, way. How many Bruce albums you got in this vault, huh?” “I don’t,” Olivia told him, looking almost apologetic. “I only get to hear Bruce when he’s on the radio.”

#thanks for the ask!#narrative theory #writing #diegetic music #diegetics #on writing #writers on tumblr #ulysses #james joyce #literature #fanfiction #bruce springsteen #long time running #my writing

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 5 months

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Wait- I'm super intrigued by your bio. "Story theory." What is this referencing? Is there a particular story theory??

ahh, my bio!

"Main fandoms: GW2, Middle-Earth, and reality. Fiction enthusiast and student of story theory. What is reality but the story of the Creator, the Author, the Word - Jesus Christ?"

Needs some updating, clearly - I've moved GW2 activity to a sideblog and I need to add Miraculous Ladybug. But your question is abt story theory! Thanks for asking! Let's dive in!

By story theory I primarily mean 'what is the art of storytelling, and telling stories well.' I mean the big things such as the study of character arcs, narrative themes (a quite extensive field on its own), plot structure, symbolism, truths and lies, the role of backstory and character motivation, major, side and background characters, narratively condemning or exalting various traits, qualities, actions, etc. etc. as well as, perhaps, the more basic concepts such as show-dont-tell, scene-and-sequel, narrative foils, etc.

What story theory is NOT is things like grammar, how to use punctuation, paragraphs, or quote marks, formatting chapters, and the like.

As far as I know there is no 'one particular' story theory, although I suppose different people have different answers to some of the questions (such as how many acts are in one story or how many basic types of stories there are).

I have learned most of my story theory from K.M. Weiland's blog, Helping Writers Become Authors, as well as the book Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain.

As a side note, I particularly love seeing how fiction mirrors reality and I do greatly believe we are all living stories, that the world has its story, that History is God's Story, and so on. That's what makes fiction compelling - because we've lived it or seen it lived. God is the author(ity) of the universe and I think that's beautiful.

And I love analyzing it lol.

I can answer more specific questions as well if you like! I llve this subject! Thanks for asking!

#Narrative theory #Story theory #christianity #faith

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dazzlegradual · 2 years

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Summer Camp in the CA Narrative Imagination

Working in the summer camp industry, many of the spaces I work in are named either after Native American tribes who ‘previously’ inhabited the colonized land or the primary colonizers who laid claim to the land to the behest of the United States government. The summer camp I have spent many years working at, primarily in a leadership position and most recently as the Director, is called ‘Camp Menzies’. It is not a clever reference to a popular and cheeky nickname for menstruation — it’s in honor of Charles Menzies, a cattle rancher and businessman whose primary residence was in Stockton, CA. The campground itself is situated about 2 hours from Sacramento, CA, just outside the small city of Arnold. It’s 5500 feet in elevation, in the heart of the Sierra Nevadas, and the land is riddled with Ponderosa Pines and the biggest pinecones you’ve ever seen. It’s gorgeous, and it’s understandable why Charles Menzies might have originally wanted to purchase the land. This 150 acre lot land that is now my Girl Scout camp (and has been since 1946) was land that Menzies and his wife bought for camping, entertaining friends, and outdoor recreation. His cabin, however dilapidated and rat-ridden, is still situated on the property today. It’s surrounded by tons junk: metal bed frames, charbroiled pipes, and a truly inexplicable number of bathtubs. At Camp Menzies, there are also original Me-Wuk built shake cabins, and a particularly creepy creaky old ‘ice house’.

Charles Menzies bought the land from a Me-wuk tribe around 1903. I’ve seen the land deed that his lawyer wrote up — I and a fellow camp staff member came across it this summer while we were searching through old camp documents. We were grateful to learn some of the names of actual Me-Wuk tribe members who were a part of the sale, including Nettie Hunter who our camp’s canoe lake is named after. The deed does not, however, list for how much the land was negotiated for. I’ve been zeroing in on this missing detail for months: scurrying myself in a tailspin as I try to parse through fragile, old documents in local libraries for how much this land exactly sold for. I had to know, and I knew it had to be written down somewhere.

I didn’t talk about this obsession with a lot of people because I felt it would become a better story, more neatly wrapped up, when I could finally report all the facts. But few months ago, I was recounting this hyper-fixation to a friend, he paused me and asked, “why?”

Why, exactly, was I invested in learning the exact amount that this sale amounted for? What would that answer? I responded that I didn’t know. And I didn’t know. Perhaps I wanted to know that Charles Menzies was a fair buisnessman. Perhaps if the land was truly bought for an amount of money that seemed ‘fair’, then I could feel absolved of some of my guilt for operating a summer camp on land that doesn’t have a clean history. Perhaps I wanted to absolve any feelings I had for running a camp named in honor of a man I know very little about. Perhaps I just felt fixated on a piece of information that felt out of my grasp.

But is there a fair price that this land could have sold for? Can you put a price on land people have lived on for thousands of years? What would that price be? The truth is, regardless of price, the event of a sale illustrates the colonial state at work. The claiming of ownership over a parcel of land is a construct we, the settlers, introduced in California 150 years ago. As la paperson writes in A Third University is Possible, “Property law is a settler colonial technology. The weapons that enforce it, the knowledge institutions that legitimize it, the financial institutions that operationalize it, are also technologies. Like all technologies, they evolve and spread.” The price of the land doesn’t really matter — the sale taking place in the first place is what counts. And it doesn’t matter is the Me-Wuk tribe members like Nettie Hunter sold the land because they genuinely wanted to or because they felt they were driven to no other choice. They were still making a decision based on their rapidly changing world, a world that was changing because of settler arrival.I will admit that I desperately still want to know all the details of this sale from the Me-wuk tribe to Charles Menzies, including the price. But I would like to know not because there is an amount that would constitute fairness, but because I feel deeply connected to this small parcel of history, which is embedded in this land, and I want to dig my fingers deep into its Earth and hear all of the stories it might tell me.

There is other evidence on the Menzies property besides the buildings of this land’s past iterations. Despite the campgrounds having been an operational Girl Scout summer camp for over 75 years, campers find old (and new) evidence every summer: horseshoes, wrenches, cowbells, rusted metal contraptions/parts we can’t make sense of. Every time a camper proudly delivers a new finding into my posession, I silently confirm in my head that, yes, we do indeed require updated tetanus shots from campers. These artifacts, to me, appear as persistent reminders that while we busy ourselves constantly with the self delusion that the past is behind us, the artifice of time remains just that: contrived and meaningless. There are ghosts at this camp. They demand to be known. And of course the children find them before I do.

Although, it can’t be all too surprising that the past beckons forth our attention when summer camp, as an institution, seems to uphold the past as a heralded beacon. To summer camp professionals, our pioneer-origins are accepted as an innate, powerful, and a nearly religious origin story. We relate deeply to the cowboys of America, the hikers of the Adirondacks, the brave and sure-footed Pioneers trekking across the plains. Summer camp professionals are often white people who embrace community and cooperative visions of the future, but cling needlessly to narratives of an idealized, non-existent past: one in which white ancestors, our forebears, lived ‘off the land’ in a way that was virtuous and noble. It allows us to see ourselves as perpetual underdogs, united by our altruistic and highly profitable love of the outdoors.

At Camp Menzies, we often play a game called ‘Gold Rush’ where we hide gold-spray painted rocks all over the camp property, and each camper’s goal is to retrieve as many gold pieces as they can and bring the rocks back to the bank (which is a cardboard box in the Dining Hall we have fitted with a Sharpie scrawling of the word “BANK!”). We assign older campers with the role of ‘robbers’ who job it is to steal gold from younger campers and re-hide them before campers can bring the rocks to the bank. After rules are described and teams are chosen, what ensues is delightful, wonderful chaos. Running is allowed, points are not kept, scores are meaningless, and the game concludes when the younger kids are tired of running and the older kids have run out of hiding places. I love Gold Rush. It exemplifies so much of what I love about summer camp. When we yell, “GO!” I watch dozens of kids squeal with delight and run with glee into the woods. I watch them take their friend’s hand and move freely, uninhibited, with a watchful adult trailing closely behind. There aren’t many times I witness young kids, girls especially, live with this complete lack of inhibition. The competitive air rushing through camp when we’re playing Gold Rush is something thick and alive. I watch teenagers, who are often otherwise constantly adjusting their hair and standing so self-assuredly in an “I’m way too old and cool to be here fashion” run full-speed at a tree stump because they caught a glint of something shiny. I’ll see a middle schooler plunge into the dirt towards a fern plant, chucking sticks and dirt at her friends, commanding that they “go on without her” because she’ll stay behind and obstruct the path of the robbers. I’ll see a younger gaggle of 10 year olds abandon the game to braid together wildflowers in the meadow, oblivious to the chaos around them. I love nothing more than watching this scene unfold before me as I stand and laugh until I can’t breathe. But I can’t shake the feeling whenever we play Gold Rush we’re playing into something weird, and complicated. I can’t help but think about that before the Gold Rush began in 1849, at least 20,000 Me-wuk people lived in the Sierra Nevadas, but by the 1910 census, only about 300 Me-wuk people (then called ‘digger Indians’) were recorded on the Tuolumne County census. The Gold Rush killed thousands of people, and here I am teaching kids it’s all in good fun.

Everyone who grows up in California is closely acquainted with the Gold Rush, and for those of us in close proximity to the Sierra Nevadas (such as myself), it’s legacy is inescapable. Practically every Main Street, town square, school is named after some aristocrat who got rich off the Gold Rush. While 4th graders in Southern California construct tiny dioramas of the Spanish missions, NorCal kids pull wagons and pan for gold in Coloma, where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848. I remember being taught that the Gold Rush was inseparable to the identity of Californians. It influenced our plucky, creative, and independent spirit. Californians, especially those in the Northern half of the state, are go-getters, problem solvers, the last true cowboys of the West. Out here, you could make something out of nothing. You could live surrounded by the most beautiful trees - Giant redwoods, palm trees, or majestic oaks. Any tree, whichever y your favorite, take your pick. You could live in the Golden State and become the truest, most shiny version of yourself. This legacy is especially enduring as any other pervasive colonial narrative, thanks to the outpouring of wine, film, music, and agriculture from the state. Everyone knows who we are, the Californians. When I traveled abroad to other countries, I learned that other U.S. Americans usually introduced themselves as just being from the States. If you’re from California, you can just say, “I’m from California” — and be certain they will know what you mean. But most of California’s modern recognition power doesn’t come from Northern California, even if that is where our golden legacy began. It comes from the Golden Gate Bridge, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Disneyland, and of course, our infamous sprawling, seaweed stinky beaches. This leaves Northern California and its many cities, strewn about the valleys and foothills and Sierra Nevada mountain range, condemned to the footnotes — despite their cities’ high populations, agricultural outputs, and literally housing the Capitol of the state. It isn’t cool to be from NorCal. It’s too hot, the valley is too flat, it’s on fire all the time, and it’s not L.A. or the Bay. The gold country remnant towns are sparsely populated and often tote tired, peeling building facades and deeply Republican vibes. Even still, this is where Camp Menzies is situated, I love it so dearly, and folks living here honestly have a point about hating the government and establishment Democrats (you and me both, buddy).

I’ll try to digress. There’s very little I can say about my personal feelings on growing up near Sacramento that Greta Gerwig didn’t say in Lady Bird. But I’d like to make a case for where to go from here, and what to do at this point. I love summer camp. I worry about summer camp. I worry when we play Gold Rush at Camp Menzies, we play into the persistent myth taught in California public school classrooms that the 1849 Gold Rush was exciting, great fun. Part of me thinks our version of the game is so anachronistic and removed from context that we are perhaps absolved. But another part knows that while the Gold Rush represents the beginning of California’s human history for many people, for the Me-wuk, Patwin, Neislan and countless other peoples and tribes, it represents an end: the end of a way of life in communion with the Earth. Many white descendants living in Northern California believe that Native Americans in the area died because of exposure to diseases like smallpox that their immune systems weren’t used to. This did occur, but this narrative instils a certain passivity on the part of white settlers and negates their real, human agency and actions. There are many letters between settlers from this time period where gold panners describe intentionally sending someone infected with small-pox as the ‘go-between’ person to tribes, knowing that infection would likely spread. Many rivers in the Sierra Nevadas were plugged or rerouted during the Gold Rush, the reason being attributed to building necessary dams or panning for gold, but a great number of the rivers were directly in path of Me-wuk tribal homesteads, and white settlers also wrote in letters that removing water was a means of ‘dealing with the Indian problem’.

Never mind many of these rivers are still not ecologically restored to their pre-colonization splendor, such as the Little Mokelumne River that runs through the Camp Menzies property. There’s rock striations and tree evidence that this river used to be much bigger. Now, it rushes in quiet earnest with snow run-off in the early summer, usually drying up by late July. When a fire blazes through this area (which it will, at some point — this is California, after all), the Little Mokelumne River likely could have provided land protection pre-Industrialization. Now, though, the river will only be a small blip in the monstrous and unstoppable path of a wildfire. There’s no way that white settlers in 1849 rerouting rivers in Tuolumne County could have known they would one day bear some responsibility for the current state of wildfires in Northern California — they also must have known, on some level, that what they were doing would cause a disruption. But I suppose that was the object. Californians love to cause a disruption, be it artistic, economic, or political. That much was certain with the sudden arrival of hundreds of hopeful white settlers in the mid 1800’s to Northern California. It is in our nature to be hopeful — to know the slight odds, and preserve anyway. A bet on the hope that you could discover something new. It is always during Gold Rush that campers discover the horseshoes, the weird tools I can’t name, the cans rusted beyond recognition. The past’s legacy of this land doesn’t just linger in the back of my head while we play Gold Rush: this history is rooted here, in this land, and in children’s hands splayed before me.

#dazzlegradual #summer camp #west coast #california #sacramento #girl scouts #narrative theory

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am--f · 1 year

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Structuralist compression

The structuralist impulse—to study culture by decomposing it into the fundamental units and structural relations that condition the diachronic unfolding of its particular instances—is frequently justified by basic technical problems: the finitude of processing power and storage capacity. Structuralism, at least since Saussure, regarded itself as the only way forward for social and human sciences that were overwhelmed by the vastness of the data of concrete utterances (parole) and still had no consistent paradigms with which to proceed. Roland Barthes recognizes that narrative analysis, like linguistics, cannot possibly proceed by addressing each and every narrative of the millions that exist; he will propose that narrative units, levels, and codes be established. A.J. Greimas refers to a semantic universe too vast to be grasped by man; he will propose that its constituents can be gathered in microuniverses defined by actantial relations. Claude Lévi-Strauss notes that there are far too many languages, representations, and characters to be treated by anthropologists; he will propose that myths be bundled in terms of elementary binaries. “A compilation of known tales and myths would fill an imposing number of volumes,” he writes. “But they can be reduced to a small number of simple types if we abstract from among the diversity of characters a few elementary functions” ([1958] 1963, 204).

In sum, structuralist research appears to take shape as a series of data compression algorithms: coding procedures that reduce to a minimum the quantity of cultural source material that needs to be transmitted and stored, without, at the same time, significantly reducing the quantity of information. This is frequently done pseudo-statistically: by loosely optimizing the codes for the “messages” that are likely to be produced. These are also essentially digital procedures, seeking to apply, at ground level, a grid of bit-like, isometric, often explicitly binary units—phonemes, mythemes, sememes, narremes—which can then be used to reconstitute any cultural object. Structuralism, in this sense, seeks to make culture computable. And although it usually refers to Saussurean linguistics as its primary model, it undoubtedly also develops in dialogue with the information-theoretical source coding of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver.

In Barthes’s early narrative analysis, the primary constitutive unit is a function, defined simply as a segment of a story that can be selected as a meaningful message, or “seen as the term of a correlation”: “A narrative is never made up of anything other than functions: in differing degrees, everything in it signifies” (89).* It would then only be a matter of scanning a given text in order to discretize it into functions, and determining the values of each function as it acts upon others and is grouped and modulated by higher-level integrations. We are familiar with other tropes of structuralist compression (encoding and decoding): semiotic squares in Greimas, tables and musical staves in Lévi-Strauss, formulas and graphs in Jacques Lacan, and alphanumeric sequences in Gérard Genette. In Genette’s structural narratology, it becomes possible, for example, to scan Proust’s narration (of Swann’s account of the Prince de Guermantes’s conversion to Dreyfusism), picking out its anachronic lexia, and to recompose it as: “A4[B3][C5–D6(E3)F6(G3)(H1)(I7<J3><K8(L2<M9>)>)N6]O4,” where A–O and 1–9 mark the two time schemas of narration and story (the order of statements in the text and the order of events that they recount) (43).

This kind of compression often exhausts its own capacities, and it is at its limits (such as in Barthes’s S/Z) where structuralist projects become most interesting. These are not only limits of purpose—what are we supposed to do once all of the codes are broken?—but also, as mentioned, limits of technical capacity. Even as early as 1955, Lévi-Strauss has run up against the hardware specifications of his card index:

At this point it seems unfortunate that, with the limited means at the disposal of French anthropological research, no further advance can be made. It should be emphasized that the task of analyzing mythological literature, which is extremely bulky, and of breaking it down into its constituent units, requires team work and secretarial help. A variant of average length needs several hundred cards to be properly analyzed. To discover a suitable pattern of rows and columns for those cards, special devices are needed, consisting of vertical boards about two meters long and one and one-half meters high, where cards can be pigeon-holed and moved at will; in order to build up three-dimensional models enabling one to compare the variants, several such boards are necessary, and this in turn requires a spacious workshop, a kind of commodity particularly unavailable in Western Europe nowadays. Furthermore, as soon as the frame of reference becomes multi-dimensional […] the board-system has to be replaced by perforated cards which in turn require I.B.M. equipment, etc. Since there is little hope that such facilities will become available in France in the near future, it is much desired that some American group, better equipped than we are here in Paris, will be induced by this paper to start a project of its own in structural mythology. (443)

The organization of cultural data in three or more dimensions cannot be achieved with Lévi-Strauss’s Paris database. The anthropologist looks to the computational methods of the Americans, calling for a research project that might put something like the automatic indexing technologies of Vannevar Bush in the service of mythological analysis. Indeed, in the 1960s, structuralist theorists and critics would continue to engage with engineers and scientists involved in the burgeoning “universal languages” of cybernetics, communications research, and information theory.

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, one of a handful of scholars working on this intellectual history, has meticulously tracked the exchanges between American military-industrial-informatics and French literary and cultural theorists in the immediate pre-WWII and post-WWII period. In Code, Geoghegan identifies Warren Weaver himself as a central node for this structuralism–cybernetics network; in his philanthropic role at the Rockefeller Foundation, he promoted the work of Roman Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss in particular. MIT’s Center of International Studies and the Ford Foundation (both of which, incidentally, received major funding and strategic direction from the CIA) provided additional support for Lévi-Strauss's 1953–1954 UNESCO seminar on cybernetics and information theory (“Utilization of Mathematics in the Social Sciences”), whose participants included psychologist Jean Piaget, structural psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, semiotician Émile Benveniste, cybernetician Ross Ashby, and information theorist Benoît Mandelbrot. Several years later, Barthes presided at a Paris group called the Center for the Study of Mass Communications (Centre d’Études des Communications de Masses, or CECMAS), which was organized in 1960 to examine the feasibility of incorporating American-style communications research and cybernetics into French academia. CECMAS’s journal, Communications, definitively established structural narratology in its eighth issue (1966), featuring influential essays by Barthes, Greimas, Genette, Claude Bremond, Umberto Eco, Tzvetan Todorov, and Christian Metz. (CECMAS seminars were the basis for Barthes’s S/Z as well as Jean Baudrillard’s The System of Objects.)

It would be a mistake to simply identify structuralism with early digital computing, communications research, and information theory, but it would also be a mistake to ignore the profound and indelible influence of these fields on the “structuralist activity” (Barthes). The prototypical digital humanities that structuralism represents has not been adequately understood in its Cold War context, especially in its reception in American humanities departments. Today’s digital humanities, I would argue, are not as new as they seem; there is a conceptual continuity between formalism, structuralism, and the digital humanities. It is a highly contested continuity, but a continuity nonetheless. Geoghegan does not say much about the implications of this history for contemporary theory and practice, but it is clear that there are parallels as well as divergences in how today’s humanities are negotiating the morass of contemporary data sciences and artificial intelligence. It is worth further exploring this history, which is not only one of conceptual resemblance but also of intellectual, financial, and political materialization.

*Barthes, it must be noted, seems to pose a challenge for those who would apply the entirety of the Shannon–Weaver model to literary texts when he insists that “art is without noise (as that term is employed in information theory)” ([1966] 1977, 89). Later, he will call literature an “intentional cacography” or noise-writing ([1973] 1974, 9). This may not be a reversal of positions; after all, if everything is noise, it follows that nothing is.

References

Barthes, Roland. (1963) 1972. “The Structuralist Activity.” Pp. 213–220 in Critical Essays, translated by Richard Howard. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. (1966) 1977. “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives.” Pp. 79–124 in Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang. ———. (1973) 1974. S/Z, translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang. Genette, Gérard. (1972) 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius. 2023. Code: From Information Theory to French Theory. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Greimas, A.-J. (1966) 1983. Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. “The Structural Study of Myth.” The Journal of American Folklore 68 (270): 428–444. ———. (1958) 1963. Structural Anthropology, translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoolpf. New York: Basic Books.

#writing #narrative theory #structuralism

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robtopus · 3 months

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Thinking about the relationship between extradiegetic and autodiegetic narration. Some people would argue that any autodiegetic narrator is, by necessity, intradiegetic (part of the narrated world), and I still hold the position that it is likely, but not necessary -- Genette himself uses In Search of Lost Time as an example, and that narrator is both extra- and autodiegetic.

Now, I'm currently working on conceptualizing a project and thus obviously thinking about my narration and narrative entities. The narrator who writes about their experiences is meant to be intradiegetic, and I realized that I can make that explicit by having another narrator whose sole purpose is to say "Rudolph writes"; but I can also have this other narrator be present implicitly, if they provide chapter titles or epigraphs, for example. And then I could move up another level if "Robert writes" is put before the chapter title so we'd have an unnamed narrator, an unseen editor (named Robert) and the person whose writings Robert is editing, who is called Rudolph. Robert could then at some point comment on the writings of Rudolph, opening up further avenues of narration and reporting.

And while I am aware that my current project is an outlier in how much I am concerned with reporting, with memory and with representing and retelling reality, I'd still argue that thinking about narrators and their relationships with each other and with the 'world at large' is something every writer can profit from, even as many writing tips relegate the finer aspects of narration to little more than a footnote.

#narrative theory #narration #writblr #writing help #writing advice #literary analysis #reading #literature #novel

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joncronshawauthor · 9 months

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A Dissociative Potterverse: Exploring an Alternative Reading of Harry Potter

Imagine this—young Harry Potter, our spectacled, raven-haired hero, never escapes the dank, dark closet beneath the stairs on Privet Drive. Bit depressing, isn’t it? But this is where we start to delve into a narrative blender that purées J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world, a pinch of Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ and a dash of Susanna Clarke’s ‘Piranasi.’ Bear with me, and don’t spill your…

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#alternative reading #Chuck Palahniuk #dissociative identity disorder #Fight Club #Harry Potter #Hogwarts #internal construct #J.K. Rowling #mental escape #narrative theory #Piranesi #psychological interpretation #psychological theory #resilience #Susanna Clarke #trauma #Tyler Durden

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jacobhopemedia · 1 year

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Narrative theory

rolan barrt's therey of enigma codes: enigma codes is about creating questions and mysterys to be given to the aduiance for them to consider. propps character types : litery texts have similar character types ; hero , villan , princess , dispatcher , donor , helper , false hero

#media studies #narrative theory

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carrotkicks · 5 months

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golden child

#doodles #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #cassidy #crying child #grrrrr cassidy!!! my bby!!! they're such an underappreciated character in this fandom.#i mean. i personally always enjoyed the narrative involving the 'humans' and spirits more #irt the springlock scars: there's this theory that the reason Cassidy is the vengeful spirit in UCN #was because they had the most brutal death and was springlocked and died very slowly and and painfully.#<- evidence is circumstantial as every theory is but it does give a interesting (but twisted) writhing movement that GFreddy does in ucn #also the idea them getting revenge on william by forcing him to have a long drawn out death by springlocks as well. Dramatic irony 👍#.png

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good-chimes · 10 months

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Proposing:

Grand Unified Scarian Theory

a single, overarching Scarian romance arc across the whole Hermitcraft and Life series as well as a primer for anyone curious about the early seasons.

We start with NEIGHBOR MEET CUTE in early Season 6:

Season 6 begins in a peaceful pirate bay. SCAR, an established hermit just beginning his third season, is happily making pirate caves. Into this tranquil scene comes GRIAN.

Grian, fresh-faced and new to Hermitcraft, picks a sea-themed base location right next to Scar’s pirate caves. He gets himself set up and starts his base. Even someone like Grian can get newcomer nerves, and he spends the first few weeks desperately trying to act like a normal person instead of the horrible gremlin he really is.

(Some hermits are taken in by this. Doc and Xisuma give him pity diamonds, something that—after getting to know Grian—they noticeably never do again.)

The only person exempt from Grian’s just-a-little-birthday-boy act is Mumbo, whom Grian already knows, clearly has a puppy-crush on, and pursues relentlessly.

Grian and Scar don’t interact much at first. Grian sees Scar for the first time while passing by his base. Scar instantly falls in one of his own caves and dies.

Grian panics.

Grian: I DIDN’T DO IT!

Scar, intrigued by his new neighbor, makes some overtures of interest:

1. Scar leaves a fully enchanted trident at Grian’s base as a welcome present. This is a generous gift for the cute neighbor you have a crush on and frankly the most normal thing either of them do in the entire years-long relationship.

Grian goes ‘huh!’ at the trident, never finds out who sent it, and immediately forgets the whole thing.

2. Scar entertains Grian’s traveling-salesman pitch and buys his overpriced armor boxes.

Multiple jokes about the size of Scar’s wallet. Grian clearly pleased by the transaction.

3. Scar makes Grian a complementary in-joke build (Spongebob’s house by Squidward’s house).

This delights Grian immeasurably for five minutes until he turns back to his prank war with Mumbo.

(Poor Mumbo. Clearly immensely fond of Grian but not sure he wants to be in a relationship with a lit stick of dynamite. This is very understandable.)

By this point Scar obviously kind of clocks that Grian is insane about Mumbo. This isn’t much of a leap. The entire SERVER is aware that Grian is horribly in love with Mumbo.

Ah. That’s okay. Scar backs off a bit. He recognizes when he’s not really in with a chance.

Maybe this thing he has with Grian is just going to be a friendship, and that’s okay! Having a crush is fun even if you’re not going to do anything about it. Scar is going to build some shops about it and be normal.

Both of them are going to be very normal.

FLIRTING (First Stages) – mid-Season 6

Both of them immediately forget to be normal.

Grian has started a detective agency and has no mysteries to solve. Scar instantly invents a cookie-based mystery supervillain called the Jangler and leaves Grian a series of tantalizing cookie-based puzzles for enrichment in his enclosure.

Grian has invented a game where you kill people with rockets. Scar volunteers to get murdered. Both of them are delighted.

Scar and Cub’s business empire is incidentally crushing Grian’s startup venture. There is no reason for this to be so flirtatiously charged.

At this point all the hermits move to a new village because of the Minecraft update. Grian starts a who-can-build-the-tallest-house war with Mumbo and Iskall. Scar notices and starts doing the same from the other side of the village.

It quickly gets so wild that Mumbo taps out (Mumbo does not do well with intensity, would rather just not, thankyouverymuch), and it's only Grian, Iskall and Scar.

Scar builds a wild giant plant eating his rocketship, and then a castle in the sky, and an enormous version of himself firing a canon at Grian's house. This is the first time you can really see Grian trying to hold in shrieks when he flies back in to see what Scar has done while he's gone.

Grian’s interest has been caught. He’s gone from barely seeing Scar to checking on him regularly. What’s our good friend Scar up to? What’s Scar done? What is Scar going to do next?

FLIRTING (How To Catch Your Crush’s Interest By Building A Secret Government Facility) – late Season 6

What Scar does next is put on a snazzy military uniform, team up with Doc to steal the time machine Grian invented last week, then, in the most effort someone has EVER gone to to get Grian's attention, spend weeks on end building a fully-functional 'Area 77' military base and containment facility to stop him getting it back.

Turns out this works beyond Scar’s wildest dreams.

Grian INSTANTLY obsessed with breaking into Scar’s base and retrieving his time machine.

Grian persuades Ren into forming a hippie camp with him next to the base and spends weeks entirely fixated on Scar. Meanwhile Scar, who is starting to really understand how to get and keep Grian's attention, builds more and fancier infrastructure to keep Grian out. This is also where Grian really starts looking at Scar's art—the insane cliffs Scar has build around his new hangers—and awkwardly not quite managing words, because it would be very embarrassing to just outright say the word beautiful, and Grian’s a very normal and non-embarrassing person.

In the climax of the season, Grian-the-hippie breaks into General Scar’s base.

Nobody can say that Scar making himself a top brass general and Grian making himself an anti-establishment flower power hippie does not end up with plausibly-deniable not-making-out Grian-provoking-Scar-into-holding-him-against-a-wall.

but.

BUT.

This is Hermitcraft. It’s temporary. Scar and Grian both know it was a bit. A bit they both got super into, sure! But a bit. Not weird at all.

(“Sure, mate, not weird at all,” Mumbo says, after all of this is over. “Then why are you making it SOUND weird Mumbo you’re the WORST”)*

(“Sooo....” Cub says, and Scar says, “I know. I know!”)*

*not canon but you can't tell me it didn't happen off screen

FLIRTING (But What About…) – early Season 7

Okay, so that was weird, but Grian is definitely still in love with Mumbo. The Mumbo pursuit is going great and Mumbo definitely doesn’t look nervous whenever Grian turns up with a new idea. Grian is going to get Mumbo to fall in love with him and they will marry in the spring and have a dozen beautiful children redstone contraptions.

Grian attempts to make it more official with Mumbo. Surely they have been flirting long enough, they are ready for the next stage! This is in no way a reaction to Scar becoming a weird wizard in a way very unsettling to Grian and building the kind of wild organic tangled forest build that Grian is fascinated by but can't even begin to comprehend.

Everything is very under control in Grian's life. He's now official boyfriends with Mumbo. They live together and have a messaging system and everything.

Mumbo announces he’s moving out.

It’s-not-you-it’s-me

You’re… you’re moving out? Grian says, in the smallest possible voice.

We’ll still have the messaging system, Mumbo says, unconvincingly.

FINE, Grian says, I’m moving out TOO.

Mumbo moves out.

Grian deals with this in the healthiest possible way. He invents a mayorship and attempts to give it to Mumbo.

Grian is Mumbo’s self-appointed campaign manager so Mumbo has to be round him ALL THE TIME, it’s for the CAMPAIGN, Mumbo.

Mumbo, a man who doesn’t deal well with pressure or responsibility, is maybe not the ideal choice for mayor, something that has escaped Grian entirely.

Mumbo builds a robot and attempts to palm off all responsibility for decision-making onto it. Grian immediately calls it their son.

Grian puts his moustache all over the server.

NO other hermits support them for mayor (except Scar, from a lost bet, who Grian has continued to have intensely weird flirtations with while all this is happening)

Things reach a fever pitch. Election day arrives. Mumbo doesn’t want this actually but try telling Grian that. The entire MumboGrian edifice that Grian has obsessively and wildly build has reached an unsustainable pitch and finally comes tumbling down around them.

Mumbo votes Scar for mayor.

Grian votes Scar for mayor.

Mumbo disappears for several weeks to do some nice soothing redstone and calm down.

FLIRTING (Civil War) – late Season 7

Everything has calmed down now. Scar is mayor. Mumbo is...somewhere. Grian is going to work on his base normally.

Grian has a new project. He wants to build in the new nether biomes. He builds a huge and echoing and obsessively inverse version of his huge and echoing and obsessively symmetrical mansion base. It's very impressive. It's totally hollow. There's... no one else here.

Grian decides that okay, he is going to bring PEOPLE here.

He invites Mumbo, because he hasn't seen him in weeks. He invites Bdubs, because Grian above all loves genius. And he invites Scar. Because of course. Everything major Grian does now, Scar is an of course.

Bdubs shows up! Generously builds Grian's entire mansion interior. Mumbo shows up. Builds a tiny upside down disco shack.

Scar does not show up.

Scar is being mayor! Scar is a very busy and important man! Scar has spent the last few weeks obsessively replacing every single goddamn mycelium block in the shopping district with beautifully tailored grass and making trees whose flowers are diamonds. He's also got his own megabase going on. For once Scar has so much to do it's even enough for Scar's ambitions, which have never been small.

He does not come when Grian calls.

Grian is Not Happy.

This is the point where Grian starts a steadily more unhinged campaign of leaving Scar invitations. He makes little tailor's dummies of himself and delivers them to Scar's house. He sets up a tea party of three grians in a secret space under Scar's mayoral throne. He hangs himself in effigy on the tip of Scar's megadrill build. Normal behavior.

And then when Scar still doesn't notice, he puts a tiny bit of mycelium back on one of the streets of the shopping district.

This starts… THE MYCELIUM WARS

Scar attempts to contain the growing mycelium patch with warning tape.

Grian spreads more mushroom spores.

Scar brings in his allies to help contain the growing mushroom patches.

Grian digs out an underground rebel HQ, recruits several rebels, and declares himself Motherspore.

Mayor Scar stares into a camera and uses his most velvety baritone to proclaim he will hunt down Grian and the mycelium resistance and bring them to justice.

Grian sets loose mushroom-spreading sheep.

Mayor Scar obsessively searches for his base.

Grian and Impulse build several decoy bases and trap them.

Mayor Scar employs Mumbo to strip-mine every block of the shopping district with redstone tunnel-borers.

Eventually Deputy Mayor Bdubs, having his own thing with rebel Etho, tricks all of the resistance into ender-pearling into jail.

Scar gets to threaten to pour lava on an imprisoned Grian for ten minutes straight and they’re both enjoying this so much.

Grian: Scar! SCAR! Scar Scar Scar no Scar no Scar no listen Scar

Scar: Yes?

Grian: …Let’s take this somewhere else.

They ‘take this’ to Scar’s beautifully-appointed mayoral office. Grian sits on the arm of his chair (I don’t know what to tell you, this is on-screen canon).

Grian: So I know how to end the war.

Grian: We have to play minigames and make personal bets.

Grian: And Scar, Scar, if you lose…

Scar: Yes?

Grian: … you have to help build my base.

Entire room: [stunned silence]

Etho: Is this what it was about the whole time, Grian?

So! That happened. And the thing is, they could both mentally pass off the area 77 general/hippie stuff as Just A Fun Bit That Got Very Intense.

They can't do this with the mayor/motherspore stuff. They are basically making out on Scar’s chair. The resistance have noticed. The mayoral staff have noticed. EVERYONE has noticed.

Scar is into it. Scar is going along with it. Scar knows he’d had a crush for a long time, and he isn't scared of swimming with a huge wave, never mind where it's going to break. Scar has always embraced the rush. With Grian, you never know what’s going to happen next.

Grian has always loved being around Scar because there’s so much going on that you don’t have to think. Grian doesn’t have to think until everything’s calmed down. It's not until now that he stops and realizes… could this be… something.

(Maybe it already is.)

And then, by whatever eldritch mechanic you personally favor:

3rd life begins.

HEAD-OVER-HEELS – Third Life

In the tiny claustrophobic stripped-bare world of Third Life, Grian makes a choice. Grian thinks, for once very, very clearly: what if it wasn't a bit? What if it was real. What if Grian took every explosive piece of who he was and handed it over to someone he's—okay, he'll admit it—someone he's been obsessed with for a long time. What if that heady sparkle he's been seeing in the corner of his vision is true. What happens if you grab it with both hands?

Scar—surprised, bemused, amazed but wrong-footed—almost doesn't know what to DO with this.

Scar is so used to Grian layering all his obsession behind a thick layer of irony and drama and second-guessing and schemes. ‘Sure we can make out but only if I'm trailing mushroom spores and you're wearing that sash.’ ‘I'm only here because Mumbo's not around.’ ‘It’s not a thing.’ ‘It's not real.’

But it is real.

And, for once, Scar hears a tiny alarm go off in his brain. Scar knows Grian better than anyone else does, by now, and even he doesn't know where this ends. Grian is a force of nature and Scar has never been his unfiltered target. But Grian's throwing himself into this, throwing himself at Scar. And Scar always says 'yes.' 'Yes, and.' 'Yes, let's'. Scar never wants less of Grian. Scar has always taken what he can get.

But with that warning bell, Scar does try to keep that slight layer of dramatic distance, even in this new world where you can die and not come back, even if they don't know if they'll get out of this alive. Scar doesn't fully buy into Grian's second-in-command-devotion, he forces a space for Grian to still be the Grian he knows, some kind of safety vent (‘here's a bee on a lead’). And it could be a lot of reasons, but part of it is…Grian's head-over-heels, for once, and Scar has the unfamiliar feeling of needing to be the one to look where they're going.

Because where they're going is: the last two, all their friends dead, not knowing if there's any way to survive but knowing their friends haven't come back, and at that point Scar takes off the very last of his brakes and the very last of his reservations and says:

For everything you've done for me you can kill me.

(I want this. I want it to be you.)

This breaks Grian absolutely and completely.

And not broken in the fun way! Grian is too far in. Grian let go of Mumbo, who was safe because Mumbo never let it get too far, and he took a risk on Scar, and now Grian is discovering that he didn’t even know what risk meant. Grian is in emotional pain he never suspected existed. Grian has let himself put all his gambling chips on someone who wasn't SAFE and he has lost.

Grian has LOST SCAR and he has LOST HIMSELF and he has FOUND OUT HE CAN BE HURT and he is never going to be the fucking same again.

Scar is in the pond with Grian’s sword at his unresisting neck. And Scar is going to die, and Scar (damn him damn him) has turned it into: he's going to die for Grian. Now Grian is hurting, he's complicit, it turns out grief is an inevitable part of love and beauty, this is all it's taken for Grian's worldview to fall apart in pieces he can't pick up, and Grian has no defenses against pain so there's obviously no way to cope except to beat Scar to death in a cactus ring and jump off a cliff.

AFTERMATH – Season 8

They wake up in Hermitcraft.

They wake up in Hermitcraft! Scar is delighted to find out they just reincarnate, after all that!

Sure, they've all got some lingering trauma but Scar has never let that stop him from doing anything. Scar thought that whole thing went well! He just about dares to think...romantic...? Maybe...?

Grian is Normal to him.

Grian is so fucking normal. it's like. s6 normal.

Scar is. kind of. confused.

Grian is NOT acting like someone he had a romantic death match with.

(Grian is falling apart, but if there's one thing Grian has proved in his building it’s that he’s SO. fucking. good. at facades.)

(Don't go round the back.)

Neither of them are ready for the death game to repeat.

DIVORCE (Traumatic) – Last Life, Season 8

Second death game. Grian deals with his trauma super well by isolating Scar, stealing all his friends, tricking a life out of him, dropping his horse in lava, forcing him into an extortion death loop, then abandoning him and—just as a bonus—murdering Mumbo as well.

This time it’s Scar who comes back falling apart.

A theory that seems plausible: Scar’s old friend Cub picks him up, puts him back together, gets him on his feet. What we do know is that Cub moves in next to Boatem, where Scar is still living with Grian, and incidentally builds an enormous dripstone megabiome that is coincidentally very hostile and might murder you upon landing if you're someone who flies a lot, or happens to be a bird.

There’s a hole with an endless dark void between Scar and Grian’s Boatem bases. They built it together. It’s around this time they both keep repeatedly falling in it.

DIVORCE (But When It Was Good It Was So Good) – Season 8, Double Life

Then the moon gets big. Gets close. Gravity breaks down and that should be the end, should be a way out of this terrible spiral they're in, surely they're better without each other—

Grian turns up at Scar's base and says: Scar. Build us an escape pod.

—and Scar does.

They go out together. Both of them can feel the pull back into each other’s orbit but they’ll die if they acknowledge it. At the end of it all, the void, the protective suits, the unbearable gravity of falling into space together, of holding each other until another uncertain end. They're nowhere but they're in it together.

Is this a good time for another death game? Of course. How much worse can it get.

Double Life, and this time Scar keeps his distance. My soulmate is this allay! My soulmate is my cat! I don’t need a soulmate. Oh—it’s Grian? This whole time? Hahaha. How funny.

Grian: Soo… do you want to base together?

Scar: Do we have to?

Grian: It…might be nice…?

Scar is wary.

He has been burned.

But the pull is still there. The pull is always there. You can’t forget Grian, but you can blunt the edge of him on your skin. Scar is here to take care of these cat-pandas. Grian can do what he likes.

Cheated of Scar’s full attention, Grian tries to tempt BigB into a pale imitation of the Scarian folie à deux (BigB is a genuinely nice man who does not deserve this).

The rest of the server turn red, one by one. Grian and Scar are the last greens. BigB is audibly nervous when Grian proposes a red-green alliance, even though BigB is the red, he has the power. But Grian can’t escape the rest of the server, and the red hunt begins.

Grian and Scar, hunted—trapped at the top of flaming towers, jumping from heights, chased down like foxes at bay, crammed into boltholes with their hands over each other’s mouths, Grian shrieks and laughs and falls back on Scar and Scar catches him and they’re both as alive and elated as they’ve ever been. Scar dies once to Ren and BigB’s zombies and Grian murders both BigB and Ren in revenge (BigB was right to be nervous). Grian has another unhinged murder plan underway when he dies for the last time.

This whole time, Grian was hit in the face by remembering that when it's good, it's so good.

Scar isn’t surprised. Scar has known that forever.

Back in Hermitcraft, its not magically fixed. They’re not innocent any more. But every time Grian looks at Scar he remembers: when it’s good, it’s so good.

And Scar never forgot.

DIVORCE (We’re In Love And We’re Not Done Yet) – Season 9, Limited Life

By now we're into Season 9. They’re still alive. They always live, they always start again, and the other one is just there. Being, infuriatingly and magnetically, them.

Grian is thoroughly annoyed by Scar’s new allegiance to King Ren, but he keeps coming back to Scarland anyway. Scar, I made you an obstacle course. Scar, stand here and get squashed by this anvil. Scar if you don’t do something I’m going to start a resistance.

Grian pretends King Ren doesn’t exist and he has more important things to do, and pretends this so hard that he incidentally invents a mad science robot pulls them all through into the Empires dimension.

Scar, assuming Grian is doing his own thing, shacks up with Jimmy.

It takes Grian three weeks to notice and be shriekingly outraged.

Scar we’re doing a project. Scar you can’t spend all your time with Jimmy! Join my cult. Get in my shrinking machine. I made you an enchanted netherite bow. I need your allegiance. (Another real quote).

Scar teases Grian for weeks then instantly abandons Jimmy when the choice comes down to him or Grian.

Fourth death game—they’re used to this, now. Nothing too intense. Nothing too weird. Grian can’t help murdering Scar.

At this point, Scar is starting to read it as: I love you.

And that’s how we get to the current Scarian dynamic we know and love of you're the worst and I'm the worst and we've divorced a few time but we still like each other so fucking much.

It's been years. They've killed each other every possible way. These two characters are in love and they're not done yet.

#scarian #grian #goodtimeswithscar #hermitshipping #yes canon IS a grand romantic arc #to be super clear: i don't think any of this was cc intention #but we can have a little narrative framing fun #as a treat #i think nearly all of this is true to canon except some timing vagueness and the dialogue in parentheses #thank you to the hivemind for theory help #long post #glossywrites

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spider-xan · 7 months

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Regarding Mina's description of Dracula and why it's problematic, a good starting point would be to read the Wikipedia article for physiognomy, which is the outdated pseudoscience of face reading that is unfortunately rooted in racism, antisemitism, ableism, etc., and was very popular during the Victorian era as a way to judge moral character based on facial features.

So when Mina says 'His face was not a good face', she is not just saying that Dracula is ugly (though concepts of ugliness and beauty are not value-neutral either), but that she can tell that he is evil based on his facial features; note that one of the facial features she singles out is a 'beaky nose', which comes from Cesare Lombroso's idea that among other traits, hawk-like noses are a marker of criminality on the basis of criminals being evolutionary throwbacks who are less evolved than non-criminals; many of these allegedly 'criminal' and 'degenerate' facial features are obviously racialized and not associated with Gentile whiteness, but in opposition to it.

Stoker was definitely interested in physiognomy and uses it as a narrative device to show how certain heroic characters are intelligent, perceptive, and educated on the latest (pseudo)sciences (the modernity theme again) - namely Mina and Van Helsing, but also Jonathan to a lesser degree; we will definitely see this idea come up several more times, including explicit references to Lombroso himself.

It is also important to remember that linking physical appearance and morality still happens today - think about how many people say they can tell someone is a bad person bc they're ugly or that 'People get the face they deserve' where good people age gracefully and bad people age poorly, even though aging has nothing to do with personal character.

#dracula #dracula daily #re: dracula #mina harker #mina murray #abraham van helsing #van helsing #the sad irony with lombroso is that he himself was jewish #yet pioneered a theory of criminality that encouraged bigotry against his own marginalized ethnic group #which is also why it's frustrating when people dismiss mina's bigotry by saying she's an autistic-coded woman and would never #marginalized people can still internalize prejudices that hurt themselves and others #and she is ultimately a narrative device written by a bigoted writer not a real person herself

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thesherrinfordfacility · 6 months

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this is going to be the speediest speculation you have ever seen in your life because it is gone 3am and im losing my mind BUT. this little snippet? from rob wilkins? well i think - i think - i found what he was referring to.

in the frame behind the bentley and aziraphale, it's clearly flooded. we know the set was built within a studio, so elemental factors can't be at play here - this is deliberate. and noone seems to notice it, but it's very neatly framed between the two.

now, let's consider references to flooding re: second coming. well, matthew was a bullseye:

"as it was in the days of noah", there will be a flood that arrives when the second coming does. it will be there before anyone knew it, and swept them away. ergo, i think we can assume that the second coming has in fact already happened (still think it's greasy but whatever)

but also look at the splitting of humanity; sound familiar to the final fifteen? one will be taken, and the other left? marrying and giving in marriage - failed in our boys' case 💀 but did nina set a timeline, saying "one day", when she's ready to be with maggie?

also - people eating and drinking? sounds familiar also, when you consider how ham they went on pushing the vol-au-vents, the tiny dinners (thanks jim) on people at the ball.

im not okay.

#good omens #s3 narrative spec #second coming/last judgement theory #im not sure where jim walking on water in that poster fits in BUT IM CERTAIN IT DOES #am i genius for spotting this? bc i feel like a genius for spotting this

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zykamiliah · 23 days

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i love it when fandom infantilizes characters to the point of denying them their own agency.

"if people in cang qiong had treated shen jiu differently-" do you have any evidence that they mistreated him? or is it too hard a pill to swallow that shen jiu was the one who decided to close himself off and be an asshole. that cang qiong treated him just fine, that his martial siblings tolerated him to the point that even when he was suspected of murder nothing was done to him?

who forced shen jiu to abuse luo binghe? to abuse other disciples? those were his decisions, that was him acting in a position of power.

the moral of the story is not "shen jiu was misunderstood :(" the moral is: the person who was abused can also become an abuser. the one who suffers violence can be violent towards others. you, despite what you've gone through, have the capacity for kindness and cruelty. so be wise on how you decide to act, because your pain doesn't justify hurting others, and your actions will have consequences.

you have agency, you have whatever amount of power you have over your own life and the things you do have an impact in the lives of those around you and yourself. so maybe try being at the very list neutral to the world and yourself, if you can't be kind.

but no, shen jiu's mentality was "since I suffered, they deserve to suffer too". and by taking that path he perpetuated the cycle of abuse.

bingge is the same, because he could have stopped at taking revenge on shen jiu, but he decided to involve the whole sect and the rest of the world, no matter who was innocent. he was unnecessarily cruel, but so was his master.

both shen jiu and bingge had the capacity for some form of "niceness" (in the way they treated women), so it wasn't as if they'd never known some form of love. at some point in their lives, they stopped being abused children and became abusive adults.

and that's an expression of human behaviour that we have to accept as possible. the svsss narrative invites us to examine ourselves in this light, to witness our capacity for both love and hate, to realize that even in the most adverse of circumstances, there's always a small sliver of agency over how we feel and how we act. that, despite the things that defines us from birth through childhood, our decisions also define what we'll become in the future.

#svsss #svsss meta #shen jiu #this is something that's also very common irt how some people view anakin skywalker #they want to blame everything on the jedi when the narrative makes it clear that it was his own decisions and actions that #pushed him to the dark side #there are a lot of parallels between anakin and sk and bingge in this regard #i think there's a generation of people who were too sheltered and infantilized through a big portion of their lives and that had #very little power over their life through childhood and teenage years #and have no learn to be emotionally independent even after becoming legal adults #and end up projecting this kind of thinking in fiction #idk it's just a theory

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here-there-be-drag0ns · 2 months

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Okay I have had this theory for months but I never actually laid it out before now. However it's well past time I actually do that considering episode 115 all but confirmed its truth (theres still wiggle room for me to be wrong, but honestly not much)

THE FERIN FAMILY ARE AASIMAR, AND HERES WHY:

The thing that originally made me go Hey Wait A Damn Minute was the visions of the original prophecy and its history that gillion got from that tree: "Another flash, and you see these red-haired olympian looking humans and elves and all kinds of different races that are flying with their own wings". And I heard that and thought about how much that sounds like aasimar, and then the weird dreams jay had and then captain widow insisting she has powerful blood and then star saying she sensed divinity on jay and then the whole ferin family's affinity for fire magic and everything just clicked into place.

Then in episode 114 we got the recording of Faye Ferin saying "hail the solar mother" and i was like no fucking way- BUT i set it aside because it felt like I could be reaching with that evidence. It could just be a religious phrasing, not necessarily something literal.

Then episode 115 happened and I got confirmation of my theory.

Grizzly doesn’t outright say "yes the ferin are aasimars”, but he gives us all the last few pieces of the puzzle.

Here's a link to the episode that should start where the confirmation is - the two tablets: https://youtu.be/M9ig9XCUrvU?si=oYdisYFxTqx6ogbb&t=868

Transcript of the tablets: Tablet One: Shards of the divine, these words are for you and you alone. We are descendants of the sun. Thus, we are the light - the beacon that will eradicate the dark. We are the flame to which all will yield. We are the shining justice that will always prevail. Our steps illuminate the way forward and our hands spark the tales of history. Tablet Two: Shards of the divine, these words are for you and you alone. Know your kin, recognized by the manes of flickering flame, wings that rival dragons, the golden suns in our eyes. Unity is the key to prosperity. Our elders will raise generations that burn with vigorous radiance.

NOW ON TO MY EXPLANATION!!

The thing that confirmed it outright for me is literally the line "We are descendants of the sun", because there are no ifs ands or buts about it - aasimar are descended from celestials. The aasimar entry for Monsters of the Multiverse states "Whether descended from a celestial being or infused with heavenly power, aasimar are mortals who carry a spark of the Upper Planes within their souls." the tablet Jay stole from her grandmother is written in celestial, and says they are descended from the sun(aster), ergo, descended from a celestial.

Next up is the whole "Thus we are the light - the beacon that will eradicate the dark. We are the flame to which all will yield. We are the shining justice that will always prevail." bit. The entry for Protector Aasimar (the subrace i believe Jay fits best) in Volos Guide to Monsters reads "Protector aasimar are charged by the powers of good to guard the weak, to strike at evil wherever it arises, and to stand vigilant against the darkness."

Then there's "Our steps illuminate the way forward and our hands spark the tales of history." Which then in the MotM entry it says "aasimar are mortals who carry a spark of the Upper Planes within their souls. They can fan that spark to bring light, ease wounds, and unleash the fury of the heavens."

THEN THERES THE REAL FUCKING GIVEAWAY!!! THIS LINE: "Know your kin, recognized by the manes of flickering flame, wings that rival dragons, the golden suns in our eyes."

MotM says "They resemble their parents, but … often have features that hint at their celestial heritage." and VGtM says "They are a people of otherworldly visages, with luminous features that reveal their celestial heritage."

OF THE CELESTIAL FEATURES OPTIONS OFFERED BY MOTM, ENTRY 2 IS "METALLIC, LUMINOUS, OR DARK EYES" AND ENTRY 3 IS "STARKLY COLORED HAIR". THE FERINS ARE WELL KNOWN FOR HAVING BOTH.

The tablets are, of course, not my only evidence.

the ferins arent born with The Ferin Eye as revealed by Jay having to earn hers and Drey talking about when he got his. "now icarus," i hear you say "wouldnt that mean they dont actually fit the celestial features requirement?" and to that i answer "NO! IT IN FACT FITS IT BETTER!"

In discussing aasimar celestial features, MotM says "These [features] often begin subtle and become more obvious when the aasimar gains the ability to reveal their full celestial nature." Jay didn’t have the Ferin eye until she earned it and its subsequent abilities. And we all remember how she earned it, right?

A weird ass fucking dream.

Now let’s look at that. According to VGtM “An aasimar, except for one who has turned to evil, has a link to an angelic being. That being … provides guidance to the aasimar, though this connection functions only in dreams. As such, the guidance is not a direct command or a simple spoken word. Instead, the aasimar receives visions, prophecies, and feelings.”

In Jay's first sun dream (Juice Roll With It // Episode #88), Grizzly describes the sun and says "You feel like its presence is trying to reach you. And as you notice, you feel almost like you want it to.”

And then the core of the dream itself:

Grizzly: “Do you think Jay can withstand this impossible heat of the sun as you get just barely one step closer?” Condi: “I’m gonna say no… but she would try anyways, if that is, like, what the feeling is kinda giving her, you know?” Grizzly: “This powerful presence, as hot as it is - you can’t help but think of your sister. You can’t help but think of your friends. But then, you think of your mother, and then you think of your father, and then you think of your grandmother” (makes condi roll con save with disadvantage, condi got an 11) “with an 11, you take that step forward, but this overwhelming pressure, anxiousness, fear, handcuffs your spirit, closes your mind, and you just feel the heat of the sun overcome you. And you are jolted awake back in the reality. … but you know that in this dream you lost. You lost to the heat.”

Then the second dream (Happy Wife Happy Life // Episode 102), where the sun is hotter and larger than before and excruciatingly painful:

Grizzly: “You just can’t help but stare at it with both eyes wide open. And behind you you feel another heat.” (Condi asks if Jay can see this heat or if Jay is too focused on the sun) “You know that this heat signifies that backing away and falling is not an option this time. But as you look at the sun, you once again think about your family: your mother, who said she was sick; your father, who called you naive; your grandmother, who threatens the safety of your friends. You think of your friends. So I ask again, this time: do you think Jay can withstand that heat? That pressure and that fire?” Condi: “I think as Jay is staring up at this sort of immense fireball that represents… obviously her pressure, and she feels that heat at her back… I don’t think she would look at the heat as, like, something preventing her from stepping back and falling anymore. But in this metaphorical sense - since a lot of this is a metaphor - she’d probably look at it as what she basically can’t turn her back on, what she can’t leave behind. Basically like her new hope. You know, what she wants to protect. So she’s in between this and this giant fireball. Um. And I think with that in mind she would take a step forward and, um. While maybe not fully confident in herself, she would jump into the fireball with all her might, doing her best. ... I think she can handle it. She thinks she can handle it.” Grizzly: “Fair enough. That’s all I asked. You jump in- go ahead and roll a con save with advantage.” (Condi got a 19) “You leap with almost like a raging fire of conviction even if you doubt yourself, jay. And the sun almost seems to open up to welcome you in. And at first, the searing pain of the fireball’s heat feels like it’s melting your skin. You scream until it feels like it’s melting away that doubt. And then, all of the pain subsides. There’s a calming sense that kind of overtakes, jay, in your subconscious. And it’s all white at this point - your whole vision.”

So the sun reached out to jay through a dream, as aasimar’s celestial links tend to do, and gave her a test of strength that she had to figure out for herself (“as such, the guidance is not a direct command or simple spoken word. Instead, the aasimar receives visions, prophecies, and feelings.” - VGtM). She only passed it by remembering she had people she needed to protect (“Protector aasimar are charged by the powers of good to guard the weak, to strike at evil wherever it arises, and to stand vigilant against the darkness.” - VGtM). And when she passed this test given to her in a dream: “speaking of your vision, you begin to feel a warmth behind one of your eyelids. And the next day comes as you’re the first to wake at the very crack of dawn. The sun rises, and you rise with it. And you blink a few times - you feel something different. … This time, you look into a mirror and, just like your dad, just like Drey, you see this bright orange glowing eye on one of the sides. And you feel whatever that was: you passed it.”

This, therefore, perfectly fits Jay into the aasimar’s celestial features description that “these [features] often begin subtle and become more obvious when the aasimar gains the ability to reveal their full celestial nature.” Jay had to prove herself to the goddess to earn another celestial trait.

And once more, “Icarus!” I hear you cry. “You keep saying Jay fits the Protector Aasimar subrace, but don’t Protector Aasimar have incorporeal wings that come from their celestial heritage? Jay’s wings are from a tattoo! That doesn’t work!” To which I say, “Are you sure?”

The Protector Aasimar’s subrace ability is called Radiant Soul and allows the aasimar to “unleash the divine energy within yourself, causing your eyes to glimmer and two luminous, incorporeal wings to sprout from your back.”

Jay’s wings come from enchanted tattoos with which she can cast Fly. These were a deliberate choice Jay made and are not celestial in origin. However, in the first sun dream, when Jay reaches out for the sun Grizzly says “You begin to feel the tattoo on your upper back sting.” When condi asks to clarify if it’s the Niklaus tattoo, Grizzly only says “Just the upper back.”

This, of course, leads me to believe that those dreams will or already have affected her wings in some way - perhaps leaving space for her to unlock more of her celestial heritage and power as she earns it. It’s something we’ll just have to watch and see for.

Either way the Ferins are aasimar, Jay's gonna be the first one in generations to earn their true celestial power from Aster, and i will Die On This Hill

#dragons hoard #another theory post except this time its Color Coded oooohhh shinyyyy #theres a much more niche narrative theory I could go into based on this too #but thats more speculation than direct theory so itll get its own post eventually #jrwi riptide #jrwi #just roll with it #jrwiblr #just roll with it riptide #jrwi jay #jrwi jay ferin #jay ferin #jrwi theory #aasimar ferins theory #jrwi 115 #jrwi episode 115 #jrwi ep 115 #jrwi spoilers

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