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#disturbing muppet connotations
caffiend-queen · 3 years
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Psst…I’m winedrunk and just got 3 orgasms from my husband but I wanted to tell you before I fall asleep without being super rude, cuz it feels rude in my brain but I just gotta say it that when I read ari and Heather’s wedding and honeymoon fic, that whenever you write about his massive paws on her body, I imagine the ghost of Christmas present for Jim Henson’s a muppet Christmas carol and his giant muppet hands. Cuz he’s giant. And loud. And his got giant paw like hands.
Ugh I love that story so much! It’s so sexy and big! And snorkel sex!!! And heather is so cool and smart but like a little dumb???? And I really like that about her. And I like you too! You’re not dumb even a little. Keep writing and I’ll keep reading!
I don't know who you are, Nonnie, but I want to know you and have sleepovers and bring you pie. You are wonderful and if being wine-drunk and over-orgasmed makes you this way, I vote to keep you in this perpetual state. I don't think your husband would complain. Also, now that I have seen this image I will never be able to get it out of my head. Also, I cannot stop laughing and I'm beginning to cramp here.
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We're going to be friends. I'm not letting you go. Oh, my god I'm still laughing...
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hussie formspring trivia 7/?
So... Is Nepeta actually scratching him or is Gamzee slashing his face on purpose just to be fucked up?
He is slashing his face on purpose. Because I didn't think the erotic submissive asphyxiation fetish death was fucked up enough, I thought a little bit of self mutilation was in order. I hope at this point people realize that when you punched your Homestuck ticket, or really anything I've worked on, you were signing up for something that runs the risk of getting pretty fucked up. Practically everything I've done outside the confines of MSPA has been considerably more bizarre. I'm capable of containing the impulse to do bizarre shit when I want to. If you look at some big stretches of Homestuck, you will observe something that is quite tame, often cutesy, and even at times bordering on accessible. But then, to create a well manicured and widely palatable product was never the mission here. It was about exploration, high diversity of concepts and execution and all that, and I guess above all, fun for me personally. (and YOU!) So there are vehicles built into it to support my more usual fare. The primary vehicle for that was Hivebent, and the entire troll presence in the story in general. It began with a pretty messed up premise. The establishment of a colorful cast of kids from a violent race of psychopaths whose entire civilization centers around brutality and murder, and watching how kids from such a culture relate to each other and come of age. Hivebent began with dark notes relative to Homestuck, and only got darker. The scene with Vriska and Tavros in her quest cocoon was an example of the escalation in fucked up shit. Present events are even further escalation. It was always going to get much worse before it got better. If you got into this story more recently without knowing anything about me or what I've done before, and feel the story would be better suited without the inclusion of the more bizarre elements, or the downright NASTYTIMES, all I can say is that's not who I am or what you signed up for. Do you know about Humanimals? Probably most of you do. It's a comic I did years ago. I still think it's hilarious, personally. If you do too, then I would bet there aren't many ways in which our senses of humor differ. But to many it was disturbing, hideous rubbish. In truth, these comics are probably about as unsettling as you can possibly get without resorting to violent or sexual content. (if it appears sexual in nature, that is only your imagination at work, trust me) http://www.teamspecialolympics.com/comic.php?sec=archive&auth=Blurbs&cid=blurbs/00085-h.gif&blurb=h (Edward was on Equius's wall in the latest Flash) [here's where this answer probably gets a bit too long] I'm constantly mining content from my older work to incorporate into Homestuck. The instances of this are hard to quantify. Let's talk about Equius again. Lot's of people thought he had depth beyond his gags, and that's definitely true. But that wasn't what was relevant about him, to me personally. He was always the troll personification of everything like Humanimals I ever did and put on the internet. (Hence is lusus is basically a Humanimal.) I used to do all sorts of weird stuff, reviewing obscene furry pornography, making weird collages involving horses, and just a whole lot of bizarre shit that didn't make much sense, but I thought was funny. The whole span of these endeavors was quite trollish in nature, and you will agree if you peruse Humanimals. The fact that it puts some people off is part of what makes it funny. So Equius was that entire arena of trollish content, rolled into a character. That's why I was STRONGLY committed to maintaining the integrity of his arc, as I defined it. It was more important by far for me to adhere to his role as the fucked up dude who embodies all that stuff than have him blow it by doing something heroic. He believed he died a death of supreme integrity. And so do I. Don't get me wrong, he was still a gag character. But this was the precise nature of the gag, an homage to an entire vein of humor I used to deal in copiously. He, like some others, trolled you in life, and then trolled you in death. What happened in between, you ask? Well, that was just you falling in love. Whistles was a graphic novel I did years ago. It's another thing I've mined ideas from, which have specifically begun to show themselves lately with Gamzee's turn. And oddly, there's some of Whistles rolled into Equius too. If Equius seemed to accelerate to a point of depth faster than others, maybe it's because he was built on quite a payload of founding concepts, all revolving around perversity. Whistles was about a clown in a circus who was as sweet as could be. He loved his ringmaster, in spite of the fact that the master was a cannibal and a tyrant who attempted to kill him. When the circus rebelled against the master and beat him, Whistles flipped out, killed a lot of people, and absconded with the master into the desert. (nice clown going murderous is obviously what Gamzee imported from this) The recurring theme throughout the whole comic is that every time Whistles has a chance to do the right thing and rebel against his evil master, he can't overcome his loyalty to him. To the point where he offers his starving master his own severed arm to eat. The whole thing is darkly humorous and pretty messed up. Equius imported this insane reverence for the hierarchy at the expense of his own well being. Though with Whistles, it wasn't quite as perverse and didn't have the creepy sexual connotations. (However, at one point Whistles did dabble in prostitution. But when he did it, it was cute!) I get asked sometimes if I will make book 2, the conclusion of Whistles. The answer is, probably not. It's incredibly time consuming making a graphic novel, and I don't know where I'll find the time. It also probably just gathered too much dust for me to get into it again. But unlike Equius, I did plan on giving Whistles a heroic end. I always intended for him to overcome his obsession with his master. For what it's worth, I did finish a draft of book 2's first chapter. It introduces a new villain named Sugarshoe who is, get this, another insane clown! If you read through this and recent HS events, it may seem like I'm obsessed with this kind of thing. Not really. Like I said, I just borrow heavily from myself. http://www.andrewhussie.com/comic.php?sec=archive&auth=Andrew&cid=whistles2_draft/whistles2_001.jpg Just to wrap up this trivia binge, some other examples of old stuff I've rolled into Homestuck are.......... SBaHJ. I did a few strips on a whim, satirizing someone's comics, about one month before I started HS. I folded it into HS as it's primary source of original memes to be referenced ad nauseum. The whole Bro puppet obsession was largely sparked by this series of ridiculous muppet comics I did in the forum years ago. One of the comics actually made it in HS, pinned on Bro's door for Dave to find. File this under More Fucked Up Shit I did. http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?24118-Cheerfulbear-PLAY-ME All the wizard stuff in Rose's house, and her wizardfic writing in general, was mostly imported from my own absurd wizardfic I wrote some years ago, a pretty healthy sized book I never quite finished. It was called Wizardy Herbert, and was a very flippantly satirical story about kids and magic, starting out as what seemed like an unapologetic Harry Potter spoof revolving around a magical summer camp instead of a school, and then quickly launching off the plot deep end into some very convoluted stuff of Homestuckian proportions. In fact, there are many ideas mined from this story and injected into Homestuck. Any time you read anything about magic being stupid or not being real or anything like that, that's Wizardy Herbert talking. Zazzerpan and his full Complacency were minor characters in WH. WH is actually extremely similar to HS, in terms of the nature of the dialogue, the blend of utter silliness and dramatic seriousness, and complexity. It feels like such a similar thing to me, this might be the main reason why I'll never quite finish it. Characters from WH are on Rose's wall here. http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002121 Herbert is the guy with the eye patch. He had a magic gun. But he could never figure out how to use magic, so he primarily just went around shooting things. Anyway I guess that's enough about all that.
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ba1bkbm · 7 years
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Narratology Lecture Notes 3
Noteable Books
The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (2011), Jack Zipes
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers (1994), Marina Warner
Morphology of the Folktake, Vladimir Propp
“One of the best-kept secrets in the study of the cinema concerns the neglect of the influential role that the fairy-tale narrative has played in informing most of the films ever made” (Zipes, 2011)
What is a fairy-tale? “A wonder tale involving marvellous elements and occurrences, though not necessarily about fairies.” Encyclopedia Britannica
Fairytales do end “happily”
Justice is served, there is closure (such as the fate of the step-mother in Grimm’s Snow White, forced to dance to her death in red-hot iron slippers fresh from the fire)
Bluebeard (1697), Charles Perrault May have roots in real life story of a 15th century serial killer Bluebeard gives his new wife a key to a secret room that she must never enter, and inside the room are all his dead wives.
Medieval versions of Cinderella: her step-sisters slice off their toes to fit in the slipper - versions which the Grimm brothers based their story on. The Fairy Godmother was Perrault’s romanticised version. Cinderella is actually helped by birds who visit a tree she plants on her mother’s grave. The step-sisters are physically beautiful and inwardly ugly, and are punished for their deception and cruelty by having their eyes pecked out by pigeons (the natural world can only ever be appeased, not tamed). The glass slipper was originally made of squirrel fur.
The Little Engine That Could (1921), Lucy Sprague Mitchell Focuses on stories about the “here and now” because old fairytales had peculiar and disturbing images.
Dr. Gardner’s Fairy Tales for Today’s Children, 1974 Disturbing psychological messages removed - Cinderella decides the prince is out of her league, opens her own dress shop and marries a hardworking printer from the shop next door.
The earliest fairytales were shared amongst adults, contained serious meanings and ritualistic elements with clear polarity between good and evil. Draws lines between myth and religion. We can never be that heroic or that perfect in our actual life.
Fairytales rarely have names and instead use nicknames (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella), implying that they could be us. They are about “everyman” and “everywoman”.
Angela Carter (1940-1992), feminist writer (dark fairytales: The Bloody Chambers (1979)) brought sex and death to fairytales.
Modern “subversions” often reject the “polarity” of the old-fashioned tale. (Charle’s Perrault’s 1967 version of the tale, Little Red Cap, was a clear warning to “stick to the path”: danger was “out there”, in the forest, a thing to be avoided.
Angela Carter suggests that danger is also “in here”, in us - our “inner hairiness”
Tales of Mother Goose (1697), Charles Perrault
Children’s and Household Tales (1812), The Brothers Grimm
Georges Méliès, the pioneer of the fairy tale film (and the man who accidentally invented stop motion animation when his camera jammed) with Cinderella (1899)
The trouble with live action fairytales are special effects.
Animation: the ideal medium for fairytales?
Disney has started doing live action as well as animation (the new Beauty and the Beast has CGI puppets)
Who is the audience aimed at?
Muppet fairytales
CGI is so good now that you can use elements of that in a live action and create a believable movie - NASA didn’t believe that the movie “Gravity” was actually CGI
“Metamorphosis defines the fairytale” Marina Warner, 1994
“Shapeshifting is one of fairytale’ dominant and characteristic wonders: hands are cut off, found and reattached, babies’ throats are slit, but they are later restored to life, a rusty lamp turns into an all-powerful talisman, a humble pestle and mortar becomes the winged vehicle of the fairy enchantress and the slattern in the filthy donkey skin turns into a golden-haired princess.”
Images eat each other in Fantasmagorie (1908)
The Fleischer Brothers, Snow White: A Cartoon Fairy Tale (1933)
“The moveable silhouette charmingly maintains the right balance between the product of art and life; we believe enough to be enthralled, and we do not believe it enough to get the goosebumps we get when experiencing the supernatural.” Rudolph Arnheim (film critic) describes the silhouette film as the ideal medium for the realisation of a fairy tale.
Lotte Reiniger, Cinderella (1922)
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“The Three Brothers”, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J. K. Rowling 3 minute animated shadow-play sequence created by Framestore, for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) Follows along the idea that silhouette is best for fairytale - the animation is precise and straight to the point with no focus on details. Assumed to be a brief history of the Peverell brothers, who each owned a Deathly Hallow (Elder Wand, Resurrection Stone, Invisibility Cloak) that made up one Master of Death. J. K. Rowling loosely based this on Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale”. Follows the idea of the “rule of threes”, and would probably be more of a fable than a fairytale. Has connotations to the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” which also features three goats trying to cross a river manned by a troll.
Has several interpretations and morals: taught to wizarding children to provide humility and morality, teaches that you “cannot cheat death” and you will eventually “part [with death] as equals”, suggests that extreme greed leads to an untimely death.
Les Contes de la Nuit (2011), Michel Ocelot - CGI silhouette animation (contemporary)
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Disney was among the first (Zipes, 2011) “to realise how the fairy-tale genre might be enriched by film in unimaginable ways, and how film might be enriched by the fairy tale.”
Disney did “Bowdlerise” (so called for Thomas Bowdler who produced a ten volume set of the collected works of Shakespeare in 1818 which took out all the “offensive” content) the tales he told.
One hand, he was entitled to this - fairytales have always been subject to change depending on the audience they’re aimed at (Disney wanted as big of an audience as possible).
Other hand, the emphasis on romance - on dreams “magically” coming true - could stand in opposition to the true moral of the fairy tale: that rewards are earned by overcoming tests and challenges rather than simply “wishing” for things.
Epic Forumals in the Folktale (1908), Axel Olrik - identified so-called “Epic Laws” including:
The Laws of Threes - “three is the maximum number of men and objects that occur in a traditional narrative”
The Law of Repetition - actions in folk tales are typically repeated 3 times
Such as Grimm’s Snow White, the bodice laces, poisoned comb, poisoned apple
The Law of Contrast - other people should be antithetical to the hero; therefore if the hero is generous, other characters should be “stingy” to contradict him.
The Law of Twins - two people can appear together in the same role, and should be similar in nature
The Law of Patterning - situations and events are told and re-told in “as a similar a manner as possible”
Olrik also said that folktales are “single-stranded” have a “unity of plot”. There is a Concentration on a Leading Character. They don’t branch off into sub-plots.
“31 Functions” - Vladimir Propp analysed 100 Russian fairy tales and found striking similarities between them. He found they were all built on a pattern drawn from 31 functions (actions) occurring in a set order. In other words, only 31 things can happen in a fairytale.
Alfred Hitchcock 1939 “MacGuffin” described this as a plot device
Before Propp’s seminal work, fairy tales were categorised according to type (animal stories, fantastical stories, etc.) or “motif” (the appearance of a dragon). There were weaknesses: many tales belonged in more than one category, and the system did nothing to illuminate the underlying structure of the fairytale. Propp argued that fairytales had a “particular structure” and, although many details were variable, there were also set elements, or constants.
Any basic plot “will have static elements and variable elements. If we decide, for example, that the quest is a basic plot then we can say that a static example is that it will always involve a journey. A variable would be the destination.” Thomas, 2012
You can’t find 31 functions in 1 story
Propp’s “dramatis personae” (characters, like the archetypes)
Villain
Doner
Helper
Princess and the Father (single agent)
Dispatcher
Hero
False Hero
Villain appears twice usually - sneaks up, is sought out - Hans from frozen saves Ana from falling into the ocean, Ana then seeks him out for true love’s kiss
Doner is encountered accidentally and provides the hero with a magical object or gift (such as Rumplestiltskin)
Helper - such as the fairy godmother
An “initial situation” is followed by any of 31 functions, organised into 6 stages: Preparation (1-7), Complication (8-10), Transference or donation (11-15), Struggle (16-19), Return (20-22), Recognition (or difficult task) (23-31).
Deviations on Propp’s theory do occur. It aimed to catalogue oral fairytales of Russian origin, and he admits that it may not fit all fairytales.
Useful Vocabulary
Märchen - popular folktales, oral in origin (predate written records, many are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old) Kunstmärchen - literary (written) or artistic fairytales, mostly produced in the 19th century (such as The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen (1837) Morphology - the study of forms Dramatis Personae - Proppian version of the archetypes
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