#for example a lot of popular stuff is popular because it was originally inaccessible but was defanged by fanbases or whatever

[maxwell-grant]

Excuse Me what is pulp and why is it importan?

Good question! And probably one I should have answered sooner. Time to put on the historian hat for this one.

"Pulp" is a term used mainly to describe forms of storytelling that sprang out or were dominant in 20th century cheap all-fiction American magazines from the 1900s to the 1950s. The pulp magazine began in 1896, when Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine, in order to cut costs, dropped the non-fiction articles and photographs and switched from glossy paper to the much less expensive wood pulp paper, hence the name. The pulp magazines would mainly take off as a distinct market and format in 1904, when Street & Smith learned that Popular Magazine, despite being marketed towards boys, was being consumed by men of all ages, so they increased page count and started putting popular authors on the issues.

It was specifically the 1905 reprint of H.Rider Haggard's Ayesha that not only put Street & Smith on the map as rivals to Argosy, but also inspired other companies to start publishing in the pulp format. Pulps encompassed literally everything that the authors felt like publishing. Westerns, romance, horror, sci-fi, railroad stories, war stories, war aviation stories. Zeppelins had a short-lived subgenre. Celebrities got their own magazines, it was really any genre or format they could pull off, anything they could get away with.

Nowadays, although they came quite late in it's history, the American pulps are most famous for it's "hero pulps", characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage that are viewed as a formative influence on comic book superheroes. The pulp magazines in America lasted until the 1950s, when cumulative factors such as paper shortages, diminishing audience returns and the closing of it's biggest publishers led to it dying off, although in the decades since there's always been publishers calling their magazines pulp. That's the American pulp history.

But pulps are a phenomenon that spans the entire world and has a much bigger history to it, because pulps have become synonymous with cheap fiction magazines and those have a much bigger history. In America, before the pulps, you had the dime novels, the direct predecessors of the pulps, as well as the novelettes. England had it's penny dreadfuls and story papers, and continued publishing pulp-format magazines past the American 1950s, and that's how we got Elric of Melniboné. France and Russia arguably got to it first with it's 1800s coulporters, chapbooks and particularly the feuilletons which lasted all the way to the 20th century and created characters such as Arsene Lupin, Fantomas and The Phantom of the Opera. The Germans published pulp under the name hefteromane. Japan also published pulp magazines both original as well as imported, and the current "light-novel" phenomenon started off as an equivalent of pulp magazines (it's even on the Wikipedia page). China has wuxia, Brazil has cordel, Italy has gialli. There were Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Canadian, Australian pulps and much more. Look anywhere in the world and you'll find examples of "pulp" happening again and again, under different circumstances and time periods.

Even if we stick to American fiction, it's impossible to state that all pulp heroes must come from the 1900s-1950s pulp magazines, because that forces us to exclude some of the most popular pulp heroes like Indiana Jones, Green Hornet, Rocketeer and The Phantom. Pulp may have once been a term meant to refer to pulp magazines exclusively, but it's morphed and lost structure and it's become the closest thing we have to a general umbrella term that allows us to try and consolidate these under a shared history. It's a lot, as you can see, and it's why several pulp historians that broaden their scope outside of 1930s American fiction have adopted Roland Barthes's definition of pulp as "A Metaphor With No Brakes In It", which is still the closest thing to a true working definition we have.

Why is it important? You tell me. I don't like to stake claims about stuff being "important", everyone's got their own priorities in life. Surely a lot of people would scoff at the idea of old populist fiction published in what was functionally equivalent to toilet paper having any sort of "importance". On the other hand, some people definitely want to talk big about the pulps as a cultural bedrock of fiction, something that's baked into the lifeblood of all fiction as we currently know it. Which it is, mind you, but I don't like to talk about pulp fiction's value being derived mainly from merely the things it inspired.

There is definitely a historical importance to be had in cataloguing them. According to the US's foremost pulp researcher Jess Nevins, 38% of all American pulps no longer exist, and 14% of all American pulps survive in less than five copies. Many libraries have very scant, if any, records on them, many collectors are hard to locate and are uncooperative when it comes to sharing information and letting outsiders view their collections. A lot of them are bound up in legal complications that prevents them from taking off in the public domain, and a lot of them ARE public domain but are completely inacessible as research material. And that's the American pulps, foreign pulps have fared far worse in posterity, with records inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the language or locations, many existing merely in mentions on decades-old records, and hundreds if not thousands of them being completely gone beyond recovery or recall.

Gone, dead, wasted, destroyed. They can't be found in barbershops or warehouse or bookstores, not even in antique stores. Hundreds, thousands of characters, stories and creators, gone. Time and posterity have crushed them to dust, forgotten and ignored by their successors. Unfettered by pretenses of respectability that repressed their glossier counterparts, in packages meant to be destroyed after reading, proudly announcing itself as trash. Things that should have never even lasted as long as they did have died many times now. It's heroes peripherical shapeshifters, nearly all of whom seem dead, quite dead, as dead as fictional characters can possibly be.

But they do not die forever. Many of them have, maybe most of them have, but many of them linger on.

"The strange red flickering of 1930’s fiction seems distant now.  You hold in your hand the product of a time too remote to recall, and feel a slow stir of wonder.  The smell of pulp pages, an illustration, an advertisement, these fragile things mark the slow hammering of time and display what it has done.  About you are today’s machines, today’s shadows.

Outside the window, leaves hang against the sky, as did leaves during the 1930’s.  The sound of voices are no different then than now.  You hold the magazine and feel something quite delicate slipping past. These solid forms surrounding you are all insubstantial. Time’s hammer will also pass across them, leaving little enough behind." - Spider, by Robert Sampson

Many of the things people call dead are just things that have been sleeping for a while or haven't had the chance to be born. Pulp fiction is dead on the page, inert, unless your imagination breathes live to it, and every now and then, one way or another, these characters dig themselves out of dustbins. Maybe it's a brief revival, maybe it's a successful reboot. Maybe they find publishers, or maybe the public domain allows them to find new life. Maybe new creators do interesting things with them, and maybe, just maybe, they live again because some won't shut up about them online. Some curious impulse led you to me, did it not? 

We all have our Frankensteins to obsess over, and these are some of mine. As someone who's lived a life perpetually restless over pursuit of knowledge, pulp has lured me like a moth to flame, because I literally never run out of things to discover within it, I never run out of possibilities. As the years pass and the public domain starts being more and more open to the public, more and more narrative real state is brought forth for writers and artists and creators to play around.

Pulp is the dark matter of fiction, the uncatalogued depths of the ocean, the darkest recesses of space. It's the box of your grandfather's belongings, the treasure you find in an attic, a body part sticking out from an old playground. It's the things that don't work, don't succeed, the things that don't fit, that are out of place. That shouldn't live and succeed, and did so anyway. The things that slither in the cracks, the shadows behind the curtain.

Aren't you interested in peering on what's behind the curtain?

The exquisite workmanship of the head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of a language that was forgotten when Rome was young–these, Kane sensed, were additions as modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would be English words carved on the stone monoliths of Stonehenge.

As for the cat-head–looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian who had carved the head of Bast had merely altered the original figure, and what that figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess.

A close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons, unprovocative to further speculation. - The Footfalls Within, by Robert E Howard, quoted by Stuart Hopen’s The Mythic American Culture

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #argosy #h rider haggard #ayesha #robert e howard #solomon kane

[thatweeboverthereisthirsty]

hello Luna! I wanted to ask you if you think twisted wonderland will end with chapter 7, and if there will be a sequel?

   Hmmm.... I think that there will be seven chapters dedicated to student overblots. Malleus obviously being the last one. I also think that there will be some sort of 8th chapter to cover whatever happens to Grim and how the MC gets home. The build up with Mickey and Grim and all the sketchy stuff surrounding Crowley is definitely going to need to be explained before TWST ends as well. 

   I think the best way to explain how I feel TWST will close up is through examples.

Foreshadowing:

    I am a very proud fantasy reader so I tend to notice quite a few patterns in these types of storylines. The amount of foreshadowing is enormous and usually only makes sense after the climax of the story. 

   The prologue is often overlooked in most books and stories but it is likely one of the most important parts in a fiction story. The prologue for TWST has several lines and imagery that key us into the foreshadowing. 

   For example: Crowley says that we are all running out of time and when you pay attention to the intro when he asks you to take his hand a clock strikes a specific amount of times.

Relationship development and closure:

   Another important example of foreshadowing is when Crowley is crying about how the MC got Ace and Deuce to work together. Throughout the story lines it’s been obvious that the students were unused to teamwork and incapable of holding healthy relationships. The climax will likely include quite a bit of teamwork with all of the dorms working together to reach a common goal. 

   Although many of the students improved after their overblots, very few relationship matters where addressed afterwards unless absolutely necessary (scarabia’s brief explanation). It is highly likely that any strained relationships will be directed in a positive direction through circumstances that are TBA. 

   That said it is also highly unlikely that these relationships will be directly and vocally addressed. Open ended relationships are key in making a good story line because it leaves the reader to their own conclusions. When a reader comes to their own conclusions it is likely that they will create a future image that allows them to be pleased with how the story ended. It is a very effective way to let each individual reader become pleased with the story as a whole despite the fact that everyone has different tastes in stories.

Character development:

   It will be the same way with individual character development as well. A lack of vocal and direct development will be replaced by character choices, hidden changes in word choices, and emotional expression to display how a character is acting differently than in the beginning of the story.

   Even with no specific closure on whether or not a character really has changed. The reader will perceive the outlook of that character in a way that caters to their own tastes. 

   Overblot development is a given but something else we should keep an eye out for is character development in characters that didn’t overblot themselves. Hidden character arcs and development is another commonly used writing tip that adds the necessary layers that makes a story interesting.

   There will be certain characters that will very obviously be different when interacting with themselves and others, but the truth behind that is that depending on how complicated a characters personality is makes the development necessarily more or less obvious in order to incite the proper emotions within the reader.

Happy/Sad ending:

   Speaking of emotions, it is going to be a coin toss about how the ending affects the readers. Since the company we are dealing with is Disney it is entirely possible that everything ends on an almost eerily happy note. However, based on the plot and how popular story lines originated in Japan usually end, it is equally likely that there will be some sort of loss, betrayal, plot twist, etc. that will leave the reader with a few negative emotions as well.

   If this is the case then it will likely involve a character or goal present from the prologue. Crowley, Grim, and the Aduece duo are likely subjects of this negative event. A situational disaster could also turn things. The MC has been trying to get home from the beginning of the story so a plot twist along the lines of MC’s death, the way home is made clear and then some how it is permanently inaccessible, none of the story was real from the start, are all ways that TWST could end using the MC themselves as the negative event.

   It is nearly impossible to predict exactly what the ending will be, but it is likely that what we think is going to happen is the exact opposite of what will happen. 

   What we can predict is that all of the questions based on events (overblots, mickey, grim, etc.) will be answered in some way with an explanation that connects all of the events together.

Sequel???:

   Whether or not a sequel is made depends entirely on the conclusion that we receive. Since most storylines have an ending planned before they even start writing, it is unlikely that the producers will change too much about it. If it was originally planned to simply end then it’s likely that the last chapter will be the end of TWST. 

   However, due to the popularity of TWST and how open ended some of the side character arcs will likely be left. It can be assumed that TWST will likely continue to produce content, even if it isn’t direct story stuff. Side stories about characters during the school year and after the end of TWST are not entirely out of the question. More events set in the timeline where MC is at TWST is also highly probable. 

   If an english version is made, these probabilities rise considerably. Not only rerun events, but new ones will be essential to the popularity of the game when(if) it is released in other languages.

Anime:

   Another question that has been brought up frequently is whether or not TWST will be made into an anime. I would say that it isn’t impossible. The fact that TWST isn’t an otome game and that there aren’t different routes available based on the players choices makes it very easy to be turned into a different form of media. Depending on how popular it gets will also affect this. 

   Disney certainly has the money to fund the producers enough to create an anime. So financially it isn’t a problem. The only thing that would stand in the way would be demand. TWST is already hugely popular in Japan. To the point where cafe’s themed after it are being created. This popularity brings in a lot of money and possibility for TWST. If americans and others bring TWST’s popularity up this way as well then it will be extremely likely that the creators take advantage of this possibility and expand TWST’s media.

   Another reason that Disney might push for the producers to create more is that they are currently struggling with new content. Disney’s most recent productions and a large quantity of their future productions are and have been set as remakes and sequels. It is fairly obvious that they have been at a block for a while now considering the lack of new content being put out.

   TWST is still fairly new and can be exploited because of that. The fact that it is catered towards teens and older makes it even more likely since stories that people won’t grow out of tend to stay popular much longer than productions with simpler plot lines directed at children.

In conclusion:

   All of the above is purely theoretical and based off of educated guesses from me with all of my background knowledge. The fact is that where TWST goes is entirely left up to how it does when the official plot line ends. 

   What I can say is that we shouldn’t expect any sort of sequel or anime or further for a while. If any of these things do happen it will likely take place after an english version is released if one is released at all. 

   TWST is an incredible game with a perfectly capturing plot line and realistic and interesting characters. The amount of potential that it contains is far more than some other games of this type that I have seen. We can’t say for sure what it will become but I know personally that I expect the ending to be just as satisfying as the rest of the story. 

(I’m not sure if this is the answer you wanted but this is just my personal view. I hope anyone that reads this is happy with the information and theories that I have provided!)

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst theory #twst thoughts

[not-poignant]

Piaaaa!!!!! I saw that you’re feeling down as a writer but I’m here to tell you to cHEER THE EFF UP WITH MY AGGRESSIVE LOVE! Seriously though, I’ve been keeping up with your work for years now and I never stop raving about your fics to anyone who will listen. You might think the FT fandom is dying but it’s not! We’re here! We’re just stupidly shy and admire from maybe too afar 🙈 But yeah, please know you’re doing amazing stuff and I love all your FT babies to bits! Kay? Kay. 💜

Hi anon,

The thing is, I’ve been here since 2013 and readers have always been shy. There’s nothing new about that. And the sudden downward swing across all facets (including ones that don’t require like...much active engagement) cannot be explained by ‘everyone suddenly became mysteriously more shy over the past 8 months, and more and more people are getting more and more shy.’

That’s not very logical.

The downward swing, of the last 8 months, by the way, can be observed across:

AO3 commentsAO3 kudosAO3 bookmarksAO3 hitsnew patreon subscriberspatreon subscribers leaving (more patrons left per month than signed on in 8 consecutive months)anonymous askspost likespost reblogspost engagement in general (replies etc.) interaction with writing memes (that’s sitting on a spectacular ‘zero engagement’ which has never happened before and was pretty demoralising)Discord activity

Not all of those things require people to ‘overcome shyness.’ Hits, for example, just require people turning up. Same with kudos, etc. And I feel like I’m forgetting some things, but anyway that’s a pretty good list.

I’m not the only one that has noticed it re: my writing. A few other people have reached out to tell me that they’ve noticed the inactivity over a period of about 5 months, and it’s not improving, nor is it showing any signs of stabilising. I don’t know when the downward trend will stop, but it’s still continuing right now. I can see and monitor my ‘behind the scenes’ metrics (though a lot of AO3 engagement is public and observable to anyone who wants to notice it), and I can see actual graphs and bright red loss metrics on Patreon that show me things haven’t been this bad for me since 2014 (and in like two months, it will be the worst its ever been).

Anyway, I feel like it’s paramount to say a few things too. I’m really grateful for the folks who enjoy my writing, regardless of how they enjoy it or interact with it (if they do at all). I’m in a really lucky position. The me of 9 years ago would have killed to have had a successful Patreon account, or like, even vague interest in my writing projects. I still have amazing readers and to be honest, those people are why I’ve been able to keep up with a really good writing turnover for like the past 6 months (around the time I realised that engagement was dropping and kept thinking ‘oh it’s temporary, it’s just school holidays / college / end of year exams / etc.’). Because it’s depressing to notice a constant downward trend behind the scenes, so like, the interaction I do get has been everything, and I’m really grateful. 100% that’s why I’m still working on Spoils of the Spoiled today

So for me, part of the issue is that there has been no plateau or stabilisation of the loss of income and like, engagement, which makes me think this might get a lot worse and it may not ever get better or recover. I’ve had cause to think that it’s not just external factors either (gosh it would be nice if it was just all about the season or exams or something lol). I don’t really think this is a ‘reader issue’ I think this is a ‘writer issue.’ I don’t think anyone is doing anything wrong. Like I said before, other authors who write similar content to me are doing great right now. so I can’t attribute this to ‘Tumblr dying’ or folks not doing enough. Something about how I’m writing right now, or what I’m writing, just isn’t appealing to a lot of people. And it’s becoming less appealing over time. I’m really glad it still appeals to some people, and that’s why I’m still here.

The fact is as well, if people aren’t being inspired to interact more with the fic, or interact in the ways they have in the past with the writing, that’s not...anyone’s problem or fault, that’s the fault of the writing. I’m not here to ask for more interaction. Because that’s like...pity, and just...no. I’m just in this really locked up, stubborn place where like, I can’t reinvent Fae Tales (and tbh, The Ice Plague requiring so much early reading re: GT and COFT means it’s almost completely inaccessible to new readers anyway), I don’t know if anyone would even invest time in a new series and new characters, and I don’t often want to write for the old fandoms people ask me to write for, and then on top of that, like a fool, I really believe in my writing and I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just not connecting with increasing numbers of people. And I think the ones it does connect with - I think all of us kind of are in this pit and we ‘get it’ but the number of those people has been dropping over time.

Unfortunately, I don’t only write fanfiction (which is like by far and away like 5 times more popular than anything else I write anyway) and I do try and make an income off the original writing, because of medical bills and life stuff. I don’t want anyone to pledge who can’t afford to pledge because that’s really not in the spirit of Patreon. I don’t want anyone to force themselves to interact out of nostalgia or because they feel pity or whatever because that’s uncomfortable, and I don’t want people to invest time in something when other things inspire them more, because then you should be giving your energy to those things that inspire you more.

#asks and answers #pia on writing #these things just happen sometimes #and right now i'm making no firm decisions #i just have to think about the future #the next like 2-6 months will be #really critical #in terms of outcomes #i'm making no decisions today or in the next two months #except regarding the Discord #so like #yeah #sometimes that's just how things go #i've been enjoying riding the wave #but everything comes to its end eventually #and this *really* looks like its winding down #i'd really like to be wrong #and i'm holding out in the hopes that i am #administrator Gwyn wants this in the queue #Anonymous

[monstermonstre]

(1/2) hey i sent you an ask a few weeks ago about euphoria taking inspo from skam regarding the romeo and juliet references and you politely disagreed. i understand that when we are too close to the subjects we can create links where they don't exist, and that skam wasn't as mainstream as it seemed in our heads. but i definetely think it was big on the internet, and that people in the film industry were paying attention to it, specially since the buzz was very organic and that remakes have

Again we disagree over the popularity of SKAM. It got enough of a buzz that it got some articles and the attention of producers in other countries (that I wouldn’t call “the film industry”; European TV doesn’t come close to the magnitude of the American film industry; and I know it got an American remake but that one got Julie too so it went down differently than the others) and it feels like a lot but it remains the “google drive fandom”. The show is incredibly hard to access compared to others in this day and age, both officially (zero DVD release, website geoblocked when it started to gain traction, no official English subs) and pirate-wise (not available in the usual ways).

The way Sam seems to work on the show is very unusual (no writers’ room for example, I can’t think of a single American TV show that doesn’t have one) and makes me doubt that Sam can be associated with the “film industry” or any industry. He has only made small films before that (I recommend Assassination Nation btw). What’s likely though is that research was done, by people working on the show, on what teenagers watch atm (the ref to Love Island and Madoka, Kat’s fics) and how they interact with social media, but SKAM is old news now. Had Euphoria been made a few years ago, maybe we’d have had SKAM mentioned somewhere, why not. But not now, in 2019 (or even late 2018 since it’s likely that’s when they shot the show).

I agree though that both shows have some things in common.

However.

Bipolar has been exploited on TV and in films forever so it shouldn’t even count as a similarity ‘cause they all do it and usually badly (glad Euphoria did it well imo; and of course I think the og SKAM did it well too). Bipolar is one of the mental illnesses that we found the oldest records of (Ancient Greece).

So if we take out bipolar out of the equation, what’s left is r+j and “I’m Not In Love” (which was used originally on the soundtrack of the cult “Virgin Suicides” which has teens and mental illness) and queerness.

Exploration of sexuality/romantic attraction is something that’s in almost every story with teenagers because that’s usually when people start exploring/discovering this part of themselves.

So we take that out. What’s left? R+J and I’m Not In Love. One movie ref and one song, both well known by cinema buffs of my generation; but only r+j stayed well known in the mainstream. I haven’t heard of Virgin Suicides again even though it was so big. Pretty sure Sam would’ve seen it since he mentioned seeing Requiem for a Dream when it came out, in a panel he did, and VS came out just a year prior and is the same type of stuff people like me and other angsty teens with severe shit happening in their life at the time fed on.

So yes, those added together, even counting bipolar etc, seem like a lot. But taking it apart and taking into account SKAM wasn’t as big as it seemed (not denying it was big for something so inaccessible though), I do not think he even saw it.

But maybe I’m wrong and one day he’ll mention it and I’ll look like an idiot. But at least I had concrete reasons for thinking otherwise. I would have done my homework. They’d be wrong but done nonetheless. I get a point for that :p

#monstermonstre answers #Anonymous

[fabjoybag6-blog]

Ladies Love Affair With Extravagance Bags

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fabjoybag

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So just what are classified as the features that established high-class handbags apart? The particular first thing is need to have an exclusive design and style. They must be instantaneously incomparable as being a leading brand, at the. grams. Fendi, Gucci, Hermes, Lv or from additional fashion house. Vogue homes usually have their unsecured personal designs and this aids with logos as very well.

Another significant characteristic to get desirable luxury purses is usually glamour and attractiveness. The natural way this is discovered each time a particular brand is connected to a celebrity e. r. the valuable Hermes Kelly handbag that is originally produced inside 1935, has not been until top seller until 1956. The carrier shot to be able to fame while the newlywed, Queen Sophistication of Monaco, ended up being took pictures of for the cover of the time magazine shielding her expectant belly with a typical Hermes bag. The designer handbag under consideration consequently became acknowledged as the particular Kelly case in your girlfriend honour. Manner writers marketed the relationship between tote and superstar: Carrying the Kelly handbag is still identifiable together with class and previous cash.

Similarly, the Lady Dior became a sensation throughout 1994 when Princess Centro took to wearing the item close to town after the woman segregated from Prince Charles. This particular handbag is any seductive mix of briefcase in addition to handbag which includes distinctive yellow metal charms. That illustrated the attentive women who seemed to be, on the other palm, glamorous as well as sophisticated. At the moment, social media can certainly recommend the status and also requirement for an individual carrier by simply been photographed upon the provide of some sort of style icon, celeb as well as royal like Romantic Kate Middleton.

Astute marketing and advertising unquestionably plays an important function in creating a necessary case. Whereas celebrities may possibly be able to get hold of the latest luxury totes, to the working woman this is far more problematic, no matter of how much funds they want to devote. Many high-status bags usually are inaccessible and may even have holding out lists extending around about three years. The Hermes Birkin is in this class.

Women's inborn competitiveness is definitely ingeniously maintained by typically the best bag developers. Regarding example. In 2005, This sort of drove customer demand with a peak when he produced it well-known that often the launch of his or her fresh designer bag must have been a minimal with only 2 hundred ever before to be produced. After that it became the ultimate manner trophy and sold available before a new waiting collection was also compiled. This specific bag had been called the actual Novak after Ellie Novak, the legendary brunette presenter who starred with Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 work of genius Vertigo. Prices started from £550 and went up to and including huge £6, 000 for any lavish crocodile version.

It would appear that the price tag does definitely not decrease those obsessed using bags. Actually , fashion properties have worked away which a high price marking generally seems to enhance the need to own it. Presently there obviously is an countless motivation to splash out there on the designer bags are good for special occasions.

Luxury bags will last the when cared for properly. Several iconic styles come along with go, some keep all their value and others boost in benefit. However, that is only a fraction that have the suitable qualities for being iconic. To be able to become iconic, any tote is not just wonderfully attractive but it in addition surpasses time. These manufacturers have earned it is your right phone a bag well-known: Hermes Kelly, the Fendi Kuvertbr?d, the Marc Jacobs's Stam, the YSL Muse in addition to the Mulberry Roxanne.

All these luxury handbags share a very important factor in common; a very clear, clean series; nothing faddy or over-designed, and some sort of mixture of functionality having indulgence. An iconic handbag earns its standing from your best traditions of reputation, quality and craftsmanship. Because it ages, an iconic carrier will look as excellent as it performed in the day it has been bought. In addition to, for a new true bag fan, that will is worth all the particular investment property on it.

[nowhere-hunch]

I watched ‘Hamilton’ on Disney+

I’m not really a fandom person, but I would say I hang out online in a lot of “fandom-adjacent” spaces. Maybe a better word would be “lurker”. So although I was separated from it by many degrees, I’m aware of some of the insane stuff that came out of the Hamilton fandom during its heyday. Which makes me a teensy bit nervous about posting this on Tumblr - “the room where it happened” you could say (yes, I’m very funny, I know). But I’m hoping I have my blog settings right to make it hard for people to find and I won’t use any tags, so I should be fine, right? To be clear, I like Hamilton and this whole thing is positive toward it. It did get pretty long though.

First of all, I’m a little surprised that there’s a Hamilton fandom at all. Theatrical shows aren’t really the most accessible medium, especially for the demographics that we associate with fandom. The stage shows that I see with fandoms usually have other media associated with them as well, either that was based on them or that they were based on. For example, Les Mis has the book and multiple movies. That said, I’m not necessarily surprised that inaccessibility itself didn’t prevent the formation of a fandom. These days there’s plenty of ways to pirate things, plus you could argue that the cast CD of the musical that was released counts as an alternative media — since most of the dialogue is in fact part of a song.

But, being an inaccessible medium for so long has had an effect on the stories that are created for it. The demographics of people who are watching Broadway shows are probably different than those of people watching primetime TV. The historic events and people in Hamilton aren’t given much if any explanation or backstory. Several times a character is introduced that the audience is supposed to be excited about just because we already know the name: Alexander Hamilton or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or whatever. For those specific examples, it kind of makes sense. Just by living in the U.S. you tend to get an idea of who those people are (they’re the people on the money). But people like John Laurens are given the same treatment (or lack thereof) in terms of backstory. I think I learned a little about John Laurens at some point in AP U.S. History but then I passed that test and literally never thought or heard about him for nine years until I watched Hamilton.

Hamilton is not a play that is meant to teach the story of Alexander Hamilton; it’s a play that is meant to use the story of Alexander Hamilton in order to teach something else. The historical people and events that are mentioned briefly are meant to provide context for what’s going on with the main characters. “OK I know that the Boston Tea Party happened in the lead up to the Revolution so if they’re talking about that now, I know where we are.” It seemed weird to me that it became so popular when it assumed a good deal of knowledge on the part of the viewer, but I think there are (at least) three factors that makes that not too much of an issue.

One, as I said earlier I did learn about John Laurens and other kind of minute details about the Revolutionary War in high school. If “fandom” is stereotypically mostly made up of students in middle school/high school/college, it might be the case that this background knowledge is actually more accessible to them than to the average Broadway patron, who would have been out of school for even longer than me. If this musical had been about some other figure that isn’t included in an integral part of the American public school curriculum, it probably wouldn’t have seen as much success. I believe that Linn Manuel Miranda had a goal of expanding and making more diverse the audience for these shows, so this choice of subject material makes sense.

Two, Hamilton is simply a solid musical. I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t see a lot of musicals and really isn’t and never was into theater that much, but that’s the point — to the untrained eye of someone fandom-adjacent, it’s a very enjoyable piece of media. The songs are catchy, the jokes are funny, the emotional parts are moving, there’s at least a couple of performers who sound really good to me, not that I have any idea how to tell. If you think about it for more than three seconds it’s hard not to get blown away considering how much skill it must have taken to write that entire story in rhyming verse! That’s the kind of thing Shakespeare did, or even Homer — both of whom produced works that had a big impact on their era’s version of “pop culture”. I wonder if this points to something in the human brain that makes us want to engage more with stories told in this way?

Three, I think fandom (in general) had been primed for stories like this by a series that had one of the largest fandoms during the time just before Hamilton came out: Hetalia. Hetalia is a comedy manga and anime series where each country in the world is personified by an immortal (kind of) human character. It deals a lot with history and real-world people and events— if you were a fan, your “canon” material was not only the manga and anime but also real-world facts about countries’ geography, culture, and history. Since the characters for “England” and “America” (the U.S.) were some of the most popular, the Revolutionary War specifically was the subject of a lot of fan works.

Unlike Hamilton though, Hetalia is presented in a format that was made for fandom and its story reflects that as well. It has a huge cast of characters, many of which are barely developed at all in “canon” but still have a reason for viewers to connect with them (“I’m from that country!”), opportunities for creating OCs, etc. that encourage fan activity. Through Hetalia, many people were introduced to the idea of using knowledge of history for fandom purposes, which was obviously a big part of the Hamilton fandom. What’s unfortunate is that, while there wasn’t much more to get from Hetalia beyond its fandom — in fact you could strongly argue that there was more “artistic merit” in a lot of fandom content than the series itself—for me the Hamilton fandom and all of its weirdness overshadowed anything that was said about the interesting things Hamilton had to say to its “traditional” audience.

I think one property of a good piece of media is that it has different messages and takeaways that are relevant to different people consuming it. Hamilton is like this. The central theme of the story is the idea of “legacy”, but there are several lenses it provides to investigate with. For example, it has many messages about race and national origin that may resonate most strongly with different people, including:

People of color are absent from the legacy of the founding of the country they live in. It’s weird to watch actors who are people of color talk about defending slavery, but it’s no more weird than having groups of all white people do the same (which is how it actually was).

Various founding fathers have a legacy of being people who valued freedom, but they owned slaves and/or supported the institution of slavery.

Alexander Hamilton’s legacy as an immigrant is celebrated, while immigrants today are regularly treated in horrifyingly inhumane ways.

I’m positive there are people who can write entire books about how the show addresses any one of these. For me though, the theme that resonated the most was the idea of legacy through a historical female perspective, as portrayed through the relationship between Alexander and Eliza Hamilton. The gist of it is this: Alexander Hamilton married Eliza Schuyler and frankly did not treat her well. His most obvious offense is cheating on her multiple times with a woman who “seduced” him (“Lord, show me how to say no to this” — dude you literally just did: “…no…”), but even this is actually a symptom of his fatal flaw: he cares about his legacy more than her. It is brought up multiple times that he chooses his work over his family responsibilities (there’s a whole song about it), and at the time he starts his “affair”, Eliza is actually away on a family trip that he decided to skip in order to keep working even more.

His obsession with legacy causes even more hurt for Eliza because it is inherited by their oldest son, Philip. Philip challenges someone to a duel who was criticizing his father. Based on how she talked to Alexander, saying she would rather have him alive and unknown than dead with a legacy, we can assume she would be against this. But Philip goes to his father for advice, and rather than discourage him, Alexander gives him advice on how to act that will make him look the best to people remembering it (shoot into the air, it’s a bad look to kill someone and if they have any honor they will do so as well). Philip is killed in this duel. Alexander cries at his bedside while Eliza next to him wails — the cheating has already been revealed at this point, and she and Alexander haven’t “made up”. Aaron Burr, who is a foil to Alexander Hamilton in many ways in the story, illustrates the differences in their priorities in a more subtle way. Before the final duel, in which Alexander himself is killed, Burr states as he works himself up that he must win because, “I won’t leave my daughter an orphan.”

Throughout, the viewer kind of overlooks Eliza. We know she is a woman living in the 1700s and so her agency is limited. She can’t divorce Alexander or really do anything to hold him accountable for the pain he has caused her. Her defining characteristics are things like “kind”, “gentle”, and “patient” — as described by her sister who sets her up with Hamilton in the first place. After the “Reynolds Pamphlet” is released (in which Hamilton publicly confesses to his affair), she sings a song about being sad, we’re told that there’s no record of how the real Eliza reacted to the information, and after a while she and Alexander make up. To us it seems like she just kind of takes what happens to her without resistance — it doesn’t really matter if that’s what she *wanted* to do because it’s what she *had* to do. We see a lot of female characters like this in media, especially media created or set in the past, and while there is now some backlash against them, there’s not much to complain about when it’s “historically accurate”.

But that all changes at the end. The climax of the play is the duel in which Hamilton is shot and killed. After that is the “big finale” song, but since Alexander Hamilton is dead, who sings it? Eliza. We are told that Hamilton dies with Eliza and her sister Angelica by his bedside, but we don’t see this. We see Eliza come back alone and sing about what she does for the remaining 50 years of her life. We learn that she is the one who gathered his writings, interviewed people who knew him, and did other research to share his life story. In effect, she wrote the story that the musical was based on. After seeing again and again that Hamilton cares about his legacy more than Eliza, it is revealed that Eliza is his legacy. Now we realize that when characters sing “You can’t control… who tells your story,” they don’t mean that in some philosophical or metaphorical way. The individual responsible for passing on your legacy after you die could literally be anyone, even the people you see as hindering it.

I cried during the final song. Actually these specific lines:

Eliza: I interview every soldier who fought by your side Soldiers in background: She tells our story … Eliza: I raise funds in D.C. for the Washington Monument Washington: She tells my story

Now, Washington in particular probably didn’t need her help to tell his story (I mean, he’s on money), but the way the lines are sung gives a sense of the kindness or love that is expressed when another person knows or tells your story. How many people have lived and died who are now totally forgotten about? Eliza did the work to save people from that fate. Alexander Hamilton I don’t think would be described as a “kind” person, even in this musical, but there is kindness in his legacy thanks to Eliza.

And, the final song contains the final plot point, the final part of the epilogue: after Alexander’s death, Eliza founds an orphanage.

I help to raise hundreds of children I get to see them growing up

Want to talk about legacy? Go to the memorial service for a teacher who worked for decades. Go to a birthday party for a 90-year-old who has 10 kids, 50 grandkids, and 150 great grandkids. They might not have their stories written down in books, but they get to enjoy legacy during their lifetimes. In the end, it turns out that in a way, Eliza is a foil to Alexander. While he makes himself and others miserable working to build a legacy that he won’t live to see, Eliza lives her life in service of people who she loves and who depend on her though she is not remembered now. Which of them made more of a difference? Which of them would you rather be?

This is kind of a radical message: that these two types of “legacy” are both valuable in some ways. For a long, long time in history, the kind of legacy that Alexander wanted was generally not available to women, people of color, etc. The “people in power” highly valued this type of legacy, so they reserved it for themselves. As the years went on, people fought for equality, and one of the issues was, although not necessarily stated explicitly, “We want to have valued legacies too!” It seems the response was a kind of reluctant “OK, I guess we’ll open up some opportunities for you to make contributions that will be recorded in history like ours.” For many women and other groups, this was actually great. Many people had wanted those opportunities for a long time, and it’s good that they are available to those who want them. So, it’s hard to say in absolute terms that this wasn’t a good thing. But at that point, we started to see a lot of media with “strong female characters” who are tough and sarcastic and ultra-skilled at combat or whatever that all add up to, “You will be admired and your legacy valued if you forget about girly stuff and just do what men have been doing all along.”

But encouraging everyone to value legacy in this way has created a culture where a lot of things send the message “Be more like Alexander Hamilton” while very few if any say “Be more like Eliza Hamilton.” It’s pretty radical to suggest that maybe the way that Eliza and people like her have been building legacies for all this time was actually good and beneficial and shouldn’t be completely abandoned for Alexander’s way that has always been presented as the most valid.

I think the reason that this resonates with me so loudly is that I am a middle class white woman and grew up as a “gifted” student, and in our modern “enlightened” world, I feel the pressure that historically has been on white men to create some tangible legacy that will live on after I die. But in media, in stories that are fundamental to my culture, in my own family tree before pretty recently, I don’t see women doing this. I have modern society saying to me “You need to make a legacy for yourself.” while the culture that has built up over centuries consistently sends the message “women don’t get legacies”. What Hamilton is saying is “They do have legacies, just not the kind society has taught you to value.”

And actually, I would argue, it goes further, showing how women have found power and agency by refusing to leave a legacy in the traditional sense. The only time in the musical where Eliza talks about her own legacy is in the song “Burn” that she sings after finding out Alexander cheated on her. It includes these lines:

I’m erasing myself from the narrative Let future historians wonder how Eliza Reacted when you broke her heart … The world has no right to my heart The world has no place in our bed They don’t get to know what I said I’m… burning the letters that might have redeemed you

The first time I watched it, I assumed that “erasing myself from the narrative” was a metaphor for her burning the letters. But after watching the ending and knowing that Eliza was actually the one who did the work of passing on “the narrative”, it’s clear that she meant it literally. She knows how much Alexander values his legacy as much as we the audience do, so she’s hitting him where it hurts. Normally, when perspectives are missing from historical narratives we are told it’s because of carelessness (either nobody asked or someone lost it) or external censorship. In Hamilton, we are told Eliza’s part of this story is missing because that’s the way she wanted it. In her time and place, she doesn’t have the opportunity to speak out against her husband or otherwise get justice, but she has still found a powerful way to “get back” at him. Her side of the story is missing because of her agency, not her lack of it.

Initially, Eliza telling Alexander’s story is interpreted as an act of love, very romantic. But thinking back to “Burn”, you have to remember that in the 50 years Eliza lived doing that work after he died, she never “redeemed” him for the bad things he did to her. In that light, you can almost see spite running subtly through the love. “I will do everything in my power to make sure people don’t forget you because I love you (and I want them to know what a jerk you were to me).” I don’t think Eliza hated Alexander. In the play it is clear that she does love him, but she does have reasons of her own for recording his legacy besides blind devotion or adoration. For this, in a way, Eliza herself is in a way redeemed by Washington and the soldiers in the final song, even though her motives aren’t completely “pure”, these men are benefitted by (and in the song appreciative of) her work.

As I said, there are a lot of themes in Hamilton that could be talked about at length, but this one is the most interesting to me, or at least the one that I’ve found myself thinking about the most since I watched the show. I want to talk about one more thing and bring us back to where this discussion started: the Hamilton fandom.

The most notorious example of “craziness in the Hamilton fandom” was the whole “hivliving”… thing. There’s a great video about it on YouTube that really does press that “gossip” button in my social primate brain just right. I highly recommend giving it a watch. 

That may be… if not the culmination then the climax the of the insanity in the Hamilton fandom. If you didn’t watch the video, here is a very very brief synopsis:

Within the Hamilton fandom, there are two groups of people who support opposing “ships”: fans of Hamilton/Laurens and fans of Hamilton/Washington.

Members of the Hamilton/Laurens faction make a habit of harassing Hamilton/Washington fans using “social justice” rhetoric (i.e. “Your ship is problematic”). It seems agreed upon by those outside that most if not all of their accusations are baseless, but it persists.

One vocal member of the Hamilton/Laurens fans, claiming to be an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, also runs a blog called “hivliving” about, well, living with HIV. Since blogs like this are rare, the blog becomes a popular and well-loved resource.

Someone named Ursula discovers that the person running the “hivliving” blog is not in fact an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, but a white 18-year-old college student living in the U.S. When confronted and pressed, they come clean to their followers.

In the aftermath, someone realizes that Ursula is associated with people in the Hamilton/Washington faction of the Hamilton fandom, and so word starts spreading that Ursula investigated and confronted hivliving due to revenge over “shipping wars”.

More rumors come up and eventually, the story transforms so that the commonly known version is: “Hivliving was pretending to be an HIV+/etc. person and was exposed by someone who wanted revenge for them criticizing their cannibal-mermaid-AU fanfiction.” All the “normal” people have a fun time laughing about how insane people can be online.

Because of this negative attention, Ursula is forced to abandon fandom.

Seriously though, watch the video if you have time.

If there were a lesson to the hivliving story, it would be about legacy. It would be a cautionary tale about how a legacy built on good intentions and serious work can be turned completely around through no fault of your own. I don’t have much to add to that, besides noting that it is a weird coincidence that it happened in a fandom for a show that itself put so much focus on legacy. Hamilton fans, in telling the story of hivliving and Ursula, shaped it to serve their own ends (vilifying fans of a rival ship), much like Eliza shaped Alexander’s story in telling it for her own reasons. But the last thing I’ll note is this: the fans largely shaped the story by adding things, Eliza shaped the story by leaving things out.

#media