#Literature major with an unfinished degree?

[hiddenbysuccubi]

Really nice bottles of, y'know... if you just go through there, yeah... the Amontillado. That vintage. Just so. Down that hallway that also happens to have yellow wallpaper. Yup.

No don't worry you'll see it in a moment. There're also illustrations of rye near the floorboards. The floorboards that definitely don't have a heartbeat. You're *nearly* there-

What, what are you pausing by the curtains for?! The curtains are clearly just blue! Sometimes the curtains are just blue! Just keep going! Why are you yelping like the doorknob's burned you? Like I keep it at 451 Fahrenheit. Yes once in a blue lagoon you have a point but not this moment, man. Yes, the free Amontillado, again, because I'm The Giver, all magnanimous, me, you'll get there, just keep walking.

[emeraldtawny]

Dazai Osamu Character Analysis: How Human Is He?

Before I get into this, allow me to preface this with a disclaimer: I AM NO EXPERT IN ANY OF THE TOPICS I AM ABOUT TO DELVE INTO, THIS IS JUST WHAT I INTERPRET PERSONALLY. This is just a fan of the character rambling about him and his real-life counterpart for the sake of sharing the thoughts rattling around inside my brain. However, I will link all sources that I used at the end of this so you may wish to investigate further if what you read piques your interest.

Okay, so… Dazai Osamu. This man is as much of an enigma as he was in real life (which… makes sense). Whether Cybird did this on purpose for a gradual build-up to his route or because he just wasn’t as popular a character, who knows? (I like to believe the former just for hope’s sake gbsdukgdx). Because we know very little about him in-game, the majority of what I will be mentioning will relate back to IRL Dazai. If you know little or nothing of Dazai Osamu, please proceed with caution if discussions of substance abuse, depression and suicide upset or trigger you. Consider this your disclaimer. Now then, let’s dive in.

History of Dazai Osamu

Born in 1909 into a wealthy family as Tsushima Shūji, that didn’t ease his early life from burdens. His father was a politician and often spent long periods away from home. His mother was often sick so he was mostly cared for by his aunt and the family’s servants. His father died of lung cancer when Dazai was 13, but he seemed mostly unhindered by the death of his father and continued through schooling before being accepted into the literature department of Hirosaki University in 1927.

Things started taking a more outward effect on Dazai around this time, the linchpin likely being the death of his idol - author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - who committed suicide. He started losing interest in his studies, investing more time into alcohol and prostitutes. He also experimented in Marxism, even joining the Japanese Communist Party. His first suicide attempt was in 1929 - right before his school exams - by an attempted sleeping pill overdose. This wasn’t enough to kill him so he subsequently survived. He graduated from Hirosaki the following year, then moved to Tokyo University in 1930. There, he met a prostitute that he ran away with, prompting him to be disowned by his family. 

His second attempt at suicide came that year - an attempted double suicide with a young woman he barely knew. They threw themselves into the ocean. Sadly, she died, and Dazai was rescued by a passing fishing boat. He was suspected in the woman’s death, but his family’s influence saved him. He then married the prostitute he ran away with.

It was after this that Dazai began networking with established writers and started publishing his own works, his pseudonym of Dazai Osamu being established with his short story ‘Ressha’ in 1933. In 1935, he attempted suicide for the third time by hanging, failing once again. That same year, he suffered from appendicitis and was admitted to hospital where he developed an addiction to a morphine-based painkiller. He was admitted to a mental institution in 1936 and was forced off of his drug addiction. When he was getting treated, his wife had an affair with his best friend. With their marriage deteriorating, both Dazai and his wife attempted a double suicide - Dazai’s fourth attempt. They both consumed sleeping pills in an attempted overdose. Both survived and Dazai divorced his wife after this.

The 1930s and 1940s were Dazai’s golden years literature-wise. He wrote many novels and short stories. When World War II rolled around, he escaped being drafted due to tuberculosis. He continued writing through the war period and met and then married his second wife in 1941. They had three children together.

The last years of Dazai’s life produced his most infamous works - ‘The Setting Sun’ and ‘No Longer Human’ - in 1947 and 1948 respectively. Around this time, Dazai met a woman who he left his wife and children for to take as a mistress. On June 13, 1948, Dazai and his mistress committed suicide by drowning in the Tamagawa Reservoir in Tokyo. In a cruelly ironic twist, their corpses were discovered on what would have been Dazai’s 39th birthday - his fifth attempt was the one that succeeded. An unfinished novelette eerily titled ‘Goodbye’ was left behind, many believing this as his last will.

Dazai’s works became a cult classic after his death, his undertones of nihilism in a postwar society greatly appealing to the masses. ‘No Longer Human’ became his most famous piece, eventually being translated into many languages and is among the most popular books in Japanese literature. He inspired different movies and anime (and otome) with the story of his life and the works he crafted from his experiences.

(All info in this section is derived from Source 1)

No Longer Human’s Effect

When you think Dazai Osamu, it’s not uncommon to immediately think of his novel ‘No Longer Human’. Whether you’ve read the book or not, worry not, as I will not be discussing any plots in the book; I will instead address the overarching themes and (the lack of) conclusion and message the novel leaves you with.

Many consider ‘No Longer Human’ - and many other of Dazai’s works - as semi-autobiographical, as he took many of his story’s ideas from his own personal experiences. This is illustrated through the way in which he wrote his stories; focusing on first-person perspectives to an excruciatingly analytical degree. This was and still is known as the “I-Genre” in Japan and became a staple for Dazai, the viewpoints and mindsets he wrote his characters in portrayed very vividly in a way that made you question how much of it is the character, and how much of what he wrote was the author’s own words and feelings to the world.

‘No Longer Human’ is not a happy story. It follows the story of a man through childhood, university and finally adulthood - the story written in three parts as notebooks to show his progression of age. Without spoiling the contents of the novel in case you wish to read it for yourself, the story focuses on an overarching question: is being a human the solution, or the problem in and of itself? Throughout the novel, it’s clear of how questioning the main character is of this, almost to the point of obsession and compulsion. However, his language always shows how unconvinced he is; a “mundane and dream-like writing, incessantly miming the words “I think … ,” “I am … ,” “I could … ,” “I should … .” Dazai’s characters are never quite convinced.” (Source 2).

The character Dazai portrays is relentless in his self-examination, which leads to his estrangement - not just from those around him, but to the very species he is meant to be a part of. Estrangement is common throughout the story and “It is this fundamentally unhuman feeling that, paradoxically, reveals to Dazai’s characters exactly how human they are.” (Source 2). The inner monologues and conversations can be unsettling if you find yourself relating, alien if you don’t, but ultimately leave you walking away from it questioning even an inkling of what you thought was innate and normal. 

‘No Longer Human’ is not a story designed to tie up all of the loose ends it produces. Dazai leaves it up to you - the reader - to interpret for yourself. The character is infuriatingly, yet ultimately in character, indecisive in how he wishes to perceive the world; “To be a nonentity strangely indifferent to all the accoutrements of human life and society, and yet strangely drawn to the unhuman world of sky, rain, sand, sea, this is where Dazai’s novel ultimately leads, and it’s at this point that it has to end.” (Source 2).

Depression and Nihilism

I mentioned earlier that Dazai was admitted to a mental institution. From the sources I found, I couldn’t find anything concrete about why he was admitted aside from battling his drug addiction. However, mental illness was prevalent in Dazai’s life and it’s widely believed depression was a large part of this. Few recounts of people who talked with Dazai recalled his dark, wry tone in his writings, yet found his humour witty and oftentimes exaggerated (hmmmm…). Since I found nothing credible for this discussion beyond this, I’m going to step away from psychology and instead have a look at philosophy, specifically Dazai’s philosophy on life.

Again, this is just assumptions. However, I find this more comfortable theorising about over sensitive topics like depression and mental health (plus, I find this incredibly interesting, personally). You could argue that Dazai believes in sophistry - the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving - but I’m inclined to disagree simply because of how deep Dazai digs himself into his own deception; if he himself believes what he tells others, I think it’s a more deep-rooted philosophy than false arguments. I mentioned nihilism earlier and this is what I ultimately believe is the philosophy in how Dazai saw the world. What type of nihilism is the question.

Most people think nihilism and assume the whole “God is dead, I feel nothing” hypothetical; I know I used to always assume so. But, of course, it’s not as cut and dry as that (nothing is simple…). There are different types of nihilism, but I will only talk about the one I think applies to Dazai. Throughout his stories, despite the gloomy atmosphere, there’s usually a(n attempted) glimmer of hope - a snag in the character’s mindset that draws them back into their repeating thoughts of what they should and should not perceive and believe in. Because of this, cosmic nihilism (also called cosmic pessimism) can be eliminated - Dazai’s characters don’t renounce everything they feel and take meaning in as illusions to make existing easier, they’re slightly more lenient in believing what they perceive.

I offer the type of nihilism I believe Dazai’s mindset for writing - and subsequently his actual mindset - falls into: existential nihilism.

Existential nihilism operates on the premise that there is no inherent meaning or purpose; “existence itself–all action, suffering, and feeling–is ultimately senseless and empty.” (Source 3). While not denouncing beliefs like faith and love like cosmic nihilism, existential nihilism relies on values being created and sustained lest they risk falling into the mindset that there is no hope, the world is truly empty and there’s no point in existing in a world that doesn’t even try to give you a reason to hold on. Existential nihilists don’t believe that happiness doesn’t exist; they simply believe that “miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible” (Source 3) and, therefore, are constantly at odds with themselves over striving for this impossible happiness or simply leaving it behind to find something else to root themselves to reality. Many of Dazai’s character’s internal conversations echo this philosophy; they either despair over being who they are, or they despair because they can’t be who they think they are. In a specific example, they feel estranged and uneasy about how they think - being what they deem “not human” - or they feel trapped and alone in believing that they can’t be who they think they are, so they’re forced to play a character - a facade - for their entire life so as not to be discovered.

Search up ‘Dazai Osamu quotes’ on Google and you’ll find a plethora to read that seem to portray this very idea. Constantly battling within himself over what he should believe, what he should feel and, ultimately, never voicing his pain to the world itself. These two screenshots from the game seem to mirror this sentiment. 

Soo… what does this mean for Ikemen Vampire Dazai?

… Who knows? I don’t work for Cybird so I couldn’t possibly tell you sorry :3. The PV for his route had heavy implications of atonement and death being the only true salvation, so I’m intrigued on what angle they’re going to tackle that from, since Dazai’s reasoning for being revived was “well, death wasn’t what I thought it would be lol”. (Unless it’s a red herring… who knows with this eccentric man gbdukgdfx).

So… yeah. I just wanted to ramble and with his route dropping in Japan before April is done, I thought it was a good time to just ramble into the Tumblr void. Please feel free to broach further conversations about this, correct me if I slipped up anywhere or to just say you’re excited for his route (because I know I am huehuehue). 

Sources can be found here (Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3)

[youreawizardharr]

Cradlesona Event: School Days AU

[the image used can be sourced here.]

Welcome to Milreth

Name: Milreth Academy

Location: Central Quarter

Emblem: Two Staffs Clashing

Motto: "Ever Progressing."

Headmaster: William Latton

Academy Hours: 7:30 a.m - 4:30 p.m

Office Hours: 6:20 a.m - 6:20 p.m

Lunch Hour: 12:30 p.m - 1:15 p.m

┈     ┈     ┈     ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟     ┈     ┈     ┈

My piece for the Cradlesona AU event

Tagging: @lovingsiriusoswald

The uniform below can be found right here.

The uniform Eirene has worn since she attended Milreth Academy as a first year student. She always wears the jacket during class hours, and takes it off during breaks.

┈     ┈     ┈     ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟     ┈     ┈     ┈

"Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird,

That cannot fly."

Basic Information

Name: Eirene Beverly Chapman

Age: 20

Date of Birth: July 9th

Bloodtype: AB

Gender: Female

Height: 5'3"

Weight: 127lbs

Occupation(s): The Classicists

Affiliation(s): Milreth Academy

Alignment: Neutral Good

Item(s): a lanyard with her student ID

Academic Information

Year at Milreth Academy: Second Year

Academic Club: House of Arts

Choice of Course: Art & Design

Major: Fine & Studio Arts

Degree Needed: Master's Degree

The Overview: The coursework of a studio and fine art degree typically focuses on the branch of art students choose, such as painting, sculpture, illustration, animation or performance.

Favorite Subject(s):

Reading

History

Literature

Language Arts

Least Favorite Subject(s):

Mathematics

Science

Grade Point Average: 3.8

Academic Credits: 390

Studying Habits:

Eirene prefers a quiet enviroment to study for exams, complete homework or class assignments, practicing with drawing on paper, painting illustrations.

She sometimes organizes study sessions for upcoming exams or class projects (to which she deems important for social interactions, boosts friendships, and helps others in areas they have a harder time with). Eirene usually studies with almost everyone, but studies with Harr and Loki mostly.

Eirene has an exceptional memory, so she doesn't have to write down everything she needs to do or to get.

Her sleep schedule varies at nighttime, mostly because of projects, assignments, writing essays, or exams.

She makes sure to eat healthier snacks.

Student History:

Eirene received a perfect attendance award for never missing a day, or being marked as tardy for being late to class.

A painting she did of the garden in the Civic Center was auctioned at a museum for an extremely high price.

She has wrote several short stories which were published and sold at bookstores across the Central Quarter.

Student Life:

Eirene doesn't have much of a social life, meaning she isn't the partying type, and likes to spend her time wisely by being productive than some of her friends.

She loves going to Milreth's enormous library, but avoids the cafe because it gets overly crowded during exam days.

Eirene enjoys taking long walks or jogging along Milreth's huge courtyard.

Whenever inspiration strikes, she loves drawing, writing, or painting whatever it is that catches her interest. Eirene usually submits these pieces for classes.

┈     ┈     ┈     ⋞ 〈 ⏣ 〉 ⋟     ┈     ┈     ┈

Relationships

Harr Silver ;

Harr is a third year student at Milreth Academy. However, he and Eirene are taking two completely different courses. With Eirene having chosen art & design, majoring in fine and studio art, where as he's taking a course on engineering, majoring in architecture. The two are constantly busy, but always find the time to spend together.

Eirene leans forward, continuing to run the tips of her fingers through black tresses. "Hey, Harr?" Her inquiry is murmurered, but the man in question hears her, humming to confirm he heard her. "Want to come over for a study session? You can bring Loki along, if you feel uncomfortable being alone with me." Harr opens his visible eye, staring up at his girlfriend of two years. "W-What do you need help with?" He looks away from her, a blush blossoming onto his face. "Are you having problems with math again, Eirene?"

She stops playing with his hair to stroke his reddening cheek. "You know I've never been particularly talented with mathematics, Harr. But you seem to have no issues with figuring out complicated math problems, am I right?"

The third year student sat up, shifting to address his lover. "I can help you in areas you have the most trouble with. If I have issues with drawing and maping things out, I know you will help me. We balance eachoth--- Eirene cuts him off, pressing her lips against his. Pulling away, she smiles happily. "You know I'll do anything for you, right, Harr?"

Loki Genetta ;

Loki is a first year student at Milreth Academy. He decided to take a course on business, majoring in business management & administration, minoring business sales. Loki wanted to take a course on business, so that he can work closely with Harr. Hoping that, when the two of them graduate, they can open up their own business in Cradle.

Eirene and Loki always hang out together on weekends or through group study sessions. If Harr is too busy, Loki will help Eirene with her standardized homework, and even allows her to practice drawing illustrations of him and watch her paint them, afterward.

Loki procrastinates completing his work alot of the time, making Harr lecture him about the importance of his education and that working hard will pay off once he graduates, even reminding Loki about them opening their own business in the Central Quarter, which inspires Loki to complete his work.

"Loki, have you completed your homework?" Harr inquired the pink haired teen, scrubbing a filthy dish with a soapy sponge. "Have you even started your class project? You know, your paper is due next week." Loki silently toys around with his unfinished dinner, causing the tips of the fork to scrap against the glass. "Eirene is writing my paper. And before you start nagging, she offered to write it for me. She said she wanted to practice writing, so I agreed in exchange for doing her math homework for her. I hate writing, you know that. I believe this is fair."

Harr rinces the plate once he finished scrubbing, setting it down in the dish rack. "Your education is important. I've told you this countless times. Both of you should be doing the work yourselves, so that you can learn to accomplish in areas you're weak in." The third year student grabs another plate to scrub. "Do you want to open up a business with me once you graduate from the academy?" Loki stood up from the table to scrap leftover food into the trash with his fork. "I do want to open up a business with you, Harr. I thought this course would be fun, but it's not fun. There's too much work involved." A sigh escapes from Harr. "Loki, you have to work for what you want. Life isn't going to hand everything to you. If you want to open up a business with me, work hard to achieve it. I will support your dream."

Loki ran up the stairs to his room, the sound of the door slamming shut echoing throughout the house. Harr returns to washing the rest of the dishes, making a mental note to lecture Eirene at a later date.

Seth Hyde ;

Seth is a third year student at Milreth Academy. He decided to take a course in art & design, majoring in fashion & apparel design. He wants to be a fashionista, and expand his experience in the fashion industry of Cradle. Seth is confident in his ability to design fashion wear for women.

Eirene and Seth met by accident one afternoon (during break, to be more precise), becoming good friends with one another.

"You made a mistake." Eirene pointed out, gesturing toward the mistake Seth made. The man let out a shriek when he noticed the mistake. "How can this be?! I was certain I drew the curves correctly!" Smiling, Eirene takes the artbook from him, using her own pencil to erase the mistake and correct it. "No worries." She handed the drawing book back to him. "My name is Eirene Chapman."

He grins, placing the artbook down beside him. "My name is Seth Hyde. Want to be friends, Eirene? We can bond over artwork."

The two of them mostly hang out during breaks, sharing their drawing techniques, offering advice about improving styles, etc. Seth and Eirene brainstorm color palettes, and Seth watches Eirene paint his designs.

Jonah Clemence ;

Jonah is a third year student of Milreth Academy. He decided to take a course in art & design, majoring in drama & theater art. He's confident with his performances on the stage, and wants to be a famous, talented actor of Cradle. Eirene met Jonah when she was tasked to help set the stage for an upcoming event the academy planned for.

"This goes against my aesthetics." Jonah remarked, taking Eirene's artwork and throwing it on the floor of the stage. "Make it better." The second year student kept her mouth shut, feeling her eyes sting with unshed tears. Seth came up besides Eirene, picking up the scenery illustration she made. "What do you know about aesthetics, Cling of Hearts? I believe Ei did a fantastic job painting this piece. Do you know how many hours she's worked on it?" The fashion designer scolded the young actor. "Do you?"

The Queen of Hearts scoffed, regarding Seth with disdain. "No, but I don't care. Everything has to be perfect for this play, since I have the lead role. Second best is not an option."

Eirene forces a smile, reaching down to pick up an opened can of paint. "You think my work is second best? I put my heart into everything I draw, paint, and write. If you wanted someone better, then you shouldn't have wasted your time asking for MY help." She dumps all the paint on Jonah, throwing the can off to the side once there's nothing left, storming off the stage, leaving a shocked Seth and an angry Jonah behind.

[two-browngirls]

Not Today's Yesterday - Seeta Patel 

Seeta Patel is a force to be reckoned with. Her strong will, magnetic presence and passionate ideas come across equally as powerful on and off stage. But the life of a dance artist isn’t as glamorous as it may seem. Seeta is extremely busy with multiple projects on the go at once but I manage to catch her during a brief lunch break while rehearsing with a group of rising Bharatanatyam dancers in Birmingham as part of #TheNatyaProject, to chat about her exciting new tour. 

Not Today’s Yesterday is an international collaboration between UK award-winning Bharatanatyam artist Seeta Patel and Australian choreographer Lina Limosani. This work blends classical Indian dance (Bharatanatyam) & contemporary dance in a striking, intelligent and engaging evisceration of ‘pretty’ and ‘suitable’ historical stories. It is a one-woman show which subversively co-opts whitewashing against itself.

“The inspiration stems from our concerns that revisionist and airbrushed histories have become a central issue of tension throughout the world, in particular in Western democracies.”

I first asked Seeta how the idea of the work came about as I was aware that it had been a number of years in progress. 

“It started with my feeling that the history of Bharatnatyam has been white-washed. Having read Unfinished Gestures by Davesh Soneji, it really blew my mind that many of us going through the system are not often taught about the social and political history of the art form in its entirety. There’s more niceness rather than the grit of it. This is basically how history is white-washed in order to make it more palatable.”

I’d seen the work in progress around a year ago and it was haunting, hypnotic and extremely clever in its execution. Through the medium of a fairy-tale story, it draws people in with eerie familiarity, but as with any fairy-tale there are always dark undertones. Parts are grotesque and exaggerated with caricatures of colonial supremacy but other parts are gentle and vulnerable as Seeta gazes wide-eyed into the depths of what was. 

The collaboration between Seeta and choreographer, Lina Limosani was first funded by the Arts Council’s Artist International Development Fund 2016 where Seeta travelled to Australia where Lina is based, to research and develop the work. 

“Britain and Australia, amongst others, have sordid histories and relationships with indigenous and migrant communities. Skewed histories fuel a distorted sense of nationalism. This work aims to open up conversation through a clever appropriation of whitewashed histories.”

The following year, Seeta was able to gain further funding to develop the work in Poland, as another one of the collaborators was based there and perform previews of ‘Not Today’s Yesterday’ around the UK. Being based in a foreign country during this process really fuelled the creative ideas and themes, which fed into the piece. 

Earlier this year they were able to sharpen the work to a fine point and received funding to perform ‘Not Today’s Yesterday’ at Adelaide Fringe Festival. During that period, they were successful in gaining a UK touring grant for this Autumn, so it has been through several stages and Seeta envisions it to live on in many different contexts, as the work deals with some of the most pressing issues of our time. 

“This piece is a part of my wider work. Along with my classical work, whatever I do is political on a certain level. I can’t wake up in the morning and change the colour of my skin or the country that I’m born and live in, I am political. It’s not something I can choose to remove. I’m not of that privilege. Not in this country.”

As Seeta’s career rises and expands, I’m interested to learn about what advice she has to offer the next generation who look up to her as a role model and as an example of someone with a successful career as an Indian classical dancer or dancer from a South Asian background in this country. She’s brutally honest and explains that this career is by no means conventional, in any sense of the word. Her path has forced her to challenge the accepted ‘norms’ that we are socialised into as first and second generation South Asian immigrants who constantly strive to over-achieve. So to have to find temporary or casual work through the ebbs and flows is perfectly acceptable as it means that you can earn money, which doesn’t have to eat into the time that you want to work on dance. 

“Certain professions require just as much energy as dance does, so I don’t personally believe that you can do both and give each job the commitment that it deserves.” says Seeta. “You have to understand what you really want and sometimes take scary steps to get there that you’re not confident or comfortable with.”

The interactive element of the work is the carefully curated post-show talks, as Seeta hopes that the audience becomes lured into a dark fantasy and taken on an experiential journey during the performance then the discussion afterwards is a chance for reflection and transformation. 

Each performance has specifically relevant researchers, academics and powerful personalities who will help to uncover the themes behind the performance and welcome the audience to share their thoughts and ideas too. 

So don’t miss out on a very special chance to experience a dance theatre work by such a phenomenal BROWNGIRL and book your tickets to a performance near you.

TOUR DATES

Seeta is on a UK Tour of her one woman dance theatre work Not Today's Yesterday this Autumn 2018. A collaboration with Limosani Projects. Tour details as follow:

- 2nd Oct - The Place - 3rd Oct - The Place

booking info

boxoffice@theplace.org.uk

+44 (0)20 7121 1100

SPEAKERS

2nd October  Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.

Alice A. Procter is an art historian and museum educator. She runs Uncomfortable Art Tours, unofficial guided tours exploring how the UK’s major art institutions came into being against a backdrop of imperialism.

Tanika Gupta​ - Over the past 20 years Tanika has written over 20 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK. She has written 30 radio plays for the BBC and several original television dramas, as well as scripts for EastEnders, Grange Hill and The Bill.

3rd October Kenneth Tharp - Kenneth Tharp is the former Chief Executive of The Place, the UK’s premier centre for contemporary dance.

Inua Elams - Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a cross art form practitioner, a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of the Midnight Run — an international, arts-filled, night-time, playful, urban, walking experience.

Tobi Kyeremateng - Tobi Kyeremateng is a theatre, festival and live performance producer. She is currently Producer at Apples and Snakes, Executive Producer (Up Next) at Bush Theatre, and Programme Coordinator at Brainchild Festival.

- 5th Oct - Amata Theatre Falmouth University

booking info

Phone: 01326 259349

Email:

boxoffice@falmouth.ac.uk

SPEAKERS - TBC

- 12th Oct - Watermans Arts Centre

booking info

Box Office: 020 8232 1010

SPEAKERS

Bidisha Mamata: Bidisha is a British writer, film-maker and broadcaster/presenter for BBC TV and radio, Channel 4 news and Sky News and is a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation, looking after the UK's most prestigious prizes for literature in English and in translation.

- 13th Oct - Kala Sangam, Bradford

booking info

SPEAKERS

Pauline Mayers Associate Artist with the West Yorkshire Playhouse Pauline produces her own shows as The Mayers Ensemble themed around participation, intimacy and identity.

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a writer, speaker, playwright, award-winning spoken-word activist and founder of the political blog www.thebrownhijabi.com

- 23rd Oct - Patrick Centre, Birmingham

booking info

Box Office: 0844 338 5000

SPEAKERS

Dr Kehinde Andrews: is Associate Professor of Sociology, and has been leading the development of the Black Studies Degree at Birmingham City University.

Abeera Kamran: is a visual designer and a web-developer based in Birmingham and Karachi, Pakistan. Her creative practice is research-based and lies at the intersections of design, archiving practices and the internet.

“Once upon a time... in a faraway land... it happened... did not happen... could have happened.”

Supported by Chats Palace, Arts Council England, Country Arts SA, Arts SA, The Place London, Adelaide Fringe Artists Fund, LWD Dance Hub, British Council, The Bench UK and NA POMORSKIEJ Artist residency.

[melbournenewsvine]

Best Australian Yarn author Julie Raffaele imagines the day an earthquake struck Meckering

The events at Meckering on the morning of October 14, 1968, when a massive earthquake ripped through the Wheatbelt town are knotted into the fabric of Julie Raffaele’s family history. “I was only one and have no memories of it but my mum does,” she says. “We were living in Kalgoorlie at the time and mum tells me that dad was outside on a ladder and she didn’t know whether to save the children or what to do. There was a lot going on, children in high chairs and that kind of thing.” A few years ago, Raffaele started writing a short story based on her imaginings of the day. The Best Australian Yarn competition provided the perfect opportunity for her to go back to her unfinished work and complete it. “I honestly don’t know why I started writing it,” she says. “I think like a lot of things, various elements compost in your mind. You read stuff every now and then because they still have tremors out there, so I’m sure something had come up. “When I re-read it — which I did the other night — it still brings up a lot of emotion for me. I don’t know why that is but I think it is about the characters.” “I just thought about the way they would have experienced it, and really all of them are quite challenged – if that’s the word – in different ways, particularly the woman who is alone in the country.” None of the characters is based on a real person. “The country publican, I’ve met him many times,” she laughs. “I don’t know where the idea of the shopkeeper being chased by the viper came from, but that seemed very natural.” Raffaele is a film-maker who grew up in East Fremantle. She remembers being an avid reader as a child and having an affinity with literature-based learning at school. Her university career took her to Curtin, to what was then Swinburne College in Melbourne and eventually back to Murdoch University to do her masters degree in film-making. She describes her writing for her work as a film-maker as pretty heavily researched-based and enjoys the freedom of writing short stories. “It’s a purer form of an idea, more imaginative, not constrained by fact,” she says. “Any research has to be spot on. You can take some liberties once you have done the research but a short story comes comes from a place of invention.” The Best Australian Yarn, which is run by The West Australian in partnership with Minderoo Foundation, was launched in February and allows professional and amateur short story writers to compete for a $50,000 prize pool, the richest of its kind in the world. Raffaele and the other authors in the Top 50 have the opportunity to win the $30,000 major prize. Nine other finalists shortlisted for the overall prize will receive $1000 each, the top WA entrant $4000, the best Australian regional entry $3000 and the best youth entry $2000. The prize jury is chaired by the editor-in-chief of The West Australian, Anthony De Ceglie, and includes Minderoo Foundation co-founder Nicola Forrest, author Robert Drewe and publishers Terri-ann White and Rachel Bin Salleh. The winners will be announced on November 18. Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

[annerbhp]

Hey! I just wanted to check in with you. I miss you and your Ginny and I like to hear from you :) As for me I just started my junior year of University so everything is a little hectic for me but I'm enjoying it. I'm finally taking my creative writing courses for my English degree so that's also exciting!

Hi! Yes. I am still here. Thanks for checking in. I’ve just been a bit busy lately and haven’t been in a writing mood. I think I’ve slipped into a consuming mode. I’ve been watching Black Sails. Sometimes I just want to sit passively and watch a story unfold. And I also broke my promise to myself not to even look at my Armistice Files until I had finished this other FWB fic first. (Sometimes walking away from a project for a solid while really rebuilds my momentum and interest when I finally get back to it. But only if I don’t cheat. Whoops.) Which doesn’t mean I’ve been working on Armistice, but rather I have been reading it all–the most useless writer habit. Not even to edit! Ugh. I’ve fallen into the black hole that is reading my own unfinished series. (But seriously, y'all should see what happens in another 50,000 words. Lol. If I ever finish/post.)

That’s where you’ll find me these days. Someone throw down a rope or a ladder, or just a freaking quill so I can at least edit while I’m doing this useless shit.

Congrats on starting your third year! You should be getting to do some more in-depth major related stuff now. Sweet. And best of luck with your English degree. (I hope they aren’t trying to convince y'all that literature is all angsty dead white dudes. Then again, maybe college has changed since last I was there. Lol.)

[mimiplaysgames]

What Episode Luna is Going to Be About (Or... how to drastically change a character)

This post is going to be a theory, a critique, and a follow-up of my previous post, Why Lunafreya Can’t Be Fixed. In this previous post, I go into some serious detail about how a character like Luna is not possible to fix based on how the writers have designed her. After the new DLC line-up reveal, I maintain this position, in light of my own three theories about what this episode is going to be about. I do not think that my theories are of tin-hat-conspiracy quality. Professionally, I believe in organic and deeply human writing and storytelling, (I can’t help it, I am classically trained and hold degrees in writing and literature), and I try to maintain this standard in my theorizing. I will discuss what my theories will be about, what this means for her overall character “growth” or “development,” and what this means for the direction of these new DLC from a writer’s standpoint.

TL;DR: Luna is going to get seriously retconned, and this is the only way for the writers to pitch a meaningful story to tell about her.

1) Ghost Luna

I wanted to get this one out of the way because it is the most far-fetched, yet the easiest to tackle from a technical development standpoint (because they do not have to write an alternate reality where she lived, which takes more resources). The statement that her fate is something that “not even death can free her from” really bothers me here. What is the reason to include this statement in the episode description? Ravus goes as far as to mention this in Episode Ignis. Does this mean we are going to play Ghost Luna? How is that going to play out exactly, what are the game mechanics? Are we going to fight pre-demons in the Astral plane? How does this mesh with her ghostly appearances?

Keep in mind that her ghostly appearances have already been retconned in Royal Edition, although there is no indication as to what the limits of her appearances are. Before, it seemed like her appearance was unnatural, hence why she disappears so quickly. In Royal Edition, we suddenly have a talking ghost with magical powers, and no discernible reason why she would disappear then.

Then there is the story arc in this option. A ghost, by normal folkloric standards, will continue to have ties to the earthly realm because of deep-seated regrets, or unfinished business. If she has unfinished business as an Oracle in death (and has the power to make shit happen) then.... why didn’t she do anything for the 10+ years that Noctis was asleep? If she regretted leading Noctis like a lamb to a slaughter, why support him in Royal Edition? All of these options would mean a serious retconning of her by illogical standards.

Now let’s discuss two more believable options...

2) This is a story about her activities during the events of Final Fantasy XV

In other words, this is going to be about what she is doing during the base game. I have already discussed in my previous post that there isn’t much of a story to tell in this aspect, which means that this would require some serious retconning, in light of this sentence: “Her battle to save the one she loves overturns the destiny dealt to the Lucian king.” This statement REALLY bothers me.

First of all, we do not see her make any action to save Noctis from his fate in the game. His fate was to die. She didn’t do anything to thwart this, and IF ANYTHING, egged him on in Royal Edition. This is also emphasized by the fact that she knew he was going to die (I mean really, her crying about never seeing him again, Gentiana talking to her about how Regis cried over the fate of his son, Pryna carrying the prophecy of him dying, etc.). She knew, and she lead him to slaughter anyway (that is not love, btw).

So what does it mean that she wants to save the one she loves, and this overturns his fate/destiny? If we are to keep the canon of the original game, and if this takes place during the same timeline as the game, then this means that she didn’t know he was going to die and has decided to do things behind the scenes that we didn’t know about to stop his fate. Which would be the most bullshit retcon on this list (SINCE SHE KNEW) and quite defiant of the logical understanding of her character and her role in the game. This leads me to discuss some of my intuitive (and possibly my most tin-hat) thoughts about her character development, and how she was built the way she is (from a writer’s perspective). This is where I will strongly criticize the approach that Hajime Tabata has taken with her.

I do believe that Tabata is very sensitive about criticism over Luna. It’s why all of the recent additions and changes to her address her most vocal critics. One of the most vocal criticisms is that she and Noctis are not in love, so he has to hammer away at a dead horse to the point of obnoxiousness (such as giving her the cover of Royal Edition, the repetition and literal spelling-out of her love for Noctis, the update of her train scene with Noctis where Tabata felt the need to make it more dramatic, naming songs attributed to NoctxLuna like “Lost Love,” “True Love,” and “Moonlit Melodies,” etc.), and his marketing decisions that suggest this major role that she does not have in the game (Luna edition of the PS4, song lyrics that mention her, her strong appearance in most official art, Luna edition of the NVIDIA harddrive, and on and on and on...). It’s almost as if her PR is what emphasizes of her importance in the story, because the actual story does a shit job of doing it. Another common criticism of her is that she is evil for leading Noctis to his death without telling him. Keep in mind that Luna is essentially designed to be perfect and free from criticism. Tabata tries to legitimize this by making everyone in the world either adore her, or hold her in high regard. This is not a creator that understands human complexity, and the way he keeps throwing her in our faces and plastering her in all of the advertising, especially in Royal Edition, when she had four minutes of screen time, and when she is still inconsequential, is an ego trip on his part. A writer/creator/director is not supposed to do that. Furthermore, the fact that he felt the need to spell out her love for Noctis is insulting to the player - yes, we can tell that she loves him, we aren’t dumb. Spelling it out doesn’t validate their love or convince critics that it’s real.

I do not think, therefore, that he can tolerate such criticism over her and her relationship to Noctis. Which is another problem with this retcon: if she still knew that Noctis was going to die in this story arc, and decides to save him from it, then she ultimately makes a giant turnaround against her religious indoctrination and defies the gods, which is in strict contrast to what we know of her.

I mean, we are talking about a character who is so involved with her religious indoctrination that she gives a speech to a public, telling them directly that the gods are watching over them, minutes before she wakes one up and it destroys the city and subsequently kills a bunch of people. We are talking about a character whose religious indoctrination is so important to her, that this is THE ONLY THING SHE TALKS TO NOCTIS ABOUT - as children, in her death scene, and in their new reunion. Despite the Astrals’ abuse of the people, she still has delusional blind faith in their protection anyway and in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary, so it doesn’t make sense for her to defy them.

I also think that the development team does not have the resources to address the quagmire that is the Astrals, which is why they have already been retconned. Attributing all of the ills of the world to the Astrals, and blaming them for the Starscourge (being that their falling out was thought to be the cause of it) cannot be an acceptable criticism, because then it means that the development team would have to explain why Noctis would decide to die for them when he was commanded to. They don’t have a good reason for this if the Astrals are depicted as the cause of the whole problem. So the blame was shifted to Ardyn in the 1.16 patch, and Ifrit became more of a sympathetic figure.

And here is where I touch upon another flaw in her overall character design that I did not touch upon in my previous post. Blaming the gods for the Starscourge also puts blame on Luna for having faith in such abusive figures, which is also unacceptable because she is designed to be perfect. It is not acceptable to question Luna’s beliefs because the game paints her to be a character that is righteous about everything that is happening around her, and she has to be correct about the prophecies (and Florence + the Machine’s song “Too Much is Never Enough” hammers this away by saying that Luna is “right” for doing what she did). Nyx is the only character to criticize her and Regis, and she “corrects” him by implying that the countless sacrifices made in Insomnia are needed for the good of the world. The concept, then, that she will defy the gods is very strange. Ravus defies her beliefs, and look what happened to him. The Glaives in Comrades defied the gods by abandoning their king, and are called heretics or the like in need of redemption. You don’t defy the gods, which means that Luna, as their official bitch spokesperson, cannot be wrong. In other words, Luna defying the gods in the canonicity of the original story can’t happen without it being a terrible contradiction.

Which leads me to...

3) This is an alternate reality where Luna is the most retconned

By alternate reality, I can mean different things. She either lives in Altissia, or she makes different choices by defying the gods altogether and not go down the same path that she did in the game (although, defying the gods in this alternate timeline will then open its own can of worms that will have fans debating about their use and purpose in the original...).

This is arguably the easiest way to make her consequential to the plot (for more on her lack of importance to the story of Final Fantasy XV, please read ooc-but-stylish’s post on her plot progression, which is much more eloquent than I can ever hope to be). It is interesting here how her DLC is titled “The Choice of Freedom,” another sensitivity to the criticism that Luna had no actual choice in the game because she behaved as a pawn to the gods, and just kind of did whatever the plot told her to. I address her lack of choice in my previous post, as well as ooc-but-stylish.

I do believe this is also a reaction to fans’ desire for her to be selfish (which is strange - it is already selfish of her to not tell Noctis anything, which she had many chances to do so because they shared a notebook). People were expecting her and Noctis to defy their fates because they were unfair, and find another way to bring light back into the world. If the option to defy the gods is what fans want though, then they are asking for a retcon. I have discussed the possibility of putting Luna in a catch-22 in my post, where she is changed beyond what is already understood of her.

This kind of suggests that if we were to make her consequential to the plot, and take action that would seriously change the events of Final Fantasy XV, then this means that she will be changed to the point where we stop recognizing her as the Luna we know, and change into a completely different Luna (and not in the organic-character-development-way).

Looking back on my previous post, I realize that Kingsglaive Luna was very reckless and suicidal, which makes no sense in comparison to Game Luna, who is concerned about completing her role as Oracle (nor does it make sense... how does losing Regis and Insomnia mean that she lost everything if she knew that Noctis had already left? If she died being so reckless, wouldn’t that mean that she can’t do her duty?). Anyway, I am trying to say that if she changed that much, and being that she will continue to change so much, we will certainly have a third Luna in our hands, as opposed to a character learning throughout her journey and making changes to her own priorities.

I said in my previous post that it is not possible to develop Luna for proper character development, and I do believe that this option is the only way to attempt this. This doesn’t help her apparent uselessness, however - if she is still inconsequential to the original plot of FFXV, then this retcon does not justify it, nor will it fix her. 

This option also supports the concept of coming close to a grand finale that supports an idealized ending for the characters, although it will take the most work. This option would therefore be the build-up to the payoff that will then become Episode Noctis (meaning, Episode Luna is going to put all of the alternate new plot into place that Episode Noctis will solve).

So then, here are the common themes that address all three options...

Her relationship with Noctis will still need some serious work, and spelling it out isn’t good enough. There’s a good reason why there are so many Nyx and Luna shippers out there - it is because they have what fans interpret to be sexual tension between them, and they collaborate with each other. I have already discussed in my previous post why a relationship between her and Noctis will not add to her development because it isn’t possible to develop her based on her character arc. At the same time, I do not believe that putting more time and effort into building their relationship will make much difference, because then it continues to repeat certain things that we already know: one, that she is obsessive over Noctis, and two, that she cannot exist outside of Noctis. The former means that her relationship with Noctis is toxic and abusive: rsasai has an amazing post about why this relationship is psychologically damaging, and making them more romantic is not going to change this. I do not believe that the writers will have the resources to address their most pertinent problems, either. 

And shall I repeat that she cannot exist outside of Noctis? Holy shit, every single official description of her is tied to Noctis, from game manuals, to the official website, to the movie description, to the Ultimania. The idea that Episode Luna is therefore necessary to her character development is a bit too optimistic in my opinion, considering that it is truly going to be about Noctis anyway.

Furthermore, fans are optimistic because Terada will be directing these new DLC. This is fair, and yet, unfair. Yes, Episode Ignis was amazing. However, I cannot attribute writing credits to Terada’s involvement because Ignis’ story arc was already decided before Episode Ignis went into production - it has to be, in order to start the actual pre-development process. What can be attributed to Terada is the alternate ending... which most of us can agree has a serious degradation of writing quality in comparison to the main storyline, and seems like it was rushed.

I also have to emphasize that I personally believe that Episode Luna, and therefore, Episode Noctis, are going to be the alternate reality that the developers are alluding to. Which means that my initial post about her being un-fixable, and having no story to tell, is essentially on point. They didn’t have a story to elaborate about her in the canonical storyline, so they were forced to write up an alternate ending in order to make sense of her character and bring in some development. When you contrast these two vague episode descriptions with the detailed ones of Episode Ardyn (yay!) and Episode Aranea (as long as Ravus is in it, I’m good - but no, seriously, what is lacking in Ravus’ development is knowing what exactly his relationship was with the empire), then it really pushes my belief that Luna and Noctis will be the alternate reality.

All in all, she is still a mess, and retconning her like this will not decrease her controversial standing in the fandom.

[20thcenturyfantasy]

J. R. R. Tolkien

January 3rd, 1892 - September 2, 1973

Notable Fantasy Works*:

The Lord of the Rings (Series)

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

The Return of the King

The Hobbit: or There and Back Again

The Silmarillion

Farmer Giles of Ham

The Red Book of Westmarch

Smith of Wootton Major

Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth

*Not included are works written by J. R. R. Tolkein's son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien.

J. R. R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, but most of his childhood was spent in England. Growing up, he attended King Edward's School where he mastered Latin and Ancient Greek, and was becoming adept in other languages. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Gothic, Finnish, Welsh, and Old English.

Tolkien would go on to finish his degree at Oxford before enlisting as a second lieutenant in 1915, entering World War I. While at war, he fell ill with trench fever, and returned to England, where he was able to more fully develop Middle Earth, the setting in which his most famous works take place.

He eventually found a teaching position at Oxford where he published several influentual nonfiction works on Old English literature, and became a founding member of a group called the Inklings (the same Inklings C. S. Lewis was a part of). This group met to talk, drink, and read excerpts from their works.

It wasn't until 1937 that Tolkien would publish The Hobbit, the first of his works set in Middle Earth. What began as a story he would tell to his children became one of the most famous and well-loved pieces of children's literature. When pressed for more material by his publisher, Tolkien collected his notes that would comprise The Silmarillion, but it was deemed not to be commercially publishable. As a result, Tolkien began work on a new book set in Middle Earth, but this time it would be more complex and would be heavier thematically. The Lord of the Rings would be published in three parts between 1954 and 1955 to historic success. Image Source: https://ansionnachfionn.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/j-r-r-tolkien.jpg Information: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/

[cupkayke]

For the fanfiction questions thing: 1, 3, 6, 11, 17, 21, 25, 27, 36, 40, 41, 46, 50 and 51 (I hope these aren't too many)

 Not too many at all! I like talking about myself lol.

Under a cut because longggggg.

1) What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Oh gosh, definitely Tokyo Mew Mew. I never wrote fanfics for it but I co-owned and then owned an Avidgamers RP site for TMM called MewUSA back in like 2004-2006. Avidgamers was a forum site engine that was pretty damn nice for its time (also FREE, that was a plus) and I spent HOURS creating characters, storylines, and layouts for it. There were TONS of individual in-character boards and I think we may have had up to 100 unique users at one point. The detailed characters/plotlines were BASICALLY fanfiction- I think I did an entire rp with myself between a few of my characters once- and it was a whole lot of fun. Some of the OCs from that site were repurposed into a longrunning rp I have with @liarino on AIM and I am FOREVER grateful that I met them through that site

Fanfic-wise, it was Full Metal Alchemist. I had a horrendous LITERAL self-insert OC fic called ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ that was based on an RP I did with a different friend. Plot? ‘Fangirl of FMA LITERALLY FALLS INTO HER TELEVISION AND WAKES UP IN THE UNIVERSE AND FALLS IN LOVE WITH ALPHONSE’. The end. I never finished it but holy shitballs it got SO MANY REVIEWS. I’m surprised how many people actually enjoyed it- I did get some criticisms but despite the fact that it was so cringe-worthy that I took it down it still got sooooo much positive feedback. I sometimes wonder if people would still be reading it on ff.net if I hadn’t taken it down the last time I overhauled that account. I still have some Ouran oneshots on there that I wrote TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO that still get reviews. Dayum. 

3) What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

I have to say it’s a tie between the Tokyo Mew Mew fandom circa 2003-2006 and the Ouran fandom from about 2006-2008. My experience with them was limited to RP boards but I had the MOST FUN running MewUSA and a long-running Gaia RP ‘Hosting the Hosts’ because of the warm response to the concepts. The TMM fandom especially was super creative even back in the day- there were so many fan mew mews because the formula was so easy and that was one series that I didn’t mind OCs because the concept was easily applied. In-universe, the creator could have easily made more Mew Mews. So the possibilities were endless. That’s also the fandom I learned the majority of my writing skills from, even if I did get called out a couple times for shitty RPing. I got better and I was so sad when the engine finally kicked the bucket. Aside from the RP sites the TMM fandom had sooooo many fansites dedicated to the show- my other favorite being Neko Tokyo. I think that site might still be up… 

Ouran was limited to that RP I ran but damn I never had one so fun. That group of writers was hysterical and I actually met one of them in person because by sheer coincidence she lived near me. She moved soon after we figured it out but she came back for a convention and we hung out all weekend. Unfortunately I don’t remember her name and I lost her phone number T_T I wonder where she is sometimes. I wonder where a lot of my fan friends from back then are. The problem with early 2000s internet.

Tho I think Boueibu will be my new modern fave fandom.

6) List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

 Ohhhh dear. I’ll keep it to ones that I actually ship characters in because a lot of my early fandoms were MYSELF AS AN OC X HOT MALE CHARACTER. OTL. I was a weeb. Most of these are fandoms I’ve rped in rather than written fanfiction for, however.

Tokyo Mew Mew- PuddingxTart. I like to read IchigoxKisshu fanfics sometimes but that ship is highly problematic looking back on it lol

Code Lyoko - THROWBACK. JeremiexAelita. Adorable.

Ouran HSHC - I’m fond of HunnyxHaruhi (as evidenced by my mostly abandoned ff.net account) but basically AnyonexHaruhi is super cute. I think I read a fic once where Haruhi was in a relationship with ALL of the guys and it was actually super interesting. I don’t think I can find it again, tho.

Harry Potter - Drarry.

Walking Dead - CarolxDaryl FTW. and Richonne. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing fanfics for WD but never quite get up to it.

Mass Effect - Shakarian. Fuck yes. Fun fact I have an unfinished smutfic on the mass effect kinkmeme livejournal that I will EVENTUALLY FINISH ONE DAY AND PUBLISH UNDER MY NAME buuuut for now it will remain an anonymous abandoned fic.

Boueibu - …All of them? OTL I can’t pick one ship… tho if you force me… IoRyuu and BeppuMoto OT3.

YOI - I think everyone’s OTP is Victuuri.

11) Who is your current OTP?

Victuuri.

17)  Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

Since Boueibu is my current fandom- I immediately was drawn to Enatsu since s1 had a relatively large focus on them but I’ve kind of fallen out of actively shipping them. I like them as a couple and I think they’re def boyfriends material but they’re definitely a comfortable ship. Their personalities are just… drama-free, so their relationship to me just seems like a quiet background relationship. IoRyuu is a little more volatile and I really like ships where there is a lot of between-the-lines interpretation and potential for conflict. Also I just really like the Beppus

21) What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The aformentioned ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ FMA OC Mary Sue Self insert fic. Definitely the first one I ever published on the interwebs. Although I think TECHNICALLY my very first one was a Pokemon story that I was writing for a little kid neighbor of mine back when I was like… 11. I think I had just gotten a computer in my room and I remember typing it up and drawing some cover art for it… it was basically an expanded version of the episode where Meowth and Pikachu were handcuffed together or something… except there were more Pokemon involved and ALL of the characters were friends. Like Brock and Tracey were both with Ash and Misty and all of the Team Rocket people were friends for some reason. Idk I was a weird child.

Ohhh maybe a tie for the FMA fic was a Code Lyoko one I wrote around the same time called ‘Desert Rose’. I can’t remember now which was published first because I deleted them all. Another Mary Sue OC fic but I actually am still kind of proud of how I expanded the Lyoko universe in my head. I came up with new areas to Lyoko and like a central region and how they all connected. Nevermind the fact that the girl with a CAT THAT COULD OPERATE THE COMPUTER was the main character and obviously I shipped her with Odd because YumiUlrich and JeremieAeilita were OTPs. It was weird.

25) What’s your most popular fanfic?

If the story was still up it might have been ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ because that fic still haunts me. Buuut it’s either ‘Naptime’ or ‘Desire’, one of my two Hunny x Haruhi fics from my Ouran days that I left up on ff.net for posterity. I have no desire to go read the cringe and find out which one has more hits but I bet it’s the G-rated ‘Naptime’ cuz ‘Desire’ is a) the first M rated Hunny x Haruhi fic on ff.net EVER and b) really really bad porn written by like, 16-year-old me. Oops. It’s a smidgen OOC on the part of Haruhi if I remember right buuut I actually still stand by the idea that Hunny is not as childlike as he seems.

Oh dear maybe that’s why I like Yumoto so much. Similar character type. OTL

27) What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

I feel like I’m horrendous at both but lately it’s titles that are giving me trouble. 2 of the 3 Boueibu fics I’ve written had different working titles that got changed the second the story went up to be published. I’m having a brain fart and can’t remember them but both ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’ and ‘Completely’ were titled something really stupid. And your giftfic was ‘?’ until I decided on the central theme lol.

36) What’s your favourite genre to write?

I don’t like reading romance novels but I love writing shippy stuff. Tension, build….smut

40)  What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Pacing in longer works, definitely. Also just… keeping up with it. I am a horrible procrastinator and if I don’t actually have a deadline with external consequences then I never get anything done. I can’t set my own deadlines because I can always move them. I can’t get my family or friends to set them for me because I know they’ll forgive me if I fail (how horrible lol). I have tons upon tons of unfinished fics from fandoms past sitting somewhere in the depths of my word documents folder and about as many original short stories. I have so many ideas but because I get easily distracted and also because I am now working full time and suffer from typical adult exhaustion I can only put a fraction of them on paper. 

My inner critic is also a fucking bitch. I can’t get her to shut her face long enough to write a sentence sometimes. Again, I have to have a deadline looming before I can put her on mute most times. If I have infinite time, she doesn’t shut up and makes me rewrite a sentence 100 times because it sounds stupid.

41) List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

Ahahahaha… I don’t have 5 simultaneously because I can’t just… not finish reading something before moving onto the next one. I don’t also read things that are unfinished unless they sound REALLY interesting because I’m stupid impatient. But I guess for my current fandom (Boueibu) I’ll link 5 fics I read recently that I liked! 

1) Pink Blood - @magiccatprincess (okay actually this is one I’m going to read soon because it looked interesting… so it fits the question lol)

2) tuesdays - @vagarius (because how can I not love something written for me?

3) Liar - BlackJoker77 (A whoooole lot accomplished here in not a lot of words. Also, Yumoto character study/reading between the lines? Yush.)

4) ….. ok I ran out of ideas. I don’t bookmark anything OTL. I’ll come back to this question at another time with an ACTUAL answer.

46) If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

I’m most proud of ‘Completely’ at the moment- I really like how I pulled off Ryuu’s voice and it’s most definitely a scene I wanted to see written… so I’m happy that I was able to provide that scene

50) How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

It was basically an extention of RPing for the writing portion of it- ‘Nice of Me to Drop In’ was basically a cleaned up RP and when it wasn’t rping it was fan gratification for the other early fics I did. As a kid I used to (and still sometimes do) make up stories in my head when I was about to go to sleep, and a lot of them were episodes of my favorite shows that I wanted to see. So I’d put some of them on paper. And then it moved into the ~romance~ category; I was a hopeless romantic as a teenager and like a lot of teenage girls I was kind of horny so fanfiction was a way to explore my sexuality in the comfort of my own head, basically. I still like me a good smutfic and bonus points if it’s romantic AND smutty. My bf can definitely tell when I’ve been reading something naughty….

51) Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

Okay, Imma do both! And I have 2 things to rant about because I can’t shut up.

Rant: This is more of a thing that I hate about MYSELF reading fanfics, but I hate that I get turned off of fics so quickly because of writing style. When I can push past beginners writing mistakes or mediocre quality writing I can sometimes find gem fics with plots/characterizations I find adorable, but more often than not I click out of fics after just a few sentences because I can’t stand poor writing. And I feel so elitist about it! Fanfics are free, fan-generated content. A lot of fanfics are written by kids or beginner writers. I have to keep reminding myself that not every fanfic author has gone to school for writing. They may not know the conventions of literature. They may not realize that they’re head-hopping in the middle of paragraphs. They may not know the proper way to punctuate dialogue (and I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW until grad school!!!!). If I let mistakes get in the way of content I may miss out on an up and coming writer. And lord knows I was horrendous when I first started. Everyone starts somewhere. I hate that it takes me so long to get out of teacher/writing student mode and truck through some writing that may not technically be the best but their heart is in the right place. 

Rant2: I don’t like how isolated fanfiction can feel sometimes. It seems like people don’t comment on fics as much as they used to, and I see these posts going around on tumblr about how authors LOOOOOVE comments and want more of them but then comments just… don’t appear. It’s not so hard to post one thing you really liked about the story, and even one thing you didn’t like. Comments help authors grow.I also don’t like how it’s so hard to find a beta reader or three to bounce ideas off of and proofread your work.

Gush: I love communities. I love the events fanfic authors put together. I love how when communities get tight-knit how everyone builds each other up and gives one another ideas. I just love fanfiction in general, really

aaaaaand SHEW. That was a lot. BUT DEF NOT TOO MUCH

[oxfordeliterp]

CONGRATULATIONS, YANI!

You have been accepted to play the role of AIDEN STAFFORD with the faceclaim of ALFRED ENOCH. Please create your account and send it to the main in the next 24 hours. We have nothing but words of praise about everything you’ve managed to do with this application. Not only is your writing a beauty, but you understand the complexity of Aiden just the way we hoped an applicant would one day get his character. Everything, from the family dynamic to every inch of personality you’ve drawn with your words, makes it clear that you took him and made him yours being howsoever faithful to every detail of the biography. We are counting the seconds until we can read more and see your boy on the dashboard, for you won us both over, not only with good character portrayal and writing talent, but also a great taste in music.

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

Name and pronouns: Yani

Age: 25

Time-zone: CST

Activity level: 7/10 I currently work in retail and I just completed my finals for the semester so I have some free time and should through out the summer. Whoop whoop

Triggers: None

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION

Desired character: Aiden Stafford, I chose to audition for him because he was honestly a character that made me excited to get into character building again. I’ve been out of the rpc for a while and nothing held my interest as his biography did. I love his passion for his craft, how effortless it is for him to bring words together. How he beats to his own drum and yet how he is so aware and attentive to the world and people around him. But there was the twist that stayed with me and now I can’t not want to know how this tragedy is affecting him day to day. Thinking of how his mind works is just exciting to me.

Gender and pronouns of the character: Male, he/him

Changes: Not a thing.

Traits:

OCDish - For his writing purpose, he has rituals he abides too. Not that he heavily relies on them to get the creative juices flowing but he finds it eases his anxieties. When life becomes a bit more frustrating, or his inner voices start to become overwhelming, the rituals make their grand appearance to steady him and make him feel in control again.

Uninhibited - Perhaps his craft has made him this ways. He’s a rambler if you allow him. Speaking his thoughts and desires freely, you can definitely say he’s an open book or just passionate about life.

Observant - With people in general. Most people can walk into a room full of strangers and not notice the smallest things, the mannerisms. He can and will remember them. It amuses him and he even takes it as a game just for himself. So it may make him appear a bit weird when he attempts to explain it to others, but nevertheless he doesn’t care.

Careless - In the start he found this to be a good trait to have. In some degree you had to be careless to enjoy life and not spend so much time worrying about another’s opinion, until that night that changed him forever. Being too careless has devastating effects, so now he struggles with this.

Gentle - No matter where the digs or insults are coming from. From the members of the Riot Club or the other, he will remain gentle and kind as he sees no point changing himself to fit in. He believes,“Always be kinder than necessary. What goes around comes around. No one has ever made themselves strong by showing how small someone else is.”

Extras: It is advised that you mention here what major you believe your character would have chosen. Other than that, feel free to include here anything you think is relevant when it comes to how you see the character you are applying for. Headcanons, playlists, inspirational quotes, anything at all.

Major: Creative Writing with a minor in Linguistics

Headcanons (1) Aiden keeps a journal. It could be seen as his lifeline, or a sure way to keep his sanity intact. He uses it daily and hides it away so others can not spy on his deepest inner thoughts. While if anyone did find it, they probably would not understand a single word inside, because of it’s illegible writing. There are no complete thoughts, just outburst of his thoughts about life, his classmates, and his fears. Only a true dedicated person would be able to piece together that puzzle of his journal. Inside are so many of his unfinished short stories, those few failed poems he knows he will complete one day, he’s just missing something to complete it. (2) He’s quite inexperienced with love and intimacy. Aiden is not a stranger to the art of attraction. He just hasn’t found anyone that makes his heart skip a beat, that makes the words in head settle, and that is what he searches for. Well - not really searching but waits until he comes across it. Their gender is also something he’s not too worried of either. (3) Fluent in Italian and French. As he writes, of course he had to be a great reader of literature, it fuels his writings at times. And what excites him even more is reading tales from other places in other languages. Words really do evoke emotions, he believes. Those sad, tragedies also inspire him and there is something about the change in tongue that makes it all more precious, like a secret that is now revealed to him. (4) Plays the piano and cello. Lover of the classical music. As pen and paper is effortless to him so is his love and play of the cello. Starting young he would isolate himself just to hear the sounds of the cello or piano. The classical music he plays has always inspired him and is so brilliant in telling a story. Sometimes to shut the world out, it can be his only friend.

Mini Playlist [x, x, x, x, x, x]

Quotes [x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x]

PARA SAMPLE

/Check and mate/

Out of the three hundred and sixty-five days, on the three hundred and fifty-ninth day the Stafford family would come together under one roof. It was not your typical celebration for the birth of Jesus. Or the coming of a new year, but it was a perfect time to come together and throw in each other’s faces their yearly accomplishments. All powerful in their own right, the doctors, lawyers, and judges all had to let their voice be known at the Stafford estate for their annual engagement. How dreadful Aiden found them. Another year, another dinner where he sat across from Gwendolyn. The two exchanged looks throughout. Her specialty, cold hard glares, and his was nothing more than a half smile that showcased the dimple in his right cheek. It was pleasant enough, pleasant as it could be for the two of them.

After his uncle Dwight, it would be his turn to speak and let everyone know what he was up to in the past year and what he would be doing well into the next. He could already hear the sighs of disbelief and even picture the looks of pity that would be cast his way. Another year and he still was not going to take the advice from his father and try for law school.

“Oh how lovely, it’s time for another drink. Someone wake me up when he is done..” Gwendolyn spoke, referring to Aiden as all eyes now fell upon him. The grand dinning room was quiet, and all Aiden could focus on was the devious smirk Gwendolyn wore. A few attempted to save face by pretending to shun her for her kind words to Aiden but it did not make her sorry in the least. “What am I suppose to do? He’s so boring and painfully so?” She did not hide her disdain for him. Giving a little bow to everyone at the table, including Gwendolyn, he began. “I know I could never outshine, —I mean how can I keep up with uncle Dwight and his political triumphs.” By triumphs he meant how much more corporate money could he put in his pocket. Another year another speech of how Dwight nailed it at the DNC and was well on his way to securing a seat on the senate if he just played his cards right. “And no I won’t be joining our cousin on her amazing mission trip to South America or be in attendance for her speeches on the importance of clean water.” Yet everyone knew she only did so for the optics. Her husband was under criminal investigation for insider trading at his firm.

They all knew the truth, and no one dared to speak it. Sharing the truth wasn’t the purpose for these gatherings. “I just started working with a juniors writing group that focuses on helping young writers work on their craft. What inspires them to write and we try to help them reach their full potential.” Aiden was actually passionate about this group and wanted to share his excitement. But he could see the look on his father’s face, the disappointment that no it was not an announcement of his change to law or even interest in medical school. “I mean just last week we did this great piece on Francesco Petrarca and what inspir–”

“Teaching our youth on how to be boring and weird like you Aiden, what a brilliant brilliant plan that is. Exactly what we need?” Gwendolyn cut him off, and made the slow gesture to clap aloud, and no one stopped her. Aiden politely acknowledged her enthusiasm and turned to her. “Oh you would have loved it Gwendolyn, the topics the younger kids were coming up with. It was empowering, talks of equality, and being heard by their peers.” He could see the wheels of annoyance turning in her head since he did not take the obvious bait, and he would not sink to her level. “I think you should come speak to the younger girls. I know you have much more insight on the topics that inspire them and you have a way with words that I can’t touch upon.” Awaiting her answer, as he heard someone utter the brilliance of such an idea. Taking his seat again, he watched as a server placed the final dish before him. As he thanked them, picking up his fork to start at the apple pie. He paid no mind to Gwendolyn as the next person beside him stood to speak on their accomplishments. These dinners were not all bad when he thought about it, apple pie was his favourite.

[notsosadpostgrad-blog]

Hello Hello everyone! Wow whatta week – working 13 hour days and having no time for the gym and healthy eating has been hard to say the least, but I was able to see friends last week and later on this week, and even though the physical health goals weren’t exactly hit, I can easily say that I am content in the company I keep whether it be my close friends or my dog.

Anyway, onto today’s typing word vomit…

I remember the days where I wanted to be a dentist. I mean, I always loved reading but DENTISTRY? It was the end-all-be-all of my adolescence…and then 7th grade algebra and Twilight happened. Yes, the true buildup of teenage angst making a heck of a nightmare in my 13 year old self.

Due to my utter hatred of the vampire series’ writing style and even deeper hatred of numbers and letter existing on the same line, I found myself drawn into rewriting the series instead of paying attention in science class. Add that the me actually having a panic attack when reading a character death in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and by the end of middle school, I was fully immersed in literature, averaging 5-6 books a week.

And it continued throughout high school as I found myself spending almost all my paychecks at Barnes&Noble, turning to typing hundreds of pages on my new laptops, graduating with three finished stories and the idea that being an English and Education major will pave the way for me to love what I do more and more.

However, college is the preview for real life, and it is not just a school day with many hours free to get a book done. As I became more involved at Merrimack, I started bringing less and less books from home, for I never had time to read, and instead of writing books, I turned to writing thesis papers and researching methods. Unfinished books became forgotten, and when I tried to restart, I truly could not find that muscle memory. Poetry became easier when I studied in Dublin, and I even attempted to start a poetry Instagram page, starting to regain confidence in my pen’s work.

Then…I got rejected again and again from different publications, graduating from college with no creative works being accepted, when almost all the other students in my major had.

Now, you could say that I am a very wound up individual, harboring an immeasurable amount of anxiety, and PSA, my inner mental workings will be discussed a lot more, but for now, I will make this point clear and concise: I am my own worst enemy. 

I thought I could do nothing, so I can truly say that I gave up. No one liked my writing, so why should I? I let myself down, focussing on what was needed in my life instead of what was wanted. No more.

Here I am setting new goals. I have a room of books ready to be read. I have Bath And Body Works candles ready to burn and inspire my writing. And what are my goals?

The Bookcase

The Inspiration

A Poem A Day: I miss the days of feeling weightless while writing, and because of the busy schedule I have right now, writing for chunk of the day is proving to be a process. Instead, I must resort to one of my two writing loves and attain what I always wanted…finishing a whole notebook with my poetry. Notebooks and I have always had a strange relationship, for I have never been able to finish that last page as if I am afraid of it. I think I am. So no more. A notebook will finally be filled with just me and only me.

I Am Writing A Book: I have the ideas. They are in my head. I have the characters ready to act out what I need, so I am ready to become them and engulf myself in my own thoughts. I must know that my thoughts are safe, and they are good. I accept my own writing even after being rejected so many times by others. I deserve to write everything out because I believe that as a writer, if I don’t write, am I really alive?  I know that sounds dramatic, but this is my life, and I desire to feel that need again. Publication is not the goal; finishing is.

New Things To Read And Learn: Besides my bookcase, there are things I want to know besides creative works. I want to read classics for fun, and not because a professor told me I was supposed to. I want to go into Barnes&Noble, exploring the biographies and nonfiction sections, taking the time to learn more about different genres, time periods and storytelling. Finally, I want to learn about things that make me excited. For example, I never learned much about astrology or health, and hey let’s throw in some cooking books and how to take care of myself and live independently. It’s time to just drown again.

Keep Writing These Blogs: Of course.

July 18th. Let’s become passionate again. Onward and into the pages.

  CjB

I Couldn’t Math so Here I am with an English Degree: Reading and Writing and (yet again) Rambling Hello Hello everyone! Wow whatta week - working 13 hour days and having no time for the gym and healthy eating has been hard to say the least, but I was able to see friends last week and later on this week, and even though the physical health goals weren't exactly hit, I can easily say that I am content in the company I keep whether it be my close friends or my dog.

[biofunmy]

Alan Brinkley, Leading Historian of 20th-Century America, Dies at 70

Alan Brinkley, one of the pre-eminent historians of his generation, with a specialty in 20th-century American political history, died on Sunday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 70.

The cause was complications of frontotemporal dementia, a neurological disorder, his daughter, Elly Brinkley, said.

Mr. Brinkley’s work spanned the full spectrum of the last century’s seminal events and influential characters, including the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

His “Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression” (1983) won the National Book Award. And his high school and college history textbooks “American History” and “The Unfinished Nation” were best sellers and frequently updated.

“For the 20th century, Alan set the agenda for most political historians, especially about the New Deal,” Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine, said in a telephone interview.

But his interests ranged widely, and he was devoted to teaching. He received teaching awards at both Harvard and Columbia and held the rare distinction for an American historian of teaching at both Oxford and Cambridge in England.

Eric Foner, a fellow historian at Columbia, wrote in a foreword to “Alan Brinkley: A Life in History” (2019), a collection of essays written in tribute, that the central themes of Mr. Brinkley’s scholarship were “the strengths, limits and vulnerabilities of the 20th-century American liberal tradition; the challenges to it, both internal and external; the connections between popular movements and partisan politics,” as well as the New Deal’s legacies.

Mr. Brinkley grew up in Washington, a son of David Brinkley, the longtime NBC News anchor, who died in 2003. His brother Joel was a reporter and editor for The New York Times and died in 2014; his brother John is a writer at Forbes.

Although journalism was the family business, Alan was less comfortable in that world than his brothers were and toyed with alternatives. After graduating from Princeton, he applied to Harvard Law School and was accepted, but his father’s loathing of lawyers intimidated him and he abandoned that plan.

Alan did not escape journalism entirely. He became a singularly public kind of historian, someone who reached out beyond his academic scholarship and engaged with the world at large through the media in an accessible style.

Nancy Weiss Malkiel, a historian and later dean at Princeton who was Mr. Brinkley’s adviser on his senior thesis, said he had written with a grace and flair unusual for an undergraduate.

“Even then, he had an uncanny feel for language — a sense of pace, style, composition and felicitous phrasing all too rare among historians in general, let alone history students,” she wrote in the tribute book.

Mr. Brinkley wrote his senior thesis on the Louisiana politician Huey P. Long. He once described the thrill he felt doing research with primary documents.

“I’ll never forget the feeling of opening, for the first time, a box of papers, and holding in my hand a letter that Franklin Roosevelt had written and signed,” he wrote after his first trip to the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Touching that letter, he added, gave him “the sense of being a part of the great tradition of historians who have built their work around this exposure to the immediate product of the minds of the great figures, and not so great figures, of our history.”

His senior thesis became his Harvard dissertation and, later, his first book, “Voices of Protest.” He was fascinated by how both Long and the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, the chief subjects of that book, had used the radio in the 1930s to mobilize their supporters.

“The thread that ran through Alan’s work — that American political history was made as much by popular figures wielding cultural influence as by officeholders and policymakers — was fully developed in this magisterial rendering of Luce’s life,” Lizabeth Cohen, a friend and Harvard history professor, wrote. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Being attuned to contemporary journalism perhaps allowed Mr. Brinkley to be one of the first historians to see the rise of the conservative movement in American politics.

“Very few historians were writing about conservatives, but he had his eyes open,” Mr. Kazin said. “They were changing the political dialogue, and he wanted to understand it. It’s become a major theme in American political history.”

Alan Brinkley was born on June 2, 1949, in Washington. His mother was Ann (Fischer) Brinkley. He was born in the same hospital room on the same day as Frank Rich, the future New York Times chief theater critic and opinion columnist, now a television producer and writer for New York magazine.

Their mothers were good friends, both part of a relatively small enclave of Jewish families in Chevy Chase, Md. The boys remained close friends. Together they watched the first installment of “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” the nightly news program co-anchored by David Brinkley and Chet Huntley, from the Brinkleys’ living room couch in 1956.

Alan attended Landon, a private boys’ school in Bethesda. He graduated from Princeton with a degree in public policy in 1971 and earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1979.

He taught history at M.I.T. before returning to Harvard in 1982 as an assistant professor. He was a popular teacher, with classes so oversubscribed that admittance was determined by lottery, and he won the prestigious Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize.

After just a few years, the history department recommended him for tenure. To the astonishment of many, it was denied.

Mr. Brinkley, who was then in his late 30s, was apparently deemed by senior faculty members too young to deserve tenure, Jonathan Alter, a journalist and former student of his at Harvard, wrote in the tribute book.

“And rumor had it,” Mr. Alter added of those who denied him tenure, “that his popularity — including occasional television appearances — rendered him suspiciously unrigorous in their jealous eyes.”

The denial of tenure to a popular professor became a cause célèbre on campus and renewed debate over the role that teaching ability, rather than scholarship alone, should play in the selection of senior faculty.

In any case, Mr. Brinkley was snapped up by the City University of New York, where he taught before being recruited by Columbia in 1991. He served as chairman of the history department there from 2000 to 2003 and as provost from 2003 to 2009. He retired in 2018.

In 1989 he married Evangeline Morphos, a theater and television producer who held a doctorate in 18th-century English literature and taught theater and film at Columbia.

In addition to his wife, daughter and brother, Mr. Brinkley is survived by a half sister, Alexis Brinkley Collins.

Mr. Brinkley stood up for academic freedom. He refused a university order to dissuade graduate teaching assistants from organizing a union, saying his students could think for themselves. And when faculty members came under attack from partisan outside groups for their teaching, he refused to yield to demands to monitor their classroom statements; to do so, he said, would violate their academic freedom.

Among Mr. Brinkley’s other books were “John F. Kennedy” (2012), “Franklin D. Roosevelt” (2009), “Liberalism and Its Discontents” (1998) and “The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War” (1995).

He also helped his father research and write “Washington Goes to War,” David Brinkley’s memoir of being a young reporter covering Roosevelt and the capital as it prepared for World War II.

“There’s no better portrait of Washington in any era,” Frank Rich wrote in the tribute book, “and in its piquant and touching narrative, you can find a father’s and a son’s droll voices collaborating to enchanting and insightful effect.”

Sahred From Source link Arts

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2RiLQKK via IFTTT

[how2to18]

IF THERE EXISTS a mental-illness diagnosis as scary as the physical-illness diagnosis of cancer, schizophrenia may be it. To the general public, it’s a monolith of a condition: the one where you hear voices in your head and talk to people who aren’t there. That Beautiful Mind guy had it, and he invented Ed Harris completely, remember? But the words and stories of those who live with schizoaffective disorder offer proof that it’s a spectrum illness, which manifests with great variety and defies stereotype. And though it’s a serious diagnosis, many of those afflicted insist that they are not doomed.

The classic schizophrenia memoirs include The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness (1994), by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett, and The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007), by Elyn R. Saks. Both books are frightening. Schiller’s illness manifested as voices shouting at her relentlessly to kill herself, and the treatment she was given early in her illness was cruel and unhelpful. Her account is perforated by memory loss because of trauma and electroconvulsive therapy. Saks’s book is a story of extraordinary willpower; rather than seek help, she hid her debilitating symptoms almost entirely while racking up degrees and honors in the legal and medical fields. Her writing voice is a little nerdy, but her achievements, which include a MacArthur “genius” grant, are extraordinary.

Esmé Weijun Wang’s new book of essays, The Collected Schizophrenias, which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and a Whiting Award, warrants much of the hype and anticipation surrounding it. A Granta-anointed Best Young American Novelist for The Border of Paradise (2016), Wang is a highly articulate and graceful essayist, and her insights, in both the clinical and general senses, are exceptional.

Wang’s book isn’t much like the other two. The trajectory of schizoaffective disorder, in its progression, regression, detours, and stubbornness, is a common, looping thread among them, but the way the illness manifests in the three writers is profoundly different. Wang’s voices aren’t much like Schiller’s, and her delusional convictions (for example, that she is dead — also known as the Cotard delusion) are much more unusual. Saks is paranoid and manic while Wang leans to catatonia. Wang’s book is less alarming than the other two, in part because her voice is so measured and intelligent. The fact is, the three women have different illnesses, even though their umbrella diagnosis is the same — schizoaffective disorder varies as much as its patients do.

In addition, while Schiller was largely swallowed by her illness and Saks threw herself passionately into her career, Wang gives the impression of having lived many lives. She started on the Ivy League track, attending Yale (the alma mater of Saks, as well), which was exceedingly unhelpful in managing her burgeoning illness, and then Stanford, which was closer to her family. She was a fashion blogger early in her adult life, and her knowledge of designers and aesthetics is likely to bewilder the average reader. One of the essays is about disguising herself as high-functioning by using visual markers of wellness: beautiful clothes and makeup from Chanel and Tom Ford. Her survival methods are necessarily elastic:

My makeup routine is minimal and consistent. I can dress and daub when psychotic and when not psychotic. I do it with zeal when manic. If I’m depressed, I skip everything but the lipstick. If I skip the lipstick, that means I haven’t even made it to the bathroom mirror.

A sexual assault lies beneath Wang’s daily experience for years, until her illness triggers PTSD, which complicates her treatment plan further. Then, after her physical health declines mysteriously and precipitously, she is diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease.

Bookstore shelves are crammed with PTSD memoirs, Ivy League reminiscences, fashion world tell-alls, sexual-assault survival stories, and chronicles of fighting against debilitating illness — Wang’s friend Porochista Khakpour even wrote an entire book, Sick, about living with late-stage Lyme disease — but Wang has been inside all of these identities, lived all of these selves and more. Her perspective in The Collected Schizophrenias is encyclopedic and prismatic even without taking into account how her primary mental illness may have fractured her identity.

Wang asks rare, necessary questions about her condition: “What happens if I see my disordered mind as a fundamental part of who I am? It has, in fact, shaped the way I experience life.”

She’s mildly arguing against “person-first language” that “suggests that there is a person in there somewhere without the delusions and the rambling and the catatonia”:

There might be something comforting about the notion that there is, deep down, an impeccable self without disorder, and that if I try hard enough, I can reach that unblemished self. But there may be no impeccable self to reach, and if I continue to struggle toward one, I might go mad in the pursuit.

She writes with clarity about how it feels when a psychotic episode descends upon her, an experience only a fraction of us will ever have. The entire passage, from “Reality, Onscreen,” is two and a half pages of captivating prose, but the conclusion is most gripping:

Something’s wrong; then it is completely wrong […] The moment of shifting from one phase to the other is usually sharp and clear; I turn my head and in a single moment realize that my coworkers have been replaced by robots, or glance at my sewing table as the thought settles over me, fine and gray as soot, that I am dead. In this way I have become, and have remained, delusional for months at a time […] What’s true is whatever I believe, although I know enough to parrot back what I know is supposed to be true: these are real people and not robots; I am alive, not dead. The idea of “believing” something turns porous as I repeat the tenets of reality like a good girl.

These essays are mesmerizing and at times bittersweet — not unlike The Border of Paradise, which is a horrifying family drama written in balletic prose. In other ways, the two books don’t feel very similar, but that’s a mark of Wang’s craftsmanship. Her novel is warmer, with shifting perspectives that dwell on human moments, where her essays are even and controlled. Whenever they feel too icily flawless, though, Wang reveals her sense of humor. When a stranger looks her up and down as she’s in a delusional (but functioning) state, she quips, “Yes, I thought, our eyes meeting, you may think I’m hot, but I’m also a rotting corpse. Sucks to be you, sir.”

Often collections like this gather essays either too independent from one another or too repetitive in their details to form a fully satisfying work. Wang’s book mostly avoids these problems, but it does have a sense of incompleteness, which derives, perhaps, from the sense that the author is leaving things out. It’s not a particularly juicy or grotesque book, and a jaded reader of sensational memoir may find this suspicious. Her book often feels like the equivalent of her makeup routine: she’s passing as a calm, informative writer with a sophisticated prose style when inside her head it’s chaos.

This is not to say it’s a dishonest book, but it does offer up Wang’s best and most beautiful self, for the most part, and only rarely shows her gibbering at the mirror or impassively giving away her possessions. Of course, that is no one’s business but Wang’s. She is not required to expose her interior horrors to the reading public just because other essayists and memoirists do. Besides, if the book seems incomplete, or unfinished, it’s because Wang’s life is, too. Not because her illnesses have lessened her — they certainly have not — but because she is continually evolving, and aware of it. The collection carries a sense of starting over, and over, and over, with each new diagnosis, each new psychotic episode, each new obstacle that Wang must cope with to survive and thrive. Her extraordinary precision as a writer helps her organize and describe the junk drawer of intention and failure and process and truth that is life.

The Collected Schizophrenias is a necessary addition to a relatively small body of literature, but it’s also, quite simply, a pleasure to read. The prose is so beautiful, and the recollection and description so vivid, that even if it were not mostly about an under-examined condition it would be easy to recommend. Esmé Weijun Wang is poised to become a major writer, and this is her origin story.

¤

Katharine Coldiron’s work has appeared in Ms., the Times Literary Supplement, VIDA, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in California and at kcoldiron.com.

The post Fractured Origins in Esmé Weijun Wang’s “The Collected Schizophrenias” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2UIUcM9 via IFTTT

[weirdbynorthwest]

I’m deeply wary of the idea of reading games as literature. Reading one medium as another strikes me as inherently problematic, raising a bunch of questions that would have to be answered on a case-by-case basis - making it preferable, to my mind, to analyse a "text” on its own terms without imposing a set of possibly inappropriate expectations on it. Which is more than a bit rich coming from me, since that was precisely what I did during my time in academia (analysing pop culture under cover of a couple of literature degrees, several conference papers and an unfinished PhD thesis).

But I’m all for deep-dive analyses of pop culture, and "Games as Lit. 101″ offers a really good overview of some of the major themes of Alan Wake (Xbox 360, PC, 2010). I wrote something about the Dark Presence as a negative example of editorial control several years ago in my unfinished and accursed PhD thesis; it relied heavily on Karl Marx’s theory of alienation but missed the positive counter-examples of editorial “assistance” that are highlighted in this video. 

I also wrote about the Taken. I agree with the argument presented here that the Dark Presence transforms people into stereotypes through its influence on Wake’s writing, something that intimates the horrors wrought by “bad”, hackneyed prose. I think it’s also important to note with the Taken both who is speaking (with a few exceptions, the Taken are almost all men) as well as the nature of their speech (cheery, 1950s-style advertising, and different manifestations of law and order). Without getting into it here, suffice it to say there’s a lot going on in the Alan Wake series with regards to gender relations, as others have noted. The DLC and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, 2012) further develop this theme, making it, I think, ill-advised to treat Alan Wake as a self-contained work, especially since it was never conceived as one. It’s not a novel; it’s a transmedia text that appears to have been cut short, but which may (or may not) be revived at a later date.

All that being said, it’s fair to say that Alan Wake was practically begging to be read as “literature”, or at least, in relation to that sphere. A novelization by Rick Burroughs was published several days after the game’s release. The game’s limited edition box set was even designed to look like a book signed by Alan Wake himself, and came packaged with an actual book, called The Alan Wake Files, that further enriched and enhanced the overall experience. And its protagonist is a hack writer, with a penchant for quoting Stephen King and for issuing self-important proclamations about the nature of writing/art, etc. One gets the impression that the writers at Remedy shared Wake’s literary aspirations.

[gravitascivics]

CRITICAL THEORISTS’ POLITICAL VIEW

While economics is the central concern of critical theorists, they speak the language of politics.  This blog is currently reviewing critical theory’s perspective on government and politics.  The political system, to Marxists, is part of the superstructure, the institution built upon the demands of the economic elites and relied upon to protect most directly their interests.  

Politics and government are counted on, in socialists’ plans, to determine the rules by which socialist practices will be established.  This posting will describe and explain the relationship between how critical theorists see their moral outrage over the exploitive practices in market economies and their view of government and politics.

         As pointed out in a previous posting, there are various intellectual sources that influence the political beliefs of critical pedagogues.  Those sources include Hegelianism, neo-Marxist thought, the Frankfort School of Social Research, the works of John Dewey (especially his later work), post structuralists, post modernists, Jurgen Habermas, and other leftist scholars.

Their epistemological bent opposes research methods common among natural rights advocates; that is, they discard behavioral or positivist (“scientific”) protocols.  They instead rely on rational processes – dialectical (logical) processes of thought.  If readers would like to read the works of recent critical pedagogues, they might look up Paulo Freire, Michael Apple, Bill Ayers, and Henry Giroux.

Stemming from the work of Lester Frank Ward in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the curricular approach known as social reconstructionism has influenced or guided the overall thrust of critical pedagogues.[1]  As the years have passed, more formal, leftist influences have made their mark on the works of critical theorists.

In the last posting, the point was made that to varying degrees, all critical pedagogues adopt Marxian ideas. To understand the thrust of their work, one needs to appreciate how it reflects socialist thinking.  While this is true, one should keep in mind that some critical pedagogues are barely Marxists at all, but to contextualize their work, one is benefited by reviewing basic Marxian thinking.

At a minimum, the reader should understand the following concepts:  dialectical materialism, class struggle, surplus value, dictatorship of the proletariat, and superstructure.

Dialectical materialism refers to Marx's view of the sweep of history as recurring cycles of haves oppressing the have-nots.  At its essence, this development has placed entrepreneur class – the bourgeoisie – in power today.  The have-nots are the laboring class, or as Marx referred to it, the proletariat.  As with previous political cycles, Marx foresaw that the working class, the have-nots, will eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie.  

But with this revolutionary change, because of the historical factors characterizing this overthrow, the workers were to establish a political regime where no other class would exist.  Therefore, there would not be an exploitive relationship among the people of that resulting society.  This would end the cyclical nature of politics in human history.  

Class struggle is simply the clash of interests between the oppressors and the oppressed.  In the capitalist system, the oppressors are the business owners who own the means of production.  The oppressed are the working class made up primarily of mine workers and factory workers. During the time Marx wrote, these workers, the proletariat, usually worked during severe conditions:  long hours and dangerous and odious environments.

Surplus value refers to the excess value of produced goods and services that workers create after the costs of production are paid.  Since the value of any produced good or service is value added to natural resources or unfinished goods by the toil of workers, that value rightfully belongs to the workers.  Under capitalism, the owners of the means of production call this value profit and “steal” it from the workers.  This is the essence of politics in a capitalist system.

Dictatorship of the proletariat is the resulting power arrangement after the workers overthrow the capitalist system in which only the interests of the workers will be recognized as legitimate.  All individuals in the production processes will be workers.  Since this will eliminate class struggle, the source of political conflict will disappear and eventually, the state or government will “wither away.”

Superstructure refers to the institutional arrangement in any given society with the economic institution being the foundation and all others constituting the superstructure.  In this way, the economic institution has enormous influence over the beliefs and assumptions held by those who control the major institutions.  

Crude Marxism holds that this is a one-way relationship in that the organizing beliefs of the economic institution basically dictate the beliefs of all the other institutions. Moderate Marxism holds that the relationship is two-way, one in which the other institutions have, to some degree, an influence on the prevailing economic beliefs.

Both forms hold that the economic arrangements will at least provide the parameters in which all institutions operate.  This relation, in terms of civics education, is particularly important as it determines the policy by which government administers public schools and even regulates private schools.  Government policy will basically protect and promote the interests of those who own or control the productive forces of an economy.

Also, the institution of education will be ultimately controlled to advance the beliefs that sustain the position of the ruling class.  Currently, Marxists would point to the promotion of vouchers and charter schools as examples of the ruling class either taking over or sustaining control of public education.[2]

As pointed out, not every critical pedagogue buys into these Marxian ideas; consequently, many look to other sources to define how they see the political, economic, and social relationships in society.  The result has been that they have utilized influences from well-respected social scientists who range from Talcott Parsons to Sigmund Freud.  The reader is encouraged to consider this literature to see the breadth of these other influences.

Critical thinkers and researchers spend a lot of ink reporting and analyzing evidence they believe verifies their view of the social realities that occur in capitalist nations such as that of the US.  In education literature, for example, they provide statistical data and firsthand accounts about how a mal-distribution of income and other resources lead to educational disadvantages of one sort or another for the oppressed classes.  This, for them, signals exploitation and systemic barriers to true equality.

The purest of Marxists bristle at “liberal” solutions to these conditions.  They see programs like Head Start as merely capitalists' strategies to ameliorate the demands of the working classes and a way to forestall the eventual rise of the proletariat which will lead to the overthrow of the capitalist class – the manifestation of the “Marxist scenario.”

Others see liberal or progressive policies as part of a process by which a more socialist governance and economics are approached.  That is, they are socialist “light” policies that serve to making conditions better and at the same time, educate a populous on how socialism is a preferred mode of social policy.  For example, the self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders’ current support of Obamacare can be seen in this light.

Overall, therefore, critical pedagogues see politics as a battle between economic classes.  They complicate this picture with attempts to consider other sources of economic exploitation, such as discrimination and any other form of injustice.  Therefore, they are, for instance, vehemently committed to fighting racism and sexism.

Currently, one can see this battle over health care policy as demonstrating this class struggle.  For example, the bill that just passed the House of Representatives is being described as a tax cut for the super wealthy amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars.  One can see this example as how critical theorists see government and politics acting out in the US and around the world.

[1] Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1983-1958, (New York, NY: Routledge, 1986). In terms of Ward’s influence, see Kliebard’s book.  To be clear, Ward promoted the use of positivist protocols in social science research.

 [2] Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010).  For this last point, see Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ms. Ravitch is not a critical pedagogue and cannot be categorized as a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination. But in her book, she gives an excellent description of how business interests are helping to destroy our public-school system.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Reconsidering the Work of a Lebanese Female Artist Who Deserves a Closer Reading

Undated photograph of Saloua Raouda Choucair (all images courtesy of Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation except where otherwise noted)

Recognition came later in life to Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese artist working from Beirut, in relative isolation, throughout the second half of the 20th century. Her first international debut — several decades after a number of gallery exhibitions in Paris during the post-war period — was a major retrospective held at Tate Modern in 2013, after curators from Tate discovered her work in a gallery in Lebanon. Choucair was 97 years old at the time. (She stopped producing art sometime in the 1990s, after five decades of work.) In the summer of 2016, the recently reopened Sursock Museum in Beirut celebrated Choucair’s 100th birthday, and in January 2017, the artist passed away peacefully in her Beirut home. A number of obituaries highlighting her achievements appeared in the Western press.

Her life’s work was kept almost intact in her apartment in the Kantari neighborhood of Beirut, having only rarely been sold. In recent years, a number of her seldom discussed sculptures — modular structures formed in calculated, irregular shapes ­— have found their way to Western institutions, but as far as reception is concerned, Choucair is still a rather obscure footnote. Most reviews are confined to some superficial observations on her paintings, and the sculptures, albeit mentioned, are nowhere offered any serious treatment.

The celebration of Choucair’s 100th birthday at the Sursock Museum in Beirut (photo courtesy of Agop Kanledjian)

This situation hardly comes as a surprise. A number of artists, particularly those from the post-colonial world, who have been discovered and rediscovered by curators in recent years, have shared the same fate: discovery followed by institutionalization and then, if not oblivion, a suspended state. In this state, curators cannot decide whether the artist should be shown as part of the Western canon, or in carefully labeled ethnographic boxes such as “Islamic art,” “women artists,” or “modernism” — the last which is a category that today seems to cover almost an entire century when applied to art produced outside of the West.

Another view of Choucair’s 100th birthday celebration at the Sursock Museum (photo courtesy of Agop Kanledjian)

But when an artist is no longer in a position to explain and defend her legacy, is it perhaps necessary to reconsider what merits including her work in the canon of modern art. There are the obvious tropes: a female artist from an Arab country (which connotes the idea that a female artist would be keener to update the historical categories of “Islamic” or “Arab”), and the label given to her by almost every commentator as, “the first abstract modernist artist in Lebanon and possibly the Arab world,” ever since Lamia Rustum Shehadeh made that claim in 1999 in her book Women and War in Lebanon. This description of Choucair is arguable. Since when did modernism become identical with abstraction? The history of definitions of the category “modern” in the Middle East is fraught with inconsistencies, but the beginning of modernism in the region would be more accurately identified as occurring one generation before Choucair, and as far as abstraction is concerned, it would be more accurate to begin with Saliba Douaihy. More often than not, institutional attempts to link Islamic art to contemporary artists living in the Middle East have resulted in exhibitions that are either not contemporary at all or that showcase contemporary work of questionable value.

Other broad claims have been made in order to validate the process of institutionalizing Choucair, including matching or comparing her with specific Western movements or male artists. Articles on Choucair claim that she became interested in abstract art during her stay in Paris in 1948, and that she was a pupil of the post-impressionist Fernand Léger for a while and worked in his studio for some time. (The fact that fellow painter, Chafic Abboud, another Lebanese master, also spent time at Léger’s atelier, pegs her work to his in the academic literature as if the legitimacy of a male artist was necessary.) Saloua Raouda Choucair, the book by Jessica Morgan published on the occasion of Choucair’s self-titled Tate exhibition, goes as far as to claim that she was influenced by avant-garde artists such as Malevich, Kandinsky, and Mondrian.

Yet, Saloua Choucair was a solitary bird from the beginning. Armed with a degree in the natural sciences before taking up painting in the 1930s, she had little interest in the aesthecizing realism of her mentors Moustafa Farroukh and Omar Onsi. Her earliest abstract paintings precede her stay in Paris in the early 1950s. She quickly renounced the strict cubism of Leger’s atelier while still in Paris and vehemently denied Western influence on her work (at least to the degree that it appeared that she was just a follower of the avant-garde artists, though Choucair did not share their preoccupations.)

A view of the Saloua Raouda Choucair exhibition at the Tate in 2013 (photo by J Fernandes, courtesy of Tate Photography)

Choucair’s work, an extended investigation of the nature of negative space, grows through distinct bodies of work: from a purely geometric understanding of the boundaries of the line (the series Trajectories of a Line, from the 1950s), to her most complex structures in which a visual model of infinity is constructed through irregular patterns, repetitions, and concave shapes (Infinite Structures, from the 1960s onward). In between, there are other series, such as Duals, Poems, Modules and Interforms, that all pave the way toward the artist’s dissolution of time inside a solid form. However, these series are not periods, and although she abandoned painting early on to focus on sculpture, a similar stream of themes and questions constantly reappear: What is the eventual fate of a line? How can the line describe in full the varieties of our experience of time? Saloua Choucair takes on the big questions, rather than a mere aesthetic viewpoint.

Yet this is where things get complicated. With so few resources on her work available — Choucair was barely understood during her most active years and stayed away from explaining her work — it is very difficult to get a real sense of the nature of her project, which I suspect, evolved through the years. Between 1975 and 1990 there are decades of conflict in Lebanon and the long civil war during which no institutions existed that could properly exhibit or study her work, and no curators were active at the time. No encyclopedic institution that could take on the task of studying and archiving Lebanese cultural production of the war period exists in Lebanon, though certain organizations have taken on surrogate roles. Therefore the task is still unfinished.

Saloua Raouda Choucair “Dual” (1988-1990) (displayed at the Armory in 2015) aluminum, 24x14x8.5 cm (image courtesy of Agial Art Gallery)

Central to Western interpretation of Lebanese art is the idea that war and conflict have been the primary sources of influence for artists, but looking at the entirety of Choucair’s oeuvre, it is very difficult to infer any kind of insight or even information about the violence in Lebanon from observation of the work. (This was also the case with Yvette Achkar, another still undiscovered abstract painter of the same generation in Lebanon.) There’s also the often repeated claim that her work was entirely derived from Islam or from Islamic art, which is based on a single line from an interview with the artist that appeared at the time of the Tate exhibition but was probably filmed several years earlier, and furnishes very little proof that she actively considered Islamic art her chief source of inspiration; her unpublished notebooks and notes seem to suggest otherwise.

In 2015, while working at a Lebanese gallery, I was part of the team that conceived a presentation of one piece from Choucair’s Dual series alongside two contemporary Lebanese artists (Saba Innab and Tanbak), for a curated section of art from the Middle East at the Armory Show. I now realize the extent to which I fell prey to hearsay, explaining away her work in the text I had written for our presentation, as an articulation of “her experience of a Beirut divided between East and West” (the fault line during the civil war). I also reproduced the claim that the artist had been inspired by architectural brutalism in general and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille in particular, and applied these influences to depict Beirut in blocks that can be assembled and reassembled. Now there is a story in almost every review written of Choucair’s sculptures that highlights the influence of brutalism and Le Corbusier in her work. The influence might indeed be there, but this repeated story overshadows the artist’s own formal research which deserves a more searching analysis.

  Installation view of the CRG gallery show, Saloua Raouda Choucair (photograph courtesy of CRG gallery)

Later that year, two exhibitions corrected me: Donatella Bernardi’s large show, Morgenröte, aurora borealis and Levantin: Into your solar plexus at the Kunsthalle Bern, where the room “Mother/Daughter,” devoted to Saloua Choucair and her artist daughter Hala Schoukair, contained an intervention in which Choucair’s work was glossed with scientific notation. This room made me think of the review I wrote of Hala Schoukair’s work from her exhibition in Beirut in 2014: Grains of Light. About this work I wrote: “Making sense of a world of entropy and chaos, arranging its disjointed syntactic elements into an endless grid, almost meditatively, warding off mortality but yet, through the conscious repetition, establishing a proximity with madness.” Additionally, Choucair’s first solo exhibition in New York, at CRG Gallery, displaying a diverse range of materials and historical periods, clued me up on an elaborate but precise continuity, which aimed not at the rigidness of post-war abstraction but at something primal: an archetypal form. It was then possible to read Choucair’s practice alongside pre-classical art.

The work of two scholars in Lebanon has shed some light into other paths by which to better understand Choucair’s work. In 2015, Kirsten Scheid translated into English the famous letter that Choucair had penned to Musa Suleiman in 1948 in response to his book Narrative Fiction among the Arabs. In this book Suleiman claimed Arabic literature was outdated and poor in comparison to the Greek epic, to which Choucair fiercely responded:

The Arab never took much interest in visible, tangible reality, or the truth that every human sees. Rather, he took his search for beauty to the essence of the subject, extracting it from all the adulterations that had accumulated in art since the time of the [Ancient] Greeks.

We might find here the genesis of her abstraction: a deliberate departure from the image of man cultivated by Greek philosophy and humanism, which Choucair goes on to add, “froze the world for centuries.”

Saloua Raouda Choucair, “Infinite Structure” black stone, 230x60x60 cm (1985)

As Scheid explains in her introductory essay to the letter, according to Choucair, Arabs were uninterested in the visible and excelled in works that are more real than common reality. Choucair establishes from early on, the late 1940s, this most central concept in her work: the distinction between visibility (optics) and visuality (understanding). But the fact that the entire discussion in the letter is constructed around the cultural politics of the golden age of Arab nationalism makes me suspect that the ideological picture of the artist presented here is incomplete, and that Choucair might have come to hold different views years later.

Laura Metzler, on the other hand, wrote a dissertation in 2014 on genetics, quantum mechanics, and transcendence in the late work of Choucair, a work that deserves to be taken rather seriously, though it is still unpublished. Metzler had access to many unpublished notes from Choucair’s studio, and argues for a much richer picture of her work that is embedded in the sciences.

Potentiality is the keyword here. Choucair was largely interested in lines that continue infinitely, and the potentiality of lines to create shapes that again flatten into two dimensions. This brings Kandinsky’s interest in the trajectory of a line to my mind, but Choucair was looking at something else: from Metzler’s work on the notebooks we know that the infinite structures Choucair was looking at were not mere abstractions, but actually a model of deoxyribonucleic acid and early models of the human genome. In her mind, however, there was a contradiction between the infinity of a line or a system, and the event of death, which is central to the biological sciences. How does Choucair reconcile the potentialities of the line with the ultimate horizon of death? The line here merges with concepts of transcendence and memory, and a wave-like movement is introduced in her late work; infinity is achieved not through repetition of the same, but through hypostasis, merge and rupture.

Saloua Raouda Choucair “Sculpture with One Thousand Pieces” wood, 147x36x36 cm (1966-1968) (photo courtesy the SRC Foundation)

A big part of the picture of Choucair’s work is still missing — all we have is details, spare notes. But what we can see so far is enough to reset the colonial and rather condescending interpretations of Choucair’s work, and to start analysis again with a fresh set of questions in which historical claims and narrative forms become secondary to the primary preoccupations of the artist. When I encountered her “Sculpture with One Thousand Pieces” (1966-68) at the Sharjah Biennial in 2015, it frankly was difficult to see Le Corbusier or Beirut. The work was more about a certain type of infinitude that is not at the end of time, or after death, but constantly circulating among us. The Lebanese critic Jacques Aswad quotes Choucair as saying: “When the difficult equation finished, I would find the words ‘and so on.’ It was hard for me to understand the beginning, so what of this suspended ending?”

The post Reconsidering the Work of a Lebanese Female Artist Who Deserves a Closer Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2mk8WiO via IFTTT