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qqueenofhades · 3 years ago

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Hi. You made a post a couple of days ago about how queer historical fiction doesnt need to be defined only by homophobia. Can you expand on that a bit maybe? Because it seems interesting and important, but I'm a little confused as to whether that is responsible to the past and showing how things have changed over time. Anyway this probably isn't very clear, but I hope its not insulting. Have a good day :)

Hiya. I assume you're referring to this post, yes? I think the main parameters of my argument were set out pretty clearly there, but sure, I'm happy to expand on it. Because I'm a little curious as to why you think that writing a queer narrative (especially a queer fictional narrative) that doesn't make much reference to or even incorporate explicit homophobia is (implicitly) not being "responsible to the past." I've certainly made several posts on this topic before, but as ever, my thoughts and research materials change over time. So, okay.

(Note: I am a professional historian with a PhD, a book contract for an academic monograph on medieval/early modern queer history, and soon-to-be-several peer-reviewed publications on medieval queer history. In other words, I'm not just talking out of my ass here.)

As I noted in that post, first of all, the growing emphasis on "accuracy" in historical fiction and historically based media is... a mixed bag. Not least because it only seems to be applied in the Game of Thrones fashion, where the only "accurate" history is that which is misogynistic, bloody, filthy, rampantly intolerant of competing beliefs, and has no room for women, people of color, sexual minorities, or anyone else who has become subject to hot-button social discourse today. (I wrote a critical post awhile ago about the Netflix show Cursed, ripping into it for even trying to pretend that a show based on the Arthurian legends was "historically accurate" and for doing so in the most simplistic and reductive way possible.) This says far more about our own ideas of the past, rather than what it was actually like, but oh boy will you get pushback if you try to question that basic premise. As other people have noted, you can mix up the archaeological/social/linguistic/cultural/material stuff all you like, but the instant you challenge the ingrained social ideas about The Bad Medieval Era, cue the screaming.

I've been a longtime ASOIAF fan, but I do genuinely deplore the effect that it (and the show, which was by far the worst offender) has had on popular culture and widespread perceptions of medieval history. When it comes to queer history specifically, we actually do not know that much, either positive or negative, about how ordinary medieval people regarded these individuals, proto-communities, and practices. Where we do have evidence that isn't just clerical moralists fulminating against sodomy (and trying to extrapolate a society-wide attitude toward homosexuality from those sources is exactly like reading extreme right-wing anti-gay preachers today and basing your conclusions about queer life in 2021 only on those), it is genuinely mixed and contradictory. See this discussion post I likewise wrote a while ago. Queerness, queer behavior, queer-behaving individuals have always existed in history, and labeling them "queer" is only an analytical conceit that represents their strangeness to us here in the 21st century, when these categories of exclusion and difference have been stringently constructed and applied, in a way that is very far from what supposedly "always" existed in the past.

Basically, we need to get rid of the idea that there was only one empirical and factual past, and that historians are "rewriting" or "changing" or "misrepresenting" it when they produce narratives that challenge hegemonic perspectives. This is why producing good historical analysis is a skill that takes genuine training (and why it's so undervalued in a late-capitalist society that would prefer you did anything but reflect on the past). As I also said in the post to which you refer, "homophobia" as a structural conceit can't exist prior to its invention as an analytical term, if we're treating queerness as some kind of modern aberration that can't be reliably talked about until "homosexual" gained currency in the late 19th century. If there's no pre-19th century "homosexuality," then ipso facto, there can be no pre-19th-century "homophobia" either. Which one is it? Spoiler alert: there are still both things, because people are people, but just as the behavior itself is complicated in the premodern past, so too is the reaction to it, and it is certainly not automatic rejection at all times.

Hence when it comes to fiction, queer authors have no responsibility (and in my case, certainly no desire) to uncritically replicate (demonstrably false!) narratives insisting that we were always miserable, oppressed, ostracised, murdered, or simply forgotten about in the premodern world. Queer characters, especially historical queer characters, do not have to constantly function as a political mouthpiece for us to claim that things are so much better today (true in some cases, not at all in the others) and that modernity "automatically" evolved to a more "enlightened" stance (definitely not true). As we have seen with the recent resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism, nationalism, and xenophobia around the world, along with the desperate battle by the right wing to re-litigate abortion, gay rights, etc., social attitudes do not form in a vacuum and do not just automatically become more progressive. They move backward, forward, and side to side, depending on the needs of the societies that produce them, and periods of instability, violence, sickness, and poverty lead to more regressive and hardline attitudes, as people act out of fear and insularity. It is a bad human habit that we have not been able to break over thousands of years, but "[social] things in the past were Bad but now have become Good" just... isn't true.

After all, nobody feels the need to constantly add subtextual disclaimers or "don't worry, I personally don't support this attitude/action" implied authorial notes in modern romances, despite the cornucopia of social problems we have today, and despite the complicated attitude of the modern world toward LGBTQ people. If an author's only reason for including "period typical homophobia" (and as we've discussed, there's no such thing before the 19th century) is that they think it should be there, that is an attitude that needs to be challenged and examined more closely. We are not obliged to only produce works that represent a downtrodden past, even if the end message is triumphal. It's the same way we got so tired of rape scenes being used to make a female character "stronger." Just because those things existed (and do exist!), doesn't mean you have to submit every single character to those humiliations in some twisted name of accuracy.

Yes, as I have always said, prejudices have existed throughout history, sometimes violently so. But that is not the whole story, and writing things that center only on the imagined or perceived oppression is not, at this point, accurate OR helpful. Once again, I note that this is specifically talking about fiction. If real-life queer people are writing about their own experiences, which are oftentimes complex, that's not a question of "representation," it's a question of factual memoir and personal history. You can't attack someone for being "problematic" when they are writing about their own lived experience, which is something a younger generation of queer people doesn't really seem to get. They also often don't realise how drastically things have changed even in my own lifetime, per the tags on my reblog about Brokeback Mountain, and especially in media/TV.

However, if you are writing fiction about queer people, especially pre-20th century queer people, and you feel like you have to make them miserable just to be "responsible to the past," I would kindly suggest that is not actually true at all, and feeds into a dangerous narrative that suggests everything "back then" was bad and now it's fine. There are more stories to tell than just suffering, queer characters do not have to exist solely as a corollary for (inaccurate) political/social commentary on the premodern past, and they can and should be depicted as living their lives relatively how they wanted to, despite the expected difficulties and roadblocks. That is just as accurate, if sometimes not more so, than "they suffered, the end," and it's something that we all need to be more willing to embrace.

#history #medieval history #queer history #meta #long post #anonymous #ask

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yamayuandadu · 4 years ago

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The Contendings of History and Seth

Seth as a serpent-slayer (MET) It's safe to say that the myth of Osiris is one of the only non-Greek myths to enjoy a comparable degree of recognition in modern popculture. There are few direct adaptations, sure, but the core narrative is well known, and as a result works themed after ancient Egypt use Seth as a villain almost without fail if only the premise allows the use of fantastical elements. However, in this article I will instead examine the other side of Seth, and especially his role as a protagonist of myths in his own right, including the historical circumstances of this development. While I mostly want to introduce you to a little known but fascinating world of heroic(?) portrayals of Seth, naturally I will also cover Seth's later loss of relevance and complete vilification to explain why it survived as the dominant tradition.

Early history of Seth

Seth protecting Ra from Apep (wikimedia commons) From the dawn of recorded history Seth's status in Egyptian religion was ambivalent, and it continues to be a topic of heated debate among researchers what degree of popularity he enjoyed in particular very early on. Some aspects of Seth character, like his evident interest in both men and women and whether it reflects broader Egyptian cultural norms (or if it’s merely yet another way in which Seth was an outsider among gods and men, as the author of the first monograph dealing with Seth proposed in the 1960s) are likewise a hotly debated topic. Seth was associated with many animals, such as the hippopotamus and the crocodile, but his main symbol is the sha or “Seth animal” which is regarded as either a mystery or a fictional creation, and in Egyptian texts inhabits zones inhospitable to humans. Seth was called “the god of confusion” by Herman Te Velde (the first writer to dedicate a monograph to him) and while this opinion has been since called into question, it is undeniable that it’s hard to form a coherent image of him. In addition to various versions of the well known myth mentioned above there are other instances of combat between Seth and Horus (most likely initially a distinct myth combined with the narrative about Osiris’ death and resurrection at a later date) and of Seth as a menace to the established order. Some of the Pyramid Texts present even the human followers of Seth as enemies to be conquered (which is held by some researchers a mythical memory of strife between local kings before the unification of Egypt). . However, there are also texts where Seth is a rightful member of the Ennead; where he and Horus act in harmony as protectors of the ruler; where he assists pharaohs in their resurrection in the afterlife; and even to Seth as one of the gods responsible for returning Osiris to life. A recurring motif in texts dealing with the afterlife in particular is a description of Seth offering a ladder to the dead who can reach some destination themselves. Mentuhotep II of the XI dynasty seemingly had Seth and Hathor depicted behind his throne in art; Hatshepsut described Seth positively as well. Personal names invoking Seth are known, too; and as established by Willam Berg in his studies of a different ambivalent deity, “children are not called after spooks.” Seth's ambiguous character made him ideal to represent The Other in Egyptian culture – the foreigners, especially these arriving from the Levant, their culture, and generally “un-Egyptian” traits. In that capacity, he functioned as an “ambassador” or “minister of foreign affairs,” to put it in modern terms. Or perhaps a foreigner in his own country, so to speak. As a result, he came to be associated with a group of deities which, while part of the official pantheon, had their origin outside Egypt.

The Ramessides and foreign gods

Generally speaking, there were two primary sources for foreign deities incorporated into Egyptian religion: Levantine trade centers like Gebal (Byblos in Lebanon) or Ugarit (Ras Shamra in Syria); and Egypt's vassal/enemy/ally/very occasional ruler Nubia (roughly corresponding to present day Sudan). Libyan influence was smaller, and to my knowledge there is no evidence of any major impact of Egypt's other trading partners (Punt, located near Horn of Africa, and Minoan Crete; the latter absorbed many Egyptian influences instead, though) or enemies (like the Hittites) on religion. The peculiar history of Seth is related to the the first of these areas. Early researchers saw the “Syrian” deities as worshiped at best by slaves or mercenaries – they didn't fit neatly into the image of Egypt presented by some royal inscriptions: an unmovable, unchanging and homogeneous country, a vision as appealing to absolute rulers in the bronze age as it was to many 19th and 20th century researchers. However, the truth was much more complex, and in fact some of the best preserved accounts of foreign cults in Egypt indicate that the process was in no small part related to the pharaohs themselves. For example Ramses II in particular was an enthusiast of Anat, as evidenced by statues he left behind:

Ramses II and Anat (wikimedia commons) He also named his daughter Bint-Anat (“daughter of Anat”) and his favorite pets and possessions bore Anat-derived names too. Not only only Ramses II himself, but the entire XIXth dynasty – the “Ramessides” (a term also applied to the XXth dynasty) - was particularly keen on these imported deities. Curiously, one of its founders was named Seti - “man of Seth,” and Seth was seemingly the tutelary deity of his family. The well known case of Ramses II's red hair might be connected to this – this uncommon trait was associated with Seth. As a result of the Ramessides' rise to power Seth became one of the state gods in Egypt, alongside heavyweights like Amun, Ptah or Ra. However, it's also safe to say that he was popular in everyday cult among commoners, as evidenced by finds from camps for workers partaking in various construction projects.

Part of Egypt of the Ramessides at its maximal extent (in green; wikimedia commons) During the discussed period, Egypt was as the peak of its power, both military and cultural; the “other” recognized Egypt's power. Weaker states in the proximity of Egypt paid tribute, while the more distant fellow “superpowers”of the era (the Hittites and the Mitanni, rivals of Egypt in Syria and the Levant, and the more distant Kassite Babylon) bargained with Egypt for dynastic marriages, luxury goods or craftsmen. While some foreign rulers didn't necessarily get that the pharaohs might not want to play by their rules and expressed frustration with that in their letters sometimes (see a particularly funny example below), overall the relations were positive, and resulted in a lot of interchange between cultures.

(source) The incorporation of foreign deities into Egyptian pantheon was a phenomenon distinct both from the well known practice of interpretatio graeca and from the monumental Mesopotamian god lists, and foreign gods were adopted rather selectively. Some researchers propose that the incorporated deities were often chosen because their sphere of influence wasn't covered by any native god. For example, Astarte (more accurately Ashtart or Athtart, considering the Ugaritic orthography; however the Greek spelling is used in literature to refer to the Egyptian version and I'll stick to that) was associated with horses and chariot warfare. As the animal wasn't known in Egypt in the formative period of the state, it wasn't among the symbols of any local deity; at the same time chariots were a prominent component of the Egyptian military at the height of its power, and as such required a deity to be put in charge of it. Six deities of broadly “Syrian” origin are usually listed among Egyptian gods in modern scholarly literature: Anat, Astarte, Resheph, Houron, Baal (the Ugaritic weather controlling one) and Qadesh. Of these, four were pretty similar to their original versions. Qadesh is a complex case as it's uncertain if such a deity existed outside Egypt – it's possible she developed as a combination of a divine title (“the holy one”) and the general Egyptian perception of foreign religion. Some scholars in the past asserted she is simply Athirat/Asherah but this interpretation relied on the false premise of Athirat forming a trinity with Anat and Ashtart and the three of them being the only prominent goddesses in cities like Ugarit. There are also curiosities like Chaitau, a god with Egyptian name (“he who appears burning”) but attested only in sources from Levantine cities (though ones written in hieroglyphics) and in magical formulas of similar origin. Baal is the most puzzling case: simply put, it's clear Baal was introduced to Egypt. It's clear Baal was depicted in Egyptian art. It's even clear that Egyptians knew that Anat and Astarte were deities from Baal's circle back at home, and that Baal was tied to a narrative about combat with the sea. And yet, it's not easy to say where the Egyptian reception of Baal ends and where Seth starts. Baal's name was even written with the Seth animal symbol as determinative. When exactly did this identification first occur is unknown: while it would be sensible to assume the Hyksos, a Canaanite group which settled in Egypt and briefly ruled the Nile delta, are responsible, there is some evidence which might indicate this already happened before.

Baal and Seth

Baal was a natural match for Seth: Seth represented the foreigners, Baal was the most popular god of the foreign group most keen on settling in Egypt; Baal has a somewhat unruly character in myths; both rule over storms and have a pronounced warrior character. Additionally, both of them were depicted as enemies of monstrous serpents. Baal was identified with Seth in Egypt, but in turn Seth became more Baal-like too. So-called “Stela of year 400” depicts an entity labeled as Seth more similar in appearance to Baal due to the human face and Levantine, rather than Egyptian, garb:

(source) It is well known that the main myth of Baal, in Ugarit the first part of the “Baal cycle,”describes his combat with the sea, personified by the god Yam, seemingly described both as humanoid and serpentine. In Egypt, this narrative was associated with the composite Seth-Baal, and a fragmentary version is recorded in the so-called Astarte papyrus. Curiously, it was actually discovered long before the Baal cycle itself – however, it only became a subject of in depth studies in the wake of the discovery of Ugarit. There are also many similarities to the Hurrian myth “Song of the Sea,” known only from fragments, and to the Song of Hedammu from Hittite archives. While in the Ugaritic version Baal fought the personified Sea against the wishes of the head god El, in the Egyptian version the confrontation happens because the Ennead fears Yam, who threatens to flood the earth and demands tribute, much like the Hurrian Sea. Before Seth properly enters the scene, we learn about how Ptah and Renenutet, a harvest goddess, appeal to his associate Astarte (as already noted before viewed as Ptah's daughter in Egypt), hoping she'll act as a tribute bearer. Astarte is described as a fearsome warrior; however, she is not meant to fight Yam herself, but merely temporarily placate him. She seemingly strips down and brings offerings – this is, once again, closer to the Hurrian than Ugaritic version, where Shaushka, an “Ishtar type” goddess like Astarte, seduces the sea monster Hedammu in a similar way. It is not clear if Yam is interested, though - in fact he appears to question why Astarte isn’t dressed (possibly mocking what must’ve been a humiliating situation for a warrior deity, I’d assume). Eventually, Seth arrives and presumably fights Yam, likely with Astarte's help - the rest of the papyrus is too poorly preserved to decipher, but as indicated by the foreign equivalents Seth and Astarte win. This is confirmed by the Hearst Medical Papyrus, imploring Seth to expel illness from the treated person just like he vanquished the personified Sea. The Ugaritic version of the myth doesn’t include a tribute scene among surviving fragments, though it’s worth pointing out that the Ugaritic Ashtart/Astarte cheers on Baal during his battle against Yam and berates him for not acting quick enough, which is easy to interpret as hostility caused by a similar episode. Many researches assume that it existed among the lost fragments of the Baal Cycle tablets, though this is for now purely speculative. A variant of the myth of Seth and Horus - The Contendings of Horus and Seth - presents a further curious case of Seth-Baal syncretism, this time incorporated into well established Egyptian myth rather than an imported foreign one. Seth and Horus compete for the right to rule after Osiris' death. Ra thinks Seth is the better option to nominate as a successor because Seth killed Apophis on his behalf, but a few other of the elder gods disagree and try to delay the process by insisting to ask various deities to provide their expert opinions. These generally favor Horus much to Ra's annoyance, but he can't go against them so he insults Horus (calling him "feeble and weak-limbed" and criticizing his hygiene) but doesn't stop his rise to power. The semi-humorous portrayal of Ra is rather unusual; in addition to showing annoyance with other gods, at one point he vanishes, and only agrees to return because Hathor lured him out. It seems Horus' mother Isis insults Seth in response to Ra's comments. Seth, offended, refuses to partake in the divine assembly unless Isis leaves; Ra orders that and the gods gather again without her. However, Isis disguises herself and asks Seth who should inherit first, a child or a brother who can provide for himself (and is a foreigner), to which Seth replies that the former; this was a trick, obviously, and Isis holds it as proof that Seth forfeited his right to rule, which Ra accepts. After multiple chaotic tribulations (including the [in]famous lettuce episode as well as Horus decapitating his mother because he decides she doesn't do enough) Horus is re-declared king but Ra, implored by Ptah (otherwise absent from the myth) gives Seth two wives (eg. Anat and Astarte; this solution was suggested already earlier by the gods providing the opinion; some authors question if they are meant to be Seth’s wives or merely allies, much like the relationship between Baal, Anat and Ashtart in Ugarit is considered debatable) and the storm clouds as his new domain. He is to strike fear into hearts of men, but will also get to be treated as if he were Ra's own son. Considering the emphasis on storm and the mention of Anat and Astarte, it's pretty clear to me that Egyptians essentially invented their own Baal backstory meant to integrate the foreign tradition with their own by recasting Baal and Seth as the same entity. The text is however unusual because of its humorous tone – the gods insult each other, act ineptly and all around hardly provide an inspiring example. Perhaps the focus on Seth made this possible. As a final note before I'll move on to times much less prosperous for Seth it's worth to mention that not only Baal but also other foreign gods were at times equated with Seth. The Libyan god Ash was conflated with him in the western oases, while treaties with the Hittites assign the name of Seth to various members of their pantheon, including the Baal-like Tarhunna (equivalent of Hurrian Teshub) but also the sun goddess of Arinna.

Demonization of Seth

While in the late bronze age Seth greatly benefited from his role as a god of foreigners, in later periods this has proven to be his undoing. Egypt couldn't maintain its power forever, and eventually fell to the Assyrians, who showed little respect for local culture and looted Thebes. While the Assyrian domination was only temporary, it severely damaged the country, and a spiritual scapegoat was needed to reconcile the carnage with the idea that Egypt was a land chosen and protected by the gods. The change seemingly occurred under the rule of Psamtik – in a new version of the myth of Seth and Horus, Seth not only lost decisively, but also was punished afterwards, and religious texts spoke of a “rebellion”of Seth. Seth was never associated with Ashur, the head god of the Assyrians, before, but in Egyptian imagination he was blamed for bringing the invaders under “his” command to ravage and subjugate the country. A mythical text has Isis implore Ra to punish Seth for robbing temples, much like the Assyrian armies did. Even later accounts tell various tales about Seth being punished, either gruesomely (a few texts recount massacred of towns belonging to Seth) or humorously (for example in one text Thoth makes him impotent with a spell) and exiled from among gods. There's evidence that the worship of Seth, previously commonplace, came to be abhorred and depictions of Seth were destroyed or altered. A famous example is a Seth statue converted to look like Knhnum or Amun instead:

Seth no more (wikimedia commons) A late relief from Edfu, from the Ptolemaic times, seems to indicate that even Seth's role as a guardian of the solar barge was lost: Seth, depicted as a hippopotamus, was defeated by Horus from the solar barge of Re. However, while Apep is usually depicted as huge and menacing, hippo Seth is tiny and pathetic.

Seth as a tiny hippo representing the forces of chaos (wikimedia commons) Curiously, despite the official policies, which continued under Ptolemaic rule, it seems that until the 2nd century CE, Seth continued to be popular in the Dahkleh oasis, possibly even serving as the main deity there. Sadly due to lack of research I am unable to provide any more detailed information about that.

Closing remarks

Even further demonization of Seth is evident in the fact that the Greeks and Romans referred to Seth as Typhon, leaving no room for ambiguity of interpretation. As the Greek accounts of the late version of Seth were all that was known for centuries due to ability to read hieroglyphic writing vanishing with the advent of new religions, it remains dominant in media today. Perhaps it would be beneficial to leave some room for the serpent-slaying hero Seth hanging out with foreign deities in modern works, though? Surely his peculiar outsider status is even more appealing to modern readers than it was to the public of the Ramesside period.

Bibliography

N. Ayali-Darshan, The Other Version of the Story of the Storm-god’s Combat with the Sea in the Light of Egyptian, Ugaritic, and Hurro-Hittite Texts

G. Beckman, Foreigners in the Ancient Near East

M. Dijkstra, Ishtar seduces the Sea-serpent. A New Join in the Epic of Hedammu (KUB 36, 56+95) and its meaning for the battle between Baal and Yam in Ugaritic Tradition

T. J. Lewis, ʿAthtartu’s Incantations and the Use of Divine Names as Weapons

D. Schorsch and M. T. Wypyski, Seth, "Figure of Mystery"

D. T. Sugimoto (ed.), Transformation of a Goddess. Ishtar – Astarte – Aphrodite - especially the chapters ‘Athtart in Late Bronze Age Syrian Texts by M. S. Smith and Astarte in New Kingdom Egypt: Reconsideration of Her Role and Function by K. Tazawa

H. Te Velde, Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion

P. J. Turner, Seth - a misrepresented god in the Ancient Egyptian pantheon? (PhD thesis)

C. Zivie-Coche, Foreign Deities in Egypt

#mythology #egyptian mythology #seth #astarte #canaanite mythology

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loonatism · 3 years ago

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WHAT IS THE LOONAVERSE? PART 2 – THE NARRATIVE DEVICES

LOONA is special among K-pop for its immersive storyline. These girls are not just k-pop idols performing a song, they also perform a story and that story is what we call the Loonaverse.

So, what is the Loonaverse? In a few words: The world and story that LOONA inhabits.

Yeah. Duh. But what is it?

Well… it’s complicated.

The Loonaverse is a fictitious story that borrows elements from real science and fantasy to build its world but also uses allegories, metaphors, allusions and other literary devices to tell its story. Our job as spectators (and specifically us theorizers) is to look beyond those devices to understand the message they are trying to send. In this post I’ll attempt to explain the numerous literary devices used to narrate the story of the Loonaverse.

So, these 2 things are LAW:

Each girl has two conflicts: an external one and an internal one.

The LOONAVERSE story is one of fantasy and mystery.

INTERNAL CONFLICT VS EXTRNAL CONFLICT

Or as I like to call it: UNIT vs SOLO

I’ve explained how the girls are trapped in a time loop and how escaping it was their overarching goal. This is the external conflict of the Loonaverse. The progression of this storyline is seen mainly in the Sub-Unit MVs and LOONA MVs but also in some teasers and other videos like Cinema Theory. The conflict is external because: 1) It comes from the outside. 2) The characters not have power against it, at least not at the beginning. 3) The conflict has effect over multiple people.

Also…

Every character has an internal conflict. A personal story. Each girl perceives the world differently and that changes the way they act and interact with each other. It is internal because: 1) It comes from within the person. 2) They themselves may be the cause for the conflict. 3) The conflict has effect on only one person: themselves. This Internal conflict is presented to us in the Solo MVs. Every solo MV is a window to the character’s mind. While the solo MVs are tangentially related to the main external conflict, they mostly focus on the internal conflict of the character.

External and Internal conflicts often mix and interlace each other to create a wider story. We will see how the external conflict fuels the internal conflicts of the girls and how their internal conflicts will shape the way they act towards solving the external conflict.

FANTASY AND MYSTERY

What is fantasy? The genre of fantasy is described as a story based in a world completely separate from our own. It usually features elements or magical/supernatural forces that do not exist on our own world. It is not tied to reality of science.

Wait a minute. You just spent an entire post explaining the science of the Loonaverse. You can’t call it fantasy now. Well yes, yes I can. Since most of the scientific elements I explained are theoretical, unproved in our world but in the world of LOONA they are a reality, a scientific reality. A reality that differs from our own, and thus a fantasy to us. But regardless of that the reason I call the Loonaverse a fantasy is because of the themes it explores.

Fantasy is a broad genre, it is one of the oldest literary genres, being found in old myths. Some of the themes often found in fantasy stories include: tradition vs. change, the individual vs. society, man vs. nature, coming of age, betrayal, epic journeys, etc. All of these themes are very present in the Loonaverse. But I’ll delve into each one as we encounter them.

What is Mystery? The mystery genre is a type of fiction in which a person (usually a detective) solves a crime. The purpose is to solve a puzzle and to create a feeling of resolution with the audience. Some elements of a mystery include: the Crime that needs solving, the use of suspense, use of figures of speech, the detective having inference gaps, the suspects motives are examined in the story, the characters usually get in danger while investigating, plus these:

Red herring. something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question and leads the audience to a false answer.

Suspense. Intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events.

Foreshadowing. A literary device that hints at information that will become relevant later on.

I just though you should know these definitions.

In the Loonaverse, the “crime” is the time loop itself, and the mystery is finding a way to break it. Or so we think. In reality, the “How do we break the loop?” question is solved rather easily. But can we really call this a mystery if the main question is already answered? Yes! It may no be a mystery story for the characters themselves but because BlockBerry uses various mystery genre tropes while telling the story, it is a mystery TO THE AUDIENCE.

That’s right! WE are the detectives!

In a classical mystery, the detective examines all clues, motives, and possible alibis, for each suspect, or in our case, each character. The same way we analyze every MV, every interaction, every possible clue to where and when everything is happening.

The Loonaverse differs from a classic ‘Who done it?’ by establishing that no suspect is actually guilty. The crime IS the loop, but no girl is responsible for it (or so we think). Our job as detectives is not to figure out who is doing this but to explain how and establish an timeline of events that shed a light to what really happened. In that sense, our job resembles more closely a real crime investigation than a mystery novel.

LITERARY DEVICES

There are many literary devices an author can use to tell its story. Too many to cover them all in here, so I’ll focus on the most recurrent ones in the Loonaverse:

Allusion. Referring to a subject matter such as a place, event, or literary work by way of a passing reference.

Archetype. Reference to a concept, a person or an object that has served as a prototype of its kind and is the original idea that has come to be used over and over again.

Faulty Parallelism. the practice placing together similarly structure related phrases, words or clauses but where one fails to follow this parallel structure.

Juxtaposition. The author places a person, concept, place, idea or theme parallel to another

Metaphor. A meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another. One subject is implied to be another so as to draw a comparison between their similarities and shared traits.

Motif. Any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature.

Symbol. Using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning, they contain several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight.

Genre. Classification of a literary work by its form, content, and style.

Some other literary devices worthy of your private investigation are: Negative Capability, Point of View, Doppelgänger, Flashback, Caesura, Stream of Consciousness, Periodic Structure, THEME, Analogy.

About Genre:

Genres are important because they give a story structure. They help an author tell the story in a way that makes it simple for the audience to understand what kind of story is being told. The classic genres of literature are Poetry, Drama and Prose. Some scholars include Fiction and Non-fiction.

In film there are a variety of accepted genres: Comedy, Tragedy, Horror, Action, Fantasy, Drama, Historical, etc. Plus a bunch of subgenres like Contemporary Fantasy, Spy Film, Slapstick Comedy, Psychological Thriller, etc. What defines a genre is the use of similar techniques and tropes like color, editing, themes, character archetypes, etc.

I point this out because the Loonaverse uses many genres to tell its story. Sure, the main story is a fantasy/mystery but every MV or Teaser has its own genre (especially the solo MVs). So, when I point out later that Kiss Later is a romantic comedy or that One & Only is a gothic melodrama, this is what I mean.

TLDR:

The Loonaverse is the world and story that LOONA inhabits. It borrows form real life science and fantasy elements to better tell its story. Each girl has an external conflict (escaping the loop) and an internal conflict (portrayed in the solo MVs). Both conflicts interlace to tell the story. The Loonaverse is a story of Fantasy because it takes place in a different world from ours and it is a Mystery because it is told using various mystery tropes. The story uses multiple literary and visual devices to tell it’s story and fuel the mystery.

REMEMBER: This is all my interpretation. My way of comprehending and analyzing the story. You don’t have to agree with everything. I encourage you to form your own theories. Remember: every theory is correct.

After all that you may be wondering what the story even is. And we’ll finally be getting to that. While I have my own interpretation of the timeline, themes and who did what. I think it’s more fun to slowly explore every brick instead of just summarizing it in one (incredibly long) post. I’ll do that much, much, much later. The journey will be just as interesting as the destination. I hope you’re in for the ride.

Let’s get to the real deal: The MVs. I’m going in chronological order so let’s start with girl No. 1!

Next: The bright pink bunny of LOONA: HeeJin’s ViViD.

#yeah i know its been months #life's tough kids give me a break #loona #loonaverse #loona theory #loonatism #heejin #hyunjin #haseul #yeojin #vivi #kim lip #jinsoul #choerry #yves #chuu #go won #olivia hye

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xiaq · 4 years ago

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(TW: sexual assault. Take care of yourself.) I won't be offended if you ignore this, or make your own post. I hope I don't offend YOU. But I'd like to hear your thoughts? RPF is abhorrent to me. I won't read it, even if it's an innocuous, 2 line appearance of Crosby so the fictional world is more real. It's putting words and actions into the mouths of REAL people. And to me the line is paper thin between that and the r*pe fantasy letter that Natalie Portman received as her 1st ever fan letter.

Firstly, I understand why RPF might make you uncomfortable and I’m not offended by your question at all. Keep in mind, these are my thoughts/opinions and I absolutely don’t expect everyone to share them, and that’s fine. So let's tackle a few things individually. 1. I think comparing RPF to that rape fantasy letter Natalie Portman received is a dangerous false equivalency. In one scenario, an adult man writes a terrible fantasy about a minor and then ensures to the best of his ability that the minor in question receive and read said fantasy without the ability to consent to its content. In the other scenario, (provided people are being responsible and respectful) you usually have an adult writing a fantasy for other like-minded adults. They do not want the person the fantasy is about to read or engage with it, and they use the available tagging and warning systems to ensure that people can consent, to the best of their ability, to consuming the story’s content. I know one of my friends who writes RPFs puts in all caps at the top of every fic she posts online something to the effect of “IF YOU FOUND THIS BY GOOGLING YOUR NAME TURN AROUND AND LEAVE.”

TL;DR I do not believe perverse power-seeking behavior that disallows consent can be equated to a genre of writing that, as a whole, usually ensures readers can consent to consume the content produced.

2. On the discomfort with “putting words and actions into the mouths of REAL people” thing. I think it’s important to remember that, historically, literarily speaking, some form of RPF has always existed. The Epic of Gilgamesh all the way back in the second millennium BC was a fictionalized version of (to our knowledge) a real Mesopotamian king. Nearly all of Shakespeare’s histories were fictionalized versions of real people and their exploits, and the Brontë sisters more or less role-played people who fought in and lived through the Napoleonic wars (the Duke of Wellington, for example) who were still living while they created these stories. As children, humans, in general, are prone to making fictional accounts of real people all the time. I’d wager that, at its base construction, we all do a bit of RPF writing, even if it’s solely in the privacy of our own heads, when we make assumptions about the humans around us and the parts of their lives or personalities that we do not actively see.

TL;DR I don’t believe anything is inherently wrong with RPF––in fact, I think it’s quite natural.

3. Now, I can understand discomfort over RPFs because they may feel like a divergence from more traditional fic about fictional characters. But I think it’s important to remember that the very concept of a celebrity involves a performative body. The public personas of celebrities are constructs, and those very constructs perhaps encourage fictional interpretations. I’ve never written RPF, but I believe it was @earlgreytea68 who said (and I’m paraphrasing, here) that RPF allows a degree of freedom that most fic does not because writers have a larger (or perhaps more empty) canvas with which to work. In a book or a TV show, a character often has a back story and explicit personality quirks, and the reader or viewer follows them home and sees who they are at night, alone, away from other people or when interacting with people they love. Obviously, we are not afforded this behind-the-scenes information about most celebrities, so an RPF writer essentially gets to make up their own character––their own ideas about who this person is behind closed doors/when the cameras are off––and superimpose those ideas onto a well-loved figure. Tl:DR Folks who write RPF are engaging in creative, fictional, writing, and I think, for the most part, they are well aware of the fact that their stories do not represent reality and perhaps prefer writing them because of the additional freedom of the genre.

4. All that being said, I do think it’s very important that RPF writers (and fic writers in general) are responsible and respectful in the way that they share their writing online. If someone writes an RPF and sends it to the real person in question, that is inappropriate behavior. If someone finds an RPF online and then takes it to the real person included in the narrative (despite the author’s clear intent to never share it with that person) that is inappropriate behavior. If a person posts fic online and does not properly tag it so readers can consent to their reading experience, that is inappropriate behavior. I feel these situations might be termed “abhorrent,” considering context, but I certainly do not think the very act of writing or reading RPF is abhorrent. TL;DR As long as writers share their RPFs responsibly, I support them and have no quarrel with them.

#RPF #fandom studies #discourse #fandom discourse #real person fiction #answered asks

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darylelockhart · 5 years ago

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How afrofuturism gives Black people the confidence to survive doubt and anti-Blackness

by Anthony Q. Briggs and Warren Clarke

Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future. Marvel Studios

In 2018, Black people globally got a signal of hope when director Ryan Coogler and Marvel Studios released the critically acclaimed movie, Black Panther. While few knew of the Black Panther as a superhero despite the comic being released in the 1960s, millions now know of him because of the film’s overwhelming success.

Its success can be due, in part, because of what it tells us about Black people’s futures. Many Black people — seeking belonging and better outcomes for their lives — have turned to afrofuturism as the source of optimism. According to afrofuturist expert and author Ytasha Womack, afrofuturism refers to “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation … Afrofuturists redefine culture and notions of Blackness for today and the future by combining elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, afrocentricity and magic realism with non-western beliefs.”

Black Panther had Black people chanting “Wakanda Forever,” while many imagined that they too could put on the Black Panther suit to gain a sense of belonging. Black people, including Canadians, believed that Wakanda, the utopian city where the Black Panther resides, is a real place. For Black Canadians, Wakanda offers a place that exists outside the harsh reality of an anti-Black white settler narrative that is anti-Black.

Black legal scholar Lolita Buckner Inniss says anti-Black racism is deeply enmeshed in the Canadian social fabric. Anti-Black racism cuts deep enough so that many, if not all, Black Canadians feel there is no hope for a better future.

Leaving family but not tradition

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti must deal with racism and isolation as she traverses a universe that does not value her people’s knowledge. (Tor Books)

Afrofuturism in cinema is but one source. Writer Nnedi Okorafor’s 2015 science fiction novella, Binti, features a Black woman protagonist named Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka. Binti is an intelligent woman leader of the Himba tribe whose genius gets her into to the prestigious Oomza University, which floats about the galaxy. Binti is the first member of the Himba ethnic people to attend the school. Her decision to attend is met with ridicule, laughter and threats to her life due to the fear and insecurities of her people.

Her people have never been allowed to imagine futures beyond their traditional way of life and identification with the land. Binti states:

We Himba don’t travel. We stay put. Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish. We even cover our bodies with it. Otjize is red land. Here in the launch port, most were Khoush and a few other non-Himba. Here, I was an outsider; I was outside.

She echoes the social challenges that Black people face when embarking upon new ways of living after leaving traditional family and cultural contexts. Often, their families and cultures pressure them to remain entrenched within the known confines of family, culture and community, rather than explore the new and unknown.

One of us, Anthony, was the first member of his immediate family to attend post-secondary education and graduate school. He wanted to apply to graduate school but had to fight internalized feelings of low self-worth that insisted he did not belong in academia. Indeed, a lack of self-confidence influenced the choice to avoid applying to programs that required a high grade-point average with a full scholarship because he did not believe he would be accepted.

Blazing a trail to a Black future

In her village, Binti had been one of the few who used knowledge to create peace in her tribe, so she had to overcome pressure to remain in the village in order to embrace new learning. On a spaceship, travelling from her village to the Oomza University, Binti as the only Himba at the university encounters another obstacle: the false assumption that people from her land are evil, dirty and primitive.

In one moment, one of the Khoush (a different lighter-skinned tribe) students touches Binti’s braids out of curiosity and without consent. Her hair is mixed with sweet smelling red clay and perfume called Otijze, which is connected to her cultural heritage. One of the Khoush students responds that it has a horrible smell, suggesting a passive discriminatory logic of sanitation.

One can observe strong echoes of the attitudes of privileged whites towards high-priority Black neighbourhoods whose inhabitants are stereotyped as criminal, irrational, impoverished and unintelligent. The book suggests that there is no such thing as neutral space and that structural inequities and racial inequalities make space and place difficult to navigate, especially in elitist environments.

But Binti is gripped by the challenge of the new. Her journey of self-discovery begins when she decides to leave village life, defying her ancestors’ dedication to their land and cultural identity. Binti explains that tribal knowledge was handed down orally as her father had taught her 300 years of oral lessons “about astrolabes including how they worked, the art of them, the true negotiation of them, the lineage … circuits, wire, metals, oils, heat, electricity, math current and sand bar.” Her mother had also transmitted mathematical insights and gifts, but never in formal educational settings. Family unity and protection were paramount.

Binti symbolizes the trailblazer who encounters politics, racism, stereotypes, ignorance, systemic inequalities, gender inequities, classism and so on. Additionally, she faces the strong pull of past traditions since she is the first member of her family and tribe to attend a formal educational institute.

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Afrofuturism offers a way for Black people to envision their futures, as Missy Elliot’s futuristic music videos exemplify.

Some Black individuals living such stories will inevitably encounter feelings of isolation, lack of belonging and self-doubt. Their internal battles will pit self-trust and the drive towards the new against the safety and security of the past. They will have to develop a secure sense of self and an understanding that it does not matter how far they travel among the galaxies because everyone has unique gifts they can contribute to the universe.

Against the pull of anxieties and insecurities, Anthony graduated with a master’s degree and a PhD; he currently has a post-doctoral fellowship — yet is in another galaxy of his own among the stars.

Afro-Caribbean Black people living in white settler, colonized nations such as Canada face discrimination and negative stereotypes. Afrofuturism can enable Black communities to reimagine new possibilities, especially when the future trajectory for Black Canadians is at times uncertain.

About The Authors:

Anthony Q. Briggs, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University and Warren Clarke, PhD student, Department of Sociology, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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typewriterwitch · 6 years ago

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When the Forced Marriage Trope is Given Depth

The forced marriage plot is a venerated tradition in romance novels. So much so that today’s romance writers are twisting plots around like pretzels to try to make this trope plausible—and palatable—for the modern age. Usually, this involves business arrangments and marriages of convenience. The old school romance novels of my adolescence were more about king’s edicts and unbreakable betrothals to the last man on earth the heroine ever wants to marry—but with a sly wink toward lust to undercut her early hate.

The appeal of the forced marriage plot is the belligerent sexual tension for a start. Then it’s the softening. The something there that wasn’t there before. The hero becomes less of an ass. The heroine admits her initial impression was harsh. It’s classic Pride & Prejudiceor Beauty & the Beast. Gold standard stuff. From a practical point of the view, the forced marriage plot is a way for historical romance writers to have their Pride & Prejudice or Beauty & the Beast plot, give a nod toward social norms, and still include sex scenes.

But the forced marriage trope has a crucial difference—in both Pride & Prejudice and Beauty & the Beast examples, the narrative question is, “Will the heroine consent to marry the hero?” Her choice is centered. Elizabeth throwing Darcy’s proposal back in his face is one of the best examples of agency in all of romance (my personal favorite comes from North & South). We want to see the heroine stand up for herself because then it’s crystal clear that, by the end, she’s marrying for love. In the case of the forced marriage trope, the choice has been made for her, so her agency is compromised.

What does that do to the appeal of the trope? It messes it right up, that’s what it does.

For fans of messy romance—romance with stakes and grit and depth—this is can be a very interesting thing. If the author treads carefully. Treading carefully means hitting a few major beats:

Acknowledging the messed up nature of the situation. The hero especially needs to understand how getting a wife against her will is, you know, bad. Even if he starts out conceited or oblivious, it’s crucial that he learns to value consent above all else.

Giving the heroine a free and clear means of escape. Readers seem to swoon over the whole, ‘You’re too good for me! But I’m a selfish bastard so I’ll never let you go’ angle. In this trope, the alpha possessiveness vibe is more uncomfortable than usual. Tone it way down. Even Disney gets it right: When the Beast asks Belle if she can be happy with him in the 2017 version, she responds, “Can anyone be happy if they aren’t free?” The only answer is no and the Beast promptly lets her go.

Making the character change crystal clear. The reason the heroine decides to stay with the hero is make-or-break for this trope. Quivering thighs aren’t enough. Genuine, authentic change in the hero’s actions and the heroine’s understanding is a must. This cannot be lip service. It has to feel authentic and earned.

Why are these three beats so crucial? Because the very last thing we need is forced marriage itself romanticized as an institution. Forced marriage is and has been a source of pervasive evil in the lives of women. Google ‘forced marriage’ without the ‘romance’ at the end and you get a lifeline number to stop human trafficking. This trope emerged from a dark and dangerous place, as a lot of storytelling tropes do. No number of happy fictional endings will change that.

Most premises for this trope I’ve seen skirt the trope’s heart of darkness, ignoring the uncomfortable implications in favor of a few thrills. Which begs the question—does the popularity of the trope mean its readers are regressing or resisting progress? Are readers thinking that choice is too hard and wouldn’t it be nicer if someone chose a husband for them and it all worked out in the happily-ever-after? Maybe. Romance is escapism, after all. This trope and the soulmates trope are like the benevolent dictator theories of romance novels. Easy and unrealistic are what some readers are looking for when they pick up a romance novel.

As a champion for romance with stakes and grit and depth, that’s so not me. I want a happy ending, I do. But I also what to use the forced marriage trope to, like, explore my anxieties about the long line of forced marriages from which I’m likely descended. That’s why I need the heroine to continuously stand up for herself and the hero to completely understand her situation by the end. Those three beats I laid out above allow that arc to happen. They’re a formula for catharsis and that’s damn good drama. But the right to choose one’s life partner is a cornerstone of feminism for a damn good reason. For me, the story isn’t satisfying unless it actively tackles that issue.

One of the best examples of the forced marriage trope given depth comes from a movie almost no one saw called Child 44. Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace star as Leo and Raisa Demidov a married couple in 1950s Russia. Leo is a WWII hero turned Captain in the Ministry of State Security. The plot focuses on Leo searching for a serial killer who targets young boys. His investigation is complicated because he’s going against the will of the government. Leo’s colleagues actively want to silence any evidence that their society—a paradise—could produce a murderer. But, as the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes will tell you, the thriller aspect is a bit of a letdown. The real meaty storyline is the evolving relationship between Leo and Raisa.

The first scene to introduce Leo and Raisa as a couple is a phenomenal piece of character work. Leo is telling the story of how he fell in love and married Raisa at a dinner party. The story is a common one: love at first sight. Leo saw Raisa, waxed poetic, and asked for her name. When he tracks her down again, she admits that she gave him a false one. The two tell the story in tandem, but the audience is clued into the fact that Raisa is telling her parts dutifully. It’s Leo who finds this story romantic as he confesses his devotion to his wife. The women of the group are touched. Raisa is cool and contained. She remains cool and contained when the couple has sex in their apartment. It’s a classic framing of marital discord. Leo is kissing her neck, clearly overcome by passion. And Raisa is turned away from him, frowning into middle-distance. In a few short scenes, the audience comes to understand that Raisa does not share her husband’s blind obedience to the Soviet Union. We wonder if she might be a spy or a traitor in some way. When Leo comes home after a hard day where a subordinate murdered a mother and father in front of their two young children, he seeks comfort from Raisa. She accepts that she should do this for him, but she does not actively comfort him.

The turn comes when Leo is handed a folder and told to investigate his own wife for treason. He knows that no matter what he finds over the course of his investigation there will be no mercy. The implication alone is damning. Leo follows Raisa, seeing her lose a fellow school teacher to soldiers. She seems too close to her principal, but nothing implicates her except that he loses her in the crowd. Leo talks to his adopted father, who cautions him that it’s better to give up his wife than to go down with her. Raisa shows up for dinner then and announces where she’d gone—to the doctor. She’s pregnant. Leo tears apart their apartment but finds nothing damning. Neither do his colleagues. The scene where Leo confronts Raisa about the investigation is heartbreaking. You can see on her face that she expects to be given up. You can see on his face how much this is tearing him up inside. In the end, he submits her innocence knowing that he is dooming them both. Sure enough, they are dragged from their beds. The character work here is that Raisa lets her husband hold her, she screams for him in terror. She clings to him when she thinks they will be killed.

But they are spared somewhat. They are able to leave Moscow with their lives and sent to a village in the middle of nowhere. Gone are the luxuries that her husband’s career afforded them. In exchange for her life, he has to give up everything. Raisa is cooler than ever. It’s fascinating. She tells him that it was all a test of loyalty—he should have denounced because “that’s what wives are for.” His show of love hardens rather than softens her toward him. But she does not betray him, even when his most evil coworker offers for her to return to Moscow as his mistress. She tries to leave him, but Leo stops her and brings her back home. He forbids her from leaving again.

It’s then that we learn that Raisa resents him for how much he loves her because, as we find out, she never had a say in it. That charming story he likes to tell? She remembers it very differently. She “cried for one week” when he proposed and then accepted out fear for what would happen to her if she declined a man of his stature. She was forced into this marriage, and now she’s bound to him even tighter because of his sacrifice. Hearing this breaks Leo’s heart into a million pieces. Honestly, the angst of this scene is everything I want in this trope. Her confession rocks Leo’s world. He has tears in his eyes because he’s realizing how much of a monster he has been in the eyes of the woman he loves but has never known. We also find out that Raisa lied about being pregnant to save her own life. She’s a survivor. She’s a complex thinker and feeler. It’s heartwrenching, deep stuff, people. Sign me the fuck up twice.

That’s the first of the major beats. Acknowledging the messed up nature of the situation.

Then the murder investigation starts in earnest. Leo has to go to Moscow and he’s afraid if he leaves Raisa he won’t be able to protect her. She doesn’t want to go anywhere with him. He tells her that if she comes to Moscow with him, she can stay there. He won’t make her return, and she never has to see him again.

There’s beat number two. Giving the heroine a free and clear means of escape.

But in Moscow, things change for Raisa. She is drawn into the investigation and sees how honorable it is. She comes to realize that the man she assumed to be the honest Russian sticking up for his countrywomen against the brutal government was an ideologue all along. The monsters of her world are becoming much less black and white. By the time we get to the moment when Raisa chooses to come back with Leo, we understand why she’s making that choice.

And then boy are we ever rewarded. We get to see Raisa stand up for her husband, soothe and comfort him. We see her protect him from would-be murdererstwice and Leo turn around and do the same thing for her. She is an equal partner in his investigation and his life. The events of the movie bring them together in a way that their sham marriage never could—and it’s a messy, complicated, harrowing thing to watch. In the end, this is a true romance because the couple gets a happy ending. So happy. I won’t spoil the last bit, but there is definitely a romance novel-worthy moment when Leo turns those puppy dog eyes on Raisa to ask her if she thinks he is a monster. And of course she no longer thinks that. Her understanding of him has changed. And his actions have changed—no longer does he presume her love and ignore her true feelings. No longer does he go along with the state mindlessly and play up the war hero bit. He’s a better man and she loves him for it. That’s a transformational love story.

Final beat nailed. Making the character change crystal clear.

Again, not going to say Child 44 is a perfect movie. But the love story? Is a perfect example of a thoughtful use of the forced marriage trope. More romance novels could stand to use it as a template.

#writingjourney #child 44

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comradecowplant · 3 years ago

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WELL it was an easy read and I finished the book already. I gotta do a classic Dani Vents About a Story post that will include significant spoilers, so be careful if you are reading/want to read The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargraves. I’m about to bitch about it a lot, but overall it was an interesting book that I’d still (mostly) recommend if you have an interest in historical fiction surrounding the Norwegian witch trials.

Most of it was really good, although a few theme threads and character arcs completely fell apart in the final act. I knew it was going to be dark-- again, 17th century witch trial shit-- but the actual “murder my favorite characters” bit thankfully didn’t begin until pretty late in the story, which lets the focus remain more on the lives of the women vs their horrific deaths. The author does a (mostly) great job at creating interesting characters you fall in love with, and succeeded immensely at bringing the landscape and village of Vardo to life.

BUT

IN THE LAST LITERAL FOUR PAGES, THE NARRATIVE TOOK ALL THE MEANING THAT THE PROTAGANISTS HAD CREATED OUT OF THEIR HARDSHIPS AND THREW IT OVER A CLIFF (LITERALLY! & EACH USE OF THIS WORD HERE HAS BEEN THE PROPER USE. although i guess a fictional event cannot be truly ‘literal’ BUT WHATEVER I AM NOT GETTING LOST IN THE WEEDS WITH PEDANTICS). I am so fucking mad, and it serves as a reminder to why I typically don’t read/watch many period pieces these days, unless it is a period setting in a fantasy/sci fi world. So many people think that in order to bE rEaLiStIc when writing about periods in history, you simply MUST be as grimdark as possible, especially with conclusions, but I find that perspective boring and uncreative as hell. Bitch it’s already fiction! it’s already lies! you are god in the universe you write, have some courage and don’t concede to established tropes that center on garish suffering to define the experiences of historically (& contemporaneously) marginalized people! At least in a medieval-set fantasy story, you get the vibes of the historical setting, but also your friends can swoop by on a dragon and rescue the innocent pants-wearing fisherwoman who is about to be burned alive by the racist woman-hating church.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a story with a messy & unhappy ending. I even love an occasional grimdark story! But as I get older, I see & feel more the evils which inspired these historical events and how they still burden our world today, and I do not enjoy spending my free time reading/watching movies that are centered on suffering for suffering’s sake-- if I want a story about senseless violence & the underdogs who never win, I will just turn on the fucking news. SO, for me, the dark stories I do enjoy cannot just be traumaporn in a difference shell, the darkness has. to. make. sense. You can’t spend 300 pages on a woman overcoming her grief of losing her brother/father/fiancé/half her village & learning how to be a #StrongIndependantWoman, then have her just kill herself on the last page. It just isn’t narratively good, it just isn’t! And to be clear, the author could have gone WAYYYYYYYY darker in many places throughout the book & did not even come close to going full grimdark. I think overall she greatly succeeded at balancing hope & hopelessness. It was done so well in fact that I was lulled into a false sense of security that maybe just maybe there might be a way out for our ladies, a conclusion that didn’t end with the kind of complete misery that historic fiction tends to skew towards. But there is this overwhelming sense in the final few pages that, probably due to the aforementioned loyalty to perceived “historical accuracy”, she hadn’t included enough suffering (even though there is PLENTY of tragedy to go around by that point) & she didn’t know how to finish the story. So when in doubt, kill 👏 those 👏 gays 👏 (although we don’t know the fate of the other woman, who has entire chapters given from her perspective, but Meren just says bye & we never hear about Ursa again 😤)

Which brings us to, yeah, it did have gay shit like I thought, and up until the garbage of the last four pages, it was a very touching romance. But it too concluded in a way that is only satisfying if you squint, and adds to the inconsistencies that I mentioned above. I’ve never in my life said this before, and it makes me ill to even type this, but, *sob* it probably would have been a better story if the two women had remained platonic friends and no touch-a the booba. I know a lot of people think I’m One of Those cringe queers who will read/watch absolute garbage just if there is a queer person (which tbf I definitely also do sometimes, & it’s actually very valid of me, thank u very much), but if that were true I would have finished that awful Warming Trend book that I blogged about like 2 years go, or read any of the hundreds of stupid “subtext” trash that folks like to recommend, or ship Supercorp (no offense to anyone who ships them, I get it, Katie McGrath is hot, but come on, there is a perfectly good lesbian already on the show), or watched Glee. No, I do actually have some standards-- Are they super high, as a love-starved reader/viewer who uses romantic fiction as a primary means of escapism/coping with my shitty life? No, lmao. But as a writer, and as a queermo, nothing grinds my gears more than a badly executed lgbtq+ storyline.

Anyway, I just finished the book an hour ago so my crankiness & disappointment is raw and thus I am all over the place with this rant. I hope I’m not coming off as being too hard on the author, because despite it’s flaws, I am very glad to have serendipitously found The Mercies, and I look forward to checking out KMH’s other works. It’s been a long time since I’ve dug into a book and read it in just a few sittings like I did this, repeating “just one more chapter” for hours until it’s suddenly 3 am, and despite the fuckery to my sleep schedule it contributes to, the feeling is good-- it brings me back to simpler times when I actually was able to experience an ease from the constant uneasiness I always carry in my chest. Idk, moral of the story is that reading is fun, & when I get stuck in my Bad Turns & don’t read for months, it becomes easy to forget how much solace can come from a mid-quality but seductive (not in a horny way. but sometimes also in a horny way, lol) novel. Like, most of my reading these days is miserable 20th century theory or other academic/non-fiction writing related to our depressing capitalist hellscape & impending climate disaster, and The Mercies helped me remember that my roots lie in fiction. It also has me inspired to revisit a couple of historical fictions projects I have laying around, aND MAKE A WOMAN-EMPOWERMENT, ANTI-RACIST, QUEER AS HELL PERIOD FICTION PEICE THAT DOES NOT END IN COMPLETE GARBAGE! And in the meantime, I shall be revisiting the works of Sarah Waters, the only bad bitch I know of who writes queer historical fiction without relinquishing her characters solely to the suffering they experience ✌

If anyone has read this far and has any books/authors to recommend (wlw focused preferably, historical fiction or any genre as long as the story itself doesn’t rely on the tropes I touched on, recently published also preferably bc I have a long list of older books/authors but i don’t keep up with new releases like I should, & a lot of the ones I know are white & cis so PLEASE send reccs for more diverse stories/authors if you have them)

#dani talks about books

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audipop311 · 7 years ago

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Essay #2- The Evolutionary Representation of the Zombie

During this course, we have examined the origins of characters such as vampires, zombies, ghosts, and witches, and how they have been stereotyped, as well as the evolution of their representation throughout history. The common theme between each of these characters was that their origin was created based on the fears and anxieties of the people of that time. Fears regarding social class, gender and racial equality, as well as political and historical events influenced not only the way these figures were portrayed back then, but also the way they are perceived today.

The most remarkable character’s evolution of the way these figures have been represented throughout history, is the zombie. The concept of the zombie originated in Haiti within the Vodou religion, a religion widely misunderstood. Due to this misconception of the religion, zombies also are often misunderstood however, they are not commonly associated with the Vodou religion. This is most likely because the picture of the zombie illustrated in the Western mind differs greatly from a mind living during the 1950’s. The image often associated with zombies today is of an extremely gory, bloody, plagued, half-alive ‘human’ being. In contrast, the image of zombies portrayed during the 1950’s-1960’s was far less bloody and seen more as a psychological illness. This ‘illness’ however, was not due to a virus or a disease, it actually stemmed from a dark portion of U.S. history, racism and slavery. Zombies, racism, and slavery all intertwine because zombies represented the fears and anxieties of people during the time of slavery and open racism. In the essay, “Race, Colonialism, and the Evolution of the Zombie”, it explains the five aspects that the academic world has knowledge about when it comes to zombies. “One, that the zombies began as something associated with Haiti, and further with a religion the West once called Voodoo and now in an age of greater cultural tolerance, calls Vodou. Two, that as a result of this, the zombie is best understood in the postcolonial mode, and says as much about ‘Western’ fears as it does about any Haitian reality.” (Rushton, 2011). This is a compelling statement because, as a result of the greater understanding people have built for diversity, the zombie is best understood in postcolonial times and, therefore, the zombie has transformed throughout the decades.

The 1932 film, “White Zombie”, was the first to introduce the concept of zombies and starred an evil vodou priest in Haiti who zombified a multitude of women. The connection between zombies, slavery, as well as racism was clearly illustrated throughout the film. For example, the black carriage driver allowed one of the zombies wondering around the street to get dangerously close to the couple riding in the carriage. The couple preceded to yell at the carriage driver for ‘almost getting them killed.’ The driver explained to the couple that there was a difference between ‘getting killed and getting captured around there.’ I found this statement to be compelling due to it’s connection to slavery, racism and discrimination. When slaves were captured from their indigenous countries to be sold, they were no longer considered or treated as humans, and in a way that human part of themselves died. Slaves were not physically murdered, they were captured and this simple reference in the “White Zombie” film truly illustrated this concept. Another example in the film that represented slavery and racism in the form of a zombie was in the scene where the black zombies are working in the sugar cane factory. The men walked around as if they were on auto-pilot and as if they had no soul. At one point, a worker fell into the machine and nobody bat an eye, let alone cared that one of their workers just died in front of them. This represents the disrespect and cruelty towards the black population that was socially acceptable during that time. The reason this is so shocking to us currently is because in 2018, we no longer openly discriminate against race, gender, sexuality, and as a result when we see such acts, even illustrated in films, it can be quite shocking. The cinematic references to zombies we have currently are television shows such as “The Walking Dead”, and “iZombie”. These shows illustrate zombies based on today’s fears of plague and sickness, political hierarchy, and losing loved ones.

Another cinematic film that challenged the perspectives towards racism and its connection to zombies, was the 1968 film, “The Night of the Living Dead.” In this film, the way that the black main character, Ben, was represented was the first of its kind during the 1960’s. Ben was portrayed as being very wise, knowledgeable, and a hero, a figure that was not associated with the black population during that time. This was the start to the positive evolution of people’s perspective towards the black population, in contrast to the times of slavery where this perception of inferiority justified cruel and brutal actions of their plantation owners. In the excerpt, “Guess Who is Going to be Dinner,” Bruce states, “The Night of the Living Dead gives full vent to the anxieties permeating late-60’s American culture, offering a dark, cynical, anti-Hollywood look at ‘ordinary’ Americans and engaging race-based expectations without offering the panacea of a Poitier- like hero or readily identifiable and, therefore, containable black stereotypes.” (Bruce, 2011). Not only is the fear of racial equality presented in this film, but also the fears of gender equality and political fears including assassinations and nuclear radiation. The fears of gender equality were symbolized through Barbara’s character because she embodied the ‘hysterical’ and ‘erratic’ woman that was stigmatized during the 1960’s and contributed to the lack of women’s rights. The fear of nuclear radiation and attack was symbolized through the sound of explosions during radio announcements. The fear of assassinations most likely stemmed from the assassination of president John F. Kennedy which occurred in 1963, only five years prior to the release of the film “Night of the Living Dead”. This fear of assassination was represented in the film through the character’s casual use as well as misuse of weapons due to the false perception of inferiority authority had during the 1960’s. Symbolism plays a huge role in the way perspectives on topics or people are formed. For example, American society has put symbolism behind the colors, black and white. White often symbolizes angelic, innocence, purity and perfection. The color black often symbolizes death, decay, evil and darkness. When this perspective is applied to the zombie culture, it reveals the truths about the Master Narrative and Western beliefs surrounding the Gothic culture by the fact that white skinned zombies are viewed as ‘innocent’, even though they are still flesh-eating zombies, while black skinned zombies are viewed as actual ‘monsters.’

The depiction of zombies during the time of their origin not only connects to the fear of racial, social, and gender equality, but the fear of the undead and the uncanny as well. Freuds theory, “The Uncanny”, states that to experience the emotional state of being uncanny, things that were meant to be hidden, suppressed, and secretive are brought to light. Once humans have deceased, we are buried or cremated and essentially hidden either underground or in a dark urn, so our spirits are not brought back to light. Zombies embody the uncanny because they come back to life after death, but without the natural human ability to reason and maintain control over the psyche. This concept of zombies gives people an uncanny feeling because our greatest fear as humans is to lose control over our psyche. In the excerpt, “Putting the Undead to Work”, Inglis states, “Most representations of zombies occur in the realms of popular fiction. But what happens when the undead escape from the confines of popular culture and enter realms where their presence is regarded as the unwanted intrusion and uncanny intervention?” (Inglis, 2011). The chapter proceeds to go into detail on the academic connection to zombies as well as discussing aspects of the film, “The Night of the Living Dead”. This piece of literature aids in supporting the evolution of the representation of zombies and the fears associated with them throughout the decades. “Thus the Haitian fear is not of zombies, which is the Euro-American disposition. Rather, the anthropological record is replete with cases of Haitians taking in and caring for people they believe to be zombified relatives. The fear is instead of becoming a zombie, deprived of all free will and enslaved to a powerful, predatory master. Clearly this fear harks back in certain ways to the brutal conditions of plantation life during the colonial period.” (Inglis, 2011). This excerpt exemplifies the misconception of the origin of zombies and the Haitian culture, as well as the connection to the fear of slavery associated with zombies. Even in today’s modern society, public school teachings are remise of historical information on slavery, the epitome of the uncanny, which further deepens the hidden aspect of racial inequality.

Although symbolism played a huge role on the evolution of how vampires, witches, and ghosts have all been defined, the zombie has by far had the greatest transformation. From the first time the concept was created depicting a controversial topic such as slavery in 1938, to currently in 2018, where zombies are almost exclusively viewed cinematically or through popular fiction for entertainment purposes.

Sources:

Bruce, Barbara S. “Guess Who’s Going to Be Dinner: Sidney Poitier, Black Militancy, and the Ambivalence of Race in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.” Race, Oppression, and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition, McFarland & Co., 2011. 60-76.

Halperin, Victor, director. White Zombie. A Halperin Production, 1932.

Inglis, David. “Putting the Undead to Work: Wade Davis, Haitian Vodou and the Social Uses of the Zombie.” Race, Oppression, and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition, McFarland & Co., 2011. 42-59.

Moreman, Christopher M., and Cory James Rushton. “Race, Colonialism and the Evolution of the Zombie.” Race, Oppression, and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition. McFarland & Co., 2011. 1-12.

Russo, John. Night of the Living Dead. Continental Distributing, Inc., 1968.

Images:

https://vr-world.com/night-of-the-living-dead-virtual-reality-erfahrung-2018/

https://zamonthly.org/2014/05/27/film-review-white-zombie-1932/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-haitian-slave-culture-gave-life-to-zombies

Additional Links:

http://horrornews.net/12624/film-review-white-zombie-1932/

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/night-of-the-living-dead

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=clcweb

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/02/17/guest-post-on-the-origin-of-zombies/

#ils4180battistaspring18

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heartofaquamarine · 7 years ago

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Media Criticism: An Introduction.

As I think is clear if you search the “long post” tag on my blog, and if you see my regular smaller posts complaining about parts of fandom, I tend to approach media far more from a position of writing meta and critique rather than writing fanfiction or fanart. This is fairly common, I think, in the part of fandom outside of what we might call Capital-F Fandom. Reviews, meta, technical analysis and examining work in terms of a particular social, psychological or political framework all come under what we might call Criticism, (here used not to simply mean being critical, but how we think about and understand media), but all of these have very different aims and methodology. Just as it is worth understanding the goal, standards and methods of a type of fiction or a historical account, it is worth understanding what different types of criticism are trying to do, how they try to do it, and how it fits into the overall conversation about media. Criticism does not have to be critical, as odd as that sounds, and I think that the way we tend to blur the lines between types of criticism often blurs our discussions both of media and of our communities.

Why do Criticism? In my day to day work, I am actually a science based PhD student. We spend a lot of time discussing how to properly communicate our work to various audiences, both to our peers in the scientific community and to the general public who lack the specialist knowledge of our field. This is not a knock on the general public; I lack the specialist knowledge to understand the research of other students in my own office. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that different audiences have different needs, and will respond to the same piece of work in very different ways. However, while learning how to communicate your ideas is important, there’s an equally, if not more, important skill to learn; how to critically evaluate the information we absorb, how to read and listen to new information. I say potentially more important because of the ratio of how much information we read compared to how much we absorb. In an average day, unless you are sequestered entirely away from the world, you will hear more than you talk. No matter what form of art you focus on creating, you will certainly examine more work than you create, if only because during the course of creation you will naturally have to examine your own work. That is why I think being aware of both how we approach criticising things, and how we go about making good criticism, is important. Media is a product and a feedback into society, and is worth being examined carefully..

This also extends into real life conversations. In my university and field we often talk about the narrative of a piece of scientific work. Not in the sense that it is false, but rather in the sense that we use a similar methodology to story structure to create the piece. Terry Pratchett in the second Science of Discworld book called humanity “Pan Narrans”; the story-telling ape. Scientific papers, everyday conversation, politicians and business people making speeches and promises, and even how we get news at all are all, on some level, pieces of media we can critique for accuracy, for potential hidden meaning, for technical skill in crafting them and in their place within the wider social construct. All of these, of course, have their own individual quirks that need to be accounted for; one would not read a scientific journal paper in the same way as Harry Potter, but I think there are some underlying principles that apply to all forms of criticism. This essay is not intended to be a complete guide to how to do criticism well; it is merely the starting point. The majority of it will be taken up describing various kinds of common methods of criticism and their usage, as well as discussing criticism’s place in society and how we respond to criticism of both our own work and other’s.

Personally, when I am writing criticism, I tend to use a framework of four basic questions. Which one I focus on depends on the piece, but all four of them are worth exploring. 1.) What do I think the artist is trying to do? Essentially, this is an attempt to examine the intent behind the piece. This can include social and personal background on the artist, readings to explore the likely meaning that scenes are supposed to convey, ect.

2.) How well did they manage this? This is more focused on technical aspects; how good was the writing, how good were the actors, how well did they use the tools available to them.

3.) Do I think that this was a good aim? This varies from things like “no, I don’t think you should have made pro-nazi propaganda” to “I get what you’re doing with that subplot but it breaks drastically thematically from the rest of the piece. This is naturally more personal to the critic, and artists are free to ignore it, but that doesn’t mean it should be able to be said.

4.) What is in the work that they might not have intended? It is easy to create a work with implications you did not intend, and messages you didn’t expect the audience to come away with.

A brief taxonomy of Criticism.

The categories listed are not intended to be inherently mutually exclusive, but rather a set of broad classifications of types of Criticism I have seen. Critical works, particularly longer ones, often have parts of different types within them, but I think a lot of them has a main focus. These categories are more based on what the work is trying to do, rather than the methodology and standards of this type of work; not that those couldn’t be used (indeed, they will be mentioned as we go, and some particular methods of criticism will be mentioned on their own), but I think starting from the purpose of the criticism is a good place to start. I will be capitalising the specific terms I suggest as potential terms to make it clear that, say, when I talk about Reviews I am talking about a particular type of review, not the broad category of things generally called reviews.

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Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is one of the most fundamental types of criticism. It focuses on the skill of the artist at crafting their piece. How well did they handle their brush? How well did the writing in this scene flow? Obviously, there are as many different ways of making this criticism as there are types of media, so discussing particulars of these criticisms is difficult. This kind of analysis is likely the kind that artists encounter, create and seek out most, simply because it is the one that most matches up with the mental tools that artists use and master themselves.

In many ways, technical analysis is the most basic form of media criticism. Other forms of critical methodology build on the technical analysis to discuss other aspects of the media. I don’t mean this in a negative way; the fact that something is the basis that other things build on doesn’t make it less important.

Social Context

This category of criticism is less interested in the work itself, and more interested in how it reflects the worldview of the writer, the reader and the wider social world in which they live.

Sometimes this is as simple as explaining nuances of the social climate the work is written in that might not be obvious to outsiders; for example, as a kid growing up in the UK I caught the class aspects in Harry Potter, but completely missed a lot of the social commentary of the US in the Simpsons (in fact, my dad had to explain to me who Bush 1 and Clinton were so I could understand the Simpsons episode where Bush moves in across the street and becomes Homer’s enemy). On a deeper level, we can discuss the actions of certain characters, and also how the narrative responds to those actions.

The aspects that it reflects, notably, don’t have to be deliberately placed in the work by the writer. In fact, to be honest, it is often more interesting if they are not deliberate, particularly when they are spread across multiple works. If multiple works present the military in a wholly positive or negative manner, or present predatory sexual behaviours as amusing or desirable, then that is an indication of the underlying base assumptions about the military and sexual relationships. These base assumptions are almost certainly not actively on the writer’s mind while creating the work, but are still there. This also applies to setting details; the culture we live often colours our assumptions about how things and people work; just as an example, there’s a bit of a running gag about American Harry Potter fanfic authors treating Hogwarts like an American High School, with pep rallies and very particular social structures.

Cultural Feedback

The idea of cultural feedback examines how the media we consume affects us. Going beyond the idea of media simply reflecting reality, and now talking about how it changes people’s worldviews, their actions and through that, the reality we live in. This can be, in some cases, very obvious; the shift in how sharks were viewed after Jaws came out is fairly quantifiable, to the point that changes in government policy can be attributed back to the popular blockbuster. On a more personal level, media exposure to minority groups can be vital in helping to humanise those groups for people who have not encountered that group, and helping people explore and come to terms with aspects of their lives.

Other forms of criticism look at more subtle potential types of cultural feedback; the Frankfurt School was interested in examining how authority and society were portrayed in German media in the 30’s and how they may have influenced society in the run up to the rise of the Nazi’s to power. The idea of violent media affecting people and making them more violent, or sexist media perpetuating sexist attitudes in society certainly isn’t new, and some of this kind of criticism is obviously bad. I can see the words “Jack Thompson” forming on some of your lips already.

Examining the relationship between media and attitudes is difficult; it is an intersection of critical media theory, sociology and psychology, and empirical research is hard to carry out, particularly on how it affects people on longer timescales. There is some evidence to suggest that the way media affects people is less related to changing their actions, and more to do with changing their idea of normal, their understanding of the background social radiation that we live in. It isn’t that violent media makes you more violent, but rather that it can affect how you approach other people’s violence.

This kind of analysis is usually very focused; examining a very particular aspect of the media; the depiction of a certain action or group of characters, for example. By depiction, I don’t just mean how it presents them, but also their context within the narrative. Are the actions rewarded, punished or simply depicted? How much focus is the depiction given by the piece, and who’s perspective do we see the event from? Some of these aspects may be intended by the artist, while some be unintended implications, positive or negative. Note that all of this refers equally to positive, negative and ambivalent pieces of criticism. There is a tendency for fans of media to focus on using these methods of criticism to examine positive impacts while detractors focus on negative impacts. If art has power and meaning, there’s no reason for this power to have solely positive or negative results. While prioritising either is perfectly reasonable, good criticism should acknowledge both aspects, even if it doesn’t examine all implications of the media in detail. Acknowledging the failures of a piece you enjoy or the successes of a piece you dislike is important.

Reviews

By this I mean the kind of review you would see in a game or film magazine. The intent of Reviews is to inform the reader as to whether a piece of media, usually recently released, is worthwhile for people to watch/read/listen to/ect. They function primarily as kind of a customer protection service, to let people know what to expect in terms of quality, and to be honest are probably the kind of criticism we are most use to seeing, particularly as in a sense we are all Reviewers; if you recommend a new piece of media to friend and explain why, you are being a Reviewer. Formal Reviews tend to be very broad, but I might argue, usually quite shallow. This is not me insulting Reviewers, but rather it’s just a function of the commercial system that creates them; not only do Reviews usually have to be produced quickly to stay relevant to the product, but they have a rather unique target audience. While most works of criticism aim at an audience with at least a passing knowledge of a work (often with bits to get people who haven’t seen it up to speed, but once that’s done the criticism returns to assuming you already have the general geist and use small passages/clips to demonstrate particular aspects of the criticism), Reviews are targeted at people who don’t know about the work and want to know if it is right for them, often without spoilers, which inherently limits the amount of depth you can into.

A particular quirk of Reviews is the common use of scoring systems. These vary, but usually take the form of giving things a score between 0 or 1 to 5 or 10 (not that you need me to explain this to you, since you have probably already seen reviews that give “five out five stars” to things). Sometimes they granulate it a bit, giving the product separate scores for categories like “writing”, “music” and “gameplay”, as well as an overall score. These appear to give the Review some measure of objectivity, and provide a quick, easy to read summary of the Review. It’s worth remembering however that these scores are not objective, but rather we might call them quantitative measures of subjectivity. Ultimately the Review is only going to reflect the opinion of a single writer or set of writers, in the case of collaborative Reviews (more common in video format because it is easier to have people sit down and have a conversation than it is to jump between multiple perspectives in text). It is most useful to find Reviewers who generally agree with you on the particularly type of media you are interested in seeing, or who you know roughly where your opinions diverge. Furthermore, as I discuss later in the section on agendas in criticism, it is important to remember that your own priorities are not universal when evaluating the state of Reviews in the aggregate, and that just because the Reviews’ judging criteria agrees with yours does not make it neutral or agendaless. I know that paragraph may seem obvious, but since we are setting out definitions we just need to cover all the bases.

Review scores are often used to provide an average opinion of quality across a range of views, such as Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic or simply the scores on an Amazon or Google review of a product or location. While this is useful to provide an at-a-glance summary of, as with all such methods this convenience comes at the cost of some information. For example, two films might have 5/10 each, but when looking at the individual scores one is tightly packed, with most of the scores being 5/10, while the other has a clear split between people giving it 8/10 and 2/10 Reviews. The former is generally agreed to simply be a mediocre movie, the other is clearly polarising. Amazon and Google both show the range of opinions, but not all such systems do. Such review sites bring their own issues. The most obvious is what reviews are included in the system, which is generally solved by including all of them, preferably with some system in place to avoid spam (like Steam scores don’t have). Another problem that pops up occasionally is less to do with the combined review scores themselves and more to do with the way they are treated by producers of media, such as game publishers tying financial bonuses for the game developer to the metacritic score.

Reviews are incredibly important parts of criticism because they tend to be the ones most directly linked to how commercial media evolves and develops, both by direct Reviewer feedback and by their effect on audience buying power. They are tools that we use to direct our limited money, time and attention, and that is why I spent so long describing them; understand where a Review is coming from, what its priorities are (and we’ll get to that later when we discuss agendas in criticism) and how it relates to your opinions is kind of important, because, like I said, these are probably the kind of criticism we encounter most in our everyday lives, so in some ways it is even more important than other kinds of discussion that we get this correct.

Diegetic Discussion

This is probably either the most or the second most common kind of criticism carried out day to day. It is sometimes called Watsonian, in-universe or TV trope’s analysis. It is entirely based on discussing the characters and events of a story from an in-universe perspective. Usually a couple of assumptions are, knowingly or not, made; that said universe is internally consistent and that it lines up with our own universe in terms of physical laws and norms of human behaviour unless explicitly stated otherwise.

This kind of discussion can be really useful and interesting, allowing the work’s narrative to be explored in a far more in depth way. Extrapolating what we see in the work and applying it to the wider world create helps explore the themes, characterisation and issues the work, intentionally or not, raises. It also helps you nail down why a work does or does not work for you; many works rely on verisimilitude, and breaking that suspension of disbelief can damage the reception of a work. Finally, it can be used to attempt to predict later plots and character arcs of the work; if the current state of the work is X, then later on we might expect Y. That last factor often branches out into a more meta conversation about genre and expectations; we expect this arc to go in a particular way, based on what we have already seen.

Many examples of this kind of discussion can be found in message forums about shows, in shipping meta that attempts to show why a particular pairing is, can be or soon will be canon, and in discussions about whether character A or character B from different properties would win in a battle. It is also probably the most popular kind of literature study to teach in some schools, particularly those that rely heavily on automatically marked tests. It is, in many ways, a test of memorisation and knowledge, not actual analysis, and can be made into a true or false question rather than an essay style question. Unfortunately, in some cases this form of discussion becomes a bit of a “when all you have is a hammer…” situation. For one thing, treating the work like it is its own fully formed universe that just is fails to account for the role of the creator in the work. The ultimate answer to the question “why does something happen in this story” is simply “the creator put down that it happened”. The follow up question is then “well, why did the creator choose to do that?”. I sometimes call this the “Flamingo Argument”, after an incident in a roleplay where I justified the sentence “and then a flamingo jumps out of your pocket” so well the players literally applauded. The decisions, events and possible limitations of a fictional universe are defined by a real life agent, not their own laws.

Another problem with a lot of this kind of discussion is its incompleteness, which is to say it does not actually properly examine the internal world of the work. Extrapolating from one sentence and applying real world logic does not actually help when there’s a paragraph explaining how it differs from real life. This kind of emerges a lot in shipping metas, which often declare particular actions to only be done in romantic relationships then proceed to ignore, for example, instances where one member of the ship behaves that way to someone else. In some ways this is can apply to most kinds of criticism, I simply see it applied in these kinds of discussions a lot. A final problem is how this kind of analysis often demands completeness. By this, I mean that all revealed aspects of a universe are expected to tie into each other. Character’s cannot simply be unrelated, but must be webbed together; that dockhand in the prequel is the grandfather of one of the protagonists in the first story. In many ways this actually I think makes the world less large. Forcing everyone to be pulled into a clearly defined link pulls the world into the pragmatic reality that a story only has so much time to explore the world, and doesn’t let it expand itself through implication. In fact, much of this analysis has issue with implication and uncertainty; unreliable narrators are a constant bane to working out how this applies, but are a well worn literary staple at this point. I’m not saying don’t do this at all; but be aware of these traps, and don’t assume that diegetic explanations are the be all and end all of discussion about a work.

Aggregate Analysis

Aggregate analysis is not quite the same as review aggregates, discussed above. There, you are looking at lots of reviews of one thing. This kind of aggregate analysis is examining multiple pieces of media at once, usually looking at a common factor or theme. Given we are on the lay internet, the most obvious example of this type of criticism is Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes Vs. Women videos, both the more well known series focused on video games and This allows for trends in media to be examined, which can be useful for examining the social opinions that are being reflected by the work. It can also be useful for looking at particular creators and trends in their work; it’s very easy to come up with in-story reasons for a certain trope, but if it repeatedly appears in someone’s work, or the work of a particular group. then it is worth exploring. Additionally, examining work in the aggregate means that less focus is put on any particular given work in the analysis. This will be covered in a later post on critique etiquette, but when the creators are not in a particularly strong position, like most fanfiction writers, it can be good to be careful about how much criticism you are pouring on the creators and their work.

Another form of aggregate analysis was just mentioned above in the diegetic discussion section. Media can be discussed as to how they fit into particular genres and patterns, both how they use these patterns and how they subvert them. Romance stories can be expected to have a happy ending and slasher horror films use a particularly group of tropes so often that they now parody themselves, for instance. This is helpful because the human brain is very good at pattern recognition and seeing when a pattern is broken; holding to familiar plots and tropes fufils two major roles; it is often what people want in their media (there’s nothing wrong with just consuming something because you enjoy it, any more than there’s something wrong with consuming the same media critically) and breaking the pattern reinforces the point that you are making in the audience’s head. Like all methods of aggregation, this kind of analysis will result in some information being lost. Details about individual works get swept up and ignored, and some nuances will naturally be lost. Furthermore, the analysis is rarely systematic; that is, the selection of the sample from the overall population not actually be representative, meaning that it can imply a particular media trend is far larger than it actually is. This need not be a conscious attempt by the person doing the criticism to mislead, but simply that the sample size is biased in favour of what they have actually read. For this reason, establishing a selection criteria, such as looking at best selling books, works created in a particular year or from a particular author, is quite important. Generally, the larger the sample size, the more this issue is avoided but this expands the focus and resources (time, effort, money to obtain the works you are examining) needed to create the criticism. Obviously the more works you examine in the same length piece, the less details you can give to each piece.

Criticism as Comedy

*INSERT MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 THEME HERE*

Given that this piece is primarily focused on the internet, I would be remiss if I did not mention the thriving genre of comedy that uses criticism as a framework to build the jokes on (some people might prefer to think of it in an alternative form; criticism that uses comedy to enhance the experience of watching it). Riffing, sporking and some forms of let’s play all fall into this category. Commonly, this kind of criticism/comedy relies on a fairly straight forward structure; you go through the media in a linear fashion, inserting comments about it as you go; see most members of TGWTG, or the Mister Plinkett Star Wars videos. Quite often these pieces are presented as being from a character separate to the actual actor and writer; Lindsay Ellis, formerly the Nostalgia Chick, mentioned in a livestream about presenting yourself as a character online that she sometimes wrote herself opinions she didn’t actually hold for her character. These characters are often deliberately hyperbolic, cruel and in many ways pathetic, using the suffering of the character due to watching the media they are criticising as the source of comedy. The media chosen to be examined is also very often considered to be low quality, as it’s easier to write jokes for.

If I may be a bit negative myself here, the quality of the actual criticisms made in these comedies is often fairly low as well. Many of them focus on surface level issues, such as plot holes and immediately obvious aesthetic problems; bad drawings or cgi, while avoiding issues such as theme, editing technique or character growth. The worst ones openly misrepresent what they are criticising if they think it helps with the joke. This is both bad criticism and lazy comedy; the worst of both worlds. That being said, you can certainly have criticism that mixes comedy and insight well, and you can get very good comedy using criticism as the basis.

Agendas in Criticism

All criticism are made using some kind of underlying agenda. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say, but it’s true. Even the idea that art should be judged solely on technical merits without any kind of social analysis is an agenda. Any Reviewer will have an agenda dictating what part of the analysis they are focusing on to make their judgement. For example, many video game reviewers put importance on frame rates and other visual technical details in their reviews, which for a variety of reasons aren’t that helpful for me; while improved graphical quality might be nice, factors like frame rate don’t have that much of an effect on my enjoyment. Agenda is possibly a bad term to use, given the negative implications the word carries, but at this point I’ve been using criticism to mean all kinds of critical analysis of media, not simply negative analysis, so at this point I feel I might as well make a habit out of it. Perhaps a better term would be base assumptions, or goals; what aspect of the media is the criticism interested in exploring? As I’ve noted above, all of the types of criticism I’ve listed here have different aims, different agendas. These can certainly be criticised; if the intentions of an author are open to analysis I see no reason to shield creators of criticism from it, but even if you don’t feel a certain focus is useful to you, that’s no guarantee that it is not useful at all.

Art as Criticism

Originally this section was going to be much longer, since this is a rather large topic to cover, but ultimately I kind of felt that I was adding more words to an already long piece without much of a benefit; the subject of how traditional forms of art can be used as forms of critical discourse, on personal, social and artistic grounds is vast, too large to be given proper detail, but the overall gist can be summed up in two sentences. 1.) Art can certainly be used as an expression of critical discourse.

2.) Many artists lack the tools to make good critical discourse through their art. The second one I feel is probably rather controversial. I don’t mean this in a “artists are terrible” manner or anything like that, but simply that the toolkit needed to make good criticism and the toolkit needed to create good art are different techniques, and artists will have generally put more focus on learning the skills for their craft. People have limited time and opportunities to add skills to their personal toolkit; I have a lot of skills in mathematics, programming and physics (particularly climate dynamics), some lesser skills in communication, critical theory and story writing, but no skill in drawing or playing music. I’d like to gain these skills, but as noted above, I have other skills to learn. This is true for everyone, but the fact remains that the tools of the artist and the critic are different (as, for that matter, the tools required of a technical critic, a sociological critic and a reviewer are different from each other). Furthermore, the goals of the art as art, and the art as criticism, can be opposed to each other. While depiction is certainly not glorification or condonement, a lot of artistic techniques can result in the subject being portrayed more positively than intended; for example, good directing in a film is far more glamourizing than viewing the subject in real life. The camera is far more carefully controlled than our eye movements, and the director and editor can reshoot and recut the scene, unlike ourselves in real time. This is not insurmountable, but needs to be acknowledged.

Of course, the opposite is true; the tool kit of the artist can be used to massively enhance the skill of the commentary. I will hopefully do some more work on exploring how this can be done, but I will admit that my own toolkit needs some advancement on this subject. As I note near the end of this piece, the focus on my critical toolkit does very much tend towards the negative; I can diagnose the problem, but not necessarily provide a treatment. I can point to examples of media that does criticism well (Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, for example), media that succeeds in some areas but fails in other areas (Fight Club sets up it’s criticism of toxic masculinity incredibly well, but has difficulties sticking the landing by not allowing time for the audience to recontextualise the rest of the film after the revival at the end and…okay, I could do an entire piece on this, and many others have been written, so I’m going to stop now) and media that handles its criticism badly (A State of Fear by Michael Critchton), but this piece is more intended as an overview rather than discussing particular examples in detail.

Criticism as Art

If art can be criticism, then that raises the question of the reversal of that sentence; is criticism art? There’s a couple of ways of answering this question. One might be to start by defining art, and then seeing if criticism fits within in that definition. This...is rather famously difficult. Asking “what is Art” is almost a cliché, a line used by STEM folks like myself to mock artists, but attempts have been made. Quite possibly the most broad definition is the one given by Scott McCloud in his book “Understanding Comics”, that art is any human activity not directly related to survival or reproduction. This definition is broad enough to basically be useless; almost every human activity counts as art. On a personal level, I find the definition frustrating for the same reason an artist might be frustrated at a scientist declaring that the most important aspect of human existence fall under science; it gives art claim to every other field, ignoring their differences. I will be the first one to admit that both art and science can learn from each other, science gaining methods of communication and a great understanding of the way their work interacts with the world and art gaining improvements in technical methods and an increased understanding of the world for them to work into their art, but trying to make them subordinate to each other doesn’t really help.

I sometimes like to think of art more in the context of a “family”, in the sense of a group of things where it is far easier to confirm one particular thing is a member of the group than it is to actually define a group. Think of it like a blob of colour that fades out as it spreads. It’s difficult to define the boundaries of it without arbitrarily leaving things that, had you examined them singularly, should be in the group. So, is criticism art? Is it in the obvious bit of the blob?

I would argue yes. Criticism is, under any definition, a way of expressing opinions focused on another piece of art. It’s language is different from other types of art, in the same way a novel uses a different language to a painting, but it is fundamentally art. Any freedom of art, I think, must also include a freedom to criticise, but given I have just defined criticism as art, this applies to criticism itself. There are good and bad ways to do criticism, poor and useful ways to use the toolkit it provides us.

Critical Criticism.

For the most part, I have attempted to keep this piece descriptive, not prescriptive; describing the various methods and techniques of criticism, and, if not abstaining, then at least labelling the points where I am editorialising clearly. That being said, I believe that reading this may give you a fairly accurate reading of one aspect of my personality. I am the kind of person who tends to focus more on the negatives of a situation. Some have called me a pessimistic idealist; I acknowledge the good of a situation, but most of my focus is on how things can be improved. This is not an inherently bad thing; I need to keep aware of it, and avoid dishonestly ignoring good parts of what I am examining, but it is a useful skill to have. Knowing how to both create and receive negative criticism is important in basically any field, and art is no different. Likewise, there’s no reason why people with a more positive focus cannot coexist with me in the same social space. I am planning to create a post later on critical etiquette, both in terms of giving, receiving and coexisting with it, but for now I think it is enough to say that remember that art and criticism are both communication, and need to be treated like any other form.

Applying Critical Skills to Real Life

Throughout this piece, I’ve been trying to explain a couple of things. One, what different ways do we have to make criticism of media, the critical toolkit, to continue my preferred metaphor. Two, what at the limits of each of these tools, aka “don’t use a hammer to tighten a screw”. And three, why do we carry out criticism, or “what are we attempting to build or repair with our criticism”. So far I’ve discussed why I think it is good to critically examine media, from improving our ability to create other media, exploring the social situation that the media emerged from, examining how media feedbacks and modulates our own behaviour, and even to simply using it as a framework for jokes. The final question I want to tackle in this piece is whether these tools are more universally useful than they first appear. Can we apply this to real life, outside of fiction? This is, once again, kind of a large subject, but I believe the tools can be applied both directly and indirectly. Directly, a lot of the questions you need to think of when analysing fictional or fictionalised media also apply to non-fiction media, if not more so. Why is this piece of news being created? What does the focus of the news and encyclopaedias say about the society that created them, and how do they in turn effect us? Indirectly, we start to move from our toolkit to comparing it to toolkits in other areas. For example, the concept of base assumptions mentioned above a few times applies also to examining real life groups, and frankly many of us are unreliable narrators when considering ourselves, viewing our personalities and actions in either the best or the worst possible way, and this applies to how we approach others as well. I think one of the biggest benefits of media and stories is that it allows us to approach and discuss situations in a safe modelled environment, and this benefit applies to how we examine media as well. I hope that this piece has made you think a bit more about how you approach media, and helped you find out what your own priorities for media criticism are.

#Media Criticism #critical analysis #fandom #long post #very long post #please reblog #I spent ages on this #Earl don't look

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timespanner · 5 years ago

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In a vault in the basement of a library in Connecticut lies a book no one can read. The Voynich Manuscript, an early 15th-century codex that belongs to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, presents an irresistible medieval mystery. The tome is written using an otherwise unknown collection of symbols known to those who study the codex as “Voynichese,” with what appear to be roots, prefixes and suffixes as well as repeating spelling and grammatical patterns. Then there are the illustrations, which include unidentifiable but detailed and realistic plants, circular zodiacal and astronomical diagrams, crowned nude women bathing in green or blue pools and other images that defy description.

For centuries, the Voynich Manuscript has resisted interpretation, which hasn’t stopped a host of would-be readers from claiming they’ve solved it. In June 1921, the monthly magazine Hearst’s International announced that University of Pennsylvania Professor William Newbold had “come upon the key to the secret cipher of the [Voynich] Manuscript … and the truth of six hundred years ago is coming out!” Newbold surmised that 13th-century English scientist Roger Bacon had written the manuscript with the aid of a microscope and a telescope, centuries before the invention of either instrument. Newbold’s solution was debunked in 1931 by University of Chicago classicist John Matthews Manly in a journal of medieval studies called Speculum, leaving Newbold posthumously disgraced. Although they had once been close friends, Manly felt a moral imperative to publicly denounce Newbold’s work in the “interests of scientific truth.” “In my opinion,” he wrote, “the Newbold claims are entirely baseless and should be definitely and absolutely rejected.”

Sound familiar? It should. Every few months, it seems, a new theory is trumpeted by the news media beneath a breathless headline along the lines of “Has the Voynich Manuscript Really Been Solved?” (Spoiler alert: No, it hasn’t.) I’ve seen them all.

I’ve been critiquing Voynich theories since I was a PhD student at Yale in the early 1990s and had a job at the Beinecke Library. In addition to my other responsibilities, I was tasked with handling Voynich-related correspondence. Ever since I first laid eyes on the manuscript 30 years ago, I have been captivated not only by the object itself but also by the hold it has on both the public and the persistent and devoted “Voynichologists” who can’t get enough.

Like modern-day Newbolds, we all want to know what the Voynich means. But most would-be interpreters make the same mistake as Newbold: By beginning with their own preconceptions of what they want the Voynich to be, their conclusions take them further from the truth. Their attempts to demystify the medieval past only serve to mystify it further, making the Voynich into a telling avatar of our vexed relationship with the past.

In addition to my own work on the Voynich, which involves a detailed study of the scribes who wrote the manuscript, I’ve been increasingly called upon by the media in recent years to comment on various theories. Every solution I have seen falls apart under scrutiny, from wishful foundations to illogical conclusions.

Recent proposals that were reported worldwide argued that it was written in “Proto-Romance” (something that was not an actual language in the early 15th century), in ancient Hebrew (this theory depends in part on Google Translate, which can’t really handle medieval languages), or — as publicized just last month — in an Italian dialect transcribed using a well-known medieval shorthand system called Tironian Notation. (In fact, there is no resemblance between Voynichese and Tironian Notes.) Like others before them, these authors tend to go public prematurely — and without proper review by the real experts. Word of each new solution spreads across the globe in minutes. While it took years for Manly to call out Newbold, today’s refutations are posted within hours on Twitter or other platforms.

What is it about the Voynich Manuscript that keeps us clicking? Why do we fall for the breathless announcements, only to see them denounced within hours or days? And why should we care about the Voynich Manuscript at all?

There is, in fact, no medieval manuscript that has been seen, studied, analyzed and debated more than Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library MS 408. Dozens of solutions have been proposed in the past century alone, most of them more aspirational than they are substantive. In addition to Roger Bacon, the manuscript has been credited to Leonardo da Vinci or attributed to 16th-century Mesoamerica. Recent chemical analyses, however, concluded that the oak gall ink and the mineral and botanical pigments are consistent with medieval recipes, and Carbon-14 analysis has dated the parchment to between 1404 and 1438. That rules out Roger Bacon (who was already dead), da Vinci (who hadn’t been born), and the peoples of post-contact Mesoamerica.

I regularly receive Voynich “solutions” by email with requests for feedback. That feedback and my public comments are not always accepted in the constructively critical spirit in which they are given. I recently received an ugly and threatening direct message from a fake Facebook account referring in detail to my critique of the Proto-Romance theory, claiming that the author of the theory “will go down in history,” while I will be remembered as a “backwards looking troglodyte” who tried to slow “the advancement of knowledge and human progress” and who will “fade into obscurity.” For some, apparently, the stakes appear to be irrationally high.

The proliferation of demonstrably false Voynich solutions is indicative of a larger issue. As executive director of the Medieval Academy of America, the largest organization in the world dedicated to the study of the Middle Ages, I am acutely aware of the importance of the humanities as a discipline and the urgency of addressing the increasing threats to the study of history, languages and literature in the United States.

In this context, what are we to make of the widespread popular interest in a 600-year-old manuscript that no one can read? While it is the mystery of the Voynich that appeals, that grabs and holds the attention of a curious public, undercooked solutions presented without context lead readers down a rabbit hole of misinformation, conspiracy theories and the thoroughly unproductive fetishization of a fictional medieval past, turning an authentic and fascinating medieval manuscript into a caricature of itself.

Every new Voynich theory offers an opportunity for readers to exercise healthy, critical skepticism instead of accepting publicized solutions at face value. Proposed solutions shouldn’t automatically be rejected (the default reaction of most medievalists), but they should be approached with caution. Seek out expert opinions, and do some follow-up reading. It shouldn’t take a Voynichologist to spot a leap of logic or an argument based on wishful thinking instead of solid facts. It is only by engaging with the critical reading and interpretive skills imparted by the study of the humanities that consumers of media can deconstruct methodologies, assess hypotheses and judge for themselves the reliability of what they read. And I’m not just talking about the Voynich Manuscript.

When we approach an ancient object such as the Voynich Manuscript, we tend to bring our preconceptions with us to the table. The more we burden the manuscript with what we want it to be, the more buried the truth becomes.

The missteps of historical preconception are particularly problematic when dealing with the Middle Ages. We watch “Game of Thrones,” we read “Lord of the Rings,” we play medieval-themed video games, and therefore we think we know something about the Middle Ages. Nationalists and white supremacists misappropriate medieval symbols, imagery and narrative to serve their own vicious agendas. Using a contemporary cultural megaphone to talk over history threatens to drown out that which might otherwise be heard on its own terms. To truly understand the past, we have to let it speak for itself. The Voynich Manuscript has a voice — we just need to listen.

#Voynich Manuscript #medieval manuscripts #The Washington Post #Lisa Fagin Davis #Medieval Academy of America #Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library #Yale University #August 2019

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fyeahanneboleyn · 7 years ago

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Well, I finally finished it! Thoughts under the cut, and beware spoilers, such as they are:

First off, I have to say that this was the most thorough fictional portrayal of Anne I’ve yet read - as it should be, clocking in at almost 550 pages. As with most of Alison Weir’s novels it was an entertaining read that kept me engaged. And as with most of Alison Weir’s novels it also had things that annoyed the hell out of me. Disclaimer: I do have an advanced reader’s copy, so there’s a chance that some of these things will be fixed in the general publication. But i doubt it.

The Good:

1. Weir definitely did her research with this one and it shows. The novel is chock-full of anecdotes, quotes and incidents Anne fans will recognize from her life, which really adds a sense of flavor and realism to the world. (Among my personal favorites: Anne’s meeting with Leonardo da Vinci and Henry informing Anne of Purkoy’s death.)

2. The Anne portrayal, while I keep going back and forth on it, felt pretty good. It was complex and layered and I do think it was ultimately meant to be sympathetic. Young Anne is surrounded by female role models, and therefore grows up with ambitions to be a respected female ruler herself - a force for religious reform in particular, which I liked. She is hot-tempered and sometimes vindictive but fundamentally kind, becoming increasingly volatile and high-strung as her marriage unravels. I especially liked the scenes of her imprisonment, trial and eventual execution; I thought her vacillating emotional state, as well as her ultimate strength and dignity, came across very well.

3. The beginnings of her relationship with Henry are portrayed as sexual harassment. Anne is horrified at Henry’s attention, as she has no feelings for him and is actually rather fond of Catherine. It’s an interesting case of ‘Anne as uncomfortable victim’ that eventually segues into ‘Anne as ambitious re: making the best of a bad situation to advance her reformist causes’, and I didn’t dislike it.

4. Weir does include authorial notes at the end of the book, explaining (some of) what was pulled from history versus made up and naming (some of) her sources. I do still have a few issues with the content - she notes that Chapuys loathed Anne but still considers him “well-informed” because he “cites his sources” - but as I’ve said before, I respect including these notes on principle.

The Groanworthy:

1. A caveat to the generally fair portrayal of Anne as outlined above: Anne is portrayed as being unable to bond with or love Elizabeth who, as a girl, is an irrevocable disappointment. Incredibly, Weir doesn’t ignore the evidence of the real Anne’s affection for her daughter; rather she justifies it in the novel as Anne’s way of trying to soothe her own conscience. What. Just what.

2. A disappointing number of the old cliches continue to rear their heads, such as: Anne having a sixth fingernail, Anne and Mary being rivals, Anne being an utterly loathed queen, and Jane Parker as an embittered and unpleasant woman trapped in a hated marriage. It’s 2017. Come on now.

3. The writing has some issues. The dialogue can feel uneven, sometimes veering into anachronistic territory and then veering the other way whenever historical quotes are used. There are places where repetitive word choice and phrasing become painfully apparent (”Darling” oh my goddd), especially during the long rigmarole of Henry’s attempt to get an annulment. By the time he and Anne have about the sixteenth variant of the exact same conversation it feels like the book is just spinning its wheels. Speaking of whom…

4. Henry. Holy shit, was this characterization annoying. I couldn’t stand him, I couldn’t stand his dialogue, and not even for the usual reasons. There is nothing to appreciate here; he’s not charming or charismatic, he’s not proactive, he’s not especially intelligent or politically savvy. What he is is obnoxious, whiny, ineffective, dominated first by Catherine and then Anne, easily manipulated by everyone around him, and overall just a pathetic figure. He is pitifully attached to Anne, so terrified of her leaving him that he does whatever she wants. His famous temper doesn’t even make an appearance to liven things up; his only redeeming feature is his enduring “fatherly love”. /vomit

Aside from the fact that this portrayal ignores nearly everything we know about the real Henry, it also makes his “partnership” with Anne unbearably one-sided and dull. There’s no dynamic and very little exchange of ideas - it’s just Anne and her family blatantly manipulating the king on one side, and figures like Wolsey and Cromwell doing the same on the other. As a result there’s no indication that Henry knows the charges against Anne are false; the whole coup is framed as Cromwell’s doing, and given that Henry has been shown to be a malleable idiot up to this point, there’s no reason to think he questions any of it. A thought: Stop trying to make women like COA and Anne look “strong” by making the men around them laughably weak. It doesn’t help anyone’s cause.

The Perplexing:

1. I’ve praised Weir’s research in putting together this book, but it occasionally fell victim to some bizarre Critical Research Failure. Why did Anne have two extra brothers, when a basic Google search could tell you Elizabeth Howard only had three children who lived to adulthood? Why do these characters exist when they add nothing to the story, don’t affect events and are killed off fairly quickly? There’s no reason for them to be there, and it’s distracting when most of the book seems well thought-out.

2. The treatment of Mary and George Boleyn was just…strange. There’s nothing really new about Mary’s characterization, but Weir puts forth the idea that she was violently raped by both Francis and Henry. Why is this here? At best it’s meant as an early reason for Anne to distrust men, but there were plenty of other (more tasteful) ways to do that. Anne even lampshades the fact that it “beggared belief” that Mary could be raped by both kings - you don’t say!

As for George…I really don’t know what Weir’s beef with him is, or how it served the story, but George Boleyn here is effectively Satan. He sexually humiliates his wife, sleeps with everyone (and is possibly bi, the shock, the horror!), admits to raping women of all ages, and - most bizarrely - is “revealed” as having poisoned Catherine of Aragon (and implied to be the source of Fisher’s assassination attempt as well). Again: why is any of this here? All it does is make Anne look terrible by association, as she learns these things about her brother and never changes her opinion of him for more than five minutes.

3. Anne and Henry Norris are in love. That’s…interesting, I suppose, though backed up by basically nothing. Even in the novel it’s utterly underdeveloped; Anne falls in love with Norris at first sight - from afar - and for the rest of the book we’re meant to accept that they have this great unspoken passion for each other. I don’t necessarily object to the idea of Anne having feelings for someone else during her marriage to Henry, as long as the author doesn’t toe the line of “she really was an adulteress” too closely. But this felt so random and gratuitous that their “emotional” scenes together read as unintentionally funny.

4. Speaking of gratuitous! The choice to keep Anne conscious in the moments after her beheading was really weird, and frankly it pissed me off a little. Weir doesn’t totally pull this out of nowhere, granted, but once more: it didn’t need to be there. At this point the reader has spent over 500 pages watching Anne grow up, sympathizing with her and relating to her and liking her. The entire last section of the book is devoted to Anne’s mental anguish and terror over her circumstances, which is difficult enough to read. Ending the novel with a gory description of her experience post-decapitation, ending her story with nothing but more fear and physical agony, was unnecessary. It was cruel.

It was also, I might add, a marked contrast to the ending of the previous book in this series, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen. That novel ends with Catherine dying peacefully in her bed and being welcomed into heaven. Compare that to Anne’s horrific final moments before “merciful darkness descended” and tell me it doesn’t feel like authorial bias. Which is strange because, again, I think we’re supposed to root for Anne in this novel.

So, yes, this was an interesting and entertaining read. It did shed light on episodes of Anne’s life and facets of her personality that don’t get much in the way of popular attention. There are frustrating moments and confusing narrative choices, but I’d still recommend giving it a look.

#book review #Anne Boleyn #Alison Weir #Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession #man this got long but yall were warned #i'd love to hear other people's opinions on this as well #now maybe i can actually attack my inbox......

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feetglider2-blog · 6 years ago

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‘Destroy All Monsters’ Is a Harrowing Tribute to Small-Town Music Scenes

The epigraph of Jeff Jackson’s harrowing sophomore novel Destroy All Monsters invokes the ghost of Johnny Ace, the first historical rock martyr, an accidental gun suicide on Christmas Day, 1954. Like any number of musicians who died young, Ace’s early demise imbues his music with a posthumous sense of vitality. Whether through violence or accident or overdose, untimely ends yield relevance . . . except for when they don’t. Which variable is more potent: the music or the story? Tragically, the same might be said of the coverage of violence: does media coverage plant seeds waiting to bloom in concert halls, public squares?

Jackson wrestles with these questions in the fictional Arcadia, a town with a music scene bolstered by the Carmelite Rifles. Their TSOL-ish stage presence captivates and pollinates, a spate of bands forming in its wake. After the band leaves town to seek fame and fortune, a young musician named Shaun, duly inspired, starts a band, records a seven-inch, and plays in front of a hometown crowd at a club called the Bunker. Then violence cuts down the young surge, and it’s not limited to Arcadia: a wave of concert shootings decimates unheard music scenes. Over and over again, unheralded bands are shot while onstage, playing in tiny towns.

Jeff Jackson has spent time in and around music scenes, including Charlotte, North Carolina’s. His writing on bands is keen and never overwrought, focusing on the interdynamics that make novels and documentaries about bands so captivating, as well as the fan perspective, where even in the internet age, apocrypha and rumor still swirl and subsist.

It’s this fan perspective – interlaced with the band point of view – that drives Destory All Monsters’ narrative. The ad hoc protagonist, after a series of narrative shifts and false starts, is Xenie. She appears in the shadows of the legendary Carmelite Rifles show, where she meets Shaun. After his untimely demise, the survivors of Arcadia’s music scene reconfigure.

Xenie notes “Most of the people I know are in bands. All those so-called creative people are always telling me to join these groups or start my own. They’re always trying to get me to see their shows, listen to their songs, buy their stuff. It’s like everything has to be public, everything has to be validated by a crowd, or it doesn’t exist.”

In support of this idea, the ever-changing constellation of musicians in Arcadia reconfigure into a new band and plan a memorial benefit. Xenie lurks the outskirts, “An unwelcome reminder of the town tragedy.” She watches the preparations for the show, ingraining herself with a band comprised of Arcadia’s survivors. At the show’s venue, the eerily named Dead Echo, a trapdoor is installed in the middle of the stage for easy escape in case of shooting, and heightened security nervously awaits.

Xenie notes that “(t)he killers wanted music to matter again….they wanted to purify it. It’s like they were tinning the herd, putting wounded animals out of their misery.” Certainly the amount of music out there has increased with the advent of Bandcamp and Soundcloud – the old adage that anyone can form a band is more a truism now than ever. Cynics might say that the old snap shares a similar truth: everyone can form a band, but not everyone should.

Jackson summons the ghost of the dearly departed rock critic Lester Bangs in his depiction of the climactic show. As audience and readers wait with baited breath, Jackson recalls Bangs’ seminal essay “Of Pop and Pies And Fun,” in which Iggy Pop and the Stooges bash away with abandon and make jackasses of themselves. This foolishness, Bangs says, is the point: too much of rock music is empty posturing and worship. A band must do whatever it takes to move their audience, to genuinely affect them – even if it means utterly debasing themselves. Xenie, the scene’s specter, does this by dressing like Shaun, lip-syncing his songs for the crowd, while onstage, singer Florian strips naked, wearing a target, imploring the audience to shoot him, to break the ritual by continuing it.

This nudity isn’t fans throwing pies at Iggy Pop in the sixties, as Bangs wrote about, but it serves the same purpose: in “Of Pop And Pies And Fun,” Bangs makes the point that initially rock music was all about anyone being able to bash out “Louie Louie” – music is democratic in its simplicity. Or was, before the advent of prog, of Clapton and Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. By making fools of themselves onstage, by baring themselves, the Stooges were saying “you can do this.” Florian and Xenie, similarly, make spectacles of themselves to jolt the audience out of ritual – as the tragically departed singer of the Minutemen D. boon reminds us, real names be proof. Real displays can impact. Violence doesn’t have to be an accepted art – things can change. Can be changed. This notion is further evidenced by the novel’s rock nerd structure: an alternate reality unfolds when one flips the book over, a b-side with the same characters living an alternate reality.

With so much exposure, so many pings and notifications, boxes full of emails waiting to be annihiliated like weeks, Destroy All Monsters rails against its own titular notion – it’s better to create than destroy. Its sharded optimism is a balm for these increasingly fractious times.

FICTION Destroy All Monsters By Jeff Jackson FSG Originals Published October 16, 2018

Jeff Jackson is the author of Mira Corpora, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Vice, and The Collagist, and five of his plays have been produced by the Obie Award–winning Collapsable Giraffe theater company in New York City. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Source: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/10/16/destroy-all-monsters-jeff-jackson-review/

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blamingtim · 6 years ago

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The 2018 Reading List

Here’s the 2nd annual reading list (and probably the final post for Tumblr since the platform is dying)

Freedom ™ - Daniel Suarez

- Finished February 18th

This is the 2nd book in the Daemon saga. It picks up about 4 months after the close of the first book and does its best to tie the first story into a much larger epic. While an enjoyable book, the focus is much more on the characters introduced in the first book and much less on the Daemon itself. This was an interesting read, because two of the main characters from the first book really don’t have much to do and are just part of the larger story. There’s also some interesting comparisons I could make between this book’s overall message and that of Atlas Shrugged. One of the most annoying parts of Atlas Shrugged is how Rand beats the reader over the head about how great her viewpoint is and how absurd normalcy is. Suarez does this too in his own way when he describes these ‘holons’ or communities of Daemon operatives. It’s a strange tale, one that also ends with a fizzle instead of a bang. I don’t want to be too hard on this book, it just seems the author had a lot more direction and gusto to the climax of the first book and not as much in the second.

A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L’Engle

- Finished March 3rd

I originally read this book when I was in the 6th grade. While I remembered a good deal about it, there were definitely blank spots in my memory on how the kids and witches travelled around the universe. Re-reading this 27 years later was very interesting. Originally I hadn’t realized how religious this book had been. I suppose going to school in Kennesaw, GA probably didn’t help since religion was awash pretty much everywhere. The story follows the Murry family whose father has been missing for some time. The main character is the oldest child, their daughter Meg. With the help of 2 and a half women, Meg, her little brother, and a friend must travel throughout the galaxy to attempt to save their father from IT - a telepathic giant brain who can control entire planets. It’s interesting how this book, which was written in the early 1960s, is a product of its time. The principle battle is with a very thinly veiled communism. Everyone on dark planets are living identical lives and performing everything in the exact perfect rhythm. IT uses the ability to control people to have them conform. Also ‘The Black Thing’ which is essentially a giant shadow is a direct representation of the devil, while the light is God. Jesus and God are also mentioned by name in the book, just to ensure that the points are driven home. The ‘witches’ were originally stars and are billions of years old, and attempt to pretend to be humans when meeting the children. They disguise themselves as witches and live in a haunted house because that seemed the easiest way to hide in plain sight. It’s an interesting tale with very familiar tropes including the fact that love quite literally saves the day. I also didn’t recall this being a ‘Quintet’ of stories, as apparently the adventures continue. From what I hear they get even more biblical and time travel allows them to visit Noah’s Ark for some reason. I’ll save this copy for my daughters when they get a little older, as it’s a great children’s book… but doesn’t quite hold up for the adult reader.

We are Legion (We are Bob) - Dennis Taylor

- Finished March 13th

This book follows the fate of Bob, an engineer who sells his software company and immediately signs up to have his head cryo-frozen when he dies. Almost immediately he is hit by a car and wakes up as a computer program ~100 years in the future. He has been awoken to be trained to be a Von Neuenburg probe and replicate himself throughout the galaxy. I immediately loved this book. The first third deals with Bob coming to grips with being a computer simulation as well as learning all the tools and techniques he’ll need for his voyage. As an engineer myself, it was great reading about all the subroutines he would write to support his tasks as well as the semi-detective work he would do to try and learn more about his situation. After he is launched into space things go sideways and he has to fend off the geo-political terrorist attacks against him and his project. The 2nd third of the book deals with Bob replicating himself, getting along with the clones, and the troubles with the Brazilian forces that are trying to destroy him. The book starts to fizzle out here, and by the end of the book I started to realize that this was going to be the first book in a trilogy. The last third of the book has a plot-line involving Bob Prime taking a vast interest in a life-form of Furry Bat-like people that Bob basically becomes a God to. He attempts to defend them from these gorilla like animals that keep murdering them. I found this part of the story tedious and began rooting for the bat people to all be murdered. In any case this was a fun book at the beginning but it really took a turn and by the end I really just wanted it to be over. I don’t think I’m going to read the other two books in the series and move onto other books on my shelf.

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

- Finished April 15th

This is the third book in the Robert Langdon series, starting with Angels & Demon and continuing with The DaVinci Code. Following the formula, Robert is, this time, sent to Washington D.C. and is forced to solve a mystery involving the Masons, the CIA, and a crazed villain. The story is light and fun with a great deal of detail in the descriptions of the artwork and architecture of D.C. It’s difficult to know how much of the descriptions and history are accurate as Dan Brown likes to add false details to help streamline his narrative, but it’s all pretty fun to read. There’s some good founding father background information which has me wanting to read biographies on Washington and Franklin. My only criticism of the book comes with its ending, which isn’t all that satisfying and happens very abruptly. The book then continues on several chapters attempting to finish off the main mystery of the book. It gets pretty hokey toward the end and the reader gets browbeaten pretty heavily in the final pages. All in all this was a fun read but ends with a fizzle instead of a bang.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

- Finished July 14th

I didn’t know what I was getting into, not really. This is by far the darkest story I’ve read. McCarthy brought two things into my life with this story: A new appreciation of historical language, and utter dread. The book follows the life of “the kid”, an unnamed protagonist teenage anti-hero, throughout his travels in the year 1847. He starts in Tennessee but quickly finds his way to Mexico via Texas. The horrors start to pack on as he joins a brigade of Indian scalpers into the wasteland deserts of northern Mexico. The book introduces one of the most complicated characters I’ve encountered called “The Judge”. His story interweaves throughout various points of the Kid’s, always in the most grim and dire of ways. I read this story during my daily commute, so about an hour of reading into work and an hour out. This kept my mood in a very strange place while I read it. The descriptions of gore and terror are vivid and very visual. Interestingly the amount of archaic word usage had me pulling up a dictionary every couple of pages. This strange tongue, English - but still foreign, adds its own dimension to the story. Things that are familiar as set askew with the era specific idioms. These are people. They are from the United States but they are in Mexico. But they are as difficult to truly understand as the language used in their details. This is a fantastic book, but I warn the reader to be ready for a dark ride into a lonely place.

The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay

- Finished October 1st

As if I hadn’t read a depressing enough book with Blood Meridian, I decided to follow it up with this book. The Power of One takes place in South Africa in the late 1930s as you follow the life of a 5 year old boy. His mother is sent to an asylum and he is put into a boarding school. He is English, which are hated by the Boers, and the poor kid is tortured for the next hundred pages. It’s difficult to read about this poor kid being physically abused by bigger kids as well as the staff. The reader is rewarded throughout the rest of the book with a fascinating journey where the kid grows up with a mission to become the welterweight boxing champion of the world.

This book is very much an epic. It’s split into three sub-books, each focusing on 3-5 years of his life. The book ends around his 19th birthday and is filled with twists, turns, and a ‘chosen one’ storyline that the kid is aware of and has to deal with. It’s interesting to see the main character so self aware of a Jesus-like story line and his attempts to stop it while working toward his own personal goals. All in all this is a great read.

Farsighted - Steven Johnson

- Finished December 5th

Needing a break from all this fiction I decided to read Farsighted: How we make the decisions that matter the most. I was hoping this would be an examination into decision making, but it was more case studies of decisions that occurs mostly in New York. Going back into the 1700s, the author takes us through decisions from water supplies, historical battles, and real estate issues. I was hoping the book would be more prescriptive in how to make better decisions, but the author is just an author - not a researcher. All in all some interesting history but not what I was hoping for.

So it seems that I’m on average for about 7 books a year at this point. Hopefully I can step up the pace for 2019 as I’ve got a reading list as long as my arm at this point.

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