when someone follows my art blog but not my main. i can really respect that.

Analyzing the 5 plays in this drama club poster .From the bts pics of stranger things 4.

So... some of ya’ll know I'm going through the st s4 films given to us by the official st twitter + the films reffed in the show itself or mentioned by the Duffers in interviews .

So I decided to look at the plays mentioned here. Because even if we don't see the monologues in the show directly - the Duffers wouldn't name drop anything unless it inspired them in some way. Similar to films name dropped in the show. Tw : for some dark themes .

This is just a quick little analysis I decided to do since we probably won't get any new st content today (3/22). Nothing too deep. Just mentioning things that caught my interest especially cause these plays have a lot of narrative connections to the st s4 movies I've been watching.

Invitation to a march (Authur laurents)

Reminds me of the stancy/jancy love triangle. "A young woman is having second thoughts about doing the right thing and marrying a respectable , rich, kind, young man with good prospects.By way of a prewedding diversion, this woman becomes interested in the passionate but poor and entirely unsuitable son of a local landlord.Basically, the plot concerns the efforts of Norma Brown to choose between a conventional fiance who "puts her to sleep" but is wealthy (like what her own mother did) or go for this new-poor guy. The play is principally interested in how this youthful love triangle affects the three mothers involved (whether the kids like it or not)

12th night (Shakespeare)

 - viola (el) wrongly assumes a family member (hopper) is dead. She dresses up as a man named 'cesario'. A girl named Olivia falls for 'cesario' (violet dressed as a man). "Finally, when 'Cesario' and Sebastian (violet's twin brother: assumed to have drowned - Will) appear in the presence of Olivia there is more wonder and confusion at their physical similarity. Taking Sebastian for 'Cesario', Olivia asks him to marry her, and they are secretly married in a church. Cough if Olivia is 'straight' cause she fell for Viola (as a doppleganger dressed like her twin brother).Mike being into el who multiple characters in s1 said looked like a boy and specifically like Will is...suspish and a hint he's not straight lol. just like Olivia they're both into guys . plus, this play just has a butt load of love triangles (ugh i hated that aspect). There was also romantically coded letters (which was in the s4 films) . One character is also thrown into an insane asylum and framed as 'insane'.'Pretending that Malvolio is insane, they lock him up in a dark chamber. Feste visits him to mock his insanity'. We all know the psych hospital will be narratively important- talked about it more here.

The seagull (Anton Chekhov-russian)

similar to how I believed s4 will show m*#even already broken up since the months between s3-4 : act 3 (s3) ends with Nina begging for one last chance to be with Trigorin before he leaves/moves away. They kiss and make plans to meet again in Moscow.And in act 4 there's a timeskip where it shows they've been broken up for a long time between acts- and its established they never actually loved eachother. Do i even have to spell out why this parallels the m*#even ending in s3? There is also a play within the play (this is common in a lot of the st films- they have plays- or a story within a story- which illustrate certain themes or emotions of the characters within said film : blackswan, children of paradise, highschool musical, Rushmore, book of Henry, welcome to marwen, never ending story, romancing the stone, wet hot American summer, etc).The play is Konstantin's latest attempt at creating a dense symbolist work. There is also alot of love triangles in the seagull. TW!: for se#ual ab*se/su*cidal thoughts/ inc*st (here and in other play segments). The seagull motif reminds me a lot of Jonathan's rabbit story.Konstantin romantically into Nina shows up to give her a gull that he has shot. Nina is confused and horrified . Trigorin sees the gull that Konstantin has shot and muses to Nina on how he could use it as a subject for a short story: "The plot for the short story: a young girl lives all her life on the shore of a lake. She loves the lake, like a gull, and she's happy and free, like a gull. But a man arrives by chance, and when he sees her, he destroys her, out of sheer boredom. Like this gull."  This immediately reminded me of jon's rabbit story and some of the movies on the s4 list . Like in forrest gump- Jenny (who is poor) was se*ually ab*sed as a very young girl by her father. As a child she runs away into a field-away from her alcoholic father yelling at her -there she prays that she can "be a bird so I can fly far far away" .

Jenny as an adult struggles with this unresolved trauma- being with ab*sive partners, doing dr*gs, and having su*cidal thoughts . She as an adult when contemplating su*icide, jokes 'you think i can fly like a bird ?' while looking down at a bridge.God-i'm worried about jonathan (Jenny was also a musician sort of like jon). In another s4 movie example ' mystic river ' :(in the 80s) a preteen baseball playing boy is r*ped by men in the woods. He later says he wishes he could become an undead monster to not feel the pain of that experience - cause quote " if I'm not human anymore maybe the pain will stop" (Will) . slightly off topic but he also has another personality, imagines a alternate word that dissappears when he turns his head. And as a less direct animal parallel to the play - the boy from the film also imagined his perpetrators as monsters and wolves to cope.In 'getout' the photographer character sees a dead deer in the woods and it represents a parent/his own childhood tra*ma relating to his past. similarly in 'prince of tides' the 2 siblings as kids were ra*ed by men. The older brother remembered it and the younger sibling developed DID (so didn't remember but she would draw wolves- as the perpetrators/villains in her picture stories she created . In the film they also had an ab*sive dad and were very poor. She also tried k*ling herself multiple times-but started to get better after remembering the source of her pain and trauma.  There is also the theme of multiple attempted su*cides in the play- and the play ends with yet another attempt- and the audience is left unaware of the artist's fate at the end of the play.

The tempest (Shakespeare)

Prospereo - (the perceived antagonist) is a wizard with monstrous looks, storm powers , and ability to create monster-dogs

He wants revenge on a man who tried ra*ing his family member & revenge on his other family member who wronged him years ago. I mean... pretty much my did theory.But in the end.Prospero decides to show his enemies the mercy that they did not show him twelve years earlier. He tells Ariel to bring the men to him, he will restore their sanity and then renounce magic forever.Prospero breaks the spell that the men are under .

Diary of a scoundrel (Alexander Ostrovsky-Russian)

-  I suppose this could loosely relate to Jonathan? Glumov, is a young man from an impoverished family lacking status seeking entrance into society's pampered class. A 19th-century Russian scoundrel must scheme his way out of his meager life in a small apartment -whatever it takes.He has a quick mind and some talent for seeing through the hypocrisies of people around him ( Jonathan does make a lot of social critiques about society). That gives him some advantages. A tale of one man's mission to finagle his way into upper-class society and find a cushy job. Set in 1874, this social comedy follows Glumov, a Russian youth who begins his ambitious ascent to social esteem. He progresses by wit, guile and rhetoric. Pitting one stupid person against another, he soon gains his ends. To reach these goals, Glumov will lie, flatter, and cater to the vanities of the wealthy. Unable to contain his disgust with his victims, Glumov decides to relieve his unvoiced satirical comments by recording his schemes in a diary. But he is tripped up by his uncle's wife, to whom he has made passionate love on his way to success. At the end of the play, his diary is stolen and his duplicity exposed, but he can nevertheless suceeds. The author is much more critical about the high society itself than about the main character, so the play keeps attracting generations of directors by opening possibilities for political criticism while also avoiding naming names of the current rulers.The play's aim was to overthrow bourgeois tradition and establish a class-conscious art called eccentricism giving a deliberately comic portrayal of reality.

I suppose I notice some possible commonalities-  besides s3 critiquing the wealthy/capitalism in comedic ways . jonathan since s1 has worried about his family's finances / had some resentment toward the rich . In some of the s4 movies ‘orphan’ & ‘ girl interrupted’ someone reads their diary out loud to get at them (in girl interrupted the winona character’s diary even had critiques of her new friends).  Alot of movies also have someone (usually a teen/young adult) making a documentary about their life -which could narratively replace said diary? A few movies have a poor guy adjusting to snobby rich social circles (or being poor and then getting money)- titanic, kingsmen, karate kid, the craft , godfather,  wardogs,into the spiderverse,flashdance, and many others . And movies like wardogs has a poor-young-character do shady things to finacially support his family . There’s also that whole uncle’s wife thing- which makes me uncomfortable for obvious reasons (but I’m just thinking of Lonnie’s creepy gf who was into him). A few movies had the guy’s step mom innappropriately hit on him- orange county & you got mail. And him trying to avoid her advances. Or...not to mention ... it may be a problematic coincidence /trope. But in enter the void -the guy who needs to finacially support his sibling/ does dr*gs -hooks up with his dr*g dealing friend’s married mom (who would give him money).  Or in gilbert grape- the poor teen-who has to finacially support his siblings/single mom-has his endgame relationship be a girl his own age. But before that he h*oked up with a married woman -who would give him money. Don’s plum -young film guy-propositioned by older female film director (for dream job). Not even mentioning the other films that have the guy hooking up with toxic older women (like ‘the graduate’). Or analyze this-where the therapist accuses him of having an Oedipus complex (not touching that one... but the guy in ‘enter the void’ a 100% had one). It’s possible those movies were just- inspo for s3?  A coincidence? Or s3 was foreshadowing for this in s4- but unlike s3 it will accurately be played as wrong  and a sign of Jonathan recreating past tra*ma caused by Lonnie (cough like the photos) /being desperate for money. And not played ‘comedically’ like how it mostly was in s3. But shown as self destructive  (for Jon) and immoral on the Woman’s end. Like... Billy and Jon are character foils. Both are older siblings into rock music, with ab*sive dads who shoved them into walls. Both lose it (and beat steve to a pulp when Steve accidentally triggers their daddy issues). In s3 it’s established womanizer Billy has mommy issues, than he tries ho*king up with someone his mom’s age, and the characters ref ‘back to the future ‘ and Steve incorrectly says it’s about “alex p keaton trying to bang his mom.” This could illustrate his subconscious issues with parental figures/adults cause of Lonnie’s  possible past se*ual ab*se . One film the friend even says to the guy “you don’t have friends!” guy b: i have friends! him:  no you have acquaintances! ADMIT IT! YOU’RE AFRAID OF MEN!I mean-Jonathan liked Nancy- but he initially hooked up with her cause he wanted to prove he didn’t have ‘trust issues’ from his dad. Also it’s prob a bit of a reach (and maybe a coincidence)- but the fact Murray in the same breath compares Steve (Nancy’s then bf) and Lonnie  ... uh... if you think too long about it ... it’s very sinister .  Especially because in s3: muray tells Joyce  that despite her wanting to be with a nice guy, she’s curious about “the brute” Hopper despite him reminding her of a past “bad relationship”(aka Lonnie). Like- yeah connect some dots.  Quite a few films (other than forrest gump) also have the character who (as a kid) was  r*ped by their dad/parent-  begin to do dr*gs/be pr*miscuous as adults since they never learned to properly cope with their trauma (’girl with the dragon tattoo’,  ‘black swan’, and ‘magnolia’). Unfortunately the whole relative doing such things to kid-relatives is in at least 30+ movies. 

Personally, i would be MUCH happier if Jon had a age appropriate romance- and had not a single creepy adult near him. A few movies actually imply Lonnie gets yet another ‘new model’  replacing his gf in her 20s with a new gf- who is ‘barely l*gal” and just turned 18. so there’s that possibility as well- that she’s jonathan’s age.I just want Jonathan-happy &safe. GOD. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

for @shitpostingfromthebarricade , who very nicely asked for an elaboration of my partial disagreement with the idea that Grantaire represents “the people”  of France or Paris: 

First let me say again it’s a partial  disagreement; I do think he represents a specific segment of the people. But one which is not ~~**~~ The People~~**~~  which I will hopefully be able to explain here?

- As far as “the people” goes, that term-- that specific  term, “the people” detached from other qualifiers-- especially in Hugo’s specific  political-social group-- seems to have been used mostly to mean the workers-- workers, small artisan-merchants, maybe peasants. If someone in a socialist-writer text of the period is called a “child of the people” it means they’re from the working class; if they’re a Man Of The People , ditto. Feuilly is the representative of The People in the Amis’ group-- Enjolras even specifically says so, in the middle of one of his full-on visionary speeches--Feuilly,vaillant ouvrier, homme de peuple, hommes des peuples” (valiant working-man,man of the people--and then the transition/combo that can be read as “man of all peoples”  or “men  of the people” , plural (or, actually, as “the people’s man”, depending on what you’re choosing to focus on. Lamarque song rewrite go!) .  For a guy with very few lines, Feuilly is specifically carrying a LOT of social/political representation here :P (and of course it’s even more Symbolic because Feuilly has no known human parents; his class background is also his family background, he’s of The People, full stop, not of any more specific background. )

We’re never given Grantaire’s exact socioeconomic background, and certainly working-class kids could go into art studies in certain circumstances-- but Grantaire also has no apparent job and has a lot of middle-class-kid hobbies (boxing, singlestick, dancing, etc etc). Everything about Grantaire marks him as middle-class in background, currently choosing to vie-boheme it up. He’s definitely not a representative of “the people” in this sense. 

I also can’t go with Grantaire representing Paris, at least not Full On Spirit Of Paris.  Leaving aside that Grantaire specifically disavows Paris and his own Parisian-ness in Preliminary Gayeties, Hugo sets up very specific symbolism and character for Paris in Les Mis, and he’s pretty direct about it!

 Hugo’s Paris is wild, bold, anarchic, laughing, unafraid of violence, sometimes lazy or careless but essentially generous, bold, insightful and daring, and always  inherently inclined to liberty (and also essentially Romantic at its heart, because this is a Hugo novel and anything good has to be essentially Romantic at heart:P)  (and Hugo has a Lot of Feelings about Paris). Paris in miniature--Paris Atomized, Paris made human-- is Gavroche,  not Grantaire. Even among just the Amis, the one closest to being Hugo’s Paris Avatar is Bahorel, who shares so many echoes of the gamin chapters in his intro, the group’s flâneur-- flâner est Parisien!--and connection to the city,  in the same way Feuilly is their connection to the wider world and internationalist causes.  

But like I said, I do  really think Grantaire represents a part of the population of Paris! An important part! 

Specifically, he’s representing that part of the population that wants to take a damn break.   The part that feels that “of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads”,(4.1.1) the part that having found a seat wants to sit.  The perhaps selfish, but very understandable, part of the population that is secure enough itself to feel like it will do nothing but lose in another revolution, that “some one whose name is all” that says “I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.” (5.1.20)

That is to say...Grantaire is representing the apathetic, the burned out, and the bourgeoisie. 

This is certainly not the most flattering thing to be representing, but then Grantaire isn’t a particularly aspirational  character--not until the very end of his arc, when he stands up and announces himself For The Ideal. Like the people who close their doors,like the bourgeoisie who just wants to rest, he doesn’t hate the ideal, really...but he’s had Enough Trying, he wants peace and security and to not die or see his loved ones die,  and all of that is very understandable! But if he were genuinely happy  with that...well he wouldn’t be with the Amis at all. He also wants that Ideal, a better kinder world, and unfortunately to get that he’s going to have to stand up.

..Well, not him, personally,of course. When he  stands up he’s-a-gonna die, albeit in a super symbolic transformational/salvational way.  But the Not Very Subtle At All implication is that this is where the revolution wins: when the comfortable people , and especially  the bourgeoisie (well, as Hugo defines them), who have been sitting down, sleeping, wake up and take part. 

(This is of course true in a grand sense-- revolutions need mass participation! -- and it’s also true in the very specific sense of what went down in 1830 vs 1832. In 1830, a lot of the bourgeoisie did  get involved , and it’s a big part of why that went as smoothly as it did. But in 1832, by and large they said No Thanks We’re Good; a handful of students and some wild Romantics really was about all participation outside of the working/poor classes. But this is already so freaking long and this is not a Barricade Day post!) 

So: all of that very  long ramble is to say, yeah, I think Grantaire is symbolizing not The People (who are , symbolically and historically, already on the barricade)  but a specific and crucial subset of The People Of France (Or Wherever), which is why I never feel like I can go either “Yeah!!” or  “Ugh No” when I see a “Grantaire is the people” mention. :P

--sorry I can’t put them under a second cut >< , but these are relevant longer chunks of some of the quotes above!

Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads. We would exchange Cæsar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. “What a good little king was he!” We have marched since daybreak, we have reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first change with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed.Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which are sated, fortunes which are made, seek, demand, implore, solicit, what? A shelter.”(4.1.1, Well Cut) 

The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the bourgeoisie. (4.1.2, Badly Sewed)

And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-à-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!

... I don’t think much of your revolution,I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven. ” - (Grantaire, from Premliminary Gayeties, 4.12.2)

What, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it; the permanent life of the peoples.

Now, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the human race.

Let us admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism; momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have their turn later on.—“I exist,” murmurs that some one whose name is All. “I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.”—Hence, at certain hours, a profound cold broods over the magnanimous vanguard of the human race.  (5.1.20, The Dead Are In The Right and the Living Are Not Wrong)

High School: Good Luck Keeping Your  Cool

        Are you reading this because you have to or because you want to? Do you have the self-control to finish reading this paper if you wished? Or do you have the ability to rebel against reading this paper if you’re only looking at this sentence through obligation? These questions about control, rebellion, and independence are what thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche to W.E.B Du Bois implore us to answer. I don’t claim to have answered those questions; instead, I have explored them through the context of my life and the paradigm of cool. After all, in our society, the word cool is like a cellphone, people use it every day but have no idea of its inner workings. But by reflecting on the thoughts of those who have studied the word, and relating it to my own life, I can hope to unscrew the casing and at least glimpse what lies underneath.

        I grew up in a high school that viewed class participation as a God, and everyone from the teachers to the students worshipped it as such. Your grade hinged on how you acted in class, and if you couldn’t speak up, you were going to be lacking a certain vowel on your transcript. Most of my peers and I were happily oblivious to our grades throughout middle school, and so class involvement was just an abstract idea floating beyond the horizon of reality. But as we walked into the jaws of high school, the pervasive stench of college applications began to affect everyone. Soon, I noticed that the classroom was a jungle of outstretched hands swaying back and forth for the teacher’s attention. People were making noise just for the sake of making noise so that subconsciously the instructor would think they were participating more. And don’t even get me started on how much “funnier” the teacher’s jokes suddenly got. I felt like I wasn’t surrounded by my friends anymore, but these alien life forms whose mission was to capture as much of the teacher’s attention as possible. The worst part is...I started turning into those unrecognizable creatures as well. I begin to tune out the material taught and instead, solely focused on what I was going to say next. I stopped refining and re-refining my thoughts in my head and instead, blurted half-baked thoughts as they spawned into my consciousness. I used to prize ideas that I contributed, but now I simply jumped from concept to concept without being committed to any of them. Perhaps worst of all, I hated all of it. I was despised and ashamed of how shallow and artificial I was, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to jump off the train because I had no idea where I’d land. Now I know, however, that I would have landed in the cool.

        The rejecting of my individuality and acceptance of superficiality is profoundly uncool. Just look at Oscar Wilde who said “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation(De Profundis).” And he’s right. My classmates and I didn't love trigonometry or enjoy discussing some long-forgotten battle, but we sure acted like we did. Our thoughts sought to mirror that of our teachers and hence, we were no longer ourselves. And this hollow imitation we lived, through the lens of Oscar Wilde, was uncool. Oscar Wilde was far from the only person who recognized the importance of one’s identity. W.E.B Du Bois wrote about how his racially discriminated peers “shrunk into tasteless sycophancy(The Souls of Black Folk)” and how they failed to realize that for one “to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another(The Souls of Black Folk).” Were my friends and I too not tasteless sycophants seeking to flatter our way to a better grade? I, like many of Du Bois’ audience, thought I had to slip into the skin of someone else if I was to fit into the world. But Du Bois, just like Oscar Wilde, drew from the wells of cool to preach the importance of remaining true to yourself.

        I gave up another aspect of myself during my high school experience: self-control. And in the bible of cool, there’s no greater sin than relinquishing control. For example, Robert Farris Thompson in his studying of the aesthetic of the cool argues “Control, stability, and composure...seem to constitute elements of an all-embracing aesthetic attitude(An Aesthetic of the Cool).” You would see none of those traits if you walked into my high school classrooms. I learned that being composed meant being unable to contribute your thoughts amid my unconstrained peers continually trying to make sound. Our class discussions were as shifting as the tides, and new waves steadily erupted as people tried to change the topic to what fell into their minds. And hence, I lost all self-control. I could no longer prevent myself from foregoing my tendency for careful thought and instead, succumbing to the mindless chatter around me. As Thompson would say, I no longer exhibited “the intelligent withholding of speech for the purposes of higher deliberation(An Aesthetic of the Cool),” and hence, I no longer fit into the definition of cool. Nietzsche too held the same notions about control when he said: “Virtues are as dangerous as vices in so far as one lets them rule over one as authorities and laws(The Will to Power).” Nietzsche argues that, just like how authorities and laws can control you, so do virtues. Being able to involve myself in school was always taught to me by my friends, my parents, my teachers, almost everyone really, as a beneficial value I must adopt. But as the German philosopher acutely points out, virtues can exert great control over you, and if you’re not careful, it can leave you like a marionette with loose strings for anyone to seize.

        I’ve spent most of my life never rebelling, and I can never hope to find even signs pointing to the highway of cool if I haven’t shown defiance. I grew up in a household that revolved around risk, specifically how best to eradicate it. My father taught us that predictability would lead to success, which, in his eyes, meant doing well in school, becoming a doctor, and safely investing your money till retirement. He wanted to ensure our financial stability as we grew older and beseeched us to follow the well-beaten route to the top without getting distracted by the side trails continuously dotting the path. And hence, when faced with the choice to either jump in the boat with my classmates to float safely to an A, or to bid farewell and strike out on my own to explore the turbid tributaries, I, of course, chose the former. But that is wholly uncool.  

        The authors of Cool Rules put it succinctly when they wrote “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals or small groups to express defiance state to authority(Cool Rules).” My injected sense of caution couldn’t have led me farther from the attitude Pountain and Robins are describing. The problem with defying authority is that it is inherently risky, and you never know the consequences of such an action. The thought of disobeying my teachers scared, and still does scare, me because you’re no longer on the surest path to success. But being in a “private rebellion(Cool Rules)” is critical to the art of cool, and without it you are, as Nietzsche would say, “a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre(Beyond Good and Evil).” And that’s a pretty accurate way to describe my classmates and me. Herd animals that are corralled by the teacher and graze on her approval. This sentiment is furthered by Oscar Wilde’s assertion that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made(The Soul of Man Under Socialism).” For Wilde, disobedience is an integral part of humanity that has helped us continuously propel the wheel of progress forward. In his eyes, there was no progress in our classroom, no one was pushing the teacher to be her best self by questioning her, and in turn, no one was pushing us to become better by questioning us. Everyone simply said what everyone else wanted to hear, and as Wilde predicted, neither the teacher nor the student grew as a result. And if you can’t even find a way to grow in life, how do you expect to be cool?

        Too many people say that they were the coolest when they were in high school. And yet, from studying the true meaning behind the word cool, I would say they couldn’t be farther from the truth. My high school ran off with my individuality and left me with only a threadbare blanket of superficiality with which to shamefully wrap myself. And, as both W.E.B Du Bois and Oscar Wilde described, individuality is central to a person's being. Furthermore, I lost my ability to control myself and was instead forced to sing a song I despised. This loss of self-control, in the eyes of Nietzsche, bound me down just like any law or authority figure would. Thompson too valued self-control, stating that if you can’t even teach yourself how to stay quiet, you can never hope to become cool. Finally, my dad’s instruction to always color in between the lines left me passive and obedient, adjectives that, in the eyes of Cool Rule’s authors, would be noticeably absent in any cool man’s dictionary. Hence, no matter how cool I, or any of my classmates, thought we were in high school the thinkers who actually analyzed the essence of the word would only smile(well maybe not Nietzsche) and shake their heads in dissent.

FEATURE: Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale Review

Spoiler Warning for the entirety of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.

  Some movies are made for a single moment.

  For Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, that moment is when Yui appears in the middle of the film's final battle—a showdown with the boss of the Aincrad Castle's Floor 100—bringing with her all of Kirito and Asuna's friends from stories past. There's a swell of music (the tune's called "let's join swords," and it's a remix of the franchise's most memorable track, "swordland"), and suddenly we see the silhouettes of Kirito's iconic dual blade against the backlighting. Along with back-up, Yui returns to Kirito and Asuna their appearances and weapons from the original Sword Art Online game, and the entire group explodes into frenetic action that carries through until final moment of the battle. 

  If you have even a shred of fondness for Sword Art Online as a franchise, particularly the Aincrad arc, this moment alone is worth seeing Ordinal Scale for. It's the moment the entire film drives toward, a rush of near-euphoric glee enough to make me scream with delight under my breath in the theater. It's been five years since the first season of Sword Art Online began airing and nearly three since SAO II ended, so it feels like we've been without new Sword Art Online long enough for it to feel like an event of the past (despite the continual chatter following the show since then). This, in turn, gives us enough space from the early days of Sword Art Online, the time when it truly felt new, that Ordinal Scale can actually get away with remembering Aincrad, both as an motion within the film itself and outside it with the fans.

    I walk into my local showing of Ordinal Scale about 30 minutes before the film began, wondering what kind of crowd I'm going to see. An awkward pass in front of the screen looking for a seat later, I'm reassured that this won't be like some of my other anime filmgoing experiences, as the crowd is substantial—and boisterous. Occasional laughs about the "super easy" quiz questions rotating on the screen pepper the dull buzz of conversation; I hear one girl mutter "Must get" to herself with a vengeance upon seeing an ad for the recently released SAO mobile phone game. And although less interested in the welcome messages from LiSA, Haruka Tomatsu (Asuna), and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Kirito) before the film begins, by the final corny slow-motion fist pump from Matsuoka, a genuine cheer finally emerges from the crowd before giving way to silence and the movie's opening moments.

  Whatever else was true of my company for Ordinal Scale, one thing was certain: these people were fans of Sword Art Online. And that was good, because this movie—all else aside—is for fans of Sword Art Online.

  I'm no stranger to being a fan of things generally, but as a fan of Sword Art Online (it was one of the first anime I watched once I'd finally figured out what "anime" was and decided I wanted more) it was delightful to see Ordinal Scale speaking a language only those who care about this franchise—warts and all—can understand. In the moment when we see Starburst Stream unleashed once again or Yuuki's spirit embracing Asuna as the Mother's Rosario Sword Skill appears in a burst of purple lights, the film clearly, unavoidably asks but one thing of its audience: "Remember. Because if you remember how you felt when you watched Sword Art Online, this is for you."

    So, that's the fanservice angle, but what's really neat about Ordinal Scale is that it pulls this metatextual conversation with its fans into the actual text of the film itself. The primary conflict in Ordinal Scale is, at its most basic level, one dealing with the importance of memories—specifically those of Aincrad. Memories that are immeasurably painful for some and bittersweet for others. One of Sword Art Online's ongoing themes has been a question of the validity and value of virtual experiences (although this idea's traced an admittedly inconsistent arc throughout the franchise's various stories), and so Ordinal Scale putting Asuna's memories of her time in Sword Art Online (the game) on the line aligns it strongly with this tradition—and, by the end of the film, doubles down on the Aincrad arc's very serious affirmation of the worth of such experiences. 

  So when Ordinal Scale instructs the audience to dig into their own memories, it marries the meaningfulness of the fan's memory to those that Kirito, Asuna, and their friends hold dear. Whether or not the memories were all good or all bad matters little—rather, the key is that they mean something to them (and, ultimately, carry tangible weight in the real world as well). In some ways this parallels the fan act of immersing yourself in a show, finishing it, and then fondly carrying on the memories of your time in the world with you as you move on with your life—possibly even allowing them to affect who you are as a person. Of course, it's not like this kind of unity between fanservice and themes is anything new, but it's certainly enjoyable to experience it with Ordinal Scale if, like me, you do carry some measure of affection for SAO.

  This kind of textual/audience resonance aside, as a film for fans, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale succeeds because it reaches for and achieves a single peak of unadulterated fan joy. It can be watched, thought of, and loved purely in these terms. That single shot of Kirito once again becoming the Black Swordsman who saved Aincrad justifies the entire movie. It was the only thing the film needed to do.

      On the other hand, there are still 2+ hours of film that aren't that moment, I think it's still necessary that I note that on the whole Ordinal Scale is a surprisingly detached movie. While Ordinal Scale is certainly a more restrained, mature take on the world of SAO, at the same times it feels like it looses some of its charm in the attempt to present itself this way. The crisper, flatter character designs lend themselves less to diverse facial expressions than the more cartoony and moe designs from the TV series, and when paired with the lack of interesting character acting animation, the vividness of these characters had in the TV series finds itself drowning somewhat in the darker, grittier, colder world of augmented reality. It's without a doubt satisfying to see Kirito and Asuna looking and behaving like the young adults preparing to head off to college that they are, but I can't help but feel that the overall effect is one that makes the whole film feel rather cool in a way that lacks the passionate spirit of Kirito's over-the-top video game coolness from the TV series.

  There's also a disappointing lack of immediacy in film's cinematography, which relies heavily on long shots that place the characters in large backgrounds and distance them from the camera. Director Tomohiko Ito and his friend Takahiro Shikama shared storyboarding duties for the film [1], and both have proven to be excellent at the task in past works like the Sword Art Online and ERASED, but the direction in Ordinal Scale is depressingly lifeless outside of the more dynamic action scenes, completely lacking the engaging energy of the TV series. One scene that's emblematic of this problem occurs midway through the film. Following Yuuna, Kirito finds himself on a bridge in the virtual world and talks with her. Framed with a long shot, we can only see the barest outline of each character's face, and even as Yoshitsugu Matsuoka's voice rises along with Kirito's frustration, all we see is Kirito walking in a basic cycle across the bridge towards Yuuna. The direction completely sucks the power out of the encounter—a frustrating pattern that recurs throughout the movie.

    Happily, the story and script have a bit more of a spark to them, although the former is disconnected and the latter somewhat inane. It's fortunate that the key to the story of Ordinal Scale is, basically, that for the first time since Aincrad we finally have Asuna and Kirito's relationship back in the spotlight. Despite many battles that frankly don't always feel like they have actual stakes and the script's amusing failed attempts portraying friendly banter between Kirito and Asuna's group of friends (someone says something vaguely amusing, the rest of the group gently laughs), it's the promise that our two heroes made back on the 28th floor that holds it all together. If the final boss battle is the film's justification for existing, then it's Kirito and Asuna seeing the stars together at the film's end (and having their kiss interrupted by Yui lol) that validates the story.

  Which, really, is just to say that Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is, at heart, Sword Art Online—a sometimes bumbling, sometimes ineffective, impossibly dorky, and charming invention with nothing but the best of intentions. SAO being SAO, this was never going to be a perfectly crafted movie—but it captures so many of the charms of the franchise whilst also avoiding nearly all of its most aggravating faults. It may be a few dozen minutes longer than it needs to be, undercut its own the drama by putting off the twists until near the end of the film, and lack the personality-driven dialogue that could really have made its characters come to life on the big screen, but it's still trying to be good and succeeding just often enough that I can't find it in my heart to ignore those efforts. 

  And, again: Yui appears, the Black Swordsman and Lighting Flash Asuna return. That was everything. And it was glorious.

[1] Thanks to Canipa from the Canipa Effect for making available his list of the full animation staff for the film. Be sure to check out his video breaking down the film's staff and the paths they took to this movie.

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Isaac eases his compulsive need to write about anime on his blog, Mage in a Barrel. He also sometimes hangs out on Tumblr, where he mainly posts his drawing practice as he seeks to become a renowned idol and robot fanartist. You can follow him on Twitter at @iblessall or on Facebook.

By: [email protected]

George Saunders: what writers really do when they write

A series of instincts, thousands of tiny adjustments, hundreds of drafts What is the mysterious process writers go through to get an idea on to the page?

1

Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wifes cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt on several occasions to hold the boys body. An image spontaneously leapt into my mind a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Piet. I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound, and then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasnt getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt, decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is the result of that attempt, and now I find myself in the familiar writerly fix of trying to talk about that process as if I were in control of it.

We often discuss art this way: the artist had something he wanted to express, and then he just, you know expressed it. We buy into some version of the intentional fallacy: the notion that art is about having a clear-cut intention and then confidently executing same.

The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and more of a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully.

2

A guy (Stan) constructs a model railroad town in his basement. Stan acquires a small hobo, places him under a plastic railroad bridge, near that fake campfire, then notices hes arranged his hobo into a certain posture the hobo seems to be gazing back at the town. Why is he looking over there? At that little blue Victorian house? Stan notes a plastic woman in the window, then turns her a little, so shes gazing out. Over at the railroad bridge, actually. Huh. Suddenly, Stan has made a love story. Oh, why cant they be together? If only Little Jack would just go home. To his wife. To Linda.

What did Stan (the artist) just do? Well, first, surveying his little domain, he noticed which way his hobo was looking. Then he chose to change that little universe, by turning the plastic woman. Now, Stan didnt exactly decide to turn her. It might be more accurate to say that it occurred to him to do so; in a split-second, with no accompanying language, except maybe a very quiet internal Yes.

He just liked it better that way, for reasons he couldnt articulate, and before hed had the time or inclination to articulate them.

An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing ones intention and then executing it does not make good art. Artists know this. According to Donald Barthelme: The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do. Gerald Stern put it this way: If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking. Einstein, always the smarty-pants, outdid them both: No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.

How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with P on this side (Positive) and N on this side (Negative). I try to read what Ive written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might (without hope and without despair). Wheres the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the P zone. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments.

The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?

The interesting thing, in my experience, is that the result of this laborious and slightly obsessive process is a story that is better than I am in real life funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining.

And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual.

3

Revising by the method described is a form of increasing the ambient intelligence of a piece of writing. This, in turn, communicates a sense of respect for your reader. As text is revised, it becomes more specific and embodied in the particular. It becomes more sane. It becomes less hyperbolic, sentimental, and misleading. It loses its ability to create a propagandistic fog. Falsehoods get squeezed out of it, lazy assertions stand up, naked and blushing, and rush out of the room.

Is any of this relevant to our current political moment?

Hoo, boy.

When I write, Bob was an asshole, and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, Bob snapped impatiently at the barista, then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife, and then pause and add, who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas, I didnt make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.

But it is more compassionate. Bob has gone from pure asshole to grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person, to whom, normally, he would have been nice. Bob has changed. He started out a cartoon, on which we could heap scorn, but now he is closer to me, on a different day.

How was this done? Via pursuit of specificity. I turned my attention to Bob and, under the pressure of trying not to suck, my prose moved in the direction of specificity, and in the process my gaze became more loving toward him (ie, more gentle, nuanced, complex), and you, dear reader, witnessing my gaze become more loving, might have found your own gaze becoming slightly more loving, and together (the two of us, assisted by that imaginary grouch) reminded ourselves that it is possible for ones gaze to become more loving.

Or we could just stick with Bob was an asshole, and post it, and wait for the likes, and for the pro-Bob forces to rally, and the anti-barista trolls to anonymously weigh in but, meanwhile, theres poor Bob, grieving and misunderstood, and theres our poor abused barista, feeling crappy and not exactly knowing why, incrementally more convinced that the world is irrationally cruel.

Illustration by Yann Kebbi for Review

4

What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which shes already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly were adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs. I write, Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch, read that, wince, cross out came into the room and down and blue (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if its blue?) and the sentence becomes Jane sat on the couch and suddenly, its better (Hemingwayesque, even!), although why is it meaningful for Jane to sit on a couch? Do we really need that? And soon we have arrived, simply, at Jane, which at least doesnt suck, and has the virtue of brevity.

But why did I make those changes? On what basis?

On the basis that, if its better this new way for me, over here, now, it will be better for you, later, over there, when you read it. When I pull on this rope here, you lurch forward over there.

This is a hopeful notion, because it implies that our minds are built on common architecture that whatever is present in me might also be present in you. I might be a 19th-century Russian count, you a part-time Walmart clerk in 2017, in Boise, Idaho, but when you start crying at the end of my (Tolstoys) story Master and Man, you have proved that we have something in common, communicable across language and miles and time, and despite the fact that one of us is dead.

Another reason youre crying: youve just realised that Tolstoy thought well of you he believed that his own notions about life here on earth would be discernible to you, and would move you.

Tolstoy imagined you generously, you rose to the occasion.

We often think that the empathetic function in fiction is accomplished via the writers relation to his characters, but its also accomplished via the writers relation to his reader. You make a rarefied place (rarefied in language, in form; perfected in many inarticulable beauties the way two scenes abut; a certain formal device that self-escalates; the perfect place at which a chapter cuts off); and then welcome the reader in. She cant believe that you believe in her that much; that you are so confident that the subtle nuances of the place will speak to her; she is flattered. And they do speak to her. This mode of revision, then, is ultimately about imagining that your reader is as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well intentioned as you, and that, to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her. You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: No, shes smarter than that. Dont dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.

And in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.

5

I had written short stories by this method for the last 20 years, always assuming that an entirely new method (more planning, more overt intention, big messy charts, elaborate systems of numerology underlying the letters in the characters names, say) would be required for a novel. But, no. My novel proceeded by essentially the same principles as my stories always have: somehow get to the writing desk, read what youve got so far, watch that forehead needle, adjust accordingly. The whole thing was being done on a slightly larger frame, admittedly, but there was a moment when I finally realised that, if one is going to do something artistically intense at 55 years old, he is probably going to use the same skills hes been obsessively honing all of those years; the trick might be to destabilise oneself enough that the skills come to the table fresh-eyed and a little confused. A bandleader used to working with three accordionists is granted a symphony orchestra; what hes been developing all of those years, he may find, runs deeper than mere instrumentation his take on melody and harmony should be transferable to this new group, and he might even find himself looking anew at himself, so to speak: reinvigorated by his own sudden strangeness in that new domain.

It was as if, over the years, Id become adept at setting up tents and then a very large tent showed up: bigger frame, more fabric, same procedure. Or, to be more precise (yet stay within my temporary housing motif): it was as if Id spent my life designing custom yurts and then got a commission to build a mansion. At first I thought Not sure I can do that. But then it occurred to me that a mansion of sorts might be constructed from a series of connected yurts each small unit built by the usual rules of construction, their interconnection creating new opportunities for beauty.

6

Any work of art quickly reveals itself to be a linked system of problems. A book has personality, and personality, as anyone burdened with one will attest, is a mixed blessing. This guy has great energy but never sits still. This girl is sensitive maybe too much; she weeps when the wrong type of pasta is served. Almost from the first paragraph, the writer becomes aware that a works strengths and weaknesses are bound together, and that, sadly, his great idea has baggage.

For example: I loved the idea of Lincoln, alone at night in the graveyard. But how is a novel made from one guy in a graveyard at night? Unless we want to write a 300-page monologue in the voice of Lincoln (Four score and seven minutes ago, I did enter this ghastly place) or inject a really long-winded and omniscient gravedigger into the book (we dont, trust me, I tried), we need some other presences there in the graveyard. Is this a problem? Well, it sure felt like one, back in 2012. But, as new age gurus are always assuring us, a problem is actually an opportunity. In art, this is true. The reader will sense the impending problem at about the same moment the writer does, and part of what we call artistic satisfaction is the readers feeling that just the right cavalry has arrived, at just the right moment. Another wave of artistic satisfaction occurs if she feels that the cavalry is not only arriving efficiently, but is a cool, interesting cavalry, ie, is an opportunity for added fun/beauty a broadening-out of the aesthetic terms.

In this case, the solution was pretty simple contained, joke-like, in the very statement of the problem (Who else might be in a graveyard late at night?).

I remembered an earlier, abandoned novel, set in a New York State graveyard that featured wait for it talking ghosts. I also remembered a conversation with a brilliant former student of mine, who said that if I ever wrote a novel, it should be a series of monologues, as in a story of mine called Four Institutional Monologues.

So: the book would be narrated by a group of monologuing ghosts stuck in that graveyard.

And suddenly what was a problem really did become an opportunity: someone who loves doing voices, and thinking about death, now had the opportunity to spend four years trying to make a group of talking ghosts be charming, spooky, substantial, moving, and, well, human.

There is something wonderful in feeling the presence of the writer within you, of something wilful that seems to have a plan George Saunders. Photograph: Tim Knox for the Guardian

7

A work of fiction can be understood as a three-beat movement: a juggler gathers bowling pins; throws them in the air; catches them. This intuitive approach Ive been discussing is most essential, I think, during the first phase: the gathering of the pins. This gathering phase really is: conjuring up the pins. Somehow the best pins are the ones made inadvertently, through this system of radical, iterative preference Ive described. Concentrating on the line-to-line sound of the prose, or some matter of internal logic, or describing a certain swath of nature in the most evocative way (that is, by doing whatever gives us delight, and about which we have a strong opinion), we suddenly find that weve made a pin. Which pin? Better not to name it. To name it is to reduce it. Often pin exists simply as some form of imperative, or a thing about which were curious; a threat, a promise, a pattern, a vow we feel must soon be broken. Scrooge says it would be best if Tiny Tim died and eliminated the surplus population; Romeo loves Juliet; Akaky Akakievich needs a new overcoat; Gatsby really wants Daisy. (The colour grey keeps showing up; everything that occurs in the story does so in pairs.)

Then: up go the pins. The reader knows they are up there and waits for them to come down and be caught. If they dont come down (Romeo decides not to date Juliet after all, but to go to law school; the weather in St Petersburg suddenly gets tropical, and the overcoat will not be needed; Gatsby sours on Daisy, falls for Betty; the writer seems to have forgotten about his grey motif) the reader cries foul, and her forehead needle plummets into the N zone and she throws down the book and wanders away to get on to Facebook, or rob a store.

The writer, having tossed up some suitably interesting pins, knows they have to come down, and, in my experience, the greatest pleasure in writing fiction is when they come down in a surprising way that conveys more and better meaning than youd had any idea was possible. One of the new pleasures I experienced writing this, my first novel, was simply that the pins were more numerous, stayed in the air longer, and landed in ways that were more unforeseen and complexly instructive to me than has happened in shorter works.

Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because theyd been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential incapable of influencing the living. Enter Willie Lincoln, just dead, in imminent danger (children dont fare well in that realm). In the last third of the book, the bowling pins started raining down. Certain decisions Id made early on forced certain actions to fulfilment. The rules of the universe created certain compulsions, as did the formal and structural conventions Id put in motion. Slowly, without any volition from me (I was, always, focused on my forehead needle), the characters started to do certain things, each on his or her own, the sum total of which resulted, in the end, in a broad, cooperative pattern that seemed to be arguing for what Id call a viral theory of goodness. All of these imaginary beings started working together, without me having decided they should do so (each simply doing that which produced the best prose), and they were, it seemed, working together to save young Willie Lincoln, in a complex pattern seemingly being dictated from elsewhere. (It wasnt me, it was them.)

Something like this had happened in stories before, but never on this scale, and never so unrelated to my intention. It was a beautiful, mysterious experience and I find myself craving it while, at the same time, flinching at the thousands of hours of work it will take to set such a machine in motion again.

Why do I feel this to be a hopeful thing? The way this pattern thrillingly completed itself? It may just be almost surely is a feature of the brain, the byproduct of any rigorous, iterative engagement in a thought system. But there is something wonderful in watching a figure emerge from the stone unsummoned, feeling the presence of something within you, the writer, and also beyond you something consistent, wilful, and benevolent, that seems to have a plan, which seems to be: to lead you to your own higher ground.

Lincoln in the Bardo is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for 14.24 (RRP 18.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

Read more: http://bit.ly/2luoG7k

from George Saunders: what writers really do when they write