#applied semiotics

[leapfrogstrategyconsulting]

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[dykesynthezoid]

Not to go full Kristevan semiotics but intentionally showing the flatline on Daniel’s laptop recording… cut in between the peaks and valleys, red…. one day you’re at a traffic light… green light… horns honking, you don’t move… horns honking, you don’t move… it’s about the boundary of start/stop, it’s about the repetition, it’s about intermittence… an empty space between spikes… one sentence clause, then another, up against each other, up-down, repeating, constructing boundary out of juxtaposition… red, green… it’s about what happens when the symbolic boundaries get broken… and what is a greater transgression of signified boundaries than a corpse. Death in the flesh. The realized abject. Horns honking, you don’t move. He never says, you’re dead. But we know. Green means go. You don’t go. The symbol has no meaning in the face of death. Boundaries broken. Meanings broken. All that careful construction simply crumbles.

Intermittence as a language of boundaries and therefore a language of inferred meaning but also a language of horror and yet, still, a language of the erotic. “It is intermittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic; the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance.” The erotic as a sort of liminal space, the flash between boundaries. The abject, and horror, as things that transgress those boundaries. The sublime, ashamed jouissance where these things overlap. The thrill.

One sentence clause, then another. Boundary by juxtaposition. Two symbols standing next to each other. Peaks and valleys. You, me. Me, you. The boundaries give meaning. I construct myself against you. But what happens when the boundaries between you and me no longer exist? What happens when I am you and you are me and our blood is one body?

Horror. A thrill. Death. Erotic where we overlap. No subjects remain. There is only an undefinable not-thing. An abject. This is monstrousness.

[i-fucked-your-milkshake]

I think it’s funny when people roll their eyes about all the time Sanderson spends on clothes and fashion, as if it’s not an integral part of the world building and character development. I did my undergrad thesis on fashion semiotics in Mistborn (primarily using Roland Barthes) and there’s a direct correlation between how Vin is dressing and where she’s at on the hero’s journey, but in a way that doesn’t feel obvious at first. So it’s interesting to read Yumi and see how Sanderson is utilizing the language of fashion to explore these worlds and characters. The changing room scene with Akane is more than just a cute romcom scene, it’s about the process of discovery. Which is obvious but I can’t help harkening back to Barthes, who co-opts De Saussure’s thoughts on language for the use of fashion.

De Saussure identifies two aspects of language and communication: langue and parole. Langue is the rules of a particular language (subject verb order, for example) and parole is how an individual uses those rules to express themselves. Barthes applies this idea to fashion. We’re given these arbitrary rules of fashion (even as simple as “one must be dressed in public”) and from there we learn to work within the parameters of those rules to outwardly express ourselves. There’s a difference between your favorite pair of jeans and the pair of slacks you wear to work; there’s a difference between the dress you wear to a job interview and the dress you wear on a date where you’re trying to fuck.

The changing room scene is Yumi shotgunning the concepts of langue and parole all at once. She is learning new rules (you can have your shoulders bare) while learning how to express herself within the parameters of those rules (you can wear a dress with bare shoulders and still cover your shoulders with another garment). It’s cute and sweet but also important. She’s learning not just how to express herself but also that she’s allowed to. There’s nothing frivolous about how Sanderson uses and describes fashion. It’s a direct outgrowth of the journeys he sends his characters on.

[beameized]

my bi cyno agenda and Collei's beef with Haitham (before he becomes her tutor and whatever grievances are laid to rest)

Also my Collei HCs:

Collei is that Cyno, Kaveh and Nari were quite excited to get her into their darshan after she finished her basics. Except she didn't really want to go there because they are fields of research that the Doctor often employed in his experiments. She feels her skin crawl just thinking about it and she's not sure if in-depth study would be empowering or triggering. And frankly, Collei didn't want to risk it.

She got the idea of going for Haravatat from Faruzan who taught her basic letters. She said semiotics was quite a flexible field of study, in that it encompasses other fields. And Collei liked that sense of security so she opted to apply for Haravatat.

Cyno asked Alhaitham's help here and he did enjoy helping out those who were earnest in their studies so Alhaitham's readily agreed. (Also he's gay for Cyno but yeah even if he was, he wouldn't agree if Collei was a difficult student... or would he?)

But anyway, I think Collei would struggle telling Nari the most because he did teach her quite a bit. And his expectations were the highest. But also he understands what Collei struggles with the most. And reassures her that her decision wouldn't change a thing and they'd always be academic brothers and sisters (Cyno too). There's hug and tears.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

I've asked myself many times over the course of three years about how would I react to information that comes to contradict a specific image I have about people. And the answer would differ, more or less, depending on a myriad of factors, such as my mental wellbeing, my attitude toward the fandom, the group, the members, etc. The truth is, I only knew how I would respond the moment it happens and I was pleasantly surprised in a way. I see it as a sign that I'm doing better or at least I'm on the path of doing better.

These are things that I didn't want to allow to come to surface in the way I used to handle the BTM blog. Perhaps because the point was to create a platform in which I could offer the rational, researched perspective which I considered to be the correct one. I'm not retracting any of that. I still believe that it is possible to offer a more complex perspective if I can back it up with knowledge from various fields, but it was also one of my defense mechanisms.

Without expanding on the personal reasons, it has become very easy for me to separate my rational and emotional side. So much, that even when I should be staying in the moment and let my emotions take space, I can't really do it, I need to come up with a rational explanation so it can make sense. I then applied this to BTS as well. I couldn't just say I like this group when someone would ask, I would have to tell them about all the studies I read and how my fascination is mostly intelectual, when in truth it was both. I used to talk about jikook only in the context of analysis, be it GCF through semiotics or various types of interpretations when it came to their performances or fandom reception in terms of their dynamics. It had to be in the context of rational fascination and curiosity because I was merely trying to justify myself on why I care that much about two strangers that I look at on my phone. Again, my intellectual curiosity is real, but that has always been only one side if the coin, but it was one that I pushed.

It's about shame actually. I can't actually accept that I have such an interest. It doesn't fit with the idea I have of myself. And sometimes I don't like it because it makes me question my intellect, my critical thinking. How can I be so good academically and at the same time I fear that I've fallen into a fandom trap? I'm smart, right? Right?

I'm sure a lot of people have dealt with or ar going through this process of cognitive dissonance. How does one deal with the mere idea that something they believe in based on their understanding of the world, their ability of decoding (not in a conspiracy sense, but in a Saussurean way) can turn out to be wrong? We see something that resembles a specific behavior that we are surrounded with our entire lives, sometimes we ourselves engage with, but we've identified it wrong on others? Of course, it's through the visual medium, one that is edited. It's a puzzle with large chunks missing, but we're getting a general idea of it. But we can be wrong. So how do we deal with that? Well, I don't have a correct answer.

Me in 2020/2021 would have been more affected because my mental health was not good. I was functionally depressed and I clinged so much onto BTS, Jikook and the small community that I found myself in at that time, that I would have felt a lot more torn than I am now.

A couple of years later and having to actually go through a situation in which my understanding of people's relationship might not be accurate, I realized I'm fine. And I think it's because it made me really register just now that I finally learned how to have fun with it. It took me three years. By having fun, I mean genuinely being able to simply enjoy the little things. I'm still on the path of not being ashamed for liking kpop or spending time talking about the dynamic/relationship of two people.

What prompted this post was reading what is currently being written in the jikook tag. Yes, I had this big introductory chunk that perhaps people won't bother reading, but I'm doing it for myself. If I can't be honest while writing stuff into the void for strangers to read, then what is the point?

I get frustrated very easily. I like debates and contradictory points of view, but not always. And that's because I like to be right. Almost all the time. So when I see something that I believe it lacks logic or I find it absurd, then my fingers are itching. I don't comment or DM people, I can control myself. I'd rather get out of the app and do something else.

What I want to say is I was surprised at how much fanfiction is being written. More that usual. Shipping contains a big deal of fanfiction by its nature. Gestures and events taking place at different times are interpreted and having information added that fills the gaps. People do that because they have to make sense of what they see.

They like to make relationship timelines. They speculate on first kisses and first sexual experiences. That's their imagination. None of us has any way of knowing. The element of fiction is heighted when people feel like they are losing control of the narrative. When they are unsure of what they are seeing. Which is what usually happens in the shipping community on a yearly basis. Anons flooding the bloggers' inboxes because they need confirmation or they didn't get any ship content in a month or two which means something is wrong.

There's this understanding that the shipper/supporter is delusional while the one who stops shipping is the rational one. From what I've observed throughout time and mostly now, that is a false distinction. The so-called rational fan makes use of fiction just as the shipper. The difference is in purpose. One talks about why the supposed romantic relationship is real and the other tries to refute that. But both categories seem to need fiction in order to build their arguments. That is because none of them have access to someone's private life and relationship, so the gaps need to be filled with speculation. There is no right or wrong version here, despite how much the idea is being pushed. And me writing about this won't make a difference. It's simply how the fandom works. The one who position themselves on the side of anti-delulu will always be seen as the less crazy one. The similarities will fade for the collective consciousness of the fandom.

I think it's difficult for a lot of people, regardless on which side they find themselves on, to accept that the option of simply not knowing is enough as well. Or knowing, but without getting anal about it. But it's hard and they write posts after posts, anons are sending asks over asks because there has to be a firm answer. Only a few allow themselves to be in between lines.

I'll bring back something that I always used to say. Shipping and involvement in the fandom is a lot more about us and less about the people we're talking about. It's about fullfiling some needs, of needing a community, of focusing on the idea of love. Those things can still be done in a way that still makes the experience enjoyable. But not everyone can and I'm not blaming it.

There's a way to just like how people behave with each other and imagine things without adding so much weight to it. Regardless of the true nature. It's our imagination, there's no need for a moral inquisition to tell anyone how to think or that they should stop thinking a certain way. Touching some grass is a cliche and an expression I ended up hating, but I do believe that being connected to discourse on a daily basis can really alter our sense of reality and what we consider to be real issues. We really should pay more attention to that and take some distance if necessary.

[vivalabunbun]

Hiii Viva~

Hope, you'll take your time to read this. It's not a request of course. I was simply curious about something. To be honest, I've read all your fics and my goodness, they are mind blowing and always make overwhelm with emotions. Specially how you portray Al-Haitham. Every fic of his feels like a fic and a character study all at once.

You know, in your recent fic, I just noticed that you said Alhaitham is a man logic and rationality, which is true. But isn't he from the Haravatat Darshan or a department that has something to do with studying and deciphering various scripts? Like isn't he a linguist? I thought he was a man associated with the humanities stream or something like that if we put it into modern terms. So, the question here is—why portray him as a man of science? Sure, he's a genius and an intellectual person but can a person really be that apt at two different disciplines? For example, I'm a political Science Honours student and honestly....I hate subjects that has anything to do with maths or science in general. 🥲 Does that make sense?

I'm not saying, you can't portray him like that or anything but rather the intent of doing so. And honestly, I think, you yourself are a highly intelligent individual. The way you put tid bits of practical information into the plot of fics says a lot about you, the author as well. I admire that quality and probably would like to know how you do it so effortlessly?

I really hope that I did not come off as criticizing or a dumb person in general. I was just curious and wanted to know. Hope, you'll read this.

Btw, Happy Basant Panchami from India, Viva. Today, we worship the goddess of knowledge, wisdom and arts here. Fun fact, it's actually kinda officially forbidden to study today, you know.

Hope, I didn't rant much....sorry, in advance. 🥲🌹

Arunima~

Hello! this is an interesting ask 🤔

From my understanding, Haravatat focuses on semiotics, which also includes linguistics. Linguistics is a field of science, the scientific study of languages. Because empirical research is involved along with empirical evidence.

Perhaps you were thinking about literature, which is of the humanities and academia. Although of course, there are possible overlaps between linguistics and literature.

Al Haitham liked to read abstruse academic journals from a young age, so I'd like to think tidbits of information from those journals would naturally bury themselves in his thoughts.

His thoughts and ponderings resemble those who have been part of the sciences. Disagree, question, challenge.

Thus, why he's a nerd (affectionate).

But of course, this is all from my perspective, which is different from yours, which is different from the next person.

It's what makes character writing interesting because everyone will view everyone differently.

Thank you for your ask and Happy (belated?) Basant Panchami!

Your ask brought up an interesting thought, why can't people be apt at both humanities and science?

All throughout history humanities and science have helped the other progress. They are not opposites nor should they be. They progress thought, which in turn helps us better understand knowledge and the world around us.

Disagree, question, and challenge the paradigm is how the humanities and science have gotten where they are today, and how they will get to tomorrow.

I'm not an intelligent person, I'm just a curious person. I like reading a wide variety of things from fiction to academic essays, even mathematical theories in textbooks and notes from friends in premed. Because I'm curious about them.

Then I like applying them to what I create because I love creating. Little factoids here and there because I think it's interesting, learning about how things work so I can better draw the things I like.

No one has to be a genius or a prodigy to be apt at both, just be open-minded and willing to look at both. There is also nothing wrong about only liking one or the other.

Let's just not pit them against each other because then it'll just be destructive.

Maybe many have forgotten the symbiotic relationship between humanities and sciences.

[cottagehorror-lesbians-stuff]

how the image of abel and cain was used to portray lee dong-sik and lee yu-yeon

a not so short draft of an essay

ricardo j. quinones

1- abel and cain

not everyone is familiar with biblical stories (and it's normal) so here is their story as you can find it in some versions of the genesis, further analyses will be cited as i go:

wikipedia, genesis 4:1-18

2- lee dong-sik and lee yu-yeon

. since they are twins, their link to one another is reinforced. where age and gender could semiotically separate them, the fact that they are twins means that they are half each other's whole person. it is of course not true when you apply it to a realistic dimension. but on a symbolic level, they are doubles and they do reflect each other.

. lee yu-yeon was chosen to be the conventionally successful one, leading a good christian life, to whom praise and opportunities were given due to her good temperament. arguably it was subjective.

. lee dong-sik was the 'hopeless' child, constantly compared to his alter-ego. but it does not always seem fair or justified.

. however, the twins did not apply society's judgement to one another. lee dong-sik did not resent lee yu-yeon for being well-considered. lee yu-yeon did not resent lee dong-sik for not being as successful and hard-working as her. they cared for each other, and did not let external factors tear them apart or create jealousy and dissensions between them. if they ever argued, i best believe it most likely had nothing to do with the values of society or of their religious community, but just brother-sister shenanigans.

3- lee dong-sik as cain and lee yu-yeon as abel

. lee yu-yeon and abel are symbolically the first murder victims, both in the bible and in the context of the show. lee yu-yeon starts the storyline.s that we are following, even though previous crimes had been committed. you can see my post on lee yu-yeon here, where i mention it separately. on top of this, ricardo j. quinones mentions abel as such:

and indeed lee yu-yeon is the missing piece in solving the crimes in manyang. she is also the christlike figure of innocence who receives the most compassion due to her integration in society's conventions.

. lee yu-yeon and abel are both favored by higher authorities, be it by god in the bible, or by adults, society, and religious community in beyond evil. both in the bible and in beyond evil, this preference proves to be arbitrary, difficult to substantially back up, and unfair. even perhaps not willed by the concerned protagonists. this preference is also the reason why their deaths become so pivotal in each story.

. lee dong-sik in parallel is not cain. but he is turned into cain by figures of authority. he is framed, and most importantly, rendered responsible for his sister's disappearance. if we refer to the wikipedia passage of the genesis i included, it is textually visible that both lee dong-sik and cain reject at first the responsibility for their sibling's disappearance. only, one is being honest, and the other deceptive. cain's story was the easiest narrative to apply to lee dong-sik: the jealous, treacherous brother who stole a precious life because of a wounded pride. and bodies were found in a field where lee dong-sik's guitar pick was once planted, echoing to the first crime in the bible, and its perpetrator.

. arguably, lee yu-yeon's disappearance and the accusations against lee dong-sik echo to the cain-abel story, as ricardo j. quinones puts it:

the twins' story marks the shift between what manyang could have been before the murders and what it became, a shift in its dynamic, the end of a way of life. paralleling the cain-abel story and lee dong-sik - lee yu-yeon's is also useful in the exploration of family dynamics, and how preferences between siblings can prove detrimental.

. since the unconscious of manyang perceives lee dong-sik as the bearer of cain's appearance, he receives equal punishment, although he is in fact innocent. he is cursed with being a wanderer. and with that: an untouchable wanderer, so that his punishment is even greater than just being an outcast. he is unpunishable for a crime he is believed to have committed, but he is forever judged poorly by his peers. he is not sent to prison, but he never reintegrates society per se.

ernesto livorni points out cain's condition as follows:

. we can also take quite literally the fact that god curses cain with never being able to cultivate the soil again. lee dong-sik is left to hope for lee yu-yeon fo twenty years, unable to find any traces of her wherever he is looking. and his endless quest takes a major part of his life away from him, forever. he is left living on nothing, always seeking what he cannot find.

4- some other thoughts

. now, that was the most obvious links that came to my mind. but the show in itself insists on deconstructing the cain narrative built around lee dong-sik. and to do so, as aforementioned, they portray the twins' relation as bulletproof to society's imposed rhetoric on their dynamics.

they loved each other, and supported each other. there was no jealousy, no resentment, no competition. love is the final answer provided by the writers of the show to end dissensions, or to cope with them within communities.

. in parallel, lee dong-sik was able to break away from his curse when he could expose the truth and find lee yu-yeon. he was also able to receive punishment for his misdeeds, and able to clear his name, to find a new sense of community.

. lee yu-yeon died in a field, yes, but her body was trapped in the wall of her house. this also breaks away from abel and cain's narrative: the evil was not her brother. it was something else. the town's people were wrong in assuming lee dong-sik could do something like this to his own sister. not being able to find her body for so long was lee dong-sik's curse and redemption. he both suffered from a lack of closure, and then gained a definite means to prove that he was innocent.

. i'd like to conclude my brief analysis with once again a quote from ricardo j. quinones, which i think sums up well the importance of how the cain-abel story was used in the context of beyond evil:

[indigosfindings]

🔥

(Creepypasta)

this is less creepypasta specifically and more general (applies to, like, horror games, horror-adjacent Posts, etc) but like: im very tired of the way that "this place is not a place of honour, nothing of value is here," etc gets deployed in Online Horror. like, the whole point of that passage is that it's a semiotic exercise in how to communicate those sentiments nonverbally. writing out or dictating the whole spiel defeats the purpose of it! like, if youre leaving a warning message in english you wouldnt need to talk around it, you would just say "WARNING: NUCLEAR WASTE, DO NOT ENTER"

[leapfrogstrategyconsulting]

Revolutionise Marketing: Leapfrog Strategy Consulting - Your Experts in Marketing Semiotics

Leapfrog Strategy Consulting revolutionises marketing with its profound expertise in Marketing Semiotics. Our tailored solutions decode the cultural and symbolic meanings embedded in consumer behaviour, enabling brands to craft compelling marketing strategies. Gain a competitive edge in the market and amplify your brand's resonance with the power of Marketing Semiotics from Leapfrog Strategy Consulting.

[essektheylyss]

What's dunamis, in your words? For the uninitiated

So, with apologies for watering down an already watered down scientific metaphor, there's an anecdote that comes up a lot if you read any sort of pop science books on quantum theory or physics, wherein a professor burns a sheet of paper and tells a class, "All of the information on the paper still exists in the ashes," because in theory, quantum information cannot be destroyed. This analogy is super metaphorical, generally referring to the idea that, for example, anything that gets pulled into a black hole is not in fact lost, it's just beyond our reach, with the understanding that "information" is a highly broad term applied to many, many things and in this realm of physics it has a very particular meaning that most people do not consider when they hear the word 'information,' but this isn't a semiotics lecture.

Anyway, as such, it gets completely misconstrued as the idea of quite literally being able to reconstruct whatever notes or ideas were recorded on that paper, which is not accurate in real world physics. Information as ideas and concepts are not recorded in subatomic particles, at least not in anyway we can access or reconstruct.

However... it could be true in an arcane system, if you wanted it to, cuz why not! And given dunamis's impact on probability, and pulling from alternate timelines and potential, as well as the fact that consecution suggests souls are held within a beacon and then put back into a newly-born body, I'm essentially of the mind that dunamis could take the place of those subatomic particles and, when manipulated in the arcane sense, can be used to essentially reconstruct conceptual information of the universe. (That's the very basic idea, anyway, and I'm just using this for fic fodder, but if you are interested in wading through a very introspective chunk of fic for more, it's mostly in here.)

Which is just slightly to the left (and essentially could be a next possible conjecture) of what Caleb described.

[against-forms-recognizable]

I've been getting into witchcraft lately, as a hobby where I can synthesize all of my queer theory, anarchist, and rationalist tendencies and thoughts into fun praxis that has a positive effect on my life and allows me to connect with my close friends in deeper and new ways (and sometimes have hot ritual sex). The specific framework I've been leaning on a lot is chaos magick, which is a sort of applied semiotics: it takes from Wittgenstein and Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari and more to build a system for the intentional manipulation of the layered maps of meaning that constitute our assembled reality, to produce change in ourselves in accordance with our will. ... Maybe? I'm still trudging through all of those thinkers, but I think that's a good working definition.

I plan to start writing progress posts discussing the design of certain rituals and the intended effects, along with a progress report later on. First up will be my homebrewed version of the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram (LBRP), linked below, modified to remove Christian imagery and to change the intended effect slightly.

Disclaimer that I obviously don't believe the supernatural exists, I just think magick serves as an interesting framework to use the power of stories and make believe to introduce changes in our own lives, to prod our brain to think in new ways, to form habits and settle into more healthy mindsets through regular practice.

If anyone knows of any wizards in the adjacency who have already dabbled in this I'd be interested to discuss with them.

Link to the LBRP:

https://www.llewellyn.com/encyclopedia/article/5139

[i-fucked-your-milkshake]

Really, tumblr offers one of the best examples of semiotics in action that I can think of on the internet. So much of the humor and interactions on this site revolve around the collective understanding of images to communicate. Semiotics comes down to signs and how we read them. We can apply this to language but so much of semiotic understanding is non-verbal, which is what makes tumblr kind of unique from this perspective. If I posted:

You’d understand it. While this meme has spread somewhat, it has a meaning on tumblr that we can easily divine.

Semiotics is (basically) the study of the communication of signs and symbols. In order for something to have meaning you must have a signifier (the method of communication), the signified (what is being communicated), which both work together to form the sign (the signal that something is being communicated).

If I posted an image of Castiel saying “I love you” in another ecosystem, some people might get it but most people wouldn’t. They don’t have the ability to understand that there is a sign there. But if I posted that same image on tumblr, your heart would stop a little bit because you’d expect some fucked up news to be delivered.

Same with “I like your shoelaces.” Said to a random person they’d have no idea what the fuck I was on about. Said to a tumblr user? They’d know. In this case the signifier is the phrase “I like your shoelaces” and the signified is “I know you’re on tumblr.” If you’re not on tumblr you don’t know the “correct” response.

The meme ecosystems of other websites certainly function in similar ways but what makes tumblr unique is our inability to let jokes fucking die. Memes and jokes become part of the linguistic ecosystem and become legitimate methods of communication.

This is what you mean when you say “we’re speaking in hieroglyphs.” You’re not necessarily wrong when you say that (hieroglyphs, like all written language, being a form of semiotic expression) but what you’re actually doing is reaching a kind of semiotic oneness with the larger tumblr culture that enables you to decipher and discern meaning where an outsider might not.

And that fucking rips so fucking hard.

[darkmaga-retard]

A recent "peer-reviewed" paper from 2 authors in Korea and Japan should have been sent to me for rejection.

GeoffPainPhD

Sep 08, 2024

Shame on all who have shared the nonsensical microscopy “study” of evaporating Covid19 Jab samples claiming “Self-assembling Artificial Constructions” and other weird descriptors.1

Young Mi Lee describes herself as:

a practicing physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, and is also a reproductive endocrinologist; because of her work over the last three years she has become an expert in stereomicroscopy and in the microbiology of incubated COVID-19 injectables, especially, Pfizer and Moderna

Daniel Broudy describes himself as having:

a doctorate in applied psycholinguistics

and this should ring alarm bells:

His research integrates research in cognitive linguistics, developmental and social psychology, semiotics, and communication theory as an effort to describe the ways in which centers of power organize campaigns of persuasion and engineer consent for policies and actions across cultures.

Here is some real science published 32 years ago.2

Can you guess why Lee and Broudy don’t mention it?

The Figure caption reads:

How many of my readers will share this across social media?

I told John Campbell what I thought about him using his mass following to spread junk.3

See also useful contributions from my friends, will update as I find them.4

[apocrypals]

Weird question maybe but how do you both like Christmas so much?

I am ex-evangelical in the way that probably lots of your listeners are and now that I don’t have the like church-y part of Christmas I just kind of feel bad about it :/ and you guys have such a genuine love for Christmas it seems like !! So if you have any advice about liking Christmas and not getting bogged down in bad theology feelings i would appreciate !! Or if that’s too big of an ask thanks for the show anyways and I hope you’re listening to Darlene love !!

A number of years ago, Chris did a podcast episode with our mutual friend Elle Collins about the joys of secular Christmas, but it doesn't seem to exist on internet anymore, alas.

But without even diving deeply into the semiotics of the thing, I feel there's much to like about Christmas at an absolutely surface level with minimal religious trappings: lights, decorations, music, food, candy, hot drinks, getting together with friends and family, parties, that kind of stuff. For a lot of people, that kind of thing is enough to enjoy Christmas even if they don't have a religious attachment.

However, if you need something more, the things I like to think about when it comes to Christmas are that it's a celebration at the darkest time of the year, when much of nature sleeps or dies, and in a way, we're forced to confront our own mortality. BUT, Christmas (and other winter holidays; this isn't a Christmas exclusive) reminds us that life and death is a cycle: today is dark, but tomorrow is a little brighter. If you're no longer into the idea of an incarnate deity born that man no more may die, consider the holly, the evergreen. If they can tough out the winter, so can we. "Hope," saith the holly.

And we foster that hope with lights and songs and games and music and good food and good will and forgiveness toward the other people around us. Consider these verses from a favorite song of mine:

All hail to the days that merit more praise Than all the rest of the year And welcome the nights that double delights As well for the poor as the peer Good fortune attend each merry man's friend That doth but the best that he may Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs To drive the cold winter away 'Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined To think of small injuries now If wrath be to seek, do not lend her your cheek Nor let her inhabit thy brow Cross out of thy books malevolent looks Both beauty and youth's decay And wholly consort with mirth and sport To drive the cold winter away

In that podcast I was talking about at the top, Chris talked about how he loves the very idea of Santa Claus, because he represents humankind at their most selfless. Not just in the idea that there's a powerful figure whose whole deal is giving other people things, but that Christmas morning is likely to be the happiest a kid will feel all year, and parents are willing to give someone else credit for it. It almost staggers the mind, tbh.

On top of that, for me personally, one of the major draws of the Christmas season is the wealth of folklore that comes along with it, but your mileage may vary on that.

Anyway, of course, all this winter stuff only applies if you're in the Northern Hemisphere; sorry if you're in Australia or something, I don't have any metaphors for you.

[skalidris]

i would absolutely love to hear more about your course on semiotic analysis in theatre and how it had influenced your opinions on mdzs/cql, when/if you have brain space to talk about it. 🧋

First, thank you for asking--I hadn't actually thought about how that course influenced my take on mdzs and the derivative canons, but in hindsight, it really super did.

Now that I have given it some thought, I should say first that it's been a while since I studied this, and also a while since I first read mdzs (I'm using 'mdzs' as a shorthand; I actually watched s1 of the donghua first, then s1 of the audio drama, and then I read the full novel. cql wasn't a thing back in those days yet, and neither were the later donghua seasons).

Read more as I'm longwinded! Content: Theatre Studies Semiotics, Why I Use This

Semiotics, even just for theatre, has a lot going on. I'll be simplifying! Very simply, semiotics is about a thing called signs. These signs are expressions of something; rather, they are vehicles of communication. Anything that communicates is a sign. Signs communicate some abstract idea, or carry a meaning--something like that.

It's absolutely irrelevant whether someone put a meaning into the sign, or why that sign came to exist. Intent doesn't matter. Since all material expressions (also, words, or sensory experiences--they're material compared to their meanings) are signs, and the duty of a sign is to carry a meaning, that meaning is what can be derived from the sign. Itself.

This dualistic definition is basically associated with a guy called Ferdinand de Saussure. In the semiotics of equally famous guy Charles Peirce, you get a third category. It's kind of complicated, but for these purposes, I'm gonna go ahead and call that third category the system for understanding the sign--the incoporation of the 'thought' of the sign back into a framework of ideas and concepts.

The essence of semiotics in theatre in so far as I mentioned it in that post is, everything on the stage is part of the performance. Our professors had real-life anecdotes for this, but it's basically this: If in the middle of a staged fight, an actor spits blood and collapses on the stage, some audiences might be empathically upset, others might laugh, someone else might go 'woah. how did they do that?'

But no matter what, all of those responses assume that this is acted--someone, several someones, costume and blood and light and acting, came together to portray 'death' in this way. But that actor actually just died for real, in real life. That's why, intent isn't important for semiotics. Although you can certainly discuss intent, ultimately, once you've agreed to the existence of signs and signification, intent is at most secondary.

Obviously, a novel isn't a play, and neither is a tv show, or a donghua, or an audio drama. Semiotics absolutely can be applied to anything, but I'm specifically talking about theatre here. I personally don't see this as an issue, first, because cql and the audio drama are recorded performance arts (they fall within theatre studies already). two, because I'm fundamentally regarding reading/watching/listening as unique, non-repeatable events in which i, the audience, and you, the audience, are never really passive at all. <<key concept in theatre studies, in particular the work of the theatre semiotician erika fischer-lichte.

I like this approach for mdzs, and it's definitely partly because I just liked JGY so much! And I was not really in a majority with that, and back then, people also didn't like xiyao as much as they do in this post-zzj&lhk era. I wanted to understand this, and I also wanted to know whether I was wrong to like him. Not because it would've made me stop, but because 'I've decided to ignore the author' and 'the author doesn't contradict me' are really different starting positions for thinking about something, and I wanted to know which I was in!

(If I want to stubbornly contradict something, I better make sure I haven't made up a strawman from misunderstanding first. That sort of idea)

Semiotics sort of.. side-steps this? The conclusion I came to is that the text creates its own framework for interpretation. It does this structurally, by what information is presented, omitted, changed, etc, when and how. It does this in how characters talk, in what cues they take from each other (or don't!), in what the narration comments on.

In other words, the conclusion is that, just as in theater, regardless of what intention is behind any individual sign of the story, regardless how it came to exist in the story, it's there, and part of the story. So I am obligated to consider as part of the total network of signs that make up the bigger-scale meanings, such as 'all kinds of intent result in destruction if the circumstances are bad enough' and 'what happens after the terrible thing happened' and so on and so forth

If something doesn't have a meaning, because the whole story is made up of signs and system, it becomes a sign with a meaning anyway. Due to peer pressure.

Luckily, Peircean semiotics allow for system interpretation, so signs like that, the ones whose meanings we can't incorporate well, it's possible to decide not to incoporate them in analysis or whatever ^^

And of course, your own framework might be lacking. Mdzs was my first webnovel, and my first danmei, so with this philosophy in mind I set out to read several more in order to give me more confidence in understanding the story. That is, in order to decide what 'counts' when creating an interpretation and 'what doesn't count' is made easier with a more suitable framework. However, I still think that the story itself gives you the correct cues anyway--they just might get distorted by your framework.

[was gonna put an example here, since I dunno if this makes sense, but I'm too tired. Mayb later.]