#the pin with the arrow made little sense in the context of the story itself. a mockingjay has no inherent relation to archery

[deanpinterester]

the illustrated hunger games is finally gonna have the real mockingjay pin i see

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Hi there ‘not queer-baiting’ anon here. I want to apologize. I didn’t mean to come across like I was lecturing you. I’m a queer woman born in 1983, and I was aware we’re close to the same age. I brought up Teena and Shepard because some of those who read your blog might not know those names, who weren’t around when those tragedies happened. I was pretty certain you would know who they are.

As for my what I was getting at, I do think the show itself needs to confirm Will is gay, whether he only admits it privately to himself or perhaps to his direct family. I just think within the universe the idea that Will might not come out to his friends and live as an openly gay boy is a realistic possibility. Like you pointed out, the media back then didn’t have a lot of positive representation. Will had no role models, very little access to accurate information, or a gay community. He’s also from a traditionally conservative State. I can easily see a fifteen year old boy not feeling ready to come out under such circumstances. So, those who talk about the situation like Byler has to happen or else it invalidates Will’s story is reductive to me. The story of a closeted gay kid is just as valid, if disappointing to the modern audience.

I’m hopeful that if the Byers are in California that Will does get to see and experience a more positive depiction of gay people than Hawkins probably gave him. I think that would be a very organic way to open him up more to be comfortable and accepting of himself. I do want Will to come out and be happy, I just want to temper those expectations with acceptance that it might not be the outcome.

Once again, I’m sorry if it seemed like a lecture or that I’m unsupportive of LGBT+ persons and depictions in media. That was never my intent.

I apologize on my end, too. I appreciate you wanting to take the historical context seriously, but I was being defensive, and I overreacted a bit. I get angry when it's suggested that it's unrealistic that Mike and Will could get together. It ends up feeling like the burden of evidence is sky high for a gay couple, but two straight kids just need to be in the same room.

I honestly feel like the story of the closested gay kid is played out, and it sends a hopeless message to the audience in this particular case. On a show where Will has constantly been made to suffer, he deserves more than to accept himself in silence. It would feel to me like he ends the show the way he started, only he's just hiding from a different type of monster. I'm not saying that Will should end up "out and proud" or that he and Mike would dance together at the Prom, but there is a middle ground here that perhaps we're both ignoring.

They've spent three seasons now showing the unique relationship Mike and Will have. People out there still seem to think they're "just friends," but the details make it clear that they have something special that they don't have with any of their other friends. If they didn't plan to go somewhere with this, I can't see why they'd repeatedly build it up. And it's not solely on Will's end, like some people seem to think. Will's homosexuality is actually something we're largely informed of, rather than shown. Honestly, the only part we actually see from him is his jealousy in season 3. It's really Mike who makes all the grand gestures, but most fans don't think twice about Mike being gay. I find that to be an interesting phenomenon. Apparently, in our heteronormative society, you're straight as an arrow until someone says you're gay.

I don't know how they plan to go about portraying this. I feel like there's no way they can really do the journey justice with the time they have. Still, I do believe that the seeds have been planted for both Mike and Will over the years, and they seemed to be priming it to bloom in some way next season. I just can't see the Mike and Will saga going nowhere after everything they've done leading up to it. I don't know if Robin will play a role in this now that she's opened the door for explicitly gay characters. I don't know if a relatively more liberal area like California might play a role, either. I just don't it would be baffling to me to not take this to some sort of satisfying resolution. I just know that they've gone to lengths to show that these boys have something special, and it would make no sense to me to end it with anything else but them together. It doesn't need to be over the top. I don't expect them to be able to go out in public in a place like Hawkins, but I do expect them to show these two boys finally finding peace and happiness with each other.

PS: If anyone out there is genuinely interested in why I feel the way I do about Byler, or any other topics, then please look at my pinned index post. I've talked about these topics too many times, and I don't wish to repeat myself over an over.

[blindrapture]

The Structure of Ulysses, plus Sonic, Part I

Ulysses is a big book. And I intend on adapting all of it at some point into a series I call Sonic Hamlet, where everyone is played by video game characters. I’m not going to explain why video game characters just yet, you’ve got to just accept them for now.

So far, I have not made much progress with the actual adaptation (I have the first third of the first episode done and on YouTube, click here for it). However, I have made progress in rereading and understanding Ulysses, I’ve made far more progress than I honestly thought I was capable of. And I think I might be ready to at least outline some things. I believe strongly that Ulysses will be of interest to many people alive today, and I do not accept language as a valid barrier to comprehension, only a temporary obstacle. But the onus is on those of us who have read Ulysses, we have to be the ones to clear those obstacles away, we cannot just expect people to read it, we have to help because those obstacles are very much there! Ulysses was hard to read even at its time, but there’s a difference between an intentional challenge and the changing of parlance over time. And the intentional challenge? Is wonderful. It in fact helps us embrace life, the big and the little things in it, the complicated cycles that overwhelm, the fast-paced sarcastic comedy of young people, the slow-paced enigmatic wit of those so ancient they perished long ago, the clash of cultures suggesting inevitable conflict and yet still hiding pathways to real diverse peace.

As an adaptation, my work is a sort of translation, this has to be. I don’t want to change any of the words, though-- Ulysses has a structure to it, a mathematical and logical and literary structure, and the specific words are a part of that. Translations into other languages, those naturally must deal with changing the words, but they try their best to still stick within the plan of the original’s intent. The only language I’m translating into is the extratextual-- I’m adding images, sounds, pauses for reflection. I’m realizing an interpretation of the original text, in the hopes that my audience might have a better foothold for comfortably examining and interpreting Ulysses themselves. The original words can still fit in that context. But character names? Sure. I can accept changing those.

So. So. Sonic Hamlet. As Ulysses is a book, so Sonic Hamlet is a show. As Ulysses is of three main parts with various Episodes in each, so Sonic Hamlet is of three seasons with various Episodes. Following me?

Part I, my Season 1, has three episodes. It is sometimes called the Telemachiad, as it deals with the Telemachus of the story, Stephen Dedalus (hereby Sonic Dedalus), as he goes through the motions of an increasingly despondent life without a trustworthy guide.

Part II, my Season 2, has twelve episodes. It is sometimes called the Odyssey, or the Wanderings of Ulysses, as it deals with the Odysseus of the story, Leopold Bloom (hereby Mario Bloom), as he navigates the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in hopes of returning home victorious.

Part III, my Season 3, has three episodes. It is sometimes called the Nostos, or the Homecoming, as it deals our Odysseus’s bold return and the stratagems which fell the suitors of his wife, Marion “Molly” Bloom (hereby Peach Bloom).

I will, for now, compose three posts, one for each Season. I will not point out all the coolest shit, all the patterns and correspondences, but I will give a general outline as best I can. Maybe this outline, alone, will give all the help a reader needs to “get” the premise of Ulysses and thus be able to read the original. But ultimately I write this not for any reader but for my own benefit. I need to organize and consolidate some things, see. And I’d may as well start somewhere.

So. Here we go.

Part I / Season 1: The Telemachiad (8 AM - Noon)

Episode 1 / 101: Telemachus

Sonic Dedalus is 22 years old. His mother died last year, putting a damper on his aspirations of travelling other countries and becoming a poet. Now he’s contributing rent money to a buddy’s cultural project (”let’s rent out an old watchtower and turn Ireland into Ancient Greece,” that’s about as thought-out as the plan became). His buddy, Big Mulligan, doesn’t seem to have much respect for Sonic, just an incessantly jovial tolerance. Staying with them is Shadow Haines, an Englishman with a gun who wants to write a book of all the quirky folk-sayings of the primitive rural Irish. Big thinks Sonic could contribute a lot to that. Everyone seems to like Big and Shadow; their conspicuous and confident personalities shine above the material worries of the Dublin lower-class. The lady who delivers milk for their breakfast that morning (played by Tikal) listens to Shadow with reverence and doesn’t even seem to notice Sonic, who pays for the breakfast and sees Ireland’s spirit in her. That morning, Big gets Sonic to promise him a sizable chunk of Sonic’s salary will go towards getting them all drunk later. He also gets the key to the tower from him, for some reason. And he gets naked and goes for a swim, as Sonic walks off to do his day’s work.

Episode 2 / 102: Nestor

Sonic works as a temporary teacher at a nearby school. Today, he teaches his class about the historical battle at Asculum, where Pyrrhus gave his famous quote (”another victory like that, and we’re done for”). They’re not terribly interested, since today’s hockey day and they want to play outside, but that’s okay, Sonic’s mind isn’t really focused today either. He’s got some themes battling in his head, and they won’t go away. Though they don’t stop him from at least giving the kids a strange riddle and helping a poor kid with his math homework. And the kids all play hockey. This episode takes its name from an old boastful king, whose advice keeps young Telemachus going (waiting for his father’s return from the war), but also whose company is a bit much in long bursts. Here, Nestor is played by the headmaster of the school (whose video game character I have not assigned), Mr. Deasy. Deasy is a West Briton, the type of Irishman who thinks he’s English and thinks Ireland is just the westernmost province of England. So, probably a Protestant. I really don’t remember right this minute. But in practice, it means Deasy talks down on a lot of people all while thinking he’s being a nice old man. He has money, he keeps his money, he says this is a very English thing to do, and he judges all those who can’t pay their way. He loves history, sees it as one steady march towards the real manifestation of God, and he thinks Sonic unhappy for his view that history is “a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.” But he at least pays him, his salary and some decency. And, knowing Sonic has some “literary contacts,” he gives him a letter to deliver to the newspapers, a letter proposing a solution to foot-and-mouth disease (this will come up later). And as Sonic leaves the school for the day, Deasy hails him down to say one last thing: a jovial bit of earnest antisemitism. “You know why Ireland is one of the only countries that never persecuted the jews?” “Why?” “She never let them in!” And he laughs, the light of the sun dancing coins on his shoulders.

Episode 3 / 103: Proteus

It is now 11 AM. Sonic, after leaving the school, walked all the way to Dublin proper. Here he is on the Strand, a sort of beach, having some alone time, thinking of many things, many memories (his short stay in Paris as a poet, his interactions with the family of uncle Richie who lives nearby to the Strand, his childhood), many subjects (Greek philosophy, Latin theology, aspirations, self-loathing), the sights he sees (midwives with bags, someone walking a dog, lots of flotsam). Ultimately, there’s a trend of trying to pin down the unpinnable, to put into words the ineluctable modality of the visible, the limits of the diaphane; this clues us into the Odyssean correspondence. Proteus is god of the sea, ever changing shapeshifter, who it is said will grant a wish to anyone who is able to hold him still for long enough. Just as Telemachus, in now understanding some context about his father, waits by the sea and wonders how he-- how anyone-- could successfully return with their wits intact when the gods are so multifaceted and the waters so unpredictable, just as Telemachus watches the sea, so does Sonic watch the morphing world of his senses.

And that’s Part I of Ulysses, and that’s Season 1 of Sonic Hamlet. We will see Sonic again later in the day, we’ll actually see quite a bit of him, but this is the point of departure for the text itself. This whole time, the text has taken Sonic’s psyche, the energy and passion and associations dormant in his thoughts, and infused it with a more novel-like narration of What Actually Happens, altogether producing The Text what readers read. It’s happened relatively slowly, with sparks of surprising creativity manifesting in each episode, the “narrative” doing “weird” “things” “all of a sudden,” and Proteus acts as a sort of climax, allowing Sonic’s psyche the whole spotlight and putting What Actually Happens in the background. I’ve said before that the text “wakes up” over the course of these early episodes, but I now think what really happens is the text holds back in order to allow the reader to wake up, to recognize that the text, the narrative itself, is the narrator, that not even focal characters like Sonic are the source of the viewpoint we see, that.. there’s something more going on. A greater Argument being made. But it will take time to even see the whole argument. And here let me bring up medieval pedagogy regarding the art of syllogism: it has been conventional to view the initial order of cognitive thought as “Subject, Middle, Predicate” (as opposed to any other order of those terms which are all, in fact, valid). This is a big factor behind why we’re taught to view stories as constituting a “beginning, middle, end,” and why we’re taught to give arguments (essays!) in the same structure. It’s all because that’s how Christian theology saw the Greek tool of syllogism should be taught, back in the middle ages. With me so far? Okay, cool. So Ulysses is made up of three main parts. There’s a lot of reasons why given episodes are strictly in one part and not others, but perhaps one of the most aesthetically pleasing bits of trivia is that Part I begins with the letter S, Part II begins with the letter M, and Part III begins with the letter P. Subject, Middle, Predicate. A valid structure for a formal argument. Season 1 of Sonic Hamlet, in following Ulysses as far as I feasibly am able to, gives us the thematic subject of a greater argument being made. And that makes Season 2, or Part II, the bulk of the argument, the middle.

So what goes on, then, in the middle of this grand argument? If Sonic isn’t the point, then who is? If Sonic is Telemachus, then who is Odysseus, the wise father-king-husband-hero coming home from the great war? We can interpret the sea of his voyage as probably being his shifting senses, as per Proteus, so then what are the trials on his sea, the trials on his senses? Who are the gods that he faces, what are the stratagems he comes up with in order to appease and survive?

Well, Joyce was adamant of this: The modern Odysseus in Ireland would have to be of Jewish descent. He would have to be a staunch pacifist. He would have to have a marriage in a questionable state of stability. He would have to be a stick in the mud, a party pooper with an adorably dry sense of humour and a physically average build, a serious and unrelenting cuck, and yet a man with sensible ideas of how to spend money generously and pipe dreams of a socialist nation where love and equality triumph. He would not stand in opposition to the modern bigoted uncaring society, his friends and neighbours, but he would be tasked with changing it all the same.

The modern Odysseus is Leopold Bloom. The modern Odysseus is the prototypical social justice warrior.

And that’s who the bulk of Ulysses is about, that’s the psyche we’ll get to explore, that’s what I’ll post about later on.