#perhaps I just need to develop their stories and make more slice-of-life content but damn

[luckyashes-art]

Thinkin abt Splatoon goobers,, (my OCs),,

And part of me feels a little unsatisfied w/ them :(

[boredkids]

Emotional Algebra: The Formulas of Television and What It Means for Daria’s Sick, Sad World

By H. Hernon

Human beings can be broken down into a series of patterns. The same can be said for our media. For as much as we complain about tropes, stereotypes and formulas there's a reason they're so prevalent: they work. They work really well. As a self-declared semi-creative, this can be frustrating. There's no need to innovate. There's no need to try something new. We've wasted our time on English classes, social science classes, and the dreaded media classes when we could've been doing math and science because that's all you need. Grab the formula, plug in Chris Pratt and Anna Kendrick and you've got yourself a hit. No thinking necessary in this sick, sad world.

Or perhaps I'm just in a nihilistic mood because I've been binge watching MTV's Daria. The show works incredibly well as a slice-of-life for late 90's culture- it captures a certain early internet pessimism and necessary disdain for everything through the lens of high school apathy. But I would argue the show works on a level beyond that. It's one thing to synthesize and satirize culture. It's another to try and do that while maintaining a level of emotional connection, and Daria is able to make this all work using an extremely effective formula for television.

Let's pull back a sec. When it comes to television comedy I've always preferred some sort of emotional core. I've taken a Community or a Party Down over a Always Sunny or Arrested Development time and time again. Not to say that those latter shows aren't good or anything like that, they're very funny. But a lot of narrative shows are funny. It takes a bit more spice to get a viewer invested. Community and Party Down do it through pop culture reliability and capitalist dread respectively, but it's Daria that does it in a way that shows why TV is so damn good at getting people emotionally involved.

Daria Morgendorfer, the character, has been somewhat caricatured over the years. (Known blogmate Eli Schoop compared her to Tina from Bob's Burgers in one drunken conversation, one of the most horrific atrocities in our friendship.) The stigma seems to be that she isn't a character as much of ball of sarcasm, one liners, and edgy-cool disdain for everything. (Hi Tumblr!) But that perception of her as a character is paper thin. Daria's character can be surprisingly complex for the world she exists in, but we'll just use the important things. She has unrealistically high standards for everyone and everything, including herself. She has disdain for “the system” but no real drive to change it. She's emotionally distant because she feels like that's the only way she won't be taken advantage of by anyone or anything. Non participation is a big theme. This doesn't account much for her interests or even personality (the caricature gets some things right, sarcastic and a little bit too edgy at times), but for the basis of outlining this TV formula we can stop here.

And this is where the common critiques of Daria get things wrong. The show isn't about how everyone is shitty and the only way to get through life is to be a sarcastic asshole to everyone and involve yourself in nothing. It's most profound moments are about exploring the times when that clearly isn't the case. The formula the show uses is this: set up a character that has a strict moral view on what they will and won't do (Daria), establish this for several episodes so the audience knows what to expect from them, then in a moment of true emotional dilemma have them act out of there own understood set of morals and have them do something they wouldn't normally do for someone else to show that they really do care. This can be seen in a lot of my favorite shows on a monumental scale. Rick and Morty season two ends with Rick getting himself arrested against his own socio-political views, Party Down as a series ends with Henry doing the one thing he said he'd never do, go back into acting, as a grand gesture to his faith in love interest Casey. The Office (UK) series two end with David Brent swallowing his pride for the first and only time and begging for his job back. These are all huge, one time moments, but Daria is able to do this by constantly questioning our main character's morals.

And in slice-of-life fashion, this isn't always a dramatic moment. Sometimes it ultimately means nothing, despite being internally huge for Daria (deleting embarrassing tape of Quinn in “Monster”), sometimes she grows as a person despite being right in the end, (attempting to accept that Jane can be participating in a corrupt school sport system in “See Jane Run”) sometimes she tries to change for someone else and feels shitty about it, (literally any Trent/Daria episode) and sometimes she legitimately is just in the wrong, and we see the faults of her rigid world view (“Jane's Addiction”, “Partner's Complaint”).

A lot of these episodes come later in the series because time is needed to set up these crescendo moments. That's why TV is so fucking good. You can go a few episodes without giving the characters any moral dilemmas to work with or you can go years. Media doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the amount of time we spend with the stories we watch is key here. Daria starts to realize these things late in season two and way more in seasons three and four because the audience has seen who she is for an entire six hours of content by then. There's something to be said about following someone for that amount of time.

This doesn't just apply to comedy, although I think it works better because I find it easier to connect to people I think are funny. This is why people loved Breaking Bad, it’s why everyone I know won't stop watching Vanderpump Rules. (Reality TV, although unscripted, is a breeding ground for this sort of stuff, if you're patient enough [I'm not]). This is something mostly bound to TV as a medium, and it’s so satisfying to be a part of.

So many shows try this formula, and not all succeed. Daria does it really damn well, and at a rate that is really impressive, especially for what it is. I'm still not done with the show, and I'm already anticipating that single tear slowly rolling down the cheek at the end of the last episode. I'm not saying every show has to do this emotional-moral marshmallow fluff, or that Daria is for everyone. It's really not. But for as cliché, trope ridden, and stigmatized TV in general is, it's a goldmine of emotion and growth over time, largely thanks to the patterns and rules that we know work.

So yeah, I overreacted a bit earlier. Knowing what works isn't always a bad thing. As a self-declared semi-creative it's always more fun to dump a can of beer on “the system” and give it a stone-cold stunner, but perhaps, just like Daria, we self-declared semi-creatives need to learn that sometimes dipping a participatory toe in “the system” isn't always a bad thing.  

[mrkanz]

A Stumble Toward Oblivion

Metanoia (2017) - Nate Perkins

“The auditory equivalent of drinking a bottle of Scotch alone, or a 12-pack worth of cheap beer in a bar full of strangers. Would black out to again, probably.”

About the artist: Nate Perkins is a developing artist from the depths of southern Ohio who’s somehow survived multiple forays into the entertainment business without becoming completely insufferable. He’s got at least one degree, if you can believe it; I’d argue he’s earned an honorary half-bachelor’s on top of that from the school of hard liquor. He’s also got a background in music production, prose work, poetry, and play-writing. (Seriously, the man cannot stop pouring out his feelings for the benefit of strangers.) This is his sophomore album.

First glance: To say that Metanoia initially resists recommendation is putting it lightly. From the cover image of animated corpse leering triumphantly at the thought of his heart fermenting in a jar of cheap alcohol (see the attached image, courtesy of the lovely and talented Brenna Jenny) to the laundry list of things I wouldn’t wish on my least-favorite people that serves as its table of contents, the album seems to promise a bleary-eyed slog through the worst Saturday night bender—and accompanying Sunday afternoon hangover— you ever had.

Play-by-Play

1. Insomnia (5 stars)

Amid a vivid combination of synthetic and organic sound that neatly parallels the mix of sincere and utterly pre-supposed lines being delivered, Perkins’ opening track sets the audience up for what a fall from grace looks like when you’re already starting from a place of mutually-agreed-upon bitterness, masochism, and contradiction. The conversation being illustrated here isn’t a conversation at all, as neither of the participants is taking it seriously… That tells you everything you need to know about the level of sympathy and compassion available to this story’s (anti)hero.

2. Arrhythmia (3 stars)

The action picks up right away—if “Insomnia” offered up the artistically-polished, Ginsbergian representation of what a doomed relationship looks like, then “Arrhythmia” peels back that thin veneer to expose the way brokenness has settled into every corner of the protagonist’s daily grind. Two songs in and he already sounds exhausted (and not just on account of the strained-through-gravel vocals that make their first appearance). I’ll admit, I think the chorus is weak… but I dare you to find me a better depiction of clinical depression.

3. Blacklung (4 stars)

In case you needed it, “Blacklung” provides an even clearer and pared-down explanation of our hero’s wretchedness—delivered, perhaps necessarily, in a backhanded brag. (“Why yes, I am hopelessly empty inside. That’s why I drink.”) Its instrumental undercurrents ominously toe the line between defiant swagger and pitiable stumble, making this one of the best bar songs the album has hidden up its ragged sleeve. I imagine the music video for this one would feature a lot of tracking shots in the pouring rain. I also want to hear the slowed-down, acoustic version pretty damn bad.

4. Cirrhosis (5 stars)

Finally, something you could (possibly) dance to (if you really wanted). The presence of a co-writer explains a lot on this one, I think: the narrative coherence especially, along with the appearance of additional named characters where once there were only blurred, inconstant reminders of life outside the protagonist’s head. You know that Modest Mouse song “We’ve Got Everything?” This feels a lot like that. “Cirrhosis” is also the first song on the album to display Perkins’ full vocal range, if only momentarily.

5. Fracture (5 stars)

Another manifesto/slice-of-life representation, this time in what almost feels more like a poem set to music than a song. (Which isn’t to say I’m ragging on the musical structure of the piece. Even in pre-development, it used to stick in mine--which is what won it the additional star I handed out.)

...I think this is an excellent place to remind the reader that we are already halfway through a scathingly honest ode to depression and loneliness, and Perkins has somehow avoided repeating himself. Turns out there are as many ways to talk about being sad as there are to get drunk, my friends—and we are going to hear about them all before the protagonist makes it out...

6. Malignant (3.5 stars)

There is a lot going on here—a lot of sounds in the background, a lot of work being put into the vocals. The deep-throated snarl that carried us thus is set aside in favor of a much reedier (read: more vulnerable) side of Perkins’ range. This is the voice of a man struggling to make sense of things, projecting his feelings of utter abandonment onto anything and everything in his line of sight so indiscriminately it’d be funny if it wasn’t so miserable. (If you’re getting echoes of The Doors here, I don’t think you’re too far off.) It’s a long, slow spiral to what feels—at least at the time—like the bottom of the barrel, though the last few lines make for a gratifying crash landing.

7. Amnesia (5 stars)

Like the chaser to a shot that burnt your throat past the point of yelling any longer, “Amnesia” is (considerably) sadder than its predecessor. The track’s built-in lurch and lunge, which so often sounds as though it won’t quite make it through another repetition, uniquely captures the sensation of reaching for something you simply will never get to. The vocal layering, though, is what really drives the point home for me: for the first time the rock-bottom voice of depression, the smoke-strained voice of desperation, and the flat, often mocking speaking voice Perkins employed in the opening monologue are united in a single representation of the protagonist’s inability to connect with anything present or solid. The result is equal parts menace and pathos; a fascinating sample of self-imposed hell.

8. Comatose (4.5 stars)

The penultimate song jolts us back into our hero’s version of normal: a numbed, flattened landscape occasionally punctuated by lightning-flash moments of regret, wrath, and longing. I really like what’s going on with the vocals here, though I can only imagine how difficult it was to record such a ragged chorus (we’re talking Nirvana-level screams by the end). Perhaps in light of that, I find myself drawn to the bridge’s more hopeful musical cues…

9. Time of Death (5 stars)

...Which is probably why I’m such a fan of the final track! “Time of Death” bookends quite nicely with “Insomnia”—you get the sense that everything is culminating, meshing and melding (musically and vocally), albeit for no other reason than the hero’s recognition that fighting to go on like this is taking more than he’s got left. A kind of beautiful finality creeps into the last line of each verse; the protagonist appears to be dying by degrees, only to contradict himself at the very end. Whether it’s a transitory vision sparked by the final synaptic fires of a dying man’s head or a legitimate turnaround, the message remains remarkably forward-thinking. Surprise! We’ve made it to metanoia after all.

Overall: An evocative, complex depiction of mental illness and its effects on the daily business of being human in the modern era… or else a tongue-in-cheek character study with some decent drinking songs mixed in for good measure. Don’t be thrown off by the on-the-nose cover or the black-as-hell titling scheme: if you’re willing to take it for exactly what it is (like it wants you to), Metanoia is as legitimately entertaining as it is deeply tragic. You might not want to play it at parties, but you’ll probably put it on when you haven’t got one to attend. (4.4 stars)