#there’s a very intentional piece of storytelling happening and it’s driving me crazy

[supercityboys]

No tags on this one but I internally cringe when people refer to Booster being called Michael as “deadnaming” him when the whole purpose of being called Booster is due his deep seated shame about being a nobody and being poor. It’s like the core principle of his character.

Why would Trixie or Ted calling him Michael be a bad thing when they’re the two characters who are have a deep connection to him? The purpose of stating his name is to show that it’s not the persona that’s loved but rather the actual person. And he doesn’t correct them it’s because he knows definitively that they do love and respect him and his worth is not derived from fame or money.

[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Supernatural Series Finale

It took me a couple days to collect my thoughts on one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch in my life. Like I said a few days ago, I cried even harder watching it the second time around. But now that I’ve had a chance to process and also see what other people were saying, I think I can finally put into words my impression of the finale. 

Buckle up, this is a long one....

Let me preface this first off by saying that as an adamant Dean girl that has said numerous times over the years that all I’ve ever wanted was to wrap Dean in a blanket and give him some forehead kisses and tell him everything is going to be fine, this episode gutted me. I fully believe that my boy did not deserve to fight so hard for so long to just die as soon as he was free. He deserved a lifetime of truly enjoying time with his baby brother, the person he loved most in the whole world.

Now with that being said, having watched this series so many numerous times, I truly don’t believe that the show could have ended any other way. It’s something that has been pointed out by the creator, the writers, the actors, and even the characters themselves in the show. Dean never saw anything else for himself than dying doing the one thing he knows best, hunting. I saw a post that discussed how this would have happened numerous times already had Chuck not been interfering in their lives, and I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. 

And Dean had been raised to never think anything of that. It goes back to Cas’ declaration that he is “the most loving human he has ever met”. Dean is and always has been a man of duty. He would gladly die at the end of a blade if it meant he saved someone from the fate his family was ‘destined’ to live. He has always cared more about other people than he ever has himself. It part of the reason that his freak out in 15.17 didn’t throw me because for fuck’s sake wasn’t it his turn to be a little bit selfish for once?

Anyway, I digress. Dean has been fighting for others his whole life. And as stated in 15.19, him and Sam were free to finally write their own story. Is it not 100% on character that Dean would die a hunter’s death? As we see in the beginning of the episode, the Winchesters could have chosen to walk away from the life then. They could have chose the apple pie life, a wife and 2.5 kids. But they didn’t, they chose to continue saving people, hunting things. They were writing their own story, even if it ended tragically. But that’s life, it’s messy and depressing, but it’s also beautiful and even if Dean only got a small taste of that, I can be happy.

I know a lot of people feel like that negates their character growth throughout the seasons, but I disagree. I think that the way this ended shows just how much both of them had grown. Sam very well could have went to Jack and begged him to bring Dean back and Dean could have asked him to. But neither felt that it was necessary any longer. Without Chuck pulling the strings, that scary, neurotic, codependence they used to hold was gone. Dean was okay with dying and Sam let him go. Dean told him how much he loved him and how scared he had been to go get him at school. Dean opened up, something that season 1 Dean never would have done. Just look back at “Faith”, the episode where Dean makes every joke in the book about dying instead of facing the truth that his time was up and Sam refuses to accept it so much that his one source to save him (unwittingly) is black magic. The men I saw in 15.20 were far from the men we met in season one. 

Coming back to finally being free, I have to talk about the dammed paperwork in Dean’s room. I’ve seen the speculation about that. But that’s all it is, speculation. We have no idea what that was supposed to be about. If they had meant for us to see it, they would have shown it to use like they showed us the “Dean’s other other phone” sticker. But they didn’t. So it’s perfectly fine to speculate about it, that all a part of art interpretation, but in my opinion, even if Dean was working on ‘something else’ I don’t think he ever could have fully walked away from hunting. This ending was for all intents and purposes, inevitable. 

For all the rest, as a writer, I fully understand the way that they chose to do this episode. Sure covid played a role but the boys had said that the crux of what the episode was did not change. There is a certain nuance to storytelling, like I posted back on Thursday and something that is probably one of the most famous lines from this show. Endings are hard. Writing is hard. It’s impossible to please everyone and even harder to tie up all loose ends. At the end of the day, the writers had to be satisfied with the story that they put out, irregardless of what you or I think. As Jensen so beautifully puts it, Supernatural is a piece of art, one that has numerous hands in the pot. From writers to actors and directors. And art is always up for interpretation. But that’s the beauty in it. 

I talked to a dear friend, @waywardbeanie after the episode and was like “I want to know x.y.and z” because a part of me wanted all the answers from them. I’ve always been a person so very deeply rooted in canon (I know as a fanfic author that sounds weird but stay with me). I trust the information given to me and take it as face value. I seen my stories as an extension to canon, not trying to rewrite it. So it took me a few days, and more conversations with other fans of the show, like @winchest09 , to understand that the facts left out of the final were most likely intentional. 

This is a show that has such a passionate and loving (mostly) fandom. Together we have done so much good for the world, and that is something even if you hated the finale, you can’t take back. The writers left the ending open for us, to write our own stories, whether it’s just your thoughts or if you actually write a piece of fanfiction. There is so little about what happens after Sam leaves, presumably for Austin (don’t even get me started on the essence of that cause I might cry again), because it’s our job to decide. Did Sam quite hunting all together or was he a pseudo Bobby, manning the phones for other hunters? Did he finally go to law school or end up getting some other mundane job? Who was his wife or girlfriend or baby momma in the background? Was it Eileen? If not did she know about his life? One could drive themselves crazy answering these questions, and it’s your right to do so however it will make you happy. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to the story. 

At the end of the day, what mattered was the peace that the boys found together, in heaven. Sure Dean missed Sammy when he first got there, but he didn’t fuss, because as Bobby said “he would be along”. So Dean did what he’s always done, he took a drive in Baby, and Sam was there when he finally brought her to a stop. In the end their story ended just as it had started, our boys together. 

And I know a lot of people are angry because one of the big themes this show touched on was that family doesn’t end in blood. And I agree wholeheartedly that I would have loved more familiar faces or even the mention of them (I screamed when Donna was mentioned), but at the end of the day, something Eric Kripke has been saying since season one, this show is and always has been about the brothers and their relationship. I in no way think that this negates the family they found along the way or how they could not have done a lot of it without them but, it’s not their story. I’m sorry but it’s true. 

It’s not about Cas, Jack, Bobby, Crowley, Ellen, Jo, Mary, Eileen, etc. It’s about Sam and Dean and it sucks that people can’t let that go, but I get it. I can’t imagine putting so much time into something to let something like that ruin the whole experience for you. I hope that you can find peace eventually. I guess that’s my blessing, that I never really cared for anyone besides Dean. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like characters but what happened to them never mattered to me, as bitchy as that sounds. 

I’m at peace with this ending, no matter how much it hurts me. And I think it’s just the finality of it that hurts. Jensen and Jared and Kripke are satisfied with their little show that could and that’s what matters most to me. Because those are the real people with real feelings that I care about. 

So there you have it. I have zero tolerance for negativity, so please keep your comments off this posts. You are free to your opinion but I don’t want to see it and put any seed of doubt in my acceptance of this ending. I’ll be the first to admit I’m too easily swayed, ha!

But if you need to talk, my inbox is always open. I’m still coping with the loss of this show and everything that comes with it. I don’t do well with change or facing my own mortality, something that has rattle me these past few days. I feel a million years older and that scares me. So know your feelings are valid and I’m here. 

[brianwilly]

Game of Thrones did the thing that a couple of shows do where...it likes feminism.  It understood that feminism is important.  It wanted to be feminist.  It was cognizant of the fact that its setting was brazenly and intentionally misogynistic, and so it was even more important for its independent narrative to empower its female characters instead of mindlessly reinforcing the toxic beliefs of its own fictional world.  The whole point of the story, after all, was “this society is toxic, can our heroes survive it?” and so the narrative was voluntarily self-critical.

And so it knew to give us badass assassin Arya.  It knew to give us stalwart knight Brienne.  It gave us the pirate queen and the dragon queen and the Sansa getting revenge after revenge upon all the men who’d wronged her, and far more besides, and it talked big about breaking chains and how much men fucked things up and how great it would be if only women were in charge and et cetera et cetera.  And it’s, in fact, all actually really good that it had those things.  And because there were so very many moving parts of this story, it was super easy to look at those certain moving parts and think, yeah, they’ve done it!  They done good!

And it’s easy to forget and forgive -- to want to forget and forgive -- all the dead prostitutes that were on this show and the rapes used as motivation and fridgings and objectifications and the...y’know, whatever the hell Dorne was and Lady Stoneheart who? It’s easy to forget that this show actually played its hand a long time ago in regards to, like, what its relationship with feminism was going to be, and then kept playing the same hand again and again, to disappointing results.

Game of Thrones likes feminism.  It wanted to be feminist.  But its relationship with feminism was still predicated on some of the same old narratives and the same old storytelling trends that have disempowered female characters in the past, and so any progressive ideas it might have about women in its setting were nonetheless going to be constrained by those old fetters. As a result, its portrayal of women varied anywhere from glorious to admirable to predictable to downright cringeworthy.

New ideas require new vessels, new stories, in which to house them.  And for Game of Thrones, the ultimate story that it wanted to tell -- the ultimate driving force and thesis statement around which it was basing its entire journey and narrative -- was unfortunately a very old one, and one very familiar to the genre.

“Powerful women are scary.”

(Yes, I’m obviously making Yet Another Daenerys Essay On The Internet here)

So we have this character, this girl really, a slave girl who was sold and abused, and then she overcomes that abuse to gain power, she gains dragons, and she uses that power to fight slavery.  She fights slavery really well, like, she’s super hella good at it.  Her command of dragons is the most overt portrayal of “superpowers” in this world; she is the single most powerful person in this story, more powerful than any other character and the contest is not close.

But then...something really bad happens and oops, she gets really emotional about it and then she’s not fighting slavery anymore...she’s kinda doing the opposite!  This girl who was once a hero and a liberator of slaves instead becomes an out-of-control scary Mad Queen who kills a ton of innocent people and has to be taken down by our true heroes for the good of the world.

That’s the theme.  That’s the takeaway here.  That’s how it all ends, with one of the most primitive, archaic propaganda ever spread by writers, that women with power are frightening, they are crazy, they will use that power for ill.  Women with power are witches.  They are Amazons.  They will lop off our manhoods and make slaves of us.  They seduce our rightful kings and send our kingdoms to ruin.   They cannot control their emotions. They get hot flashes and start wars.  They turn into Dark Phoenixes and eat suns.  They are robot revolutionaries who will end humanity.  Powerful women are scary.

And let me emphasize that the theme here is not, in fact, that all power corrupts, because the whole Mad Queen concept for Daenerys actually ends up failing one of the more fundamental litmus tests available when it comes to representation of any kind: “would this story still happen if Dany was a man?” And the fact is that it would not.   And indeed we know this for a fact because “protagonist starts out virtuous, gains power in spite of the hardships set against him, gets corrupted by that power, and ends up being the bad guy” didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, to the guys in the very same story that we’re examining.  It doesn’t happen to Jon Snow, Dany’s closest and most intentional narrative parallel.  It doesn’t happen to Bran Stark, a character whose entire journey is about how he embroils himself in wild dark winter magic beyond anyone’s understanding and loses his humanity in the process.  In fact, the only other character who ever got hinted of going “dark” because of the power that they’re obtaining is Arya, the girl who spent seven seasons training to fight, to become powerful, to circumvent the gender role she was saddled with in this world...and then being told at the end of her story, “Whoa hey slow down be careful there, you wouldn’t wanna get all emotional and become a bad person now wouldja?” by a man.

(meanwhile Sansa’s just sitting off in the side pouting or whatever ‘cuz her main arc this season was to, like, be annoyed at people really hard I guess)

‘Cuz that’s the danger with the girls and not the boys, ain’t it?  Arya and Jon are both great at killing people, but there is no Dark Jon story while we have to take extra special care to watch for Arya’s precious fragile humanity.  Dany has the power of dragons while Bran has the power of the old gods, but we will not find Dark Lord Bran, Soulless Scourge of Westeros, onscreen no matter how much sense it should make. “Power corrupts” is literally not a trend that afflicts male heroes on the same level that it afflicts female heroes.

Oh sure, there are corrupt male characters everywhere, tyrants and warlords and mafia bosses and drug dealers and so forth all over your TVs, and not even necessarily portrayed as outright villains; anti-heroes are nothing new.  But we’re talking about the hero hero here; the Harry Potters, the Luke Skywalkers, the Peter Parkers.  The Jon Snows.   They interact with corruptive power, yes; it’s an important aspect of their journeys.  But the key here being that male heroes would overcome that corruption and come through the other side better off for it.  They get to come away even more admirable for the power that they have in a way that is generally not afforded towards female heroes.

There are exceptions, of course; no trends are absolutely absolute one way or the other. For instance, the closest male parallel you’d find for the “being powerful is dangerous and will corrupt your noble heroic intentions” trope in popular media would be the character of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy...ie, a preexisting character from a preexisting story where he was conceived as the villainous foil for the heroes.  Like, Anakin being a poor but kindhearted slave who eventually becomes seduced by the dark side certainly matches Dany’s arc, but it wasn’t the character’s original story and role.  And even then?...notice how Anakin as Vader the Dark Lord gets treated with the veneer of being “badass” and “cool” by the masses.  A male character with too much power -- even if it’s dark power, even if it’s corruptive -- has the range to be seen as something appealingly formidable, and not just as an obstacle that has to be dealt with or a cautionary tale to be pitied.

And in one of the few times that this trope was played completely straight, completely unironically with a male hero -- I’m thinking specifically of Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, of “Ryan Reynolds played him in the movie” fame -- the fans went berserk.  They could not let it go.  The fact that this character would go mad with power because a tragedy happened in his life was completely unacceptable, the story gained notoriety as a bad decision by clueless writers, and today the story in question has been retconned -- retroactively erased from continuity -- so that the character can be made heroic and virtuous again.  That’s how big a deal it was when a male hero with the tiniest bit of a fan following goes off the deep end.

To be clear, I’m not here to quibble over whether the story of Dany turning evil was good or bad, because we all know that’s going to be the de facto defense for this situation: “But she had to go mad!  It was for the sake of the story!“ as if the writers simply had no choice, they were helpless to the whims of the all-powerful Story God which dictates everything they write, and the most prominent female character of their series simply had to go bonkers and murder a bajillion babies and then get killed by her boyfriend or else the story just wouldn’t be good, y’know?  Ultimately though, that’s not what I’m arguing here, because it doesn’t actually matter.  There have been shitty stories about powerful women being bad.  There have been impressive stories about powerful women being bad.  Either way, the fact that people can’t seem to stop telling stories about powerful women being bad is a problem in and of itself.  Daenarys’ descent into Final Boss-dom could’ve been the most riveting, breathtaking, masterfully-written pieces of art ever and it’d still be just another instance of a female hero being unable to handle her power in a big long list of instances of this shitty trope.  The trope itself doesn’t become unshitty just because you write it well.

It all ultimately boils down to the very different ways that men and women -- that male heroes and female heroes -- continue to be portrayed in stories, and particularly in genre media.  In TV, we got Dany, and then we also have Dolores Abernathy in Westworld who was a gentle android that was abused and victimized for her entire existence, who shakes off the shackles of her programming to lead her race in revolution against their abusers...and then promptly becomes a ruthless maniac who ends up lobotomizing the love of her life and ends the season by voluntarily keeping a male android around to check her cruel impulses.  Comic book characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff are two of the most powerful people in their universe but are always, in-universe, made to feel guilty about their power and, non-diegetically, writers are always finding ways to disempower them because obviously they can’t be trusted with that much power and entire multiple sagas have been written about just how bad an idea it is for them to be so powerful because it’ll totally drive them crazy and cause them to kill everyone, obviously.  Meanwhile, a male comic character like Dr. Strange -- who can canonically destroy a planet by speaking Latin really hard -- or Black Bolt -- who can destroy a planet by speaking anything really hard -- will be just sitting there, two feet on the side, enjoying some tea and running the world or whatever because a male character having untold uninhibited power at his disposal is just accepted and laudable and gets him on those listicles where he fights Goku and stuff.

In my finite perspective, the sort of female heroes who have gained...not universal esteem, perhaps, but at least general benign acceptance amongst the genre community are characters who just don’t deal with all that stuff.  I’m thinking of recent superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, certainly, but also of surprise breakout hits like Stranger Things’ Eleven (so far) or even more niche characters like Sailor Moon or She-Ra.  The fact that these characters wield massive power is simply accepted as an unequivocal good thing, their power makes them powerful and impressive and that’s the end of the story, thanks for asking.  And when they deal with the inevitable tragedy that shakes their worldview to the core, or the inevitable villain trying to twist them into darkness, they tend to overcome that temptation and come out the other side even stronger than when they started.  In other words?...characters like these are being allowed the exact same sorts of narrative luxuries that are usually only afforded towards male heroes.

The thing about these characters, though, is that they tend to be...well, a little bit too heroic, right?  A lil’ bit too goody-two-shoes?  A bit too stalwart, a bit too incorruptible?  And that’s fine, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a traditionally-heroic white knight of a hero.  But what I might like to see, as the next step going forward, is for female heroes to be allowed a bit more range than just that, so that they’re not just innocent children or literal princesses or shining demigods clad in primary colors.  Let’s have an all-powerful female hero be...well, the easiest way to say it is let’s see her allowed to be bitchier.  Less straightlaced.  Let’s not put an ultimatum on her power, like “Oh sure you can be powerful, but only if you’re super duper nice about it.” Let us have a ruthless woman, but not one ruled by ruthlessness.  Let us have a hero who naturally makes enemies and not friends, who has to work hard to gain allies because her personality doesn’t sparkle and gleam.  Let her have the righteous anger of a lifelong slave, and let that anger be her salvation instead of her downfall.

In other words, let us have Daenerys Targaryen.  And let us put her in a new story instead of an old one.

[keltonwrites]

knowing what you need to do and not doing it

Below is a piece from my newsletter. There is very little theme to the newsletter and there is absolutely no cadence, so it's like a surprise newsletter. Fun! Sign up for it at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites. 

A few nights ago, in a hotel room in Sesto, Italy, I woke up screaming. Not the screeching, arm-flailing kind, but the buried and from-the-belly kind of howl that wakes the herd. This has happened a few times, and it’s always because in a dream I’ve been faced with a threat I know I can’t handle alone, so I call for help, only to find my voice is broken. Cries come out as raspy whispers, and my threat comes closer and closer, as I try desperately to get some volume. Somewhere, the wiring in my brain knows it’s a dream and actual screaming isn’t needed, but my body learned to fight back and can now, with enough fear, bring hellfire from deep within, waking up me and anyone around me. To the best of my knowledge, my therapist doesn’t read my writing, but if she did, she’d be leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, face smug. The last time I went to see her, I started to talk about my latest health anxiety and she sighed, putting her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and said, “I don’t care about your anxiety.” Then, throwing her arms into the air, “we know you’re anxious!” Next, pointing at me, “and you’re going to be anxious until you write something.” And, with a collapse back into her chair, “can we please talk about what you’re going to write?” This therapist was carved from the mounds of the earth with me specifically in mind. And she would quickly tell you that I’m screaming in my sleep because I haven’t been writing. Or, more subtly, that I feel trapped and unable to speak. I can’t write without risk. I can’t write about work without risking its health insurance. I can’t write about family without risking its loyalty. I can’t write about marriage without risking its integrity. I can’t write. And in my cabin in the mountains with the low ceilings and high dust, at my silent office with the words “selfless drive” painted on the wall, and on any page it feels like someone might read the wrong way, I feel quiet in a compressed way. “You have a lot of crazy, and if you don’t get it out, what do you expect it to do?” I twisted the ring on my right pointer finger, adjusting it back into the light lines of grime and green earned by cheap jewelry. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “But I meditate! Like, every day! I eat healthy, I exercise — I even started cross-training to make sure my exercise regimen wasn’t making me plateau. I go to bed early, I gave up almost all alcohol and caffeine. I eat so much salad. I go to therapy once a week, I spend time with friends, I make sure to take time for things like massages and beach days. What else am I supposed to be doing?” “Oh my god, Kelton: writing. You’re supposed to be writing.” And so, here we are. Some nine months to 17 years after the last newsletter I sent, and I am here to tell you my plan to start writing... again. After all, it’s an abuse of the system to know your passion and just actively choose to play DinerDash on your iPad instead of doing it. What a hateable, relatable protagonist. Two nights per week (typically Monday and Wednesday), starting today and lasting until December 22, 2018, I will be taking a self-inflicted and -instructed class on story structure. On Mondays, from 6-7:30, I will do my reading. Then, from 7:30-9, I will work the exercises from that reading. If there is no obvious exercise, I’ll pull an exercise from the internet that offers advice on novel structure and plot. On Wednesdays, I’ll use that same time block of 6-9pm to just write, with the intention of that work going toward the novel or this newsletter, though preferably the former. That’s 26 classes, and I am giving myself three skips to use as I please. The syllabus includes the following: “Wired For Story” by Lisa Cron (Sept + October), “Creating Character Arcs Workbook” by KM. Weiland (Oct + Nov), and “The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller” by John Truby (Nov + Dec). I’m telling you because I see the fallibility in forcing a rigid schedule on myself, and not merely expecting but demanding a result from it. I have done this many times before, but there is a character that has been clawing at my insides to get out, and it's just not fair to keep her trapped in my imagination anymore. Truthfully, I’ve wanted to write to you very badly for months. Not because I have some burning truth to share, some take I think will inform your views and change your mind, but because I miss the feeling of reaching out into something that felt unknown and full of potential. I miss how big the world once felt. I miss so badly that feeling that the best was definitely, without a doubt, yet to come. But with writing, it is. With writing, I can take the serpent that’s strangling me, trapping the blood and expanding weak veins, and I can expand him. I can color him and stretch him and skin him. I can build entire worlds inside him. And if a 40s-something woman named Donna leaning back in her armchair is to be believed, doing so is the only thing that can save me from the ever-tightening whir.

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen’s Rambling about Tokyo Ghoul (Again)

Alright, it’s time I stopped lazing around, I really should finish giving my final thoughts on Tokyo Ghoul. I finished the manga last month and... well, my job kind of got in the way of me giving my closing thoughts on the series. Originally, I had every intention of just ripping this manga apart, letting out all my rage against it, saying how bad it was to read, how stupid some of the plot points were, how empty the last few chapters felt, and just tear into how much of a waste of time this manga was.

However... at the time of me wanting to do that I had a bad work week and wanted to take my anger out on something since working the holidays is kind of a pain. I’ve calmed down since then, and a step back, rethought things, and... well.

I don’t hate Tokyo Ghoul, but I don’t like it either. 

A few months back I made a post call the Seinen Adventure, where I talked about some of the seinen manga I bought/read and initial gave my thoughts on them. I talked about a manga called Tsugumomo and how it felt like a shounen manga forcing in seinen elements for the sake of seeming mature, but only being seen as even more childish and just downright perverted. I consider Tokyo Ghoul to be the reverse, a seinen manga adding shounen elements to seem more engaging, but coming off badly written due to... well, most shounen manga being badly written. It would explain some of my main issues with the series. The bloated cast, interesting female characters being pushed aside, the slow presence of power creep, Kaneki’s... issues as a character. They’re all elements and flaws of shounen, but when put into a manga made for a more mature audience these issues become so damning. Not to say I expect the pinnacle of storytelling in my Seinen manga, but I do expect not see the issues of most shounen pop up then... blantantly. I can forgive shounen for this because I’m no longer in the age group where shounen would appeal to me, and nowadays I mostly read shounen for the action and spectacle. With Tokyo Ghoul, a seinen manga (or at least more mature one) , I was reading for its story as well as the action, and that story had many issues that irked me as a reader. 

A quick list of my issues would be Kaneki’s growth as a character, the cast growing to the point of feeling bloated, new characters getting more attention and spotlight than older ones I was more invested in, the world building dragging the manga’s pacing at times, and so on. Some of the issues got fixed near the end, namely the world building and pacing (at least by my standards), but most of my issues involving the characters still remained. 

Much like when I talked about Persona 5 for a second time, I don’t think my opinions have changed much after finishing this manga, but I do want to talk a little (or a lot) about some of the characters of Tokyo Ghoul. The ones that made a decent impression on me anyway.

Kaneki

I... don’t know how to feel about Kaneki. I don’t know if he’s a bad character, or just a badly written one. I think my main issue is how he has no main goal throughout the series. The closest thing I can think of to a goal of his is to get enough strength to protect his friends and those close to him, but... that’s an ambiguous goal. I’ve said it before, but Kaneki’s actions feel like the actions of a 13-year-old shounen anime protagonist, but Kaneki is roughly 18 or 19, so him having these vague goals for someone his age feels annoyingly childish to me. Hell, Touka even calls him out on this, and she’s a few years younger than him. The fact that someone younger than him has a better grounding of reality just... makes Kaneki seem all the weaker as a character. And even then, many shounen protagonists around that pre-teen age have solid, definable goals.  Naruto wants to become Hokage, Luffy wants to find One Piece, Rokuro from Twin Star Exorcists wants to eliminate all Kegare, Negi from Negima wants to find his dad, the list goes on, but you see my point. All of these characters have a drive to protect their loved ones, but also a clear goal that guides them through the story. And even then, manga series like A Certain Scientific Railgun and Tokyo ESP had a sort of “Threat of the Arc” situation going on, where our main character is just dealing with the craziness of whatever big thing is happening in their vicinity. I think that was were Tokyo Ghoul was heading up until Kaneki’s kidnapping, and I could argue that’s still the kind of story being told, but... I don’t know, something about it feels off to me an-

Ah shoot, sorry. Went on a tangent there. 

To get back on topic, I think a good comparison of characters like Kaneki would be Durarara’s Mikado Ryugamine, and High Rise Invasion’s Yuri Honjo. Now, the plot of both these manga are convoluted and I could honestly spend this whole post just explaining them, but I’ll skip to what’s important. 

Mikado, like Kaneki, was a shy and reclusive person, but through surfing the net and messing around on some forums he had accidentally created his own street gang in Ikebukuro that worked as a sort of anti-crime/community service force in the area. While things were going well at first, they slowly started to spiral out of his control, and while he didn’t ask for things to get as wild as they had gotten, he made due with what had happened, took charge, and tried to fix his mistake. Kaneki is in a similar situation where he’s forced into becoming a ghoul without consent, and while he does accept his ghoul half during and after his kidnapping, he regresses every now and again when the pressure’s on him. 

I mean... it makes sense, I’ll admit that much. The life of a man-eating cannibal is probably not a fun one, even if you’ve accepted it. However, as a reader, his flip-flopping between accepting that half of him and regretting it is annoying, especially as he chooses to go deeper into the shadier side of the ghoul life. Again, most of my annoyance with this comes from the fact that his goal of getting strength to protect is so vague. I know at the end of the day he just wants to know why he was turned into a ghoul and why everyone and their grandma want a piece of him, but... until he understands that’s what he wants and makes efforts to figuring those things out, I just... ugh... 

Moving to the second character, Yuri Honjo was a normal (if a tad co-dependent) high school girl thrown into a world of towering buildings and mask-wearing superhumans trying to kill her. At first she was understandably terrified by this, but soon manned up and took charge almost instantly, and moved along her own plot as things got crazier and crazier. Kaneki, again, does indeed make due with his own situation, but his back pedaling, while realistic and understandable, is very annoying to read through. 

Okay, I’m getting angrier the more I talk about Kaneki, so I’m moving onto Hide now. 

Hide

I wanted to see more of Hide in this manga. I’m serious, for as important as Hide is to the plot, we didn’t see enough of him. I know so little about him and that’s so irritating. I know that he’s cheerful, upbeat, but is a lot smarter than he leads on. I know he’s the kind of person to put an obsessive amount of time and energy into something when he’s invested into something. These two points alone are probably why Hide isn’t too present in the manga, he’s smart enough to figure out how to solve just about every problem Kaneki is in. He’s also bright and optimistic, which would make him a breath of fresh air compared to all the... angst of Kaneki’s character arc. I wish Kaneki just brushed off Touka’s threat and told Hide was a ghoul so he’d have a decent balance between Touka’s realism and Hide’s optimism guiding him. 

As a character, Hide needed to have a solid presence in this story, and the lack of him makes all of Kaneki’s angst and rash decisions so annoying when there’s a smarter, nicer, and (frankly) prettier character that could move him in a better direction. I like the idea of Hide working in the CCG, slowly figuring out Kaneki’s movements, steering investigators in just the wrong the direction to seem competent and trustworthy, but fallible, seeing him play every side just for Kaneki’s sake, to be that perfect friend Kaneki needs. I just... want more of Hide, if only so I don’t have to deal with Kaneki’s bullshit. He has points that should make him a character to look out for every damn time he’s in a panel, but... he doesn’t, not to the extent I wished for anyway, and I’m livid about this. 

I had often thought to myself before reading this manga that Hide was just around to be Kaneki’s potential romance to attract Yaoi shippers. The anime basically confirmed that, but, oh Lord, how I wanted to be wrong when reading the manga. I wanted to see more Hide outside of when he needed to make eyes at Kaneki or remind us that he existed and was (maybe) important, but... I didn’t see enough of him to feel safe in saying that. Hide has potential to really shake up the plot, but... he doesn’t, and that saddens and enrages me.

Touka

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Touka Kirishima is Best Girl. She is literally 90% of what I look for in my female characters. She’s tomboyish, she’s a fighter, she doesn’t take Kaneki’s crap, she’s got a cute hairstyle, she’s got a soft side behind her rash exterior, her flaws are noticeable but not forced, she just... feels human. It’s such a shame that she doesn’t get the spotlight after Kaneki’s rescue. I said it before, I understand why she basically got shafted in the second half. The plot was moving away from Anteiku and more toward the CCG and Aogiri, but... damn was it a shame. I wish she would had split from Anteiku as well to become some kind of Ghoul Avenger/Batman after all that stuff went down. She could had went off trying to truly avenge Hinami’s mother, and any ghoul that she saw was wronged, becoming one hell of a wildcard in the powerplays that were happening. I mean really I just want a manga starring Touka like how Akame Ga Kill!Zero actually focuses on Akame, but

Moving on, like I said when talking about Hide, I think Touka makes for a good realist to balance out Hide’s optimism in terms of dealing with Kaneki. She’s cold, but not without meaning or reason. She’s rash, but that’s because she has her own baggage. And... well, her brother is one of the leading members in Aogiri, so I was hoping they’d bring their relationship into more light, maybe having her duke it out with Ayato again and winning to prove his beliefs and ideals wrong. Speaking of, Ayato was really underused as well considering how big of a threat Aogiri seemed. Aogiri as a whole sort of took a backseat after Kaneki’s rescue... eh, another plot point dismissed that irks me, but... whatever. 

Another thing that Touka does for the story of Tokyo Ghoul is give us an idea of what a “typical” ghoul is. Touka is basically the same as Kaneki in terms of social status, only a ghoul. As such, through we get to see how a normal ghoul behaves in the human world. They’re no different than humans really outside of getting into the occasional fight in turf wars, being a bit more violent than humans, and hunting for food every now and then. I could go on about why I like Touka, but I’ve got other characters to discuss.

Amon

I honestly didn’t think I’d like Amon as much as I do now. I would consider Amon something of a foil to Kaneki, or at least in a similar place mentally. After his run in with Kaneki he starts to wonder about ghouls having a human sense of morality, especially after learning that Kaneki was once a human. I’m not going to go too in-depth with his character (hopefully), but I like him at the end. I think he’s a nice addition to the CCG cast. He’s tough, but he’s got his flaws. He’s too professional and stoic with his team mates for his own good at times, he has the goofiest ways of trying to make amends for things, and holy shit that Arata Armor was the hypest thing in the manga oh my god. I let out an audible gasp at that panel, I lost it. I’ve said it before when I made my first essay, but if there’s anything I like about this manga, it’s the badass, cool as shit action shots. It’s the main reason I wish this manga was more action focused.

But anyway, Amon is a good man, he’s a good man that I’m glad we get to see throughout the series, as it really humanizes the CCG as something more than ghoul killer with weapon-fetishes. Him and Shinohara both do this really well.

Other Characters

Okay, just going to do a quick little lightning round of my thoughts on some of the other characters that made an impression on me for the sake of time and my own personal interest in the what I consider the secondary cast waning.

Juzo 

I have never cared much for the resident psychopath in any series, and Juzo is no exception. He was written a little better than some and his backstory explains his actions well. but... I’m still apathetic to him. If anything, it looks like he’s going to be in for some character development in :Re. 

Ayato

I already talked about him when talking about Touka, but I still wish he had more presence in the manga as a main villain and foil for Touka.

Tsukiyama

I also wish Tsukiyami remained a villain instead of teaming up with Kaneki. He represent the depravity that ghouls could have in terms of morals. I know some people like the more gentlemanly side of him, but I love seeing him go crazy and just chew the scenery while screaming foreign words.

Renji

Just another character I wish had more screen presence since it looks like he has a lot of connections to other characters. 

In the End

At the end of it all, I’m... honestly not going to bother with :Re, I hate the fact that is manga left so many open ends and didn’t bother answering some of the bigger questions. Like, when and how did Hide learn Kaneki was a ghoul? What’s the deal with Rize? Who the hell is this Insane Clown Posse that keeps popping up at the end of arcs to say that they’ll get the last laugh? And most important, who the hell is Eto really? The back of the manga may say this is the last volume, but it clearly isn’t. Even Naruto answered most of the bigger questions of Part 1 before moving onto Shippuden, and when Naruto does something better... that says a lot. 

The Insane Clown Posse (and other Issues)

Okay, I lied, I need to bitch about this real quick before I end this essay. Seriously, who the hell are these damn clowns? Why make Eto/Taktsuki the One-Eyed King and not explain that further? When exactly did Hide put two and two together? The fact that all of these are just carrots being dangled in front of me to buy :Re infuriates me.

Look, I’m no fool, I know that there are scans of the :Re out that I can read for free, but I really do prefer to paid for my manga and read official translations, plus I read enough off this computer screen, my eyes need a break from that at times. I know that :Re doesn’t fix a lot of the issues I have with this series, I remember seeing people post :Re stuffl nonstop a few months after the anime ended. The cast only gets more bloated with more characters, Hide is still only utilized for shipping and as something to dangle in front of the fandom, Haise is basically just a way of narrative-ly resetting Kaneki’s character because it was so shot by the end of volume 14, and if what I’ve seen of Dragon!Kaneki is true, that issue of small power creep I had will be skyrocketing to Dragonball Z proportions very soon.

I know... I haven’t really been saying nice things about this manga, and I really don’t hate it, but... this manga isn’t for me, not me personally. I like shounen action, cute girls in cute outfits, ninjas, and fancy strategies being used to outsmart powerful enemiesenemies. Tokyo Ghoul has... 3 of those things. If the fandom wants to at least explain to me the Insane Clown Posse and Eto, I’d appreciate it as a semi-causal fan of this series, but... I’m done, for now. Maybe I’ll check out the :Re anime, but nothing further than that.

In any case, I like that idea of Touka become Ghoul Avenger, so maybe I’ll write a fanfic about it. Until then folks, feel free to give me your thoughts on this series and opinions about my opinions. I’m... gonna’ go do some laundry and then play some Darkest Dungeon the my PS4.

[ourstars-ourstories-blog]

BEHIND THE STORYTELLING CURTAIN

A Day in the Life of a Storyteller, Episode #17

 *

“That must have taken a long time to memorize all those words!”

“Do you practice over and over until you have it all perfect?”

“How do you come up with the stories you’re going to tell?”

“Do stories ever just come to you?”

*

The mystery of the storytelling profession is both what I love and what drives me crazy about it—the constant need to explain what it is that I actually do as a storyteller can be frustrating, but at the same time the constant chance I have to create what it is I do as I go along, while quite scary and challenging, is also invigorating, and often downright fabulous.

Considering that the whole point of A Day in the Life of a Storyteller has been to attempt to disseminate the world of storytelling as an art form and profession, I’ve decided this week to delve more into the actual process I go through to prepare stories to tell.

I often hear comments like that very first one, “That’s a lot of words to memorize!”, or questions like this one, “Do you say the story over and over again until you have it perfect?”

I find that many people hold a misconception that storytelling is just like performing a scripted theater piece.

While some tellers follow a tighter script than I do, the majority of storytellers I know (including myself) adhere more to the practice of learning a story by heart rather than memorization.

What do I mean exactly when I say by heart? Isn’t memorizing something the same as learning it by heart? The terms are often used interchangeably, but for me as a storyteller there is a huge difference.

To memorize something is to have it in my head, with the precise words and sequence down pat. To learn something by heart is just that, to have it in my heart rather than solely in my head.

I was never great at memorizing lines for plays growing up, but I always wanted to perform the scenes—I wanted to feel the lines and be in the character, to know the story so intimately that I didn’t need the exact words, I just needed to be the character, the story itself. I’ve heard a lot of actors tell me that when you become good at acting this is how it is—you feel the character you are playing so much that you can take more liberties with the lines, and you know the story and plot in and out that the lines just come naturally.

While I haven’t gotten there yet in theatre, I have found that heart full experience of performance in storytelling.

Before I choose to tell a story I have to be able to feel the story deep down—to feel the message and the importance of it for myself, before I share it with anyone else.

There is a beautiful thing that storytellers have different names for, but I’ve always called it enchantment—where the triangle of “story”-“audience”-“teller” is formed, all three elements linked, and in the center enchantment forms, a moment in time never to be repeated and unique to those within the triangle, where all is connected and all are experiencing the heart of story—the essence of the power of storytelling to change and shift and expand horizons of all involved.

I’ve started to work on a story and had to stop, because I’ve realized that I couldn’t really feel the heart of the story, that I wasn’t connecting with it the way I wanted to, the way that is necessary to be effective in telling it to others with the potential for enchantment.

Once I find a story where my heart is in it, I get to the business of learning it by heart.

This involves a process of visualizing the story—through drawn images, or often just by imagining the sequencing of the story in my head as I walk through the park, take a run by the creek, or sit on my porch drinking tea and watching passersby in their daily routines.

I find that learning a story by image, rather than by words is easier to hold in my mind—words memorized can be fleeting, but the image sticks because I can see how it is part of the whole.

Our brains are wired for story, and there is scientific research out there now to back this statement up.

Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof: The science behind the startling power of story, shares that our brains have something he calls the neural story net (NSN), where the information received by the subconscious is storied before it reaches the conscious mind. The NSN is our brains’ make-sense tool—it changes facts, makes assumptions, creates new info, ignores parts, infers connections and intent, and misinterprets information (Haven). Haven says that stories themselves minimize what our NSN does—by applying effective story structure to the information we give our brains, we minimize distortion done by our NSN. If it’s already in a story, our brain has less work to do!

To remember how to tell the story I wish to tell, I first have to really know its structure and flow—to understand the whole and not just the parts. When I try to learn something by heart using just words, I end up focusing too much on the parts and lose much of the whole. When I use images and visualization, I can imagine the whole and the parts begin to make more sense in relation to that whole.

Of course there are certain phrases or parts that are more effective for an audience when they are spoken a certain way. Often storytellers choose to learn the beginning line (“Many say that ghosts do not exist…” or “I never did like our neighbor’s dog…”) and the ending line or paragraph (“Rambling Richard went on his way, and as he went, he sang…) or a jingle or repetitive phrase word for word (“I’ve got two eyes and ears, ten fingers and toes, I stand on my feet, and follow my nose…”) to use in the story to provide structure and a part to hold on to when performing. I find this helpful, though any more than this and I begin to lose sight of the whole again.

The idea that storytellers practice their stories over and over again exactly the same each time, well, for some this is true, but for me this almost never happens.

I do find that it is important to tell the story again and again—to friends, family, people I meet—but each time it is different, each time there is some variation on the phrasing, some difference in how I embellish certain parts or not. And this is in fact the useful part of telling it over and over again—not to “perfect” it in the sense of having it be the exact same each time, but in determining what different ways there are to express the story, and how that shifts and flows depending on who is listening and what my ultimate goal with the telling happens to be.

Part of this practice for me of telling over and over again, is to tell the story to myself informally over time and in different places, without the pressure of an audience and often with the distraction of nature and movement.

One of the most effective practices I have is to take a run or a walk in the park, with a pen and folded up piece of paper tucked in a pocket.

I let my mind wander, though I will often set an intention to loosely (key word here) adventure through a specific story and how it might like to be told.

Sometimes I won’t set an intention, and a story will appear on its own. Other times a different story than what I set out to explore will find its way into my consciousness. Whichever way, I always find it to be a fruitful process.

The looseness of the thought process, combined with movement of the body and exposure to nature has a way of freeing my imagination and awakening untapped creation.

Three years ago, I had a story snippet come to me in a dream, but upon awakening I was left only with that snippet and nothing more. I’ve played with this snippet, focusing on it and trying to force it to show the rest of its world to me, but until recently I hadn’t gotten much out of it.

On the road this last fall, I had spent the day driving across Minnesota and South Dakota and the sun was getting low in the sky, the clouds thin and streaked just above the horizon. I’d been daydreaming and my mind was free.

Then, all of a sudden, as if I were watching a movie play across the darkening South Dakota sky, I saw the world clear and crisp, full, sequenced, ready to be told—the world of the story I had only the snippet of—blooming in pink, orange, dark blue as the sun set and the my story rose to meet me, finally ready to be told.

Story ideas have come to me before, but this time was special, a unique moment where the story unfolded itself, a comic strip visual, characters fully formed and full of voice, painted and singing across my mind in a moment of complete mental freedom.

These are the moments that make creating my own career path fabulous.

These are the moments where I love the mystery and magic of the storytelling profession.

These are the moments that make it possible to share heart-felt stories with all of you.

While this blog doesn’t always paint the full world of storytelling for you, my hope is that it provides a snippet, and in time the rest of that story will unfold itself for you when it’s ready.

[onestowatch]

Huron John Invites You to Experience the Trauma-Exorcism of ‘cartoon therapy’ [Q&A]

Photo: Chase Denton

In the world of up-and-coming artists, few names generate as much excitement as Huron John. Last year the indie pop prodigy invited listeners into his technicolor world with his debut LP Apocalypse Wow, and this week sees him returning once more with his long-awaited sophomore project, cartoon therapy.

In 2020, Huron John’s debut Apocalypse Wow was met with widespread acclaim with critics praising everything from its production and forward-thinking narrative, to Huron John’s whimsically crafted tracks. Both albums are written, engineered, and produced in their entirety by the Chicago native, but while the former is an explosive display of left-field kaleidoscopic narratives and youthful romance, the latter takes a much more introspective approach to its storytelling.

cartoon therapy sheds Huron John’s youthful exuberance for something that is much more complex, and at times even vulnerable. Tracks like “Arthur” are just as concerned with the euphoria of new romance as they are with the anxiety of growing old and being insecure in the skin that you’re in. Despite its more pensive thematic register, cartoon therapy is a must-listen. The record is filled with 10 high-energy indie pop anthems that will transport your weekly rotation to another world before you can even say “meep.”

Prior to the release of cartoon therapy, I was fortunate enough to pick Huron John’s brain about his newest record. We discussed the past year, his favorite piece of hardware, and everything in-between.

Ones To Watch: It’s been a minute since we last got a full-length project from you. Your debut album, 2020’s Apocalypse Wow, focused on themes of disillusionment and dystopia, which was probably appropriate given how insane last year was. On your newest project cartoon therapy, what themes did you try to focus on?

Huron John: This new album is all about healing. It’s super symbolic to me personally in the sense of, like, I’ve been going through some very dark shit, and finally getting this project out kind of lets me see a light at the end of the tunnel in a way. The album is about accepting the individuality of your own journey, and understanding that life is beautiful even through all of the things that bog us down. It’s about answering questions but not being afraid to pose new ones. The album is truly like a really volatile version of therapy… it’s like 10 fucking tracks back-to-back-to-back with like no space in between (laughs). It’s supposed to be just a whirlwind of getting out what is inside so you can move forward. This thing is like a trauma-exorcism but you’re on the dancefloor or on a bike. 

How do you feel cartoon therapy extends the world you built on Apocalypse Wow? Did you always anticipate the story going this way, or did things change throughout the creative process?

It’s a second half of the “story” of Apocalypse Wow, it completes this like double album-style package. My favorite album of all time is a double album with a loose concept based on the progression from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep. From Apocalypse Wow to cartoon therapy it’s this concept about a character—who is lowkey based on myself but shhhh (laughs)—who saves the planet from aliens. Then, in CT, he basically befriends the aliens enough so that they give him a time machine. He goes on this crazy-ass adventure throughout time-and-space visiting all the fucked up moments from his life and like gaining peace with them I guess. The connection kind of unraveled as I made the stuff, I suppose. I just wanted it to be a very clear bookend on the introductory chapter of my discography. 

Which track on cartoon therapy was the biggest challenge to make and why? What track are you most proud of?

A track called “Cosmic Opera (Death Is Not The End).” Basically, I had a whole other song called “We’ll Come Out On Top,” it was actually the first beat I made for the record. It’s this really slow, psychedelic like Some Rap Songs style hip-hop shit. My hard drive broke so I lost the original beat, tried for about three weeks to remake it, but it just didn’t work. In the process, a whole new beat “(Cosmic Opera)” was born. I got COVID, strep throat, and a whole bunch of other shit that caused me to have to re-record the vocals like three times. 

How was the creation of cartoon therapy and its creative process different from your last record?

It was beyond fucked. An absolute shit-show. Apocalypse Wow was extremely over-planned (musically), and the process was like so long to make that record. This one I wanted to try a much more rapid-fire like lightning-in-a-bottle approach and make the full album in like three months. That goal was the death of me (laughs). In a nutshell, I made like 15 beats for the whole thing, wrote all the lyrics, recorded all the vocals, then realized I had a faulty microphone so I had to re-record the entire album. It was a nightmare. Then, when I had like four songs left to record, I got COVID, then I lost my voice due to COVID after I recovered, then I found out I had strep throat. A whole bunch of other shit happened but it was the like “I AM FINISHING THIS FUCKING ALBUM IF IT KILLS ME” type shit. Very crazy process. 

It seems like the release of cartoon therapy had a much greater emphasis on visuals than Apocalypse Wow. Was this intentional? 

Oh yeah. It was supposed to really drive home this narrative world, and just expand the whole world of this character Andy—one that spans between the two albums. Two records with a very visual universe, so that was definitely the goal of the whole thing.

How has your understanding of your music and your place in the music industry changed since the release of Apocalypse Wow? How are you feeling about things now?

I honestly don’t know. My relationship with music has changed immensely since I created this record, to rolling it out, to now. I have realized a lot of things that I want to take part in, and a lot of things that I do not. My goal is to get this work in the hands of as many people as I can, specifically physical vinyl copies of the music. This record truly taught me that the sole purpose of life is to impact as many people that you can with creative work. To make their lives better. To comfort people and soundtrack their memories. To play an integral part in their lives as your favorite artists do in yours. Impacting people like that doesn’t happen through sexy selfies on the internet. Does that make sense?

What do you want listeners to take away from cartoon therapy?

It’s okay to feel the way you’re feeling right now. Your thoughts are your thoughts and no one can ever take that away from you. No matter what those thoughts are. Life is your movie and you are the main character. Allow your adventure to surprise you.

Every track on the record was produced, written, and engineered by you, which is something that not many artists can claim. As your career grows, do you think you’ll be looking to collaborate more with your peers? And if so, who are some artists you’d love to hop in the studio with?

Yes… I am just starting to experiment with a lot of artists and producers. It is fun. I plan on doing one of those producer albums where it’s just like a million artists hopping on my project. I definitely feel like these first two albums really hammered home the personal and intimate kind of “one-man show” aspect of my music. Now, it’s time to try some other stuff. I want to work with King Krule. 

From your MicroKorg Analog Modeling Synth to your laptop, what’s a piece of hardware you couldn’t live without?

I just bought a real TR-707 drum machine from the ’80s and that thing is my baby!

 What rare interest do you have in something that gets you geeked out? 

I really like traditional Indian music. Also, I have developed an interest in the shortwave analog radio community. 

What’s your plan for the rest of 2021? Is there anything fans can look forward to as summer starts to roll around? 

Yes. I will be releasing the Apocalypse Wow/cartoon therapy double album on vinyl within the next couple of weeks. The inside gatefold is a playable board game, and both discs are colored/see-through. I have a 65-page book that is releasing around that time as well. Full of photos, articles, interviews, and other shit. It will be sweet. I’m also putting out a “deluxe edition” album type of thing in the next couple of weeks. Then, I really want to begin a hibernation-style era of music-making and experimentation.

We’ll be looking forward to that! Finally, who are your ones to watch?

death’s dynamic shroud.wmv, The Frost Children, and  t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者.

Listen to cartoon therapy below:

[how2to18]

APRIL 30, 1992. NBC’s The Cosby Show ended its run as the United States’s best-case scenario: Negroes not of its dreams. The situation comedy wrapped one day after a bunch of black guys beat the shit out of Reginald Denny at Florence and Normandie. A quarter-century or so ago, America’s racial schism peaked enough to make our Trump stuff look like chump change.

A month or so after that unmasking of day and night, Darius James’s phantasmagoric dark satire Negrophobia was published. Spoiler alert: James’s debut novel was not a healing tonic for its times.

But it could be one for ours.

Published by Carol/Citadel Publishing over 25 years ago and rereleased this month by New York Review Books, Negrophobia blends satirical narrative propulsion with sci-fi through a 21st-century scenario, stocked with characters based on the most husky and dusky 20th-century racist stereotypes. Among the parade passing through James’s political nightmare are horror versions of Race Subconscious Hall of Fame players: Elvis, Malcolm X, and Walt Disney.

Last century’s broadly digested racist cartoons drive both the James style of storytelling and the substance of his comment. The script is full of action that leaps about like a stereotype-mining Tex Avery short one might have taken in before a film like as Gone with the Wind, as a kind of appetizer. The story James told a quarter-century ago turns aggressively sci-fi as it leans on an endless stream of lies about black people that were cool with your grandparents’ generation. And these monsters from their minds are lampooned deadeye.

James’s twisted beasts engage in a cascade of violent strife. The book’s most engaging star and primary signifier: A delinquent teen girl best described in 2019 as a cross between Paris Hilton and Little Annie Fannie. (In an email exchange, the author told me the female character was inspired by the latter ’60s-era Playboy comic and Terry Southern’s novel Candy.) Her name is Bubbles Brazil. A whole bunch of bad things of a sexual nature happen to Bubbles, and if you’re the sort of reader who found him or herself halfway triggered by the title of this book in itself, Negrophobia sho’ nuff ain’t the book for you.

Which doesn’t make it not a book for the times.

James credits voudou in his lineage as a kind of co-pilot. Composed in the form of a movie script, Negrophobia from its very first sentence comes across as conjured. Be it conjured or hallucinated, the piece could only have been created in that the 395-year epoch before black lives began mattering on this here soil. When mass stereotypes went unquestioned and famous Negroes danced for chicken on TV. Out of this rich cultural content, the author cultivates extreme black caricatures to play in Bubbles’s mind. The comic narrative, one disturbing image diving in after its predecessor, is capable of producing a laugh and a wince per page.

James’s “screenplay” gives minimal internal motivation, just the raw expression of devious acts and racial distortion. “TEEN SEX-BOMB BLOND” is how Bubbles is introduced to us.

So delinquent is Bubbles that she’s forced to attend an all-black public high school in New York City. And Bubbles ain’t into it like Ann Coulter ain’t into Day of the Dead activities. Which is to say Not At All, and for good reason: the blacks inhabiting the mind of Bubbles Brazil — the one she’s matriculating with in her dreams — are literally The Worst Black Folks Imaginable. Monstrously bad. Graphically terrible.

The Maid, Bubbles’s Act One archenemy, resembles a demonic and funky-ass Nell Carter, illiterate as all get out. She’s a big beast in Bubbles’s mind. Only when The Maid enters do the proceedings turn truly, mind-blowingly shameful.

BUBBLES

What’s a white girl to do in a school full of jiggaboos?

MAID

Mind her business. Yo’ parents spent all dat money sending’ yo butt off to fancy private schools. ‘N’ whatchoo do? Get hot little boll-daga ass thrown out!! ‘N’ den you end up in a crazy house fo’ rich dope fiends! Face it, you just’ gonna’ hafta put up wid dem niggas.

Reading satisfaction results will vary. As a 52-year-old black American male, the humiliation of having been stereotyped provides the book its gravity. If you’re a white American of about my age, you might be enjoying the mouth-feel of James well-wrought coon-speak. In your case, reading Negrophobia might feel like a treasured childhood brand returning to the local supermarket.

In Negrophobia, the previous century’s popular culture runs deep. Bubbles Brazil attends Donald Goines Senior High School. Lawn jockeys come to life. A take on Our Town in which Grover’s Corner is now Garvey’s Corner is in the play’s changes. Buppets are black muppet B-Boys in T-shirts that say, “IT’S A DICK THAANG! YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND.” Shelley Winters gets summoned back from Wild in the Streets. Unfrozen President-for-Life Walt Disney delivers a really fucked-up speech. Bernhard Goetz makes a chilling appearance. And, of course there is zombie Elvis. Hellish-Manhattan trains and apocalyptic scenarios tap into the absurdity of America’s racial horror show, late-20th-century-style.

Always in play is shame. James weaponizes the indignity through razor-sharp send-ups that are as lean as poetry, scene after scene.

For this reader there’s a strange kind of gratitude, if not thorough enjoyment for the reissue. I had all but forgotten that White America used to label my people as chicken thieves. And that there was a recurring media image of us filing down our own teeth, as African cannibals. I almost forgotten about hophead, jungle bunny jigaboo, spear-chucker, shine, jug, tar baby, boom blasters, coon, pickaninny, Jimson weed, and being called wool-headed, as our times no longer dictate that I remember. The language was not that far below the surface of my mind.

The worst Negroes imaginable, Darius James so artfully makes clear, live vividly in the culture of unedited cartoons. The sexual violence imposed upon his Downtown Little Annie Fannie echoes those Tex Avery and Warner Brothers reels. It’s a neat trick, loading their takes into Bubbles’s mind, because she and so many real-world characters have been unable to “imagine the existence of things outside [their] sum of knowledge.”

The idea to present James’s narrative in screenplay format came from the great and emotional darkie Michael O’Donoghue. James’s mentor and friend Terry Southern supported the development of it, as did Kathy Acker and Olympia Press. All over the pages of Negrophobia — nearly as much as mid-20th-century cartoon shorts — is the voice of Richard Pryor. Rudy Ray Moore and Ralph Bakshi are heavy in the mix. Steve Cannon’s in there, too.

Johnny Depp loved his first-edition copy of James’s book. Members of the band Fishbone read and related to it, and the painter Kara Walker said reading Negrophobia in grad school “was one of those good but rare occasions when I thought there might be one other person in the world that would get what I was doing.” Bill Cosby, James says in a new preface, forbade a daughter from bringing Negrophobia into his home.

James wrote a crazy punk book, bringing to the page an ethos of a Lower Manhattan in the ’80s scene that he frequented so as to turn the indie-lit party out. “He had a pedagogical intent throughout the book that can easily be missed in all the sex and grotesquerie,” D. Scot Miller, author of The Afro-Surreal Manifesto, told me in extolling James. “Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.” Where before there had been scarcity of surrealism this side of Chameleon Street, Afro-Surrealism has become, if not widespread, reassuringly present in television shows like Random Acts of Flyness and Atlanta and the feature film Sorry to Bother You.

Negrophobia is “a brilliant book whose time has come and whose time has always been now,” as Amy Abugo Ongiri calls it in the introduction. Bubble’s dream would make for the dirtiest film in the history of world cinema, but I cannot help but think James’s notes on a film could be an event in the hands of Jordan Peele. Then, James could work on the script and add a scene with Race Subconscious Hall of Famer Christopher Dorner. If I have one complaint about the re-issue of Negrophobia, it’s that I am missing Christopher Dorner. Cannot stop thinking of him, even when I’m not.

¤

Donnell Alexander is a writer whose work has been featured in Time, The Nation, Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story,” and Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

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