#sorry i love literary analysis!! as if its my fault!!!!!

[frankingsteinery]

ok but walton if you look at the letters in the beginning, while i wouldnt go so far as to say he's a neglected child (we dont get nearly enough insight into his background to make those kind of assumptions) his parents were definitely, at the very least, not very present in walton's life or influential to him growing up. from my memory his mother is literally never mentioned, and the sole mentions of his father are fleeting. simply: 1) he didnt support waltons childhood dreams and interests in sailing and expeditions/discovery 2) he died, leaving walton an orphan to be raised by his older sister margaret 3) his fathers literal dying wish was for walton to never be a mariner. so while i am in no way suggesting his childhood was near as bad as the creature's, or even victor's, i think its incorrect to suggest that walton was completely blind and ignorant to neglect and parental conflict

"victor's creature would kinda be justified in not feeling bad" but he DID feel bad and therein, to me, is where his fault lies. i feel as if the creature would have felt no empathy, no care at all for victor or those lives he was taking, then i would actually blame him for his actions less -- because what creature did was murder innocent people, and destroy victors life, all while understanding and FEELING that it was bad. he did it anyways, while actively going against his own morality

creature "doesnt really like humans and kills them" is incorrect, his reason for killing them was NEVER because he didnt like them, its because he chose to murder for revenge while simultaneously wishing he could be part of the humanity he was destroying, which is why he was so distraught and upset when he was ostracized and met with their fear and hatred every time. because he LIKED THEM, he in his sort of parasocial way LOVED them and wanted to be loved and accepted by them

and walton sees this! which is what his whole speech and their interaction at the end is about! he sees the creatures humanity, he knows creatures life stories and feels for his misfortunes and is moved by his words and expressions of sadness, and even sympathizes with him in a way literally no one else in the book does, yet he also recognizes that creature actively chose to turn away from his innate humanity and goodness and consciously choose violence and revenge instead, while knowing and feeling what he was doing was wrong, and That is why walton condemns creature

"do you think he had enough for a conscience for morality when he was neglected by his own fucking creator???" this line is just funny to me. Because thats. Thats the point of the whole book. That he had a conscience for morality despite his horrific situation

im not going to get into the whole victor-abandoned-creature and the bride-situation because ive talked about it a Lot in the past and this post is already too long. sorry for dumping this all on you months after you made this post its all for the sake of literary analysis and walton is my babygirl i had to jump to his defense 🙏 🙏

walton = big dumb stupid head

it is so weird to me that despite hearing the same tale from victor that we have, when walton hears of victor's creature wailing over victor's death he's basically like:

"erm actually maybe if you listened to your concisnece nothing would have happened l + ratio + bozo!!"

like c'monnNn walton,, do you think he had enough for a conscience for morality when he was neglected by his own fucking creator??? and even then tbh victor's creature would kinda be justified in not feeling bad since again victor ran immediately and has been very against giving his creation a second chance, permanently at least with his bride and all.

and its like gee maybe the guy who lived on his own forever and who humans treated HORRIBLY doesn't really like humans and kills them? :0 woaaa walton crazy shit right there. Idk i just-like i like victor and all but c'mon man you don't neglect ur kid but if u do don't be surprised at the consequences and walton, walton just shut the fuck up

[toxicsamruby]

hello! i have to ask: what do you think about supernatural au's where monsters don't exist/monster hunting is not a thing? do you think the characters could even exist out of that realm? i honestly have conflicting views on this because on one hand i do enjoy the character dynamics but i also feel it would be wrong to just take away something that is fundamental to this show, idk though

i LOVE this question. thank you. im going to write a very long post now

obviously there are infinite ways to interpret a story, right? but sam and dean (and castiel too of course) as characters are completely inextricable from their backstories, and their backstories are inextricable from themes of transience, poverty, loneliness, violence, familial duty, masculinity, otherness, american protestantism, horror, humanity, and monstrosity. i dont think that it’s Wrong to take away the monster hunting as an element in the story, but i DO think it would be bad storytelling to do so bc the fact is that these characters w these personalities wouldnt EXIST without a few VERY crucial plot points/themes. and thats a GOOD thing!! say what u will abt the writers (and i do. i do) but the early seasons do an EXCELLENT job of building characters who are inseparable from their stories, characters whose every action is reflective of the Story itself in a bigger sense, characters who are interesting because of the way that they’re used to tell that bigger Story. there’s a sense of cohesiveness between character and theme and narrative, and removing one of these aspects would lessen the other two. that is the mark of good storytelling (that, in my opinion, distinguishes seasons 1 and MAYBE 2 from all the rest; although funnily enough i think castiel’s arc in s4 is the best example of what im talking about outside of s1-2. but anyways).

without these crucial themes and narratives, who ARE sam and dean? why do they even matter? what’s the value of them as characters? aus that strip away all those VERY important themes and plot points strip away the actual artistic value of the characters, and reduces them to objects of the audience’s emotional whims. the only reason u have any affection for these characters in aus is because you know and understand the source material, and you remember why those characters STARTED to matter to u in the first place. this is something that happens in a lot of fanfiction i think: the most essential themes of the original work are ignored for the sake of emotionally expedient scenarios where both writer and reader can clock out of having to do a bigger analysis of the story and just focus on, for example, a certain ship getting together and/or having sex, or a certain character getting a happy ending. and like i wont deny that theyre fun to read! they are essentially transplanting already-developed characters from their already-developed stories into a new fun scenario without the themes and narratives that actually made the characters compelling. and sure, sometimes a truly good author offers us a compelling new set of themes and narratives, ones that are interesting and make us think, but i’d argue that the characters in those rare good fics are 1. not...really the same characters from the show, since the story they’re in has been so completely transformed 2. basically shortcuts for the author to cut their teeth on writing original fiction. in any case, a vast majority of fics that remove the themes and narratives of the original story DONT offer a truly satisfying replacement, so the point is almost moot.

my answer, in short, is that aus without monster hunting destroy the character-theme-narrative cohesion that all good stories require, and by extension doesn’t require either author or reader to think critically about the story as a whole. you know that joke that goes around about supernatural just being a crate full of toys that we’re all sitting around and playing barbie dolls with? that is what the fics ur talking about basically are. it isn’t seriously engaging with a story as a piece of art, it’s grabbing a few barbies from a box and putting them in different clothes. and i think the fact that supernatural does fall apart both thematically and narratively so early in its incredibly long runtime is what allows people to treat it as a box of dolls, because most of the time it seems like the writers themselves treat the show as a box of dolls instead of a story that deserves respect and care and thought. so i actually do understand the urge to play with the barbies, so to speak, and to a certain extent i dont even think it’s a bad thing. but i DO think that sometimes, especially online, ESPECIALLY with a show like this where the lines between genuine engagement with the text and playing barbie dolls gets so blurred, people actually start to lose track of which is which, and THATS what irritates me. people start to view the ENTIRE STORY as just a way to see their personal favorite character do what they want that character to do. the character (and their emotional attachment to said character) becomes the whole reason for the story, instead of the story being the reason for the characters. playing barbie dolls is fine! but it DOES need to be balanced out with actual engagement, with literary analysis, with criticism if the story needs it (and my GOD does supernatural need criticism!), and there needs to be an understanding of the difference between genuine analysis and personal loyalty to a character. 

like, not to be a snob or anything, but it is important to engage truthfully and fairly with a text. things arent good just because you want them to be good, and stories can only offer you genuine satisfaction and critical/artistic growth if you truly engage with them. engaging with supernatural means thinking/writing about monsters and the Other, and to remove monstrosity as a theme and narrative hollows out the story completely.

[faustonastring]

your take is bad. saying “i’m not saying you can’t feel x way about x thing” and then tagging multi-paragraph rants with insulting language in the LI hashtags is... telling people how to feel. if that isn’t your goal then why is it tagged? people are allowed to be upset, even if they used in-game currency. sorry, but the coins have monetary value whether you like it or not. people are pissed. the devs are not immune to criticism and neither are you

First I would just like to say this : I have a hard time articulating my thoughts into writing or words, so I can understand why you took it that way, but that’s not my intention. That doesn’t excuse what I said sure, but that’s not what I meant.

I didn’t mean to tell anyone how to feel, and I totally get why it came off that way, it’s hard for me to express what I’m thinking so this is gonna sound weird and all over the place so bare with me (not excusing what I said, simply explaining)

What I meant when I said that is: it’s simply just a game, and it’s not worth hurting people over no matter the circumstances. It’s one thing to criticize and it’s another thing to bash people because of simple change. My wording for that was not right, and I’m taking full responsibility for that, and I totally understand why you would be upset. I didn’t mean to tell any one how to feel, and I’m sorry if it came off that way that wasn’t my intention, and I hate to hide behind the excuse “I don’t know how to articulate myself” but I don’t, and I know it’s a shitty excuse, and I’m not trying to excuse my self, I’m trying to explain why it came off that way, I want to make that very clear.

When I said “It’s okay to be super pissed if you spent money on something and it’s now gone, but if you just used in-game currency, and not any of your real money, you can still be a little pissed, sure, but it’s not as big of a deal as actually spending your real hard earned cash on something.“ I didn’t mean you can’t be upset, I was giving my opinion on the matter and how I saw it, (which I shouldn’t have done looking back at it) not every one is going to agree with me. I do admit I worded that wrong, and I should of took more time to word that better, but that doesn’t change how I think. I then go on to explain throwing a fit about something so simple as a prologue change is childish, which it is. I wasn’t directing that at the person who sent in the og anon ask, I was directing it at people who bully and harass the devs for stupid shit.

The devs and I aren’t immune to criticism yes you’re right, but harassing and throwing a tantrum is not criticism. There is a difference.

“Criticism: the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work.”

“Harassment: aggressive pressure or intimidation.”

It’s one thing to analyze the arcana and write about some things you didn’t like about a scene in a chapter that didn’t sit right with you, but it’s another thing to pressure the devs into changing the prologue back, or send them hurtful messages. They’re real people too.

And before you message me or send me another ask, I understand why you might try to say my response was “harassment” because it has an angry undertone to it, but I promise that’s not what I was trying to do, I was pissed. I do understand why it might come off that way, but i was just going on a angry rant, and if you want to talk about it, then pls message me.

And if something I wrote hurt you, please message me, so we can talk this over like mature adults. I’m not going to be mad, or expose you, or even dox you, (I wouldn’t want that to happen to me so why would I do it to you, ya’ know) and I quite frankly prefer if you did, so I can better explain my self, and we can try to find a common ground.

I do admit it was immature for me to say those things, and I should of thought it through more, and I’m sorry if I hurt or offended you, that was never my intention. I put some of my bad energy into that angry rant which I shouldn’t have done, and I truly am sorry. From now on I’m going to try my best to only write response to things like that when I’m in a good head space so I don’t hurt any more people. I know this doesn’t make up for any of the harm I might of caused you, but hopefully it precedes any future mishaps (and if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you please send me a message, I would love to make it up to you/help In what ever way I can)

And you’re right, the devs aren’t immune to criticism, but again there is a difference from criticism (which I rarely see) and harassment and people trying to rewrite their story and characters which I see far to often. And you’re right I’m also not immune to criticism. But that’s not going to stop me from voicing my opinion, and speaking up on some of the toxic traits of this fandom so people don’t have what could be their ‘safe space’ taken away from them. People aren’t going to agree with me, I understand. And people aren’t going to always agree with you either. This might be one of those things we don’t see eye to eye on and that’s okay. Like I said before, it’s okay to get mad but it’s another thing to blow things out of proportion, especially over a game. And maybe were just missing each other and if you want to respectfully talk this out I’m more than happy too, (it will probably help us better understand where we’re coming from)

And one last time, I never meant to say “ you can’t get mad over this thing >:(“ that was never my intent, but I sure as hell see how/why you think that. You have every right to be upset, you have every right to not like the devs. But don’t harass the devs because they changed something. It’s immature. The same type of immaturity I exhibited when I generalized and told people how to feel.

I hope this better explains everything, and again I’m sorry.i hate it when people tell me how to feel and I feel so god awful thinking I accidentally did one of my biggest pet peeves, even when I tried to avoid it. I really am sorry. If you want to talk to me about it, feel free to message me, or if you don’t feel comfortable doing that (I swear I’m not some big scary person) you can send in another ask, (its just a little harder to answer correctly because I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling, if that makes sense.)

[liketolaugh-writes]

I don't really follow MCU universe much but I am curious on what are your opinions Tony Stark? Personally I liked him but a friend of mine kinda is really anti of him and since I didn't delve much deeper into it I let it pass but after reading CC, I am curious on your thoughts since you are usually pretty good at characterization from what I've seen with your DGM works? Only if you want to, I mean.

Tony is my favorite, okay? I know this isn’t at all clear from my Avengers work, but you’d pick it up pretty fast going through my bookmarks.

So, speaking purely from the intellectual let’s-do-a-literary-analysis-right-now standpoint, his character growth is absolutely amazing. He has a very distinct character arc, with its ups and downs, definitely with a general upwards trend. You compare Tony in the first Iron Man movie to the one in Homecoming, you’ll see what I mean, yeah?

He makes mistakes. He makes a lot of mistakes, okay, he’s an ass. But he learns from them, and it’s obvious that he learns from them, that’s the whole point. The very first Iron Man movie is literally all about this, him fixing the mistakes he made in not keeping close track of his weaponry. He messes up, but he also tries real hard, and despite what a lot of people say he actually is one of the first to fess up to his mistakes. He just doesn’t do it in, y’know, words.

Let’s talk about Civil War, because let’s be real, it’s fucking always about Civil War; it’s the highest, most extreme point of Tony and Steve’s character arcs so far. And again, yeah, it’s always about Tony and Steve, they’re the two main focus points, and anti-Tony is almost always meant as pro-Steve.

Civil War, for those of you who don’t remember, is about two things: the Accords, which put the Avengers and, I believe, other superhumans, under a set of restrictions. Don’t remember the specifics, I haven’t seen it in a while. And then there’s Bucky, who, through no particular fault of his own, has been running around killing people. The Accords would make him suffer, and prevent the Avengers from doing anything about it.

In turn, Civil War can only be fully understood within the context of the rest of the MCU - more specifically, the character arcs of Steve and Tony. But this is about Tony, so I’ll just talk about his right now.

Tony’s is first, because I love talking about Tony’s character growth. First, we have the first Iron Man movie, our starting point - Tony the billionaire, Tony the playboy, Tony the selfish, narcissistic asshole with only a minor quantity of self-awareness.

And then he gets blown up by his own weapons, and gets a huge, a massive kick in the ass. Won’t bore you all with the details, I’m sure you remember most of this part, but he gets out, and - starving, hurting, tired - one of the first things he does is shut down the weapons sector of his company. Because it’s hurting people, and now he knows it.

Cutting forward a little, we arrive at Age of Ultron, and Tony makes a huge mistake. He creates Ultron, who attempts to destroy the world. For some reason, the entire blame for this tends to get laid at Tony’s feet? Y’all, he picked up a HYDRA thing, found an AI, and mostly just left it sitting there. That’s literally it. Anyone could have done that. But, I digress. At the end of the movie, he takes responsibility for it, and leaves the Avengers.

And then, when Civil War arrives, he firmly takes the side of the Accords, which would force the Avengers to take accountability for the damage they cause. Tony, with a history of stolen weapons and huge mistakes, thinks they shouldn’t be able to go home free. This is what we call character growth, and it’s so good, it’s so damn well done and Tony’s learned so much.

This is my favorite thing about the MCU. At its core, it’s a moral debate, not just a single black-and-white theme, which is one of the reasons it works so well as a franchise instead of a small set of movies, a trilogy or something. It just wouldn’t work as well. But anyway, I’d present Steve’s side, but then I might have to debate it more fully and I do not have the time for that right now, I’m meant to be avidly reading Spiderman fanfiction.

I’ll take you one step forward, too, to Spiderman: Homecoming. Now, it doesn’t have a Tony focus, but I’ll drop one key point: one of the biggest things he teaches Peter is accountability. He makes sure Peter knows that recklessness could cost lives. (Considering Iron Man 1 and 2, I repeat: this is character growth.)

Anyway - more personally, I just really like him!! I adored his role in Homecoming, guys, he’s trying so hard to do right by Peter. I’d say more but, well, the movie’s really new, so-

Tony’s actually pretty demonstrative, but it’s unconventional, and to a lot of people it looks like bribery. To those people, I would like to introduce the concept of ‘5 Love Languages’, one of which is gift giving. Tony’s inability to express himself in words despite talking constantly shouldn’t be held against him, yeah? (There’s also ‘acts of service’, ‘physical affection’, any of this sounding familiar?)

And again! He tries!! Really hard!! If you’ve ever talked to me about Howard Link for too long, you know how much I love that. Allen too. Trying isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing. Tony throws a hell of a lot of effort into everything he takes halfway seriously.

I could go on for ages, but I think that’ll do. *laugh* Seriously, I love Tony, he’s great. Sorry if this is more than you expected, anon!

[justmytwobits]

JMTB: Daring Done

So, I’m going to be right up front: I’m going to pretty much be going off on a tangent in this post, so I’ll address my thoughts on the episode briefly and upfront:

It was…kinda meh, to be honest.

I saw it when it was leaked on YouTube last week, but I didn’t post about it because I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t love it or hate it, and I wasn’t sure if there was anything it added to the world I wanted to talk about that I haven’t already discussed (I consider Sonambula’s story to be equivalent to the legends from Campfire tales, and I gushed about those enough in my post on that episode).

So I used the fact that I saw it early to wait a bit before writing up this post, waiting until I’d at least seen Dr. Wolf’s take on it (he posts promptly, and sometimes, he’ll have noticed an element I didn’t that gives me something to talk about), and less than two minutes into his video, I knew what I was going to post about…and it doesn’t have that much to actually do with the episode.

It’s a phrase—an innocent phrase on the surface, and one that, as an actor/writer, I have been bombarded with since at least middle school: ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ or, it’s shorter form, ‘suspension of disbelief’. Dr. Wolf used it in the context of struggling with this episode because he felt as if he were being asked to suspend his disbelief to cover some pretty huge logical and narrative leaps or inconsistencies.

No.

In such circumstances, it is NOT the audience’s fault, but the content creator’s, and I say this as someone who views this primarily form the creator’s perspective.

Time and again, I have heard this phrase used as a way of telling the audience to pretty much sit own, shut up, turn off their brains and accept whatever it was they were being shown. No. no. no-no-no-no-no-no.

In its proper context, the willing suspension of disbelief is a contract between the presenter and the audience: the audience will accept the world being presented SO LONG AS THE PRESENTER RETAINS INTERNAL CONSISTENCY.

Severe character breaks, events that violate the pre-established rules or logic of the world, or circumstances or events that simply can’t happen all break this internal consistency, and thus, the contract. The audience is NOT obligated to accept something that breaks the world of the story, because it is the presenter who broke the unspoken contract.

Now, debate can happen about whether an event or choice truly violated the world as presented, or a character as established. And the character one is tricky, because well-rounded characters occasionally do something outside of their own norm, and generally this event is revelatory rather than contradictory. In such cases, though, I believe the presenter should welcome audience discussion and debate, rather than ask them to ���shut up and accept’, as discussions about a work often enrich the experience of it in the first place. That’s why the analysis community exists, why literary analysis is a huge part of the academic scene, and why, for every art form that exists, there is a corresponding field of criticism.

I’ve no issue with the concept of ‘suspension of disbelief’ in its proper context: I watch shows about pastel ponies, teenage superheroes, and read books about wizards, dragons, etc. I have to suspend my disbelief that such things ‘can’t’ exist, and enter a world where they do.

I’m trying not to sound too negative, as it’s actually a positive agreement, I guess I just feel horrible every time I hear someone criticize themselves for not being able to ‘suspend their disbelief’ when, in truth, it was the presenter that broke the rules of the world they themselves had created.

 Again I am sorry for the tangent, but that’s just my two bits…

-Narrative Arc

 To my readers:

What do you guys think? Have you ever been troubled by a world-breaking moment in a work of fiction? Have you ever been told to stop picking at an element and suspend disbelief?

Have you been on the other side—the creator’s? How do you understand the presenter’s obligation to the audience?

Did you like the episode? Do you feel that I was being unfair to brush it aside for most of the post? Did you like it? Dislike it? Struggle with it?

I’d love to hear where your opinions lie!