#But I also think Marc’s immediate response makes for a very interesting contrast

[age-of-moonknight]

“Darkness at the Edge of Town (Part Two),” Avengers Unlimited (Vol. 1/2022), Infinity Comic, #34.

Writer: Alex Segura; Artist: Jim Towe; Colorist: Andres Mossa; Letterer: Joe Sabino

[morwensteelsheen]

WIP wednesday thoughts:

willow cabin is utterly fucked because i changed my intended ~moral~ halfway through and now im stuck trying to integrate this shitty political intrigue plot into what should’ve been a more interesting story about éowyn adapting to life in gondor. hugely fucking annoyed by it and just totally unsure how to proceed. i could significantly increase the chapter count, but im worried that because the initial framing device was this bandits shit that closing out that plot and then still going for ages afterwards would be really shitty? i honestly don’t know, it’s so difficult. really i just need someone to read my outline and tell me if im being a dumb twat about it lol

meanwhile I know exactly where I want to go with AFTA but for some unaccountable reason im stressed that my ass is gonna get roasted for the direction i want to take it in. it’s all based in both tolkien’s personal politics and (some) historical precedent, but im worried people are gonna see it as a marysue-ification? but also im hoping to do sthg of a sequel to afta to practice the political intrigue writing so i don’t make the same mistakes i did in wc, and to do that it would require this specific set up in AFTA. im gonna put my AFTA thing under the cut so don’t click read more unless you’re gucci with potential AFTA spoilers!!

this royal affair au is definitely gonna get published at some point but im trying to decide if i want to do ~tasteful~ smut that drives a longer narrative or if im really just gonna do a whole 3,000 word build up to some run of the mill, old fashioned PWP lmao

okay so i have spent a Lot of time thinking about what impact i think éowyn and faramir would have on each other in a pre-ring war setting, and the honest to god conclusion ive come to is that they would somewhat inadvertently egg on each other’s (wildly divergent) idealism.

faramir’s an idealist politically in ways that, as Big D rightly points out, are not super productive in a wartime scenario. but so far as im concerned, the war doesn’t feel as warlike until they have to blow the bridge at osgiliath. until that point, there’s not really anything to say that faramir’s whole throwback optimism isn’t a perfectly justifiable position to have.

but what that idealism is and how it manifests are two really important considerations. the crux of his idealistic politics is that he looks at númenor and sees something valuable in it, and looks at gondor and sees a lot that he thinks is fucked up. outside of articulating a general angst towards the glory hunting, it’s not like he’s spending time talking about his specific policy prescriptions. however, we do know a few things that can guide us to a more coherent reconstruction of his politics:

he’s pretty rigidly hierarchical (when it’s convenient for him). as seen in: him basically telling sam to fuck off and stay in his lane in WOTW, and in how and when he chooses to refer to his father as ‘father’ vs ‘my lord’ or ‘lord of the city’ in the aftermath of the osgiliath retreat and then before he gets his ass sent back there. i don’t want to go into too much detail here but if i go with this i’ll definitely justify it more thoroughly in the footnotes.

so we’ve got faramir’s emphasis on hierarchy and his occasional (when convenient) belief that the upper echelons of a hierarchy are there because they’re intellectually and/or morally better. or, maybe to remove the causation from that instance, because they are in those upper echelons, they have an obligation to be more morally/intellectually upstanding, and the people in the structure below them have an obligation to show deference. unless you’re faramir and you’re dealing with denethor in which case that all goes out the window. classic.

we know there is some sort of nascent pseudo-democratic tradition of popular sovereignty in gondor. we know this because faramir asks the masses at aragorn’s coronation if they’ll accept him as king. faramir is a lot of things, but he is certainly not a progressive political radical, and i cannot imagine any situation in which he cooked up that rigmarole himself. that then implies to me that it’s building on some sort of political/cultural expectation in gondor. so: some sort of relationship to popular legitimacy. the people of gondor are subjects, but perhaps not as totally passive and unconsidered in the power structure as we might assume given the comparability to feudal europe/asia.

given those two things, i want to use AFTA to argue:

that faramir, in looking to assign blame for the faults he sees in gondor, would not directly assign blame to the lower classes, but rather to the aristocracy, because he will have seen them as failing in their moral obligations to the people they rule over. this is not to say that he isn’t fucked off about The People™ valorising war, but i think he’d take the position that they couldn’t possibly be expected to form those values and opinions of their own volition, and the fault lies in their rules. faramir: not gramscian.

faramir lacks any power that is non-military, and even that is of questionable worth because the rangers seem to be fairly distinct to the general structure of the army, and are not exactly a huge force.

faramir lacking any political power isn’t necessarily a huge concern for him (as in, he’s not actively trying to change that), because he knows he’s not going to lead a moral revolution and isn’t interested in taking up the responsibilities having political capital would engender because he’s stuck dealing with this war, that he fucking hates btw has he mentioned that he hates it?

however, given that he is apparently eminently versed in lore and scholarship, he is probably keenly aware that there is this incipient notion of popular legitimacy somewhere in gondor’s culture. it’s not, for most of his life, knowledge that actually does anything for him, but it is there.

éowyn, meanwhile, doesn’t really have many strong political convictions (yet). not because she’s a dumbass or whatever, but because she looks at court politics as kind of a farce, and doesn’t believe that power legitimately emanates from anywhere that isn’t a Big Fucking Army. and why, strictly speaking, would she not think that? the event that brought about the creation of her kingdom was not careful, soft spoken negotiation, it was her ancestors being in the right place at the right time with a Big Fucking Army.

and the internal politics of the Riddermark actually seem to be fairly stable, all things considered. i sincerely doubt that Théoden or Théodred are having to negotiate complex politicking in the way Denethor and Boromir are. so where, then, would éowyn see that kind of political behaviour outside gondor? with gríma.

éowyn, then, will see the immediate contrast between gríma (backroom dealer, manipulator extraordinaire) and théoden (owner of Big Fucking Army). and gríma goes and fucking wins that fight. that forces éowyn to confront the fact that, jesus christ, maybe there are different types of power.

at the same time, she’s going to be in minas tirith and needing to cover for théoden letting his shit get wrecked. not just because she’s prideful, which of course she is, but because if denethor/gondor think that théoden is too weak to hold up his end of the bargain, why would they ever go help the Mark? éowyn, seeing that théoden’s f-f-fucked, knows that there’s a very very good chance the Mark will need help.

against her feelings about courtly politics, she starts to accept that she’s going to need to do something to get power in gondor. not anything substantial, it’s not like she’s trying to overthrow anybody, but enough that when push comes to shove she can force denethor to help out the Mark (if he doesn’t do so willingly).

but, as ive sort of already shown in AFTA, she’s a bit of a dogshit diplomat. good for a little big-brawny-enforcer stuff, but not exactly brimming with cultural sensitivity. by the time she realises théoden + the Mark are fucked, she’ll have burnt quite a few bridges with the gondorrim nobles, and it’s not like she’s the sort of person to go running cap-in-hand begging for mercy.

so: she has to look elsewhere. and wow! a chance for faramir to do his favourite thing — talk about his opinions! and by god, his weird idealistic politics are… actually kind of helpful? because he’s like, look, you’re never gonna be a diplomat, but there are other ways of consolidating power. and one of those ways is by appealing to The People™. so why not work that angle?

and actually, we know that this is a viable route for éowyn because hama, in arguing for her to take up the mantle of théoden’s heir when théoden and éomer fuck off to helm’s deep, basically says that The People™ love her and would have willingly chosen her to lead them.

we also know, based on faramir’s middle men speech, that the people of gondor and the mark have grown alike in nature. not totally unreasonable to then think that the people of gondor would take to her like the people of the mark did.

éowyn, then, in various ways begins to try to win over the people of minas tirith. i need to do a little more research on this bc what ive got on the practicalities of that so far are a bit, uhhh, sketchy, but the least jargony way to describe this is to point to when natalie dormer’s character in GOT gets out of the carriage to go hug and kiss some babies. (marc bloch, eat your heart out)

this would later segue into a potential sequel where, while trying to secure the way for aragorn’s coronation, éowyn actually plays an interesting role because she’s fallen into this incidental Diana, People’s Princess™ role and so is better positioned than almost anyone to go advocate on his behalf. wow! cool! éowyn getting to be politically useful in more ways than just getting hitched!

so yeah. that’s how i am thinking it might play out. this would obviously have a rolling impact on the remainder of AFTA and how certain (🔥) events pan out later, but i think that building up part has to begin pretty much now, narratively. also this lets me get in a reference to “and then her heart changed, or else at last she understood it” and have it not be almost entirely about wanting to shag faramir, but actually about her gradual evolution from valorising war above all else to being like, hmm, maybe there are other ways of being powerful. which i think still largely captures the “no longer I will vie with the great riders” stuff, but more subtly and without feeling quite so… deferential, I guess? Like it’s not that she’s swapping one form of power (violence) for nothing (gardening?? healing?? tolkien accidental articulation of necropolitics??) but swapping violence for a different type of more sustainable power.

yeah. that’s the take, basically. who fucking knows.

[letticetweedie]

For my Final Major Project, my chosen subject area is dance, specifically its relationship to the individual and how we use it to communicate. Because I want to explore the very anthropological side of dance, my starting research area was the way in which it’s technically explained, such as Keith Rose’s Crib Dance diagrams and the textbooks which depict the individual steps to the Waltz. This contrast between the more monotonous and organised side of dance compared to the more philosophical areas I know I want to investigate, will help me identify what it is I’m trying to pin down. Having done this, I have also done a lot of contrasting research on catharsis, and what it is to feel catharsis in everyday life. While often used in literature, a sense of catharsis is something I personally feel when I dance, and having spoken to a number of people, they agreed that they felt a feeling of “release” when they too were dancing.

It’s this research into the idea of psychological release and emotional freedom that led to looking at freedom as a whole, and how far we can ever truly be free. One fact I remember being told is that every person in the UK will see on average 5,000 advertisements. This bombardment of consumerism and marketing suggests that we are in fact never free, consistently influenced by what we’re told to want and arguably losing any sense of independence or free will. In one article written by J. Krishnamurti, he stated that “freedom implies being completely alone…You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday”. While this is a more conceptual way of putting it, Krishnamurti backs up this point of never being free, as we’re constantly weighed down by our own personal experience and emotion. However, if dance is considered to bring about such a sense of release and catharsis, is that why it’s so often resorted to in times of intense emotional strain? The intuitive and natural motion of moving to a rhythm or beat could arguably be the closest thing we can ever get to being completely free. Is dance used merely as a distraction from the problems we face in reality, or is it legitimately a means for exercising a sense of psychological wellbeing? This is a key point I want to explore within this project.

Another area I want to explore is that when we do dance, how far is our movement a completely natural response, independent of external influence. The history of dance suggests that trends and styles are common in society and that more often than not, we naturally imitate those around us. However, while eras of disco, street dance and raves show this trait, what I’m interested in is the nuances that separate us, the ways not only our individual experience and emotion dictate the way we move, but how our subconscious state also influences this. Furthermore, I also want to research into the aesthetics of dance – the motifs, colour and imagery we associate with dancing and how individual experience means these will never be exactly the same for any two people. For me, I associate positive memories of dancing with large rooms of people, of which at least 90% of the people immediately next to me are close friends and with a sense of glamour and fun. However, how far does this individual experience translate onto a subjective viewer? My personal relationship to dance, and how elated it makes me feel is a major factor that influenced the decision to study dance for this project. Additionally, I know that many others are familiar with this relationship to dance, therefore this project will hopefully be something that can be largely accessible and relatable. As the cathartic nature of dancing is something I relate to really strongly, when I’ve fully explored the area, and successfully pinned down what exactly it is that makes dancing so important to us as a species, I’ll know.

The cultural context of dance is something that I want to explore thoroughly – dance itself is such a social act, it’s impossible to ignore the cultural impact its had. As noted by Marusa Pusnik in their article on the “Cultural Practice” of dance, “dance occupies an important place in the social structure of all human cultures throughout history. Dance is most commonly defined as a way of human expression through movement”. The natural affiliation to dance as a means of communication has resulted in dance being the base of a multitude of cultures. For example, originating in Bharata Natyam, India around 400 years ago, Japan’s Kabuki dance is still practiced in homes today. While research and videos are hard to find, the dance still forms a significant part of the life of those who follow it. This is just one example of the hundreds, if not thousands of different forms and styles of dance that are used around the world. Consequently it’s clear that not only is dance a matter of an individuals response to music, but a group affiliation to a shared culture or origin, something that possible aids any feeling of displacement or isolation.

Additionally, the history of dance shows a close relationship between culture and society, how groups have used dance as a way of either rebelling or affiliating themselves with the ever-changing circumstances around them. As written in an article by the BBC, (‘6 ways disco changed the world’), The 1970s craze of disco for example was in response to Nazi regulations, limiting live music and allowing only records to be played. Following on from this, disco became a massive influence on later dance trends, as it was the first time someone could join the dance floor as an individual (prior to this you’d often need someone of the opposite sex to dance with). For the first time, individuals could be part of a larger crowd, a singular mentality of just wanting a good time. This also brought about the ability for something as simple as two men being able to dance together, as this was illegal until 1971, disco therefore acting as a form of social liberation.

For me, the subject of dance is interesting because of the impact it has on our mental state, rather than its literal use in art as a medium. In terms of artistic references and contexts, the artists I’ve been researching are less to do with the act of dancing itself, but more the themes they investigate and how they relate to my own practice. For example, Cildo Meireles and Andy Warhol are two artists I’ve looked at as part of my research into consumerist art. The way both these artists responded to the increase in consumerist culture and advertising reminds me of the way in which dance is used in rebellion or affiliation to the same things. Using motifs such as Coca-Cola bottles and technology (more specifically in his piece ‘Babel’), Meireles emphasises the theme of excess in the material world, the ways in which we’re constantly subject to and influenced by what’s being forced into our consciousness. Similarly, Warhol explores this excess in the form of colour, again looking at the ways the artificial world around us is almost inescapable. It’s these themes that I want to explore in relation to dance, how we use it to escape the very things these two artists are highlighting in their work and how I can reference this in my own work. Furthermore, both these artists strongly use motifs as a method of inspiring such themes, something I want to include within this project. Artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz does this in his work ‘An Autumn Lexicon’. Using items such as disco balls, coloured lighting and text, he creates an environment that is immediately reminiscent of a nightclub or party, and in turn, dancing. In relation to this, I want to further explore dance in its modern social and cultural context - how now, coloured light immediately carries undertones of some kind of party or performance. More specific references as well, such as bathrooms covered in crazy graffiti, weirdly lit corridors, glitter and neon are all motifs that I want to explore in relation to their social connotations. Again, similar to Warhol and Meireles, these things all inspire a theme of excess, something that dance seems to naturally attribute itself to. Dance has become a means for not only emotional release and excess, but also a medium in which we associate being our most self, allowing personal style to manifest itself, in turn leading the modern club-scene to be associated with excess of all kinds (for example glitter and neon). Ultimately, that is what I want my project to become. I want it to manifest itself as one large, crazy, fun collection of work – something that in itself is reminiscent of the overflow of emotion we have when we dance.

The continued exploration of the theme of experience is definitely something that is still present in this project, however the one difference in this work from what I’ve done before is that I want to explore how personal experience and intuition influences the way we move and the reasons for this movement. Rather than looking at the emotional response to the world around us, I’m more interested in the ways we translate this conscious experience and emotion into natural and intuitive movement, usually as a way for us to make sense of the mess that’s in our heads. In terms of the mediums and techniques I’ll be using, I hope to still be able to work very materially, only this time using materials that more directly relate to the subject area itself. The abundance of imagery and motifs, such as the disco ball, gives a lot of opportunity to work sculpturally, something that’s become really integral in my practice so far. Print on the other hand, while another method I’ve become increasingly confident in, is a medium I want to approach differently - dance is such a time-based, physical form, I’ll have to think about how I translate this onto the printed page.