#Metanarrative meta

[supernaturalsidepiece]

NOO DONT BE DOOMED BY THE NARRATIVE YOU'RE SO SEXY AHA.

[kakishirocream]

Something interesting about the Winter Newsletter

Whats interesting is that Frisk was collecting every snowflake they can hold in their umbrella until it cannot physically hold itself and then it tips over onto Papyrus.

The umbrella has reached its absolute

(Credit to @/Clowntownerr on twitter with the meta oservation i wanted to share it here)

[cupidswurld]

thinking about supernaturals circular narrative. how i don’t (and won’t) watch sitcoms because of the conventions of a circular narrative.

the parallels of how characters are reduced into one-dimensional imitations of who the audience perceived them to be, boiled down into their most defining, dividing traits— a phenomenon exclusive to the intrinsic nature of sitcoms. thinking about how everything that is learnt in one episode, is forgotten in the next— how there is no progress, how there is no change and everything will always, always stay the same for the sake of the audience where nothings new.

part of why dean felt he wouldve been better off dead, about why he didnt deserve to be saved, was because he could never make any difference. how they were trapped by the same story, over and over again, that nothing mattered no matter what he did, because he'd just end up in the very same position he was 15 years ago. even before the insertion of chuck's storyline, before freewill, the pervasive hand of the writers have always held them down from the very first episode

[catboypalug]

I was thinking about how Saber exists in this weird not-quite-main-character limbo. She’s the most iconic character and basically the mascot for the entirety of the franchise, she shows up in everything, but she’s never the actual protagonist of anything. Just stuck in metanarrative purgatory. on one hand, an unfortunate fate, but at the same time, weirdly fitting given her actual story of being stranded waiting in Avalon

[macbethz]

i rlly dislike the phrase "irony poisoned" to describe our current culture mostly because i think irony is awesome but also i don't think it explains the rejection of sincerity that plagues us. irony can be some of the most sincere work there is - 90s culture was built on irony, yet the appeal of grunge was its emotional core. i dont think people calling genuine expressions of emotion cringe are being ironic i think they are just lost in simulacra

[bellshazes]

this close to writing myself into the argument that AFK farms constitute virtual reality in the sense that your non-game actions and time are now mediated by the game world. like, unironically.

[spookyteeths]

now here’s a question.

[qpjianghu]

My galaxy brained MLC meta-narrative take of the day comes from my rewatch of ep 39, when Li Lianhua smiles sadly and says "the Wangchuan (styx) flower is indeed a miracle cure," because what if it actually doesn't exist. Which is why he has that extra sad look in his eye whenever someone (Fang Duobing or Di Feisheng) mentions it, or bestows it upon him. He knows it's not real. It is a "miracle" cure in the same way he is a "miracle" doctor. Miracles don't exist. The Wangchuan flower doesn't exist. It is a literalized MacGuffin manifested by the meta-narrative to force Li Lianhua towards his Normative Happy Ending.

Because it makes no sense. Whenever it appears in the show, it appears sooo conveniently. We know Di Feisheng has people searching for it the whole time, but we never see how / where they found it. We see Shan Gudao emerge with it, but we don't know how either. And in 38, the drawer just happens to pop open during Di Feisheng's fight, revealing the flower... just in the nick of time. And then, later, Di Feisheng literally just walks over out of nowhere to put the box on the table where Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing are drinking outside Lotus Tower.

And we don't even see eventually Li Lianhua deliver it to the Emperor. All of that happens off-screen, which is totally wack. Unless... it never. actually. existed. (Btw, saving the emperor to preserve the status quo of his hierarchical / hegemonic rule.....I'm just saying!!! Classic normative narrative!!)

Li Lianhua knows this. And giving it away is his one final (succussful) attempt to break away from the narrative and forge his own life (...and death), and story, off the page.

[proosh]

iirc it was the anime that gave him his white hair red eyes design and hima just kept it and adapted it, but ignore me

(in response to this meta)

Huh, I hadn't been aware of that! I'm personally a touch dubious on Studio Deen's (meta)narrative awareness in regards to their intention with that change, but I think the analysis mostly still stands as-is, given the canonical adoption of the design change anyway.

Thank you for the note though, I do appreciate it!!

[supernaturalsidepiece]

SUPERNATURAL 2005 - 2020. (More)

[brad-brace]

Men writing women writing men writing women writing men

---

He smirked at her, deviously, and her heart skipped a beat.  

"You think you're so charming" she said, raising an eyebrow sassily but putting poison in her words, "but you're wrong".  

He frowned for an instant but then smiled more broadly, his perfect teeth showing just a little bit.  

"Then why are you so charmed by me?", he said, a dangerous glint in his eyes.  

'You bastard, how dare you!', she thought, and hated the blushing she could feel spreading through her cheeks. She wasn't about to let this, this handsome devil take all control away from her!  

She stood up and resisted the urge to throw the glass of wine on his face. 'Be dignified' Julie thought to herself, and then just gave him her best dismissive look and turned around to leave.  

That was when he grabbed her wrist. His powerful hand warm on her skin, holding her so gently, and yet so powerfully, like fur covered handcuffs.  

She looked down at his hand, his bare forearm, the muscles dancing under his skin as he deftly controlled his own strength.  

---   

Emily sat back from her laptop, her eyes glued to the words on the screen, her heavy breathing moving her generous breasts up and down, up and down. Before she could control herself, her hands began to caress her own boobs. She needed to keep writing, but her sensitive breasts were now demanding all her attention. Soon she was openly fondling her gorgeous boobs, they were beautiful and she knew it, and also so sensitive, and she never wore a bra.  

A sigh leaving her sensuous lips, Emily managed to go back to writing, but she didn't bother rearranging her crop top, letting her boobs peek out.  

---

"Please", he said, "stay". Then he smiled again that wicked smile which, by now, Julie was beginning to consider her own undoing. "I promise to be good", he added, but somehow that 'good' had sounded so very bad.  

Julie hesitated. What was she going to do anyway? He had brought her to Paris, for God's sake! A tremor ran up and down her stomach as she reminded herself of the danger inherent in this situation. She had come to Paris with this man. But truth be told, she would have gone with him to a McDonalds… or to Hell. But she wasn't about to let him know the effect he had on her.  

"Get your hand off of me", she said, loading as much disdain as she could summon into her words.  

He let her wrist go, staring deeply into her eyes, and without breaking eye contact -god damn those steely blue eyes-, he took his phone. Deftly, not glancing even once at the device, he dialed a quick contact.  

"Sir", answered a voice on the phone.  

"John, drive the lady to the airport, tell Mark to fly her home. She will not have any issues at customs". He said to the person on the other side of the line, and hung up. The last part had been a simple statement of fact. No, a simple statement of power.  

He sat back and kept looking at Julie, it was her move now. Where did he get all that damn confidence? How did he know that Julie was going to hesitate for so long, knowing she should leave, knowing she would stay?  

Julie cursed him and his steely blue eyes, and his confidence and his, his power, but then she sat back down.  

---

Emily was trembling now, her boobs shaking deliciously as she did. Her scrumptious toes wiggling and rubbing against the carpet, her long bare legs rubbing against each other. She was wearing what she always wore when she was writing, tiny shorts, with no panties, and a tiny, tight crop top, with no bra. She moved her round hips, rubbing her bubble butt against her chair. She already knew where the story was going, but she didn't know if she could take it there before having to…

Emily took the glass of wine she had been drinking while she wrote, but instead of taking a sip she poured it all over her crop top to cool herself off. Her nipples, already hard, hardened more. Then she lifted her long, sculptural legs and placed her dainty feet on her desk, admiring her own skin illuminated by the laptop's screen. She ran her hands up and down her thighs and her calves. It was amazing how she had these gorgeous legs, and she didn't even have to exercise! Really she could be a model, or a porn star, but she was too nerdy and brainy for that. She took off her glasses, which she barely needed, and sexily put the tip of the arm between her sensuous lips.  

---

The sound of the vintage typewriter stopped and Stephan stood up, flexing his neck and his shoulders, then cracking his long, nimble fingers.  

"You know you shouldn't do that", I told him.  

He looked at me and smiled shyly, then he pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter I'd gotten him at that yard sale, and offered it to me.  

"Tell me what you think, you know I really value your input", he said. I got lost for a moment in his eyes, slightly puffy and adorable, and his rebellious hair, which always seemed to get wilder when he wrote.  

I took the paper.  

"So, what are you trying to achieve here?" I asked as I began to read.  

"Well, I'm trying to create a deconstruction of gender normative erotica, highlighting its problematic aspects".  

I nodded, putting on my most serious expression, while inside me, my heart melted. It was so adorable when he tried his best at being an ally, yet there was that uncertainty in his voice, born out of his inner acknowledgement of his limitations as a cis straight man.  

I finished reading and looked at him, as he tried to hide his eagerness to listen to my feedback.  

"I like what you've done with the male gaze in the voice of the unnamed narrator describing Emily. But I'm not sure about Emily's own voice. Aren't you worried that in your haste to articulate a toxic narrative, you may be replicating a different one?"  

His eyes widened.  

"You think I could be doing that?" he asked, and his gaze shifted slightly past me, as he looked inward, taking in my comment in its entirety.  

"I think it's good to consider the possibility" I said, enjoying contemplating the outward manifestations of his inner workings.  

He shook his head in acceptance and smiled his silly lopsided smile.  

"You may be right," he said, chuckling apologetically.  

I smiled too and got up from the bed, walked up to him and sat on his lap, ruffling his wild brown locks which had begun showing strands of gray, just enough to be interesting.  

"I love that you try so hard", I told him, feeling happy and content as he wrapped his arms around me.  

"I love that you always guide me," he said, resting his cheek on my arm.  

---

Ana put down her cell phone and took a deep yearning breath. Lately she had been writing too much about Stephan. 'Am I getting obsessed with my own OC?' she thought. 'Why can't there be men like that in real life?'.  

She stared at the roof, lost in her thoughts of the perfect man in constant self deconstruction. Then she began to play with her boobs which were awesome boobs that boobed very boobily.

[ethanhuntfemmefatale]

I’m always gutted when Vincent dies. I’m fully connected to him from the moment he reacts to those coyotes in the road, and although he gets more brutal and less open from that moment on I feel like I know something of him from that scene, and I can never shake it. I get what you’re saying about Collateral, but I think I see it slightly differently in terms of what Michael Mann does with his protagonists, and the moral stance he returns to time and again in his films.

I don’t feel like Mann is pitting Vincent and Max against each other as binaries in the way a film of this type classically would. We can’t fully reject Vincent even though the convention of narrative film almost requires us to because Mann won’t let us: Mann gives us his skill and ethical integrity, casting Tom Cruise (even against type) is a deliberate appeal to identification, and Vincent has the propulsion: he is the force and the ethical voice, which appeals to the position of a hero in the narrative even though Vincent is most assuredly the danger.

We also can’t fully back Max: he is timid, he is reticent. He has great skill but doesn’t value it, and he lives in soft delusions making his ethical integrity weak. Max is playing a construct of himself just as much as Vincent is but for the bulk of the narrative it’s Max’s construct that seems exposed.

There’s incoherency in Collateral, because there’s this push pull between which of the two Mann wants you to feel close to, to like, even to root for, and it’s so tied in to his idea of integrity and masculinity and truth. It fascinates me because we do get closer to Max as the story progresses, but I don’t think it’s because Max is the inherent good set up by the narrative: it’s because Max has the propulsive character development of becoming more and more like Vincent. Vincent and Max are shown to be much closer than both expect or Max allows for multiple times - Vincent’s respect for Max comes from him demonstrating great skill at his job. Max adopts Vincent’s persona to protect himself from the potential violence of Felix. They both occupy space in the world as workers operating within a pressurising system that erodes their autonomy. Vincent’s ethical integrity allows him to navigate this with a defined sense of function and, he believes, truth. Max is missing this. He’s never going to call the girl. He’s never getting that car. He’s never going to that island. So long as thats the case, we pull towards Vincent. In order to defeat Vincent (and it is solely luck that he does) and pull the audience on side, Max has to take parts of Vincent and amalgamate them to who he is so that he’s never going to be Max-without-Vincent again. What each of them is lacking is reflected in the other, but Max is the one given the capacity to adapt (which Vincent pushes him into) and Vincent is given the ultimate gift and curse of ethical integrity and ethical inflexibility.

As Max’s position as the propulsive hero fully forms (not until he holds up the police officer, very Vincent) we are given the narrative ok to identify more fully with him - Vincent in contrast becomes almost pure function at this point, exposing his slavish pursuit of duty in a way that puts him closer to Max’s position in the system at the start of the movie - chained to the job, cog in the machine. But what fascinates me again about collateral is we’re given this new hero to identify with just in time to feel his sorrow in losing Vincent. His soft assurance that the next stop is close by, his quiet accompaniment when Vincent is still ruminating on anyone noticing his death at all, is genuinely moving. Vincent’s death is kind of devastating. As an audience, I think there’s a sense of rightness to max living: he was innocent and caught up in machinations beyond his control. But it doesn’t accompany a celebration of Vincent’s demise: we feel we’ve lost something. A chance to know him. We’re closer to Vincent than we admit and there’s something that connects us to him despite, despite, despite. I think Mann is playing with the fact that you know you should feel relieved and victorious, just like Max should, and you don’t, like Max doesn’t.

In terms of queerness, I think it’s there and I think it’s in all of Mann’s ‘city’ films. There is a deep bond based on masculinity and affinity and mirroring that runs through all of these movies. His protagonists are othered by inability to conform to dominant systems, conventional ways of living and of earning a living. Mann explores this inexplicable bond that men develop under that pressure over and over again. Honestly, it’s a whole essay on it’s own and I’m not sure I’d even want to tackle it because I think Mann is a complex filmmaker who is working on multiple frameworks and I wouldn’t feel confident working out the structure of their interplay without a lot more thought. But I totally see it in Mann’s work and I think in Collateral it adds to the melancholy in that parting. And it ramps up that coyote scene like a million percent.

(Also oh my god SORRY sorry this girl is out of control please feel free to just delete this lmfao)

hi!!!!! ok so i've read this ask like. 5 times? because i love it so much. and i want to start off by saying how much I love your thoughts on movies and admire the way you think about/write about them. And I also want to say that I hope I will be able to live up to the ideas you've presented here in my response. you make some really excellent points that influence the way I think about the movie. It's always an issue for me when watching a film to parse intentionality--how much of what im seeing and feeling is coming from the text, and how much is me having strong reactions that aren't actually based in the reality of the story that the movie is trying to tell. The issues that collateral brought up for me were mainly that I loved the movie, but Vincent as a character hit too close to home, and I felt caught by the feeling of loss that you describe and didn't know what to do with it...it's a strange impulse to watch a movie trying to figure out the emotions you're "supposed" to be feeling, but I kept having that urge. I tend to be very prickly and reactionary about issues of "irredeemable characters fated for death". Looking at your ideas I think I am starting to understand the nuances of the movie better. I also haven't seen any other Mann films and am interested to see more of his work so I can grasp more of the ideas you're talking about and get a bigger context for Collateral. Part of the issue I kept coming up against in my feelings about the movie was that i felt the push-and-pull that you mention, which i described as the "zoo animal" feeling, where vincent is a figure that we're supposed to feel connected to...sometimes. And other times we're cut off from him. The moments of vulnerability with vincent have an almost voyeuristic quality, too. It didn't occur to me to realize that a similar effect happens with Max. He isn't always an open book, and like you mentioned he's playing a role, which makes the issue of his identity a complicated one. It doesn't help that neither of these men is any good at introspection. There is a similar voyeurism to the audience's relationship with Max (it really struck me in Max's introduction in the very beginning of the film, something about all those close up hand shots), a spectator quality. He's not an audience stand in. We're supposed to watch him and try to figure him out, sometimes identify with him, and it all changes and develops throughout the movie.

I like your point about the two of them influencing each other, and also your point about the way that both of them are in similar positions as workers, invisible, obedient, playing a role. The two of them even seem to think of their jobs in relatively similar ways--both denying attachment. The running bit about Vincent's murders, the bullet and the fall killed him, I didn't. and Max's job being temporary. When you talk about the idea of vincent's gift/curse of ethical integrity and and ethical inflexibility, I can't help but think of the moment in the...club, is it? when Vincent starts killing people specifically to defend Max. that moment was so striking to me in first watch, and I didn't totally know how to parse it, but it seemed indicative of that sense of integrity, even loyalty, that Vincent seems to display more and more as the film goes on. He's the one who says that they're in this together. What's interesting about that instinct is that from what I can tell it seems to be coming from a similar place to his rigid dependence on his job and his role. In contrast Max becomes increasingly capable of confronting and hurting Vincent as he gets to know him and takes on more Vincent-like qualities.

I love your point about queerness in Mann's films and it makes me want to watch more of them so I can understand it all better...there's so much quiet complicated intimacy going on between vincent & max it's fascinating and it does break my heart a little. or even a lot

Thank you again for the excellent thoughts and perspective!!!

[mjcomics]

Superhero Comics and the Meta-Narrative

The narrative within superhero media can and has explored a variety of concepts, from weighted stories of grief and loss to light-hearted material focused on bombastic action. This freedom allows for creators to discuss superhero narratives as a form of superhero narrative. This can be viewed as a meta-narrative, a term which Waugh describes as a ‘fictional writing which self-consciously and…

[jimothy-g-brooks]

Plot “twist” I like to see: Where the bad guy’s big bad ultimate goal is foiled and/or untenable but they’re still going to attempt it which is going to do a a-lot-less-but-still-very bad.  Examples: A terrorist gets a hold of a nuke and is going to try and trigger WWIII by blowing up a city. All relevant leaders and agencies have been clued in, however. Besides, since it’s not an ICBM, who will they actually blame? So, WWIII won’t start if a city gets blown up, but a city is still going to get blown up.

Or a cult is try to resurrect their dark god so that it may rule the world with a thousand years of darkness and they plan to sacrifice a whole city to do it. However, what has become clear to the protags is that this dark god is deader than dead and the only thing the cult leader has been listening to is negative energy fueled tulpa. However, a city is still going to get sacrificed.

Something that significantly lowers the stakes of the conflict but doesn’t erase them. It may succeed in heightening the tension if your head space is “The author wouldn’t destroy the world, but they might kill a whole city.” 

[gotasked4theurlsoigaveitawaylmao]

saphangeles name saphangeles curse of having privacy just thrown out the window

[prokopetz]

Okay, so: the premise of the Final Fantasy VII remake is that the audience's demand for the remake to follow exactly the same plot as the original has manifested as a horde of evil ghosts who intervene in order to keep the story on the expected rails, with a particular emphasis on ensuring that characters in the remake die at the same times and under the same circumstances as their original counterparts. At the end of the remake's first instalment, Cloud and friends fight and defeat the king of the Evil Plot Ghosts, an act which breaks time and creates a multiverse where everybody's fanfic is real. Sephiroth subsequently merges with all the fanfic versions of himself and becomes some sort of fucked up metanarrative god. Later, Cloud simultaneously succeeds and fails in preventing Aerith's death, which partially dislocates him from the prime narrative reality, and he begins perceiving an adjacent universe where Zack never died. The Aerith of that universe then teams up with Cloud to fight Hyperdimensional Meta Bullshit Sephiroth, a battle that ends inconclusively when Sephiroth flees, stranding Zack-lives-universe Aerith in the prime narrative reality, though only Cloud can see her. The game closes with the revelation that, unbeknownst to everyone else, Sephiroth slipped the Black Materia into Cloud's pocket during their fight, setting in motion the events of the unpublished third instalment. Have I got all that straight?