#so I exchanged it for the literary canon question

[simlit]

3, 5, 10, 15, 16, 18, 23 for Kyrie

What architectural or design aesthetic would best suit them?

industrial; this is actually a pretty difficult question, because I don't think he really fits into any one style, and he doesn't have a distinct theme, himself. He's adaptable and eclectic. I think if I had to settle on one, it'd be industrial because of its fusion of new and old; raw, barebones structure within a functional living space. In a modern day setting, I could see him being a fan of those odd flips, like old gothic churches into flats. Something about the idea of recycling or repurposing the old for contemporary use, while still preserving the original beauty and respecting the initial construction, would deeply appeal to him. He rebuffs the traditional, but reframing it in a new light fits right with his personal outlook. 

If your OC was a character in a novel from literary canon, who would they be? 

Nick Carraway | The Great Gatsby; Initially more of a hopeful idealist, and harboring a sort of naïve eagerness about the world. Though privileged, Nick retains some level of moral decency and integrity throughout the novel, which I think Kyrie shares. He watches things play out from a comfortable position of wide-eyed wonder, but along with the awe and the wild entertainment comes all the vile realities of human nature. Kyrie is, at his core, The Observer. Like Nick, watches from both within and without, and while he maintains a level of civility with those he knows to have committed evil acts (not necessarily believing those people to be evil, themselves), he also has a strong sense of what is right and good and what should be done. Still, he strives for something else, something different than the monotony of his life.

What piece of moody poetry or novel quote best encompasses your character?

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde

What is a common misconception about your OC?

That he is devout. Considering he is a priest of sorts, people believe him to be a person of deep faith, but that isn’t true. Despite having his own personal connection to the gods, therefor being incapable of denying they exist, he dislikes the idea of higher power, or any sort of narrative of destiny or fate. He struggles with the fact that he has these gifts and why they are his, if not just by pure chance, and rejects the notion that he should be forced to use them for some purpose simply because he was born on a certain day of the year. 

In addition to devout, people often think him diligent or responsible simply because of his title. In all actuality, he’s a very detached person, and he doesn’t like to apply himself because he often sees very little return. 

What trait do they find most attractive/appealing about others?

Another really hard question to pinpoint because honestly he loves people. He finds them amusing and fascinating, and he doesn’t see “good” or “bad” traits, he sees human traits, and the manner in which they manifest would be the appealing part, for him. Pain may turn to cruelty in some, or hopefulness in others. So I guess what he would find attractive is perseverance. How someone might use negative experiences or trauma to overcome their lot in life, if they can maintain their sense of self, and prevail, even if in a flawed manner. Which is why he very rarely feels contempt or disgust for anyone, even if he morally disagrees with them fundamentally. He can almost always understand why they do what they do. But just as well he can be disappointed if someone squanders their opportunity to grow. The flipside would be he finds doing things for purely selfish purpose a sort of regression, as it adds nothing to the person’s character.

What is one thing that they only let those closest to them see?

His loneliness; As much as he is in love with observing others, his relationships have been mostly shallow throughout his life. The only deep connection he has is with his sister, and outside of that, everything feels like a formality. The few people in his life are only there because of circumstance and he hasn’t had the opportunity, prior to the trials, to make friends or meet people of his own accord. He understands that even though the Ten are also only there out of circumstance, he almost desperately clings to them as this sort of lifeline cast in from outside his glass bubble. He’s not an incredibly reserved person, so these cracks begin to show up even now. But I think it would take someone really getting to know him to see just how deeply that thread runs. 

What sort of routines, rituals or rules do they have or set for themselves?

I wouldn’t say he has any. He’s incredibly laid back and bucks against the rules already imposed upon him by the clergy. So he almost spitefully refuses to assume more. 

[ilvero-love]

Establishing Locklyle 💙🖤⚔👻

Whilst the books may not have ramped things up between our dashing heroes until Book 3, Complete Fiction hit the ground running. It's clear from the opening scenes of Lockwood and Co that these are our canon couple.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I really want to do with this post is look in detail at how well the opening scenes of this series are put together, especially in the context of Locklyle. Warning, it's a long one, but there's just so much to unpack.

The show opens with a mysterious couple walking. We see their kit well before we see their faces. But it’s the dialogue between them that provides the real hook. It's intelligent and immediately starts to build the world we are entering.

In these opening moments of the series, those of us new to the world of Lockwood and Co don’t quite follow the context of the exchange, yet in the hands of these two it doesn’t matter. The dialogue is clever, natural and, importantly, has just the right amount of snark.

Lockwood's response of "No need to be facetious" indicates that he is not cowed by Lucy's criticism and her later response, with accompanying knowing grin, of 'Thought you said there was no time to be facetious', hints at an already established mutual understanding and connection. But I'll come back to this in a moment.

When they meet Mrs Hope, Lockwood immediately slips into business mode, reassuring her of their capability. She looks uncertain but it's the first hint we get of Lockwood's charm and confidence, such a large part of his literary character throughout the book series.

Lucy, however, is not so diplomatic and immediately says adults are useless anyway. Lockwood, ever conscious of impressing the client, gives Lucy a look causing her to clarify what she means.

This was a change from the book where it is Lockwood who is dismissive of adults and Lucy soothes it over with explanation. However, Complete Fiction have made a clever change here. Having Lucy deliver the line is much more consistent with their characters, reflecting Lockwood's charm and Lucy's more acerbic edge. In fact much of this interaction with Mrs Hope is reversed from the books and I think it works better to establish the characters of Lucy and Lockwood.

With Mrs Hope's departure, we move inside the home and get our first understanding of their skills. We see Lucy and Lockwood as they tune into the house and see Lucy's point of view as she vividly experiences Mr Hope's death.

I love this scene. The ease as Lockwood laughs and leans against the wall. Lucy's feistiness as she challenges him with justification for her reaction. His response? He offers tea. The first reference to what we will come to know as a staple of their world.

The warmth of the kitchen offsets the ghostly greenish glow of the rest of the house. It's a very cosy, warm and domestic scene. It works to establish a sense of the calm before the storm.

As they discuss the backstory of the haunting, I adore Lockwood's question "Sarcastic or ironic?" and Lucy's response of "The cleverer one" is perfect 👌 One more example of the easy banter between them.

From here we move back upstairs to find ourselves a ghost 👻

The world building in these opening scenes is considerable. It's hard to believe it all happens in the space of 8 minutes.

I spoke earlier about how they seem to have a connection already. In the books Lucy has been with the company for around 6 months but, in Complete Fiction's universe she is only new to the company.

Which means that she, like us, is a bit unsure about Lockwood's ability. He is clearly charming and the leader but Lucy's criticism about trying to make contact with the living coming on top of his failure to pack the chains, means we're not quite sure and then we're left with Lucy dangling over a deadly drop and the opening credits roll.

It must be said that Complete Fiction have put this opening episode together so well. We don't get to see what happens with Lucy for another half hour and I admit by then, I'd almost forgotten our beginning.

We delve into Lucy's backstory which I won't go into detail over here, that's a separate post altogether. We do however get to see the development of the connection that Lucy and Lockwood clearly have and it's evident from when they first lay eyes on each other that there is a mutual connection.

There's so much to pull apart here: George's disdain, Lucy's rising feistiness as a direct consequence and Lockwood overseeing it all. The delight with which Lockwood shows her 35 Portland Row, Lucy's obvious pleasure at finding somewhere to stay, a place that could be home.

But it's the growing connection between Lucy and Lockwood that is clear. So much so that by the time of the final exchange between them in the library, Lucy is comfortable enough with Lockwood to call him out over his overstating of the standing of "Lockwood & Co". I love Lockwood's calm explanation that it was a mild exaggeration and that lots of people make them, much like she did when she exaggerated her rapier prowess ⚔

It's reflective of Lucy's inner resolve that once she realises Lockwood is not concerned by her omission, she challenges him by asking: "How do I know you're good enough for me?"

Cue the perfect segue back to her dangling over the stairwell precipice.

Now it's Lockwood's turn to shine and turns out, yes, yes he is good enough for her 🖤💙

After fighting the ghost off, with some pretty impressive moves to be honest, Lockwood grasps Lucy from falling and here, here is the moment where Locklyle is canon.

Yes I know he's just saved her from certain death, but the way they cling to each other🤗😍💙🖤

Let's just take a moment to savour this scene 😍

Sigh 😍🤗

Now, where were we?

Lockwood is so shaken by the events that he is ready to retreat, it's Lucy that wants to push on. Ironically, it's her that is reckless at this point. The desire to understand the ghost's pain drives her on and provides an early indicator of a major plot point for upcoming episodes and indeed seasons (🙏🙏Manifesting like crazy 💙🖤🧡)

The rest of the episode unfolds at pace. They find the body, Lucy grabs herself a souvenir and saves Lockwood from Ghost lock. It's just unfortunate that it results in the ultimate destruction of the house.

But our canon couple are locked in. There's no going back from here, they just go deeper and deeper.

And we willingly go along for the ride 🤗💙🖤

[illegiblewords]

Serious talk about meta under the cut.

I don't know who might need to hear it, but fwiw mental flexibility is a huge part of analysis (and interacting with other humans lol). You need to be able to account for multiple possibilities when examining a work, or understanding a social exchange. You need to be able to separate what is objective fact from your own subjective interpretation and judgment. The most negative interpretation is not automatically the most worthwhile or true. Someone throwing accusations around in-line with their own worst interpretations does not guarantee those accusations are warranted. You are not a bad or stupid person for disagreeing. Shit needs to withstand scrutiny. I don't always strike the right balance myself. I do the best I can but I'm definitely not perfect. Tbh I'm not beyond pettiness either--although I try to keep that out of actual analysis lol. There have been times I've griped to friends privately or blogged about how I felt (sans tags, with spoiler blocks so people can opt out). I've griped recently. I'm bound to gripe again in the future. Some level of griping is inevitable imo and I figure no one is 100% immune.

All that said, even if someone’s take isn't canon AND even if it's something I really dislike--I'd personally rather people follow their passions anyway. Hands down. I could be in the middle of a rant and my answer would still be that the subject of my frustration gets to exist. I'm not the boss and odds are we're going with different versions in our own heads. Discouraging another fan from creating due to my preferences or narrative approach would horrify me. I've seen fandoms where gatekeeping like that killed the creative community and it was fucking awful.

Not everyone is confident in their own judgment. Not everyone faced with a pissed off person trying to use lore and accusations like clubs will feel okay continuing with their own vision. Elitism and manipulation (especially through rhetoric) can be present within analysis. People are not being taught how to recognize those things properly. Analysts aren't always aware or invested enough to even be careful. It’s legit easy to get caught up in ideas or feelings to the point of forgetting about other people’s, and adjusting to account for alternate approaches takes some work. For me at least, I think having a 'no insults' policy and being super careful when it comes to absolute claims (assertions not qualified by 'I think' or 'it could be argued') helps.

Anyway. Just because a person calls something ‘meaningless’ doesn't make it meaningless. Someone pooh-poohing an observation you made doesn't make your observation less true or important. Employing a literary term doesn't mean that individual actually understands the term, how it works, or how to apply it. Which is to say nothing of romantic chemistry or whatever. I encourage readers to extrapolate on this. ‘Shallow’ could apply as much as ‘meaningless’. Denying parallels exist by itself doesn’t actually negate those parallels. Your version of a character may not be the same as the fan next to you’s and that difference doesn't have to detract. There's more I could say on the subject (I've edited out a lot) but basically--just because another fan isn't into what you're doing doesn't automatically make what you're doing wrong, immoral, shoddy, or otherwise less.

Seriously, vet shit. Question the entire premise an analyst tries to establish then decide for yourself if it holds water. Turn over word choices and assertions in your head before deciding if they're appropriate. Do it to me too. I don't care if someone is the holy goddamn emperor of analysts. Just because a person says something is good or bad, true or false, whatever the hell doesn't make it so. Just because a person uses a technical term doesn't mean they're discussing it effectively. Quality of argument matters beyond the packaging it’s wrapped in. It's important to protect yourself from people whose priority is enforcing their own preferences, including dismissing things they aren't partial to.

I just don't want anyone shamed silent man. Not even people whose takes drive me up the fucking wall. Neither I nor any other analyst is an authority here. And there are people who are absolutely ready to take advantage of other people’s insecurities to assert themselves. Might not even be malicious, just indifferent.

For me, analysis feels kind of like uncovering a dinosaur skeleton. I want to share the cool and exciting things I find with other people. Sometimes I might be sorting out what my own thoughts and feelings are. It's also possible to examine why you're uncomfortable with something, or why you love something another person hates, while making very clear what is YOUR READING and not THE READING. Offering a variety of possibilities is very different from presenting yourself as the only correct one. One note at the end when everything else was insulting and intolerant is like a band-aid over a wound.

EDIT: As a last point, that I'm throwing in just-in-case. If anyone reading this thinks they may have overreached and done stuff I've mentioned + feels shitty about it… that's still not the end of the world. It’s okay. This is hard stuff to learn and I really don't think anyone's perfect at it. Worth the effort though. Just gotta take a deep breath, acknowledge you're a fallible human same as everyone else, and do the best you can going forward. Life goes on.

[writingwithcolor]

Two Stories: European Translating a Fictional Japanese Novel

yoakesan asked:

Hi!

The protagonist of my novel is Sicilian university student who's working on a translation of an imaginary Japanese novel, which I would like to present as a sub-plot (the main plot features the Sicilian guy attending a local festival near his hometown).

The Japanese novel is about a young woman who has strong feelings of nostalgia towards summer, partly because of a short-lived love story she had with another girl. She spends so much time longing for summer that she can't be happy in the present.

Now, in order to underline this concept, I was thinking that the Japanese novel could end with the protagonist dying before the arrival of summer, but I'm afraid that, since the main plot features a happy ending for the Sicilian protagonist, that might be unnecessarily tragic.

Also, do you have any tips on certain aspects of Japanese culture that I should avoid underlining? The Sicilian guy loves Japanese literature, both classic and contemporary, and likes listening to contemporary Japanese electronic music. I was thinking of mentioning some similarities between the two cultures (islands - sea - volcanoes - cherry blossoms/a typical festival that is celebrated in the protagonist's hometown in the occasion of the blossoming of another tree), but the point of the novel is not to draw a consistent parallel.

Finally, said festival features people from many different countries dancing and playing instruments in traditional clothes. How can I be careful about exoticization when describing that part of the story?

More info needed

I like this concept and have read Japanese novels utilizing similar plot devices. An outsider’s perspective would be interesting. This idea also reminds me a little of The Hours (1998) by Michael Cunningham which won the Pulitzer in 1999. However, I wish you had said something more about this festival in this town so we might look into similar parallels in a Japanese context. Similarly crucial would be information about your own familiarity with Japanese literature and which authors/ novels you intended to draw on for your own inspiration for this unnamed novel. After all, the unnamed novel being translated is key. Its themes, time period, place in the Japanese literary canon etc. would all influence your protagonist and his state of mind, wouldn't it? Having done my share of translation, I have more than once grappled with the struggle of not knowing which word to pick because I don't even know what meaning the original author is trying to convey. 

I think this is an interesting question, and I like the concept of cultures shaped by similar forces and motifs being exchanged through the act of translating a novel. Speaking as a person who lives in another part of the world with unpredictable weather, earthquakes, the sea, etc., I like rediscovering aspects of my current home that also evoke Japan and vice-versa. so I invite you to re-submit with greater detail via DM so that we may provide you with a more definitive answer. 

The other question you sent on whether domestic tourism for hanami in Japan is common and which sites are favored is easy to answer through research using most search engines, so we will not be answering it.

- Marika.

[lordisitmine]

On Characterization, and the Nature of Immortality

I got a comment on the most recent chapter of TTNBD that made me realise some things about how I view the characters- namely the differences between Lizzy and Ciel and how it plays into my writing- and I wanted to re-post it here and kind of elaborate a little. TO BE CLEAR: this is NOT me calling out this commenter or being upset with them- I just thought it might be interesting to document my thought process for clarity and posterity.

The comment in question:

"I'm a little upset with sybil and lizzy, is the option not there for them to do the same as ciel and sebastian. Lizzy if she was willing, could be changed, but it sounds to me like she plans to stay a human, which sounds kind of boring to me..lol"

My response:

"I maybe should have made that clear- Sybil isn't fully a demon, so she wouldn't have the ability to change Lizzy, since they aren't already in a contract with each other. Also, I don't think Lizzy would want to live forever- not everyone is well-suited to immortality, in my opinion. Ciel living forever makes a lot more sense to me because he was already disconnected from his humanity jn a way, and had that craving for power and control, which makes living forever/demonic power a natural transition for him. I don't see that for Lizzy. I think Lizzy is too human, I think she feels too much compassion and love for her fellow humans to ever live apart from them. That's just my view, obviously. But also, no spoilers, the story isn't over yet!"

Now, let me expand on that:

It has always been important to me as a writer that the plots of my stories only exist/progress insofar as they match up with the motivations/traits of the characters therein. One comment I get more than any other is that I am very good at characterization- this is why. I pay attention to the way characters act, feel, and exist within the world of the canon setting, and I try to emulate that as much as I can while still telling non-canon stories & portraying non-canon relationships. Obviously, different writers, readers and fans have different perceptions of characters, but I will always stick to my perception, as it is the only perception I have.

I say this so when I explain why I've done things the way I have, you'll hopefully understand why.

In TTNBD Chapter Eight, Claude describes the nature of the demonic mating ritual to Alois. His explanation is as follows:

"As the story goes, there was once a demon, one who was among the first to adopt the Faustian method of existence. This demon had fallen so deeply in love with their human master, and the master with their demon, that upon completion of their contract, neither of them wished to ever be parted from one another. The demon devised this ritual as a solution...... The newly turned demon is created from the power of the existing contract- this in turn creates a perpetual exchange of energies. Each of the demon’s power feeds and is fed by the other’s."

The ritual, as I imagined it, can only be performed by a full demon, on a soul that they are already under an existing Faustian contract/bargain with. I think I have made that clear enough. Sybil, not being a full demon, doesn't need to consume souls as sustenance/cannot consume them, and therefore cannot be in a Faustian contract with a human. She couldn't turn Lizzy immortal whether she or Lizzy wanted it or not.

And, to be honest- I don't think Lizzy would choose that, even if it was an option. But why not? Ciel couldn't wait to do it, and wouldn't it be way more romantic if Lizzy and Sybil got to be together forever? I beg your patience- I'll get there.

Living forever is something a lot of us sometimes wish we could do- most of us (myself included) are scared of aging/death to some extent, some more than others. The obvious drawbacks of immortality are often discussed in literary/fandom spaces- outliving your loved ones, boredom etc. But one thing that doesn't get discussed enough (in my opinion) is the fact that immortality would require one to live separately from human beings, despite resembling them. Choosing to live forever would be choosing to other oneself from humanity while still being forced to exist within its influence. And I believe some people's personalities just aren't suited for it.

And there, dear reader, we have the crux of the issue- I think Lizzy has one of those ill-suited personalities.

First, let's take a look at Ciel. He and Lizzy have, to a minor extent, been narrative foils to each other throughout this story- going through some of the same character beats/plot arcs, but having their perceptions, motivations and feelings affected in different ways.

Ciel, in my opinion, was a great candidate for immortality. He, through both his upper-class status and childhood trauma, has always been separated from the experience of the common man (or humans in general). He already has that seed of discontent with his mortality within him, as well as a disdain for a lot of the things humans choose to do and the ways in which he perceives it to be foolish, dirty, or below him. There was always something in him that was disconnected, that put him apart from mortality, even before the ritual.

He also has an innate craving for power and control- as well as a willingness to do anything to achieve/maintain it, even at the expense of his fellow mortals. And really, what gives one more power and control than to be immune from death itself? And then there's the fact that he happens to have his fate and soul deeply entwined with Sebastian, an already immortal creature, who would do anything to stay by his side for all eternity. So, turning Ciel into a demon, making him immortal, was a no-brainer from the perspective of accurate characterization.

Lizzy, on the other hand, is (again, in my own opinion), almost too human for her own good. In my quest to break her out of the annoying childish character that she has in the anime, I discovered someone who, like Ciel, has deep convictions, as well as a stubborn streak- but, unlike her cousin, Lizzy has a love and compassion for others that limits her ability to be objective or always do what is necessary in order to succeed.

Furthermore, Lizzy doesn't have the same ambitions Ciel does, nor the inherent disconnect from the human race that is present at the core of Ciel's character. That's what makes the contrast between them work, and it's why they'll never completely see eye-to-eye, even when they're working toward the same ultimate goal.

To put it simply, I think Lizzy would miss being human too much. I think, despite that fear of death we all have, she wants to grow old, to experience all the stages of human life to their fullest. I don't think she could live in audience to humanity's saga- I think she needs to be an actor in it. Which is why the idea of making her immortal has never once been something I've seriously considered doing or have any plans to do in TTNBD. I won't say anything about what WILL happen in the TTNBD finale, but that is one thing that will NOT be happening.

That being said, this story isn't over yet! Once, again, no spoilers, but if you know me, you know I don't do sad endings! We're in the business of satisfying conclusions here, so all I'm asking is that you stick with me in this endeavor and let me get you all to that finish line!

If you read all of this, thank you so much. It means a lot to me that people care about what goes into crafting a story like this one. Love you all, and I hope to see you again soon!

[sapphire-weapon]

First off i wanted to say i appreciate you always sharing your true opinion without muddying it up too much or trying to appease people. The honesty is very refreshing!

Okk anyway i keep seeing this take going around and wanted to know your thoughts on it (i have my own, but):

Leon in infinite darkness asks shen may out to dinner once and then later is looking forward to dinner with Claire. Do you see both of these incidents as platonic? The first one reads as flirting to me and the last one seems like an intentional ship tease from the writers (before uh, yknow, making the encounter end on a sour note... look, that one hug they share when leon saves her is ship tease 100% they know what theyre doing)

A lot of people seem to think he is just innocently wanting a meal and I kind of get that vibe with Claire I guess but... ... ... ANYWAY what are your thoughts. I think people are just simply afraid of whore leon

The way I look at it is that my goal first and foremost is to analyze the story text in a serious way -- and it's impossible to have a productive conversation about narrative, characterization, and use of literary tropes if I treat every single possible interpretation of the text as valid. There needs to be some uniformity to what I'm saying, or else there's no point in having the conversation.

That, and I also feel like there's no point in having this little community at all if we can't be honest with each other. Friendships aren't built on uwu. They're built on a sincere exchange of common interests and ideas.

So, I'm really grateful that we've all found each other. It's been so fucking awesome to meet so many people who are genuinely interested in a literary analysis of RE's story and want to brainstorm ideas and piece through things together as a team -- because this has never been my experience in RE fandom before, over the full 25 years that I've been here.

I love u all very much ❤

Ok, so as for your actual question --

I pretty much agree with your interpretation of what's going on there.

People really need to get the fuck over this weird, puritanical pearl-clutching they're doing and being scandalized by OG Leon being a slut canonically. OG Leon tries to fuck Hunnigan at one point, for god's sake.

Because, like. If you try to handwave away or whitewash the way that Leon is pure testosterone; he's a walking hard-on looking for a hole throws himself at people, you're erasing and overlooking a really big part of his character.

Leon is lonely and he fucking hates himself.

The way that this manifests/the way that he expresses this is different between Remake and OG, but that fact about him never goes away. Remake Leon puts up walls and self-isolates as though he's trying to protect everyone around him from the misfortune of having to know him, but OG Leon does the opposite. OG Leon is constantly giving more and more of himself away in the hopes that, eventually, there'll be nothing left.

So, there's a few different things going on there when he asks out Shen May and then Claire in ID.

With Shen May -- yes, he is actually asking her out. That is a legitimate offer for a date that he will go into with the intention of putting the moves on her and having it end in sex.

He does this not just because she's a hot girl -- though, of course he does think she's a hot girl -- he does it because he feels enough of a connection to her that, if she were to go out with him once, he could use that as a way to trick himself into thinking he's still worth other people's time -- even if for just a few hours. Again: he's really fucking lonely. No one person ever stays in his life long enough to form a meaningful relationship with him (platonic or otherwise), but if he can take a girl out to dinner -- hey, that's something, right?

And if he were to actually fuck her, he'd be able to lose himself in her wants and desires for long enough that he can forget how much he fucking hates himself. If he were to feel her hands on his body, he would actually feel wanted for a change. And if he were to make her come, he would feel needed -- and, if he were to make her come more than once, that would be even better. (Remember: Leon is "The Protector." He needs to be needed. He's probably the master of foreplay and will tease and touch and put his mouth on a partner for well over an hour before he actually fucks them.)

And, ever since being kidnapped by the CIA, the only way that Leon has ever been needed or wanted or useful in any way has been through physical means and the use of his body. That's why he defaults to sex as a coping mechanism before he gives up and just starts drinking. He might not have any value as a person, but as a physical body and an object -- well, that's a different story.

Leon objectifies himself, is what I'm saying.

With Claire, though, it's a little bit different.

Yes, it's ship bait -- but it's very mild ship bait, because the context for this one is way different.

Leon isn't being sincere with Claire when he says what he says. He knows that Claire didn't call him or meet up with him because she wants to go out with him or is looking for a booty call. He's not stupid (mostly).

Leon is being sarcastic and self-deprecating when he tells Claire that he was hoping she was going to want to get dinner with him. It's a sad joke to him, because, in his mind, the thought that Claire would be interested in him at all is actually ridiculous.

Because Claire knows him in ways that Shen May didn't. He can't charm his way into Claire's panties by pretending that he's something more than -- or that he's someone -- that he's not.

Claire doesn't need him -- Claire has never needed him, and Leon has absolutely no reason to believe she wants him, either.

What good is he to her, really, when she already knows the truth? She knows that Leon's only real use is as a weapon -- that he's not good for literally anything outside of an active bioterrorism situation. She knows that he fucks up everything he ever tries to do in his personal life. So, why would she want him? Why would she ever want him?

She doesn't. That's why she's about to disappear from his life again for maybe another six years. Maybe more. Because he's not worth being around.

At least, that's what his brain tells him.

It's a really self-defeating mindset that turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Him talking about getting dinner with Claire is a joke, and the punchline is his own opinion of himself.

[tavina-writes]

Thanks to @thebiscuiteternal for tagging me! :D

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 192 public works on AO3 at the moment, and a [redacted] amount unrevealed as part of various ongoing exchanges I'm writing for!

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 1,244,211

3. What fandoms do you write for? I think I mostly write for MDZS at the moment, but Naruto is the major fandom I've spent the past ten or so years in, so it's always going to be my favorite. I also write for ASOIAF, various book fandoms, various other cdramas...etc.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Oh dear.

A Bolt of Silk - Naruto - 2,180

Prophet - Naruto - 1,889

My Teeth In Your Heart - ASOIAF - 1,833

Time Travel Tandem - Naruto - 1,593

It's not time that passes - Naruto - 1,521

None of my MDZS fic makes the list but I think that's normal! I've only been in the fandom for a year and a half, and I mostly write niche stuff so this makes perfect sense to me!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I answer comments sometimes! With irregularity because "answering comments" gets filed in the "send emails" part of my brain and I spend a lot of my professional life sending emails so it's more difficult to reply to comments. I also get concerned when I don't have a lot of say in response to a comment because I'm afraid that I don't sound too enthused when I respond with "Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!" or maybe get too infodumpy with my responses to some questions. In short I think I psyche myself out of responding to comments and I'm trying to do better about it.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm this is a difficult one. I don't think I go for angsty endings as much as I go for like, hopeful or not utterly bleak ones? I think that the ending for An Inherited Creature where WZL and JYL are still married and still stuck in Nightless City might be the suckiest ending, though the ending of maybe I'd make it alive where YZY and Madam Jin are just on the cusp of marrying their canonical husbands is on a level of aaaa re: how we know this story ends.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I DEFINITELY think this is A Bolt of Silk considering that right after the ending I wrote them a 6 chapter, 30k wedding epilogue where everything goes great!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Man. I would say no except sometimes I can recount really terrible stories. Mostly I think I don't get hate because my readers tend to be very kind, but I have, gotten some pretty odd and preachy comments at times. Once notably, when someone told me that I shouldn't've translated the nobility titles for a certain fic and kept them in the original Chinese, and I was about to respond with "my brother in Christ, we are in a Naruto fic and I am already stretching canon like a rubber band. Lets not make readers learn SO MUCH NEW WORD?" Or that one time when someone didn't. Read my fic but wanted to shill theirs in to me in the comments of my fic. But it's mostly odd and mildly entitled rather than hate commenting.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I DO write smut! This is a new accomplishment, but I have skipped right to the sexy sexy noncon/dubcon object insertion porn instead of uhhh any of the tamer things in between that and "literary sex scene where everyone is miserable"

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I don't really write crossovers! I have a hard time figuring out how characters from one story would react to the characters of a different one. :(

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

A number of times yeah. It's bothered me before but like, mostly nowadays I'm just like "in the year of our lord 202X?????"

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have not! It sounds like it would be really flattering but also So Much Work since I write longfic so often.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have occasionally but they've never really been posted. @autumnslantern very patiently listens to me yell about all of my fic ideas in her dms a lot though, which I consider vital to my writing process. Does that count as cowriting? :D

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Man this changes by day. I'm also a consummate multishipper so I can't say I have an all time favorite and more just yelling about "ISNT THIS NEAT?" about the niche thing I've discovered recently.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

God. I have no idea. If I've posted a wip I hope to finish it but I have no idea. Maybe some of my oldest Naruto works might never get done.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I handle emotionality, stories that occur over a long period of time, and atmosphere in a piece really well!

I also really like writing about grief and mourning, trauma, and trying to define ourselves inside difficult family histories. I enjoy writing about character histories, and how that informs their present, as well as complicated loyalties and internal conflict, but the jury's out on whether I can count those as strengths lol.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Man. Plot. Plot. Plot. The weakness is always the plot. I love a good parallel but a parallel is not a plot. Also at one point one of my fics was 30% man sitting sadly in a bathtub nearly dying by volume (like 3 out of 9 scenes in that fic was just this man having a bad time in a bathtub) and this is not a plot either lolll. I admire the people who can write a tightly plotted fic so much, godIwishthatwereme.jpeg. Also I'm perennially long-winded so I also think I struggle a lot with writing a 1.5k-2k fic where just, a snapshot happens. I love admiring other people's beautiful oneshots as well.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I don't tend to do this with dialogue though I'll include words from other languages depending. I feel like it's always so difficult to like, get the reader to know what you meant with [dialogue snippet in different language] but I've seen this handled really well in fic before so like, it does work!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Oh definitely Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils by Jin Yong when we were in the pits of that 13 year translation of the work. I wrote like, speculative fic based on what we already had? But mostly scene snippets and outline ideas of what would happen instead of formal fic. None of that was ever published anywhere though. In terms of "Fandom Where I First Published Fic on the Internet" it's probably Katekyo Hitman Reborn I was really big on that fandom in 2014. You won't take me alive on where that fic is though lmao.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

In terms of best written and most beloved to me at the moment and also complete it's definitely but I'm not in charge of sorrow (so please don't ask me when). How will I ever get over NHS's post canon journey in that fic honestly.

uhhh let's see, @im-sublimey, @woobifiedvillain, @lgbtlunaverse, @cerusee and anyone else who sees this and wants to play? If you've been tagged in this game already sdjdgkah APOLOGIES.

[ilgaksu]

🎉 and 💔 for the fic writer asks?

from this series of fic writer asks

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

definitely engagement. i actually have several fics abandoned currently because of lack of engagement.

(the one that came to my mind immediately is the fic discussing hei xiazi's past as a sex worker in canon, which never did as well as i hoped, but also i had very limited hopes for the appeal of a fic about a cis and very masc man's relationship to female-oriented sex work. it is, however, entirely accurate to the actual sex work industry in the country he was operating in, as well as refusing to view sex work with anything but respect for a profession. do i sound bitter? i'm a little bit bitter.)

in my original writing career, engagement is less of a pressing issue to me because i have exchanged actual money or some other form of renumeration for labour. fic for me is less a handing over an item (because outside of a commission, you haven't paid for access to it and also then do not take any ownership of it or rights to it) and more of a form of communication with other fans. i want the influencer-capitalism shift of fan subculture into content creators and content consumers as two separate groups to die in a fire, actually. subcultures should not seek to mimic the dominant culture; modern fandom was created, as i've said before to a friend, by a group of women in a house talking about star trek, who had the audacity to treat each other as equals to each other and to men, when the world refused to view any of them as such. there is no such thing as "more equal than others" outside of animal farm, and especially not based on productivity.

having said that, i think if i was pretending that engagement isn't part of the reason i'm spending my limited time on earth writing two fictional and borrowed people, i would be being disingenuous. i am using it as a form of communication and communion with other people who love the thing i love, and the fic itself is a way of me expressing and processing my love, especially in a sociohistorical era where we are often far more distanced from who we want to be in community with. everyone wants their work and love to be acknowledged, and the use of their time, especially when it's on something that is viewed as a waste of it in the dominant culture; especially when it's viewed as silly and small, because current western culture denigrates love of the silly and small, especially a big love of something that cannot be made fully marketable. and so, it's hard to feel like a little kid at show and tell with your craft project, only to feel as if all the other kids are just walking by. it's why i'm always open to questions about characterisation and construction of fics/headcanons/theories, as well as writing craft; i just don't discuss the last one unless asked very often because i dislike seeming as though i need to provide a thesis defense for my creative practice to preface my work. like, what are you, my phd supervisor?

but to go on further, because it's my blog and i can elaborate if i want to, there are other aspects too. to follow the argument for engagement further, i sometimes get comments that echo that i have verbalised or represented an experience that felt personal to someone, and personal to the point of it feeling isolating. when i specialised in trauma studies, i focused a whole dissertation on caruth's theory of the unspeakable in trauma and looked it with a literary studies focus. caruth argues, to try and condense it quickly, that trauma is the experience of an unspeakable event, and, by that argument, we can surmise that only by articulating the trauma can someone begin to process that trauma. (i think a lot about what it means to live in a current culture that is trauma-obsessed and obsessed with making our trauma marketable for the algorithm to the total invasion of privacy, and yet deeply lacking in empathy to when trauma makes a person behave outside the bounds of what they consider acceptable, btw. but that's another topic for another day.)

so, for example, getting a comment saying that someone has felt seen and heard feels incredible to me. even if that's the only comment i get on that fic, it feels like this form of communication in a world that's starved us of that kind of communication, and that will make the real work and time that goes into writing feel worthwhile.

however, overall, i've moved away from as being as metrics-focused as i once was. when i began writing in heihua fandom, for example, i assumed, with absolute certainty, that nobody was reading, that nobody was interested in what i had to say, that nothing i was writing would be viewed with grace. and as a result, i felt free in a way i hadn't in previous fandoms where i was very publically involved; if i was writing alone, just for me, what would i write? and so now a great deal of is a fic a success for me is based in: do i read it back to myself and enjoy the process of that? does it feel like, if it wasn't written by me, and i wasn't worried about egocentricity, i would acknowledge that this fic was made entirely to my own tastes? am i having fun? did i love the process?

those are the questions i try to focus on now, and so now it's about 50/50 with that and actual external engagement, which is huge progress.

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

OH, BOY, THIS ONE'S THE BRUTAL QUESTION.

short answer: yes, there's been several, and i immediately thought of them when you asked.

longer answer in a reply that's already had a very long answer:

several fics of mine reflect claustrophobia and hopelessness i felt at that point in my personal life. i am proud of them and i am proud of myself for them, but not because i believe the purpose of pain is to make art, or that it makes personal misery worthwhile. i am proud of them because of their honesty. they break my heart in that to look at these works at the point in my life i'm at now is to feel an intense love and compassion for the version of me who wrote them. i try and avoid autobiographical readings of my work, because i think they're often used to pigeonhole marginalised creators to fit into the box of literary criticism, but i think it's important as a creator to value how you can see your own personal development outside of just skill development in your own creative work.

[oneminutereviews]

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Novels, short stories, poems and plays all use a large set of conventions that are specific to the genre they belong to. In addition, there is a large set of conventions that work across these genres. Learning to recognise these conventions requires practice. This is one of the main messages of Thomas C. Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

Foster is a professor at the University of Michigan–Flint and has taught literature for more than three decades. He wrote his book mainly for adult returning students, who tend to ask more questions than traditional students about how literary interpretation works. To his surprise, Foster later noticed that his book was also picked up by teachers and used in secondary-school classrooms (more specifically, “high school” in American English). He even got invited to talks where secondary-school pupils asked him to sign copies of his book.

The sorts of conventions that Foster’s book focuses on are those that allow you to read between the lines: story patterns (for example, the quest), allusions and symbols. Due to the diversification of the canon, authors can no longer assume a common body of literature that their readers are familiar with (chapter 7). The sources of allusions that Foster discusses are Shakespeare, the Bible, “myth” in a broad sense (“myth is a body of stories that matter”) and children’s literature (chapters 5–8).

A large part of the book is devoted to explaining many types of symbolism: meals (“whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion”, chapter 2), the different guises of vampirism (“ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires”, chapter 3), weather phenomena such as rain and snow (chapter 9), violence (chapters 10–11), flight (“flight is freedom”, chapter 15), symbols for or coded references to sex (chapter 16), sex itself as a symbol (chapter 17), symbols for baptism (chapter 18), geography as a symbol (“when writers send characters south, it’s so they can run amok”, chapter 19), the seasons (chapter 20), deformities and other physical features (chapter 21–22), and heart disease and other illnesses (though not all diseases are created equal, chapter 23).

In Chapter 12, which is titled “Is That a Symbol?” he discusses a few common problems with the detection and interpretation of symbols. The first problem is that many readers expect a symbol to mean one particular thing, and one thing only. It is true that some symbols, such as a white flag, have a limited range of meanings, but unless you are dealing with allegory, there are usually several valid interpretations. Another problem with symbols is that many readers only look at objects and images as potential symbols and ignore events and actions. Foster mentions Robert Frost as a poet who often used action as a symbol. I would have appreciated it if the author had expanded on this type of symbols by discussing several examples. In a later chapter, Foster also explains the difference between widely understood symbols and symbols that have a specific meaning within a particular author’s work.

Foster also points out (in bold) that “characters are not people” but “products of writers’ imagination—and readers’ imagination” (chapter 8). Terry Eagleton made the same point in the first chapter of his book How to Read Literature (2013), but it bears repeating. On forums and question-and-answer sites about literature, people often ask questions that imply that characters should behave like real people, even in works of literature dating from periods when real human behaviour was not the main source of inspiration for characters’ behaviour. (See, for example, some of the questions tagged ‘character-analysis’ on Literature Stack Exchange.)

One of the last chapters reproduces Katherine Mansfield’s well-known short story The Garden Party as a test case for what you have learnt from the book. Foster asks you to answer a few questions about that story and to write down your observations. After that, he gives three examples of readings of the story, which go from a straightforward response to more sophisticated observations.

In spite of the book’s title, Foster does not look at literature as a whole but at English literature, especially prose fiction (with a few examples of plays and poems). There are few references to literature in other languages, even when including the Bible and Greek mythology, which are discussed because they are important sources of allusions and references. The author admits that a single book cannot cover everything (even when focusing only on English prose fiction). For example, form and structure are not discussed at all. The first edition contained a chapter on the structure of the sonnet but it was removed from the second edition because it did not really fit in with the rest of the book. (In 2018, Foster published How to Read Poetry Like a Professor, in which a chapter on the sonnet makes more sense.) He also points out that his book does not cover all the cultural codes that authors use, as that would have required an encyclopaedic approach and would have made his book much less enjoyable.

One of the distinguishing features of the book is how Foster encourages readers to trust their own judgement, especially in the Postlude (titled “Who’s in Charge Here?”) and the Envoi. Foster tells readers,

Don’t cede control of your opinions to critics, teachers, famous writers, or know-it-all professors. Listen to them, but read confidently and assertively, and don’t be ashamed or apologetic about your reading. You and I both know you’re capable and intelligent, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The book’s appendix contains a reading list in several parts: several pages of primary works (all English literature except for Kafka and Sophocles), a short list of fairy tales, a list of films, secondary sources (i.e. other books that can help you become a better reader of literature) and a section titled “Master Class” recommending four works of literature that “will give you a chance to use all your newfound skills”.

Foster’s book is a very enjoyable read and a great place to start for those who would like to study literature, or at least English prose. I highly recommend it.

Thomas C. Foster: How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Revised edition. HarperCollins, 2014. ISBN 9780062301673. (A teaching guide can be downloaded from the HarperCollins website. This PDF file does not follow guidelines for the creation of accessible PDF documents.)

Review submitted by Tsundoku.

[jcmarchi]

3 Questions: Wiebke Denecke on a landmark project for Chinese literature

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/3-questions-wiebke-denecke-on-a-landmark-project-for-chinese-literature/

3 Questions: Wiebke Denecke on a landmark project for Chinese literature

Nuns writing fine poetry. Centuries-old joke books. An epic travelogue ending with a visit to Genghis Khan. These are just a few things readers can experience through the new Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature, published by Oxford University Press.

The series is modeled on the Loeb Classical Library, which debuted in 1912 and features about 500 titles of Greek and Roman literature, in their distinctive red and green covers. The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature series is starting with five titles, under the supervision of founding editor-in-chief Wiebke Denecke, the S. C. Fang Professor of Chinese Language and Culture in MIT’s literature section. The aim is to bring these classic texts, from the first millennium BCE through the early 20th century, to the world, in engaging bilingual editions. There will be four more new titles next year, with dozens lined up after that.

The series benefactors are Oscar Liu-Chien Tang and Agnes Hsin Mei Hsu-Tang, whose family has also been MIT benefactors and has a notable record of philanthropy for institutions and programs in the arts, humanities, and education. MIT News talked with Denecke about the ambitious new book series.

Q: What is the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature?

A: This is a library of classical Chinese literature, covering three millennia, from what is now China and from many other places. Just as Latin was the lingua franca in Europe, classical Chinese was the lingua franca of writers in East Asia, so we include authors from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The editions are bilingual, Chinese on one side of the page and English on the other.

It belongs to a certain type of project that you could call endowed bilingual libraries. This started 100 years ago with the Loeb Classical Library of classic Greco-Roman literature. A decade ago, the Murty Classical Library of India was launched, and now here we have a new library of classical Chinese literature. It is a great moment for world literature.

We publish translations that are both solidly scholarly and eminently readable. Our associate editor is Lucas Klein, who has a vision of literary magic that makes words sparkle — it’s something he has really emphasized.

Our donors, Agnes Hsin Mei Hsu-Tang and Oscar Liu-Chien Tang, are particularly interesting. Agnes Hsu-Tang is the descendant of Xu Guangqi, who was co-translator with Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary in the 17th century, of Euclid’s “Elements.” Agnes has another great ancestor, Ji Yun, who compiled one of the greatest encyclopedias of the world, in the 18th century. It’s not just somebody from the Chinese world supporting this, but there’s a family lineage of translating knowledge onto a global stage, a symbol of East-West cultural exchange.

Q: What can we discover, or rediscover, about Chinese-language literature through this library?

A: I think it’s an important moment for the humanities generally. The Loeb Library was established when James Loeb himself said the humanities were being neglected more than at any time since perhaps the Middle Ages. Overall, we have a three-pronged strategy: First, we try to make the canonical new. Then we go beyond what anglophone readers might have heard about Chinese literature. For instance, we have three joke collections, in “The Misadventures of Master Mugwort.” In China, joke collections were very popular, and there’s a lot of political satire in there. But there is a common prejudice that China lacks satirical literature. Third, the series emphasizes that there is more than 2,000 years of common cultural heritage in East Asia. That’s a real message right there.

We publish works that are very surprising, such as “An Anthology of Poetry by Buddhist Nuns of Late Imperial China.” Many of these are first translations. We wanted a voice of the female experience, often in very precarious times. Some nuns were from elite ranks and had lost their husbands. Others were orphaned. It’s a real archaeology of female voices.

It’s a very good antidote to the idea that nuns were confined. Quite to the contrary, they made relationships they never could have in a household. They were writing poetry and painting, and it’s very empowering. One such example is Shangjian Huizong’s 17th-century poem, “Village Life.” Her husband died in prison, and she wrote three volumes of poetry, including these lines:

“Living here impoverished / I’ve lost all taste for ornaments … / The face of the woman in my mirror / is a flower that knows emptiness”

So what is amazing here? Obviously as a nun she was impoverished. The ornaments are hair ornaments, and it goes with a literary tradition in China to write about women in a boudoir — usually written by males, but here the boudoir implies self-reflectivity. The flower is a natural ornament; it also knows that emptiness accompanies the idea of enlightenment, in the Buddhist sense. So, she turns around boudoir imagery, saying she realizes in the symbolic mirror that she has gained enlightenment. These lines have incredible literary value.

Q: Another one of the first five volumes is “Daoist Master Changchun’s Journey to the West,” a firsthand account of a visit to Genghis Khan by a Chinese traveling party on a long diplomatic trip. Surely there are not many texts like this. What is it about?

A: This is written by a disciple of a Daoist patriarch who was summoned by Genghis Khan in the 1220s, when the Mongols were rushing through the continent. They basically emerged from nowhere, didn’t have a lot of history or writing behind them, and shaped world history. There are so few eyewitness sources, it’s amazing to have a travelogue with so much detail. It’s also made special by all the poetry in it, which in the Chinese tradition was always the main medium of experiencing reality and expressing it.

In this text, poetry becomes a way to cope with this travel experience: You start in China, go to Central Asia, like to the city of Samarkind, and encounter different people, different plants, Islam, sweet melons, and people drinking from glass vessels never seen in China. It’s a way to familiarize and exoticize at the same time. And the writer observes a person — we know today it’s a muezzin — lead in “petitioning heaven” for the Muslim prayer. This is an encounter with Islam, though he doesn’t have a real concept of that.

On the other hand, Genghis Khan is intensely interested in the Dao — or at least that’s how it’s depicted. The first three times they meet, the conversation is always about the Dao. The Chinese want to believe the other side is interested in them. Finally, this is also hagiographic text, a sacred eulogy of this patriarch, and it’s a process of getting political capital out of the connections with Genghis Khan.

Through all of this, we are really trying to develop what we call the Hsu-Tang Library style: smartly scholarly, where you feel there’s something gained in translation.

[leblancsvoleur]

I was rereading @justiceraffles​‘s post comparing the Gosho Boys to various literary characters from classic detective stories. I had a whole light-bulb moment regarding the question of which character Hakuba would be closely associated with SO! That’s what this post is about.

On the terms of which literary character from classic detective fiction Hakuba is closely associated with, I propose that “Herlock Sholmes/Holmlock Shears” from the Arsène Lupin stories fits the bill quite nicely, for various reasons. As ridiculous as this concept sounds BUT hear me out.

(sorry this ended up way longer than I initially intended)

So some of you may be wondering, but isn’t “Herlock Sholmes” just a misspelling of Sherlock Holmes to avoid a lawsuit by Maurice Leblanc for putting Conan Doyle’s character in his own story?

Yes, you are right. However, the Holmes and Watson that appear in the Lupin stories is, dare I say, completely OOC from the canon Holmes. Maurice Leblanc is a fanfic writer with questionable quality on characterization, so to speak. It is for this reason that I consider “Herlock Sholmes/Holmlock Shears” to be a different and separate character from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

—and, it is precisely the association with Lupin that makes this parody of the great detective a fitting candidate on this subject. For one, it is clear that Hakuba is originally created to be the Sherlock Holmes to Kaito’s Lupin — from his nationality, his appearance to the initials of his name —  much like “Holmlock Shears,” as Herlock Sholmes is called in later Lupin books.

However, unlike Shinichi/Conan who has his own series and story outside of catching KID, Hakuba’s role in the story of Magic Kaito is tied to Kaitou KID. He doesn’t really have agency outside of the initial reason he was written into the story.

We don’t learn much about Hakuba’s life — the character quirks that he shows in his initial appearance (his catchphrase question, pocket watch, Holmes cosplay, obsession with measurements & time) don’t come up again in later chapters, his caretaker doesn’t have a name, his hawk was only ever mentioned in his Detective Conan cameo and never in Magic Kaito.

Hakuba’s involvement in the story tends to be relegated to the sidelines. Apart from his initial 3-chapters appearance, Hakuba comes in and out of the story’s background at random. He has little presence and is essentially low-threat to KID, usually arriving only after KID has left the scene.

In this sense, Hakuba is treated by the narrative as an afterthought, an inferior version of Shinichi/Conan’s Sherlock Holmes. In comparison, Shinichi/Conan is much more involved in the process of catching KID, he is a threat to KID whenever he shows up and is treated as such by the story.

Taking aside the advantage that Shinichi/Conan has by being the protagonist in his own series, let’s compare the Black Star Arc (Magic Kaito ch23-24) to the Midnight Crow Arc (ch31-33) & Sun Halo Arc (ch34-36). 

Black Star Arc.

In Black Star, Shinichi is a distant presence inside a helicopter. Despite not being anywhere physically close to KID or amidst the action in-person, his presence is immediately felt in the story without even seeing him.

Throughout the story, he is a sort of omnipresence authority above the entire scene, with calm and decisive instructions to the police on the ground to corner KID.

What makes this story even more powerful is how neither Shinichi nor KID had even laid eyes on their opponent during the entire exchange.

Even though KID still escapes and achieves his objective by the end of the story, the tense knowledge of a unseen, mysterious figure chasing at KID’s literal heel and the close escape at the end makes this exchange all the more memorable.

Midnight Crow & Sun Halo Arc.

In both Midnight Crow & Sun halo, the narrative attempts to tease Hakuba as a threat in the beginning.

In Midnight Crow, he calls out KID in disguise with dialogue that makes it seems like he saw through him. Yet in the end, it was played for laughs — it is Hakuba who ultimately gave KID the perfect excuse to escape.

In Sun Halo, he vocally takes note of Kaito’s new motorcycle at the beginning and hints at the upcoming heist. However, Kaito himself is shown to be unimpressed in response, Hakuba is not taken seriously.

The story continues to present the police and by extension, Hakuba, as incompetent, making numerous mistakes and slip-ups during the course of the story. What is the most disappointing is not KID getting away, it’s how Hakuba is never shown to take the initiative. He is never in control of the field, directing the police like Shinichi. Even being led on by the criminals right within their midst in both stories.

This is similar to how “Holmlock Shears” is written in the Lupin stories, particularly in The Hollow Needle — a shadow of his canonical self from Conan Doyle’s stories. He was written only as a rival to challenge Lupin and as a representative of the anglo-french rivalry sentiments of the time, to tease but ultimately to be bested by Lupin.

In Magic Kaito, the narrative is always focused on KID and the new antagonist of the story. In both, the thief is the one who solves the mysteries and unveils the mystery of other the malicious criminals.

After all, the thief is the protagonist of this story, the detective cannot be allowed to have the final victory.

Some caveats/after-thoughts to take note of — 

1. I know I said that Hakuba’s obsession with time/his pocket watch is never mentioned again after the initial 3-chapters but I was technically wrong. He got like one tiny panel of him counting down the seconds with the watch in Midnight Crow that I almost missed so... I don’t think it invalidates my overall point tho lol.

2. Of course, the comparisons between Black Star and the various Hakuba-related MK chapters are not one-to-one. After all, Shinichi had the entire arc focused on him while Hakuba had to share the spotlight with all of these other new antagonists. With that factor in mind, Hakuba’s initial appearance (Magic Kaito ch15-17) are actually much more in line with the Black Star chapters. In those 3 chapters, Hakuba is actively involved in the plot and is shown to interact directly with KID.

HOWEVER! I’ve chosen not to use those chapters as comparison as they were from when Magic Kaito was still running as a gag manga, so the tone and structure of the stories back then were completely different than the current chapters. I also consider the Hakuba back then was still written as the one and only Sherlock Holmes to KID’s Lupin — unlike currently, where that role now is designated to Shinichi/Conan.

3. The tone and structure change in the Magic Kaito manga actually started from the Black Star Arc, and Hakuba’s initial 3 introduction-chapters was written way before that point. He then had an unexplained gap of appearance where Gosho just seemed to forget that he existed- before showing up again as a cameo in the arc right after Black Star.

4. While “Herlock/Holmlock” in the Lupin stories is not as sidelined as Hakuba is in the recent MK chapters, the main point I was trying to get at is how they are both created as the Great Detective rival to the Gentleman Thief, and are written as less competent in the story in favour of thief protagonist. It is particularly noticeable in The Hollow Needle, where Holmlock is kidnapped off-screen before he even appeared in the story, remains completely uninvolved from the narrative only to pop in at the very end to do *spoilers*. And then he never appears again in another Lupin story bc Leblanc got tired of writing Holmes fanfic I guess lol

5. I’m sorry Hakuba I love you, I can only hope that you get treated better in the story some day

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[corpsebrigadier]

Hi!! I love your final fantasy tactics fanfics. What is your thought process when writing? How do you try to interweave your own headcanons with the game’s lore? Do you like playing any other strategy rpgs? :)

Thanks so much for letting me know you like my work!

To answer your questions: My thought process when I'm composing is generally shaped by the circumstances of the composition. A lot of my fic was made in relation to prompts (from twitter, from friends, for exchanges/fests), and I find that when I'm writing under constraint I tend to have a lot of cool and unexpected ideas that I later incorporate into my personal take on the canon (I came up with a ton of my characterization for my forever faves the older Beoulves this way as well as basically everything about my functional OC Rad). Longer stuff generally coalesces from scenarios/thoughts that have been tossing about in my mind for a while, and it often gets scoped down a little so that I can ensure I actually put it out in the world instead of having it sit in drafts forever. "Let Your Curse Be On Me" and "The Cuckoo" both had their seeds as mods I daydreamed about making. "Contempt's Bloom is Forever" actually has about 6K words I drafted before I decided to re-render it as a double drabble sequence. When I actually sit down to compose write, I think a lot about literary moments I like, moments in my life I found emotional, and whatever earworm is caught in my head. I have many many incomplete playlists that I jam to for certain scenarios/characters.

When it comes to mixing headcanon and canon, I tend to see what's portrayed in the game setting up some boundaries of characterization I can push up against but never quite pass. I can make Dycedarg sympathetic but I can't make him good. Wiegraf can become softer but he can't become servile. I love that a game with so many detailed infodumps still has big gaps in its lore that fic authors can fill out, and I try to take advantage of them. I love speculating about the Fifty Years War and how it fucked everyone up, and my favorite characters to write about are almost all NPCs and enemies. I honestly find much of the main party a little hard to handle, given that they're front and center while remaining so full of ambiguity. It's perfectly possible to have Agrias or Cid die and crystalize in your first random battle after they join up and the end of the game won't change for it; there's not a perfectly clear sense as to what end they're trending towards. With characters whose arcs are small but have clear ends, I feel like I have a lot more room to expand and a lot more guidance as to where I'm going--so a lot of the ideas I develop start with the game's cast of doomed boss fights. Overall, a lot of my headcanons have developed and grown more calcified over time (I have a hugely dorky pre-canon timeline I made laid out as a spread sheet with various major characters' progressions) and at this point, I just sort of treat them as an established part of what FFT era Ivalice is for me.

As for other strategy RPGS… er… I have plans to actually play non-FFT ones (TO: LUCT's high on the list) when I finally get my doctorate and the mythical free time being post-defense will possibly get me. I have a lot of plans for then. We'll see how I'm hanging onto them next year.

Hope that response was the sort you were looking for. :)

[visiting-naturalist]

Dear naturalist,

In relation to the exchange you had on Thursday with rpsocsandcanonohmy, involving 'closed canon' and dying fandoms: have you stumbled in your studies upon the Danny Phantom fandom (sometimes known as the Phandom, although the name is shared by the Dan and Phil fandom)? It is not as active as others, but what I find fascinating is that it mantains a surprisingly steady activity considering the DP cartoon started in 2004 and finished in 2007, 14 years ago. It is therefore a closed canon fandom but not a dying one. Furthermore, since 2017 it sometimes manages to trend on April 3rd when they celebrate the Dannypocalypse (inspired by the Mishapocalypse I presume). Perhaps the essence of the fandom is being half alive/half dead (if you consider closed-canon some kind of death) the same way the protagonist of DP can be argued to be, since he is half human, half ghost.

It also has some very specific tropes like vivisection fanfics, which while I'm sure are not unique to this fandom, are relatively popular/well known in DP due to the nature of the protagonist and plot of the series.

I'm not really active in that community myself, so I'm afraid I can't give much more details, and I had to investigate a bit about the Dannypocalypse, so I apologize if it is not entirely accurate, but I hope you find this information useful, or at the very least somewhat interesting.

I wish you the best of luck in your research.

Sincerely, Octubre

Respected @octubreazul,

Thank you for this glimpse into a corner of Tumblr I had not yet come across in my travels.

While I would consider myself the sort of naturalist whose expertise and interest lies in more general observation of environments and habitats, versus the highly specific literary practices you mention, I am still interested in the property of longevity attained by the community in question.

The nature of Tumblr allowing for the perpetual circulation of content and the de-emphasizing of "timeliness," unlike other locations, allows for the healthy and sustained continuation of such communities. The easy access, thanks to archives and tags, to blogs since gone into hibernation, perpetuates content created in years past by ones long moved into different habitats.

I hope this observation interests you and does not just come across as pointless rambling. I find myself a bit dizzied by the heat this week and feel as if perhaps my writings are becoming nonsensical and meandering.

I am Most sincerely,

The Naturalist

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

what do you think of aang's comments in "the southern raiders" and what they meant to katara? I watched that episode recently with my sister who dislikes atla, and assessed similar things to what certain people of the fandom are saying: "aang didn't understand her", "aang was pushing his beliefs onto her", "it didn't seem like he knew her", etc. she was more fair than those people of course because she did say it was realistic that he'd be so worried since she recognizes that he does love her.

Honestly those arguments are all,, tired. They’re outdated. They’re boring. They’re wrong. They’re a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of A:TLA canon. This isn’t to say that those who genuinely, truly believe these arguments are terrible people (obviously not lmao), but somewhere along the line they had a seed planted in their mind that posits them to have inherent dislike for Aang. And honestly? I just feel sorry for them, because not understanding and appreciating Aang means their A:TLA experience really can’t be that great. But I digress!

“aang didn’t understand her”

Oh, what’s the post? Right - “Fandom once again forgets that Aang is the sole survivor of genocide.” Aang understands better than anyone else what Katara is going through*. There is a direct parallel between Aang finding Gyatso’s skeleton and Katara finding Kya’s body. I’m not going to sit here and argue which was more traumatizing (literally can’t stand when people do that) because you can’t quantify grief like that, but it cannot be denied that Aang has experienced something incredibly similar to what Katara has gone through: the loss of a close parental figure followed by finding said parent’s corpse. Not only that, but Aang and Katara both share a unique sense of helplessness intertwined with their grief regarding their parental figures’ deaths. For Katara, there are the questions of:

- what if I wasn’t a waterbender

- what if I had run a little faster

- what if I had fought against Yon Rha back then

All leading to “Could I have saved her?” For Aang, there are the questions of:

- what if I wasn’t the Avatar

- what if I hadn’t run away

- what if I had stayed to fight the Fire Nation back then

All leading to “Could I have saved him?” Both of them feel incredibly guilty on a personal level about the death of their parental figures, thus blaming themselves. Katara tries to push it off onto Zuko/the Fire Nation and Aang tries to suppress it entirely, but ultimately it is revealed how closely they hold responsibility to their chests. For Aang, it comes out in “The Storm.” For Katara, it comes out in “The Southern Raiders.” So, bullshit that Aang doesn’t understand Katara! He understands her grief better than anyone.

Also, many, many people have gone into this before, but Aang’s example of Appa being stolen was not callous/rude/etc. Appa was the last living piece of his culture. Appa is not “just a pet.” People who insist so are the actual ones being callous, not Aang. And, as Aang himself says, “How do you think I felt about the Fire Nation when I found out what happened to my people?” Aang has experienced more hurt at the hands of the Fire Nation than anyone. There’s a great meta here that delves into Aang’s experiences as the sole survivor of genocide. I don’t understand how someone could acknowledge all that Aang has lost (read: he has lost everything) and then argue that he doesn’t understand Katara’s pain. Like, what? Do you have no sense of empathy?

But most importantly, from Katara herself: “Thanks for understanding, Aang.” She says this after her initial dismissal of him. So take it from the source, my friend - Katara believed Aang understood her. Who are we to argue?

*The only exception perhaps being Sokka, since Kya was indeed his mother, too, but it is worth noting that Sokka did not have the same experience of seeing Kya’s dead body or feeling the intense self-blame that Katara did.

“aang was pushing his beliefs onto her”

It is SO funny how those SAME people have NO problem with everyone in the Gaang telling Aang to kill Ozai the finale! Y’know, when they were disregarding the pacifistic beliefs of his people in exchange for emphasizing their, ahem, more aggressive ones? SO funny! I’m laughing SO hard right now!

Heavy sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious. They’re hypocrites and they know it.

But, more importantly, Aang was not pushing his beliefs onto her? At all?? Tell me where in the episode Aang:

- refused to let Katara go after Yon Rha

- told Katara what she was doing was wrong

- told Katara that HE was right and that SHE needed to listen to HIM

Here’s the thing: none of that ever happened! Not only does Aang accept that Katara needs to go (see: “I wasn’t planning to [stop you]. This is a journey you need to take. You need to face this man.”), but he allows her to take Appa on her journey. Appa, the last living piece of his culture. Aang has incredible trust in Katara, and his choice to send Appa with her (essentially sending a piece of himself with her) demonstrates this fact clearly. That should end the discussion point blank, but I guess I’ll break down the lines people seem to have issues with:

1) “It’s okay, because I forgive you. [Pauses.] That give you any ideas?”

Honestly, the criticism this line gets is laughable to me. People use it to argue that Aang was being disrespectful to Katara’s feelings and?? I hate to break it to them, but you HAVE to look at the context a line is in if you’re going to judge it. That is Analysis 101: Context is Everything. This moment is used to break tension. That type of scenario is an entire literary trope, okay? A:TLA did not invent it! Shakespeare literally did it in Romeo and Juliet when he had Peter argue with musicians about something stupid after Juliet’s “death.” The whole point is to break tension before more serious scenes. In R&J, it is before the lovers kill themselves, and in A:TLA, it is before Katara leaves with Zuko to confront Yon Rha. That’s why there’s another moment just like it at the end of that scene! Y’know, Sokka asking to borrow Momo for no reason? It breaks tension! It’s a moment of respite before weighty scenes! It’s incredibly common in every form of media! This is what no Humanities classes did to some of y’all, I swear to God. So yeah, Aang was not disrespecting Katara’s feelings with this. It’s just a tension-breaker. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news for those who devoutly believed it was a sign of Aang being a Horrible Person. You were wrong, ain’t no big thing, go drink some water and stay hydrated okay darlings?

2) “I don’t think so. I think it’s about getting revenge.”

Um, a major point of “The Southern Raiders” is that Aang was right about Katara’s initial drive to face Yon Rha? It was a quest for revenge? Katara literally bloodbends, an ability she was forced to learn and essentially feels cursed to bear? Also, nowhere here does Aang tell Katara she was a horrible person for feeling angry and wanting revenge. He simply brings her attention to the reality that what she’s currently seeking is revenge. He’s worried about her. She’s his best friend! He loves her! He doesn’t want her to kill Yon Rha because he knows that for Katara to have blood on her hands from a revenge quest would hurt her tremendously. (As a matter of fact, the audience knows - or should know - this, too.) So, sorry that Aang expresses concern for her? Apparently not wanting your best friend to murder someone is forcing your beliefs onto them? Damn. Y’all are harsh these days.

3) “The monks used to say that revenge is like a two-headed rat viper. While you watch your enemy go down, you’re being poisoned yourself.” // “Katara, you do have a choice: forgiveness.” // “No, it’s not. It's easy to do nothing, but it’s hard to forgive.” // “But when you do, please don’t choose revenge. Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.”

I put all the forgiveness quotes together since people tend to complain about them as a whole. But like,, I really don’t see how this is Aang forcing his beliefs onto her? He asks her to choose forgiveness. And just speaking plainly: on an emotional level, it is better for someone to forgive than to murder. Killing someone is not easy, even if you hate that person with every bone in your body, and it will mentally scar whomever does it. Y’all know this! It’s obvious! I shouldn’t have to say it! But Aang knows this, too, and thus he doesn’t want to see Katara kill Yon Rha and perhaps kill a part of herself in the process. Katara is not a killer. I’m not arguing about whether she could have or even if she wanted to, because you know what, she admits she was tempted, but Katara is not a killer. An FMA quote is very fitting here:

“Your hands weren’t meant to kill. They were meant to give life.”

Why should Katara have to live with a man’s murder on her conscience, especially when his death would be a result of fruitless revenge? The answer is simple: she shouldn’t, and Aang doesn’t want her to. Katara is a warrior. A healer. A leader. A friend. But not a killer.

Anyways. Back to my point: Aang is not forcing his beliefs onto her here. He’s offering her another option, the option she ends up choosing, albeit she extends forgiveness to Zuko instead. And Prince Holier-Than-Thou (jk love you Zuzu) acknowledges it himself: “You [Aang] were right about what Katara needed.” Aang didn’t force anything on Katara here. He reminded her of her choices, he reminded her about the consequences of revenge, and he reminded her about the value of forgiveness. Never once did he tell her she had to forgive Yon Rha or else. And when it came down to it, he stepped aside, and he let her go, because he knew this was a journey she needed to take. So… He actually did the exact opposite of forcing his beliefs onto her! He respected her feelings and let her make her own decision! Seriously, how many pairs of anti-Aang goggles do people have to wear to genuinely believe otherwise??

“it didn't seem like he knew her”

Ohhhhhh my God this is SO close to one of the actual points of the episode! So close!! It’s not that Aang didn’t know her; it’s that Katara wasn’t acting like herself. I’ve talked about it before here and here, but Katara was incredibly consumed by her emotions in “The Southern Raiders.” It’s why she ignores Zuko the entire time before they leave on Appa! It’s why she makes that callous comment to Sokka about their mother that we know she never would have made normally! She is drowning in grief about her mother’s absence, guilt regarding her mother’s death, and anger about Zuko (she still does not trust him, and yet he can lead her to her mother’s killer; I don’t know about y’all, but that is really freaking difficult to reconcile). So when Aang compares her to Jet, it’s not a far-off description. She is acting like Jet, because she’s consumed by grief and hurt and anger and she’s not acting like herself. It is instrumental, too, that Katara isn’t acting like herself, because it makes her decision not to pursue revenge and instead offer a second third chance to Zuko even more profound. “I’m proud of you,” Aang tells her, and damn! The audience is, too! I was incredibly proud of her for finding her way out of what can be a bottomless spiral for some people. So again, it wasn’t that Aang didn’t know her. It was that Katara wasn’t acting like herself (I guess meaning… no one knew her?).

In conclusion, literally all of these anti-Aang arguments regarding TSR are exhausting and so easily disprovable. The fact that they somehow manage to live on is evidence that people just want excuses to hate Aang, plain and simple. Like, it’s so easy to just say you don’t vibe with his character? You don’t have to pull BS excuses to “justify” it? I don’t vibe with Ty Lee as much as I do other characters (although I have recently grown much more fond of her; bless the Renaissance for more Mailee content, even if some of it is just a Zukka byproduct), but y’all don’t see me twisting her sacrifice in “Boiling Rock” to make it seem like it was selfish or something (mostly because, spoiler alert, it wasn’t). Like, you can say Aang isn’t your favorite and move on instead of using the same boring rhetoric over and over and over that just makes it look like you lack critical thinking. :/

TL;DR - Aang’s comments to Katara in “The Southern Raiders” came from a place of concern. A place of wisdom. A place of love. And honestly? I think Katara realizes this, and she’s grateful to him all the more for it.

[cochart]

I came to think about this less than ideal blur between fandom and academia because I ran across a discussion about whether or not Sam and Frodo was in a gay relationship. And it wasn’t a fandom ship discussion. People were arguing whether or not the actual LOTR text could be interpreted that way in an academic paper. 

The main argument was of course, that yes, Sam and Frodo were in gay relationship. There were dissenters who argued that no Sam is not gay because he clearly ends up in a heterosexual marriage with Rosie Cotton and they have big family together. Then the author (pro Sam/Frodo) commented that still, Sam could be bisexual (because Tolkien never wrote that he wasn’t!). Some others commented that it was common for gay men to get married to women in the past. In short, people would not let go of the idea that Sam and Frodo could be gay in canon. When the dissent persisted, the pro-Sam/Frodo crowd pulled out “what’s the harm” card.

This would not have been a problem at all if the exchange took place in let’s say, Tumblr. If someone wants to ship Sam and Frodo, they should be able to without being harassed by the crowd crying “it’s not the canon.” In many fandoms, I see a lot of needless hate against ships or anything deemed “for female fans” and this is whole another topic to talk about. But if one’s arguing whether or not one could read something certain way in an academic context, (”Is this reading of this text reasonable/able to withstand scrutiny?”) then the person is opening the question up for debate.

Personally, as a (former) academic, I believe that Sam cannot be interpreted as gay from the LOTR text. Again, this does not mean that people shouldn’t be able to enjoy such fan headcanon/ships. Let me quickly lay out the arguments. 1. Sam and Frodo’s relationship was largely inspired by Tolkien’s own experience during WWI and shows positive, deep male friendship. 2. Sam’s infatuation with Rosie Cotton is described very well in the text and an absence of an author’s word on certain topic (”is Sam bisexual?”) does not work as a proof for anything. 3. Tolkien has no history of writing homosexual or bisexual relationships nor has he shown any explicit stance on the topic.

1. Sam and Frodo’s relationship was largely inspired by Tolkien’s own experience during WWI. This is discussed often and extensively in studies of his work. Nor is such close male relationship anything too strange. Portrayals of two males sharing deep friendship were pretty common throughout literary history both in the west and the east. Some people like to argue rather flippantly “see, everyone was gay!” at seeing relationships such as the bond between David and Jonathan. I think the case is more about how the current society, especially American society, grew to pathologize male feelings and intimacy.

2. The LOTR makes Sam’s infatuation with Rosie (and also her affection for him) very, very obvious. Rosie doesn’t pop up right at the end of the book so Sam can be married off. 

3. Tolkien has no history of writing homosexual/bisexual relationships. A lot of people like going on about “Tolkien was a catholic!” and it’s an often misused argument usually employed to shut down any interpretation (academic or just fan) that the person does not like. Regardless of Tolkien’s religion, one clear thing is that writing gay relationship was not his priority. 

Take Oscar Wilde, for a change. There are many male characters in close relationship to one another in his works. The exchange between Dorian Gray and Basil the painter is intimate, and considering that the author himself was gay and dated a younger man, one could reasonably argue that there is some homoerotic tension between the two men. 

Tolkien on the other hand, has no personal connection or history of writing such relationship (Also on the personal note, try comparing how Wilde writes two men and how Tolkien writes two men. Oh boy, you’ll see the difference). 

This is not saying that you have to be gay to write gay relationships but rather considering the context in which he was writing LOTR, it’s very less likely that he meant Sam and Frodo’s relationship to be gay love.

(2/2)

Again, I clarify that whatever my words are, it’s not a justification to be a dick and harass other people with “Hurr durr it’s not canon though.” In fan spaces, let other fans be fans. 

And omake coming soon when I finish this other work.

Oh and yes, I think Sam and Frodo are cute though I don’t ship them as couple.