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kameonerd566 · 4 years

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Getting Vibes about Eda’s Curse

Okay so I might be kinda going out on a limb here BUT I am getting vibes that Eda's curse can be interpreted to represent having a mental illness, especially one with elements of schizophrenia. I can only speak from my experiance and I know everyone has different experiences with the ways mental illness affects people but here's my take (feel free to ignore this post if you don't agree, I am only speaking from my experiences with this. If anyone has information about mental illnesses that I am misinformed about please let me know kindly, it is very scary for me to be opening up about these experiences online as I seldom speak about them to people I know in real life). Also I would just like to say that I am in no way trying to give advice on what to do if someone is having a psychotic episode, I am merely using my own experiences as source to connect with the show to back up my claims. Spoilers ahead!!

Okay so, we are first introduced to Eda's curse in The Intruder. Now that we know she is more prone to transforming into the owl beast when she uses too much magic it is fairly obvious that putting the forcefield around the house to protect it from the rain wiped her out. She then notices she is feeling pretty drained so she tries to get some sleep. In my experience, sleep was a cure-all of sorts for the person in my life (whom I shall simply call Person in my explanation) who struggles with psychosis. When they get too stressed, they can go into a state of psychosis where they don't know what is actually going on in real life because they are in a sort of hyper realistic dream-state. If they are able to calm down enough fall asleep, however, the stress levels decrease and the chances of going into psychosis become near zero (at least for a little while). The creators of owl house, weather intentionally or not, seem to have used this same "sleep cures all" approach with Eda and how she manages her curse.

Eda was not able to get to sleep right away and we then see the owl beast roaming throughout the house and then bam: we have the potion. The mysterious potion Eda drinks immediately jumped out at me as a potential metaphor for prescription drugs. There are many drugs out there to help with mental illness, which I do not know enough about to really dive into specefics but basically, in my experience, when person is struggling to grasp reality, they take magic pill and bam: they come back to reality temporarily enough to tell us how to help them and then they calm down enough to sleep. This is very similar to how King and Luz feed Eda the potion, and then she instantly comes back to reality by transforming back to herself. She also seems to have no memory of what she did when she was the owl beast, which is just like when Person comes back from psychosis not knowing what they were doing in the real world.

Another part of the show that jumped out at me to suggest this metaphor is in the episode Escape of the Pailsman when King messes with her and brings her to the park. I don't vibe with how King treated her in her owl beast state but at the end of the day this IS a kids show so there's gonna be some comic relief. Anyways, in my experience, being in public with someone struggling to stay in reality is very difficult and definitely draws a lot of attention, like how waltzing around a playground with an owl beast would cause attention. Animal control *could* be interested as like medical people scooping her off the street to take her to a home or hospital but the part that really jumped out at me was when King got through to her by doing his angry squeak. I have also done similar things to get through to Person when the drugs aren't working, I will try and ground them back to reality with something that will get their attention, just like King did. Maybe I'm reading too much into this and maybe my experiences are just uncanilly similar to the shows plot BUT I think it is definitely interesting to analyze and I'm gonna keep doing it for the rest of the show.

One last thing that really sealed the deal for me was in one of the latest episodes when Luz and King have to give Eda a bunch of portions and then the camera goes black and we fade in with Eda's hand on Luz's face. Eda's reaction to coming back to the real world and her confusion and embarrassment at touching Luz's face like that was again (at least to me) showing that she did not know what was going on in the real world when she was the owl beast and that what she saw while in her beast form (or in her psychosis) was the memory of her sister cursing her and she was reaching out to find out who she was not realizing that in the real world she was actually just reaching for Luz. If that isn't a textbook example of psychosis than I don't know what is (no really,, I literally don't but I DO know that when person was in psychosis, they would tell me things that seemed to make no sense because they were about what they were experiencing in her psychosis and that dictated what they said and did at those times. After they came to, they were able to explain what they thought was happening at those times and we could piece together when and why those things occurred because just like how Eda touched Luz thinking she was someone else while I'm her owl beast form).

Also, joining the emperors coven could symbolize joining a group home of sorts, where Eda will be "cured" but most likely made into a hollow drone of the emperors army. I have little to no experience with group homes but I have seen the inside of a mental hospital a few times (only from the visitors side, however, so I imagine there's a hell of a lot more that I don't know about) and from what I've seen most of the people in there are so heavily drugged that they seem almost hollow. Its really heartbreaking to watch your loved one be so hollow and I think a lot of plot points are pointing to Eda becoming a hollow drone under the emperors command especially because of how heartbreaking that would be. If that's the way the show goes I would be VERY excited to see some light shed on the conditions that mentally ill people are kept in because I have heard MANY horror stories about how often times those in charge fail to see them as people and adhere are to their needs. There is so much injustice in the mental health system it makes my skin crawl and if a kids show was to shed light on that injustice it would earn my eternal gratitude.

Additionally, a lot of the language Eda uses to talk about her curse are almost word for word things I have heard Person use to refer to their mental illness, specifically the psychosis aspect of it. Most notably is "I'm going away for a bit and I don't know if I'm going to be able to bounce back this time" As a child, when person needed to go to the hospital people would tell me they needed to "go away for a bit" and when Person would refer to getting better after an episode they would almost always refer to getting better again as "bouncing back." Now I know these are fairly common phrases but considering the context of the show and of my experiences I feel that it is honestly more fuel to the fire of my hypothesis. Additionally, when Luz asks Eda if she needs her to stay home and take care of her in Escape of the Pailsman, Eda responds with "Kid, I've had this curse longer than you've been alive" and proceeds to reassure her that she can handle it. That scene was especially important to me because I have been in Luz's shoes MANY a time and that is exactly what I would say to Person if I noticed they were struggling. The way Eda responds is almost verbatim what people would tell me about Person when I would voice concern about my ability to help them.

Additionally, with the emperors coven, we will have two options for Eda's curse story arc: either she will be cured and still be the bad ass we know and love OR she will live with the curse, as it is a part of her, and still be the bad ass we love. When characters are introduced with curses and the like, it's pretty harmful to audiences that resonate with that to have the solution be to just get rid of the curse because we can't do that in real life. So I'm hoping the writers will take the better path and have her keep the curse but find a better way to manage it. I think that will make sense with the characterization of Eda this far, since she never really mentions wanting to be free from the curse she only ever mentions dealing with it. Personally, Eda this far has filled me with so much hope that I can be a kick ass functional adult even if I end up with the same illness as Person and that is something that has brought me SO much comfort. But I know that because I look up to Eda so much because I want to interpret her this was this theory might be a little far fetched; I might be self projecting a little too much. But regardless, I am so excited to see what will happen next in this series c:

#heres my long awaited essay on Eda #please be nice im very spooked to post this #Eda #eda the owl house #toh edalyn #eda the owl lady #edalyn clawthorne #Eda theory #toh #toh theory #toh eda

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 years

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the larger courier six verse, media influences

tagged by @sybil-writes ty

the bibliography for this thing is extensive. my taste is wide and omnivorous. i try to drop what i was thinking about when i wrote a particular bit into the author’s notes, and i think i’ve credited all the direct references, but I consume a lot of dystopia and post-apoc media and harder scifi/fantasy with rules, and i don’t keep an accurate running list of shit I like, so i’m certainly not going to get everything in one post. this is mostly me looking at the very limited number of books i have with me and frantically looking at wiki lists like “yes read that liked that stole that”. if i link everything i will die. if you have trouble finding a specific thing lmk tho. this feels real goddamn pretentious like Ah Yes Look At The Media I Have Consumed but here goes

music: one of these days I will drop links to the network of playlists I have for these kids, but they’re all of Spotify and not super accessible. Danger Days, a post-apoc desert graffiti/neon/cars album by My Chemical Romance. the soft, nonsense love songs off Pretty. Odd by P!ATD. the poppy but sad neon bullshit of Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die also a P!ATD production. Wasteland, Baby! by Hozier, specifically Talk and Dinner & Diatribes. Halsey’s cover of I Walk The Line, Rihanna’s Desperado. Everything by Orville Peck but mostly Roses Are Falling and Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call). Instrumental stuff: the opening to Silverado, the Billy the Kid musical, bits of Lawrence of Arabia. It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Fitz & The Tantrums’ Get Away. Mother Mother’s album O My Heart. Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach.

filme:

the Dollars trilogy ofc

the sheer bullshit nonsense of Wild Wild West and Blazing Saddles and Turbokid.

a lot of the interaction between many characters in a tight space from Stagecoach. my dad really loves John Wayne, so I am constantly thinking about Monument Valley even though that’s nowhere near the Mojave. honestly whenever i’m thinking about how to describe landscapes I’m thinking about The Searchers, even though I have a lot of problems with that film.

the colorful nonsense future of The Fifth Element.

the gritty self-surgery and prospecting of Prospect (2018).

SO much Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, for space western flavor and the same sort of analog-cassette-future. u kno how everything in Star Wars looks like it’s been there forever? the absolute opposite of a slick Apple future? that.

god I wish Firefly was...good

Akira, bc every time I think about motorcycles the Akira motorcycle slide gif plays in my head.

speaking of which probably a decent chunk of Adventure Time, esp the Super Porp episode.

a smidge of how a platonic trio works from Samurai Champloo.

anything with a big sprawling market and a chase scene, even though the only things I can think of are Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and the first Indiana Jones. oh Skyfall also

the set dressing from Tank Girl

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. look I just really like airships and retrofuturisum but art deco

honestly a lot of Ghibli- the aviation fantasy of Porco Rosso, the gardens from Castle In The Sky, a lot of Sophie Hatter energy from Howl’s Moving Castle, the underground bits in Nausicca, the otherworldly sea from Ponyo (except the Fallout sea is probably much emptier). the lovely homey-ness and gadgetry of Sherlock Hound.

almost certainly some Metropolis for how I think about cities

thinking a lot about The Incredibles and earlier James Bond movies recently for that sort of sleek but still small physical gadget spycraft 60s bullshit

the team and found family dynamics in Leverage

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. the more recent film which I have stolen ENTIRELY too much of the Angel + Blondie + Six dynamic from

mad max: all of them, to some extent, but a lot of Fury Road. I have a theory about how the Dollars films take place in reverse order, bc of how they feel next to the Mad Max films. The first Mad Max film is about a specific person in a specific place and time doing really specific things. it feels like a movie made off the info of someone who was there. GBU also feels like that- it’s really place-specific in a way? The second Mad Max film is a little hazier, and focuses on mostly people trying to accomplish a goal. For A Few Dollars More also feels a little hazier, like it’s a little more metaphorical/a morality tale and it’s being told by someone heavily embellishing secondhand events. the third Mad Max movie is just over the top nonsense. feral children living in the wreckage of an old plane escaping in a working plane? sure. why the fuck not. For A Fistful Of Dollars also feels like this. of COURSE this big bad gunslinger drifts into town and escapes in a coffin and invents the bulletproof vest. why the fuck not.

books: i like shit that goes beyond the wander/scrounge/defend trio of verbs.

the trying to wrap your life around a huge unknowable event from Roadside Picnic,

too much Le Guin and Butler to really fit here,

god if anything i write ever has a tenth of the flavor of Kill Six Billion Demons i’ll be happy,

the postwar feel of Vonnegut and Heller,

Margaret Atwood’s biopunk Oryx and Crake trilogy

the incredibly sad decaying biopunk/mutation/last days novelette The Drowned World by JG Ballard.

the space-opera political machinations from the Ancillary trilogy by Ann Leckie.

World War Z’s accounts of survivors has always felt like reading terminal entries from Fallout games.

Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb trilogy, for its interpretation of high-tech artifacts and archaeological reinterpretation of those artifacts.

Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Tales from Jabba’s Palace.

A Canticle for Leibowitz of COURSE.

the original three books in the METRO (2033, 2034, 2035) trilogy, for their tight dense locations and resource management and life-threatening travel/exploration.

the Family Trade comic by Jordan & Ryan, for setting and intrigue and a very unorthodox power source

Elizabeth Bear’s short story And The Deep Blue Sea, about a different kind of courier.

how Gibson’s The Sprawl trilogy (a trilogy i have MANY opinions about, not all of them positive) does worldbuilding when it implies a vast sprawling richly imagined world with casual in-universe references that you can extrapolate a lot from.

The Gernsback Continuum, for making me think about stranded architectural bits that survived

a little bit of the Empress’ energy from Cavendish’s The Blazing World.

the short story The Rational Ship by Caro Clarke, about a ship that runs on orgasms, from the EXTREMELY out of print Memories and Visions: Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. i’ve scanned it in as a pdf and will send it to anyone who asks. the stories in this volume are WILDLY varying in quality and terf-yness. i would not buy this book on purpose.

i think each separate Vault storyline is a tiny separate Lost World story, so just pick your favorite and insert it here.

Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy was FORMATIVE for baby me. biopunk! big trans energy! SKY WHALES

fucking hate Paolo Bacigalupi for what he does to his female characters but Ship Breaker was good from what I remember of it

there are three very oblique Sherlock Holmes references in “blow a kiss, fire a gun” for my own amusement.

Fallout scifi seems to be very Verne and Wells and Burroughs derived? a lot of very pulpy “pseudojournalistic realism to tell an adventure story with little basis in reality.” or “hey look at this COMPLETE NOVEL i found in a bottle by the sea OR locked in my weird great-uncle’s things, i shall retell it to you here”

idk i think The Road and the Hunger Games have so profoundly shaped the state of the genre, there’s probably at least a little bit of both these things in here even if I didn’t particularly like either of them. There’s also a lot of super bleak post-war stuff I read but am not necessarily incorporating, like Nevill Shute’s On The Beach. probably some Dune in here too if i’m being totally honest. why have a desert if there’s not going to be a giant worm, Fallout: New Vegas???

jesus i gotta read more lady authors. there are probably way more that i’m not remembering bc almost all the books i own are in a storage unit seven hours away that i haven’t touched in three years. there are probably way more comics also.

OH not a book but the decaying-rich-people-paradise of Bioshock. pity how they never made a third game

#ain't that a kick in the head #ty!!!#this was really interesting to think about #i'm not sure i answered it Right bc there's probably a way i could answer this more directly and draw closer parallels to shit #but here we are in an imperfect week with my imperfect brain

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donnerpartyofone · 5 years

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I don’t ever remember feeling good. I don’t mean to say that I’ve never had moments of happiness, that I don’t love my friends, that I regret getting married; I’m not denying that I’ve had the opportunity to pursue passions in life, or that I feel incredibly lucky to have led my privileged life. I mean that I wanted to kill myself when I was a really little kid. I suffer from an incredibly detailed long term memory that goes back before I reached the age of two, and what I remember about childhood is the scathing heat of embarrassment, itching under a layer of cold sweat, revulsion at the hideousness and impracticality of my own body, horror at a world that was ugly, dirty, cheap, boring and airless, a world that was all these things and that required mandatory participation, a factory that makes nothing. I vacillated between mindless rage, and violent sobbing, which I indulged on purpose in pursuit of catharsis. There wasn’t much that I wanted, because everything seemed so repulsive. The main thing was that I wanted to be left alone, and unseen. Each morning I would wake up gripped by panic, because I knew that once I left my bedroom to come to breakfast, everyone was going to look at me. It would take me what felt like hours to work up the nerve to open the door, and when I did I would begin to scream “DON’T LOOK AT ME! DON’T LOOK AT ME!” like a toddler version of Frank Booth. It’s pretty hilarious to think about, but the truth is that I still feel like doing that every time I show up somewhere.

My earliest memory is of my mother trying to take my picture. It took place in an apartment I couldn’t exactly place, so at first I thought it must have been a dream. I was very little, but I understood enough about what the camera meant--that I was being stared at. I turned away, and was repositioned; then I tried to run away. My mother chased me, increasingly infuriated, until I was cornered behind the hilariously prison-like bars of my crib, where she could photograph me whether I liked it or not. I eventually found the resulting picture of myself agonizing behind the crib, confirming that I remembered being about one-and-a-half, living in an apartment before the house I grew up in. The memory serves as something like a metaphor for everything I have been afraid of--helplessness, captivity, surveillance, and of course, my mother.

There is no doubt that I had a serious chemical problem that caused my catastrophic rages and suicidal ideation, even so early in life. (I would find out about that...well, just a few years ago) But, lest I fall into the trap that therapy so often creates--the belief that everything that is wrong with you is within your own power to change, that sadness and anger are only the result of your own bad attitude, which just needs an adjustment--I have to admit that there is something within all this about my mother. I have traditionally categorized this particular woe as a void of maternal relationship. My mother and I “didn’t get along” or “didn’t really relate”, and then before I was old enough for us to have our first adult conversation, she was dead. As I teased out some anecdotal details of our absence from each other’s lives with my first therapist, that doctor once started one of our sessions by blithely declaring, “So you say your mother hated you!” Actually I never said that, but thanks for illuminating things so brightly, you...fucking asshole. Ironically, one of the things I didn’t like about this young, attractive, waspy therapist was that her Kelly Bundy-ish work attire made it impossible for me to bring up any anxieties I had around my own attractiveness, or my alienation from the rest of my gender. The alienation from the rest of my gender that had certainly begun with my alienation from my mother.

I don’t remember a single nurturing, initiatory experience with my mother. I had my first period young, and when I naturally went to her for help--well, to be fair, I probably told her that I more or less understood how things went, but I still think we probably should have had a longer conversation than just her telling me not to flush maxi pads down the toilet, and coolly dismissing me. I remember the first time I tried on makeup, her makeup of course; as soon as she spotted me, she asked “Are you wearing makeup?” in this razor sharp tone, and scowled at me until I followed her unspoken instruction to go to the bathroom, wash my face, and send myself to my room. Again, no further discussion of makeup, clothing, or general womanhood issues ensued. Similarly, I remember a day when I had become just old enough to pick out some of my own clothes. We went shopping for underwear, and every model she suggested, I just wanted in black. I didn’t realize what kind of rage this was stoking in her until she suddenly snapped, “DON’T YOU WANT ANYTHING OTHER THAN BLACK?” and spun away from me. I had no idea what rule I was breaking to deserve this, although the truth is that probably some primitive part of me understood that it was kind of a sexual problem. In the following years I developed into a huge comic book nerd, spending almost all my time copying what I didn’t really know were pretty sleazy pinup images of female characters out of X-Men comics. I had an inkling that these were sort of horny-looking, but I was really attracted to the drawings, which were heavily cross-hatched and compulsively detailed, according to the predominant style of the '90s. That kind of intense, microscopic linework has always attracted me, and one day I stupidly asked my mother, an artist herself, what she thought of a certain drawing I was studying. Most unfortunately, it was of the White Queen, a really idiotic character whose costume is essentially lingerie. What really interested me about it was the linework, but my hopes of discussing art were dashed when my mother spat “I THINK IT’S BORDERLINE PORNOGRAPHY!” and promptly stormed off. That probably would have been a pretty good time for her to talk with her insecure, confused eleven year old girlchild about feminism, body positivity, or any of the other facts of being a woman that I desperately needed to hear. I didn’t get any of that either when, around the same time, I started trying to talk to her about feeling fat and ugly, and she just threw a diet book at me. When I remember my mother, I most immediately remember the back of her head.

This all makes my mother sound like some sort of tyrannical throwback housewife, but none one would have told you that about her. Mom was “cool”. A playfully subversive hippie painter from Brown who loved kitsch and camp, she filled our house with old pulp novels, 3D horror comics, bootlegs of Mystery Science Theater 3000, tapes of Warhol’s Frankenstein and Dracula. She was a striking dresser, imperiously intelligent, and brutally funny. She was outrageously popular among everyone who knew her. The strange truth, though, was that while she had the outward appearance of a mischievous hipster on the cutting edge of culture, on the inside she had a rigid resistance to anything she considered psychologically or emotionally abnormal. Sadness and frustration were unacceptable, antisocial qualities, inconveniences that were grounds for rejection. So, as if she’d been cursed by a spiteful witch, instead of having a fun, affectionate, curious, creative mini-me, her first born turned out to be a taciturn suicide case, constantly quivering with fear and rage--the ultimate in uncoolness. I have a recollection of being around 12 and complaining to her about a friend of mine who was (also) sort of a drip and a drama queen. My mother’s advice to me was to say to my difficult friend, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” which is a clever way of expressing sympathy while giving no credit at all to the sources of the person’s pain. Even at that young age, I kind of thought...hey wait a minute, that’s exactly what she’s been saying to me!

Lest anyone think of her as some sort of roundly superior specimen, I can also say that she was sort of a nerd. She had a huge number of allergies, and also asthma, which she passed on to my brother and me. (And ironically, my lifelong snorting and snuffling and sneezing became one of the many things about me that visibly disgusted her) This, combined with my father’s amorphous environmental illnesses (see: the brilliant Todd Haynes movie SAFE), compelled my parents to try to move house. When I was about 11, we moved across our grimy, depressed city to a much bigger house in a nicer neighborhood. Shortly after we got settled, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Her doctor’s advice was to go home and make her peace, immediately, but she shocked everyone by surviving for at least another three years. When people hear that, they always respond as if it must have been some sort of beautiful miracle. No one who has lived with the dying could think this. Our lives turned into NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, quickly and consistently, every day a frank, unromantic confrontation with mortality, until it was over.

What could I possibly feel? This person who was a virtual stranger to me, who didn’t like me, who turned into a rotting corpse in front of me, had died in agony. Instead of trying to raise a happy, healthy person, she had sat back expecting me to seduce her, and I had failed. So, I didn’t know what the loss of her really meant. I would never understand anything about maternity, and I would never figure out anything about being a woman that I didn’t ultimately make up for myself. The only thing I really knew about first hand was death. I didn’t understand much of anything about my mother’s actual biological reality, because no one really communicated with me about it, but I knew for sure that the human body is a bunch of bullshit and there is just no reason to be precious about it, ever. Unfortunately, one is never left in dignified solitude with their own interpretation of death. Death is a curse that befalls the living, who are then suddenly and disproportionately responsible for each other’s feelings. This is never more true than when you physically resemble the dead. You become everybody’s confessor, the person with whom they try to relive their experience with the living, and you better be nice about it--even if you are technically more entitled to grief and resentment and anguish than anybody in the room. And of course, this was never more true than with someone who had always frightened me more than my mother: my mother’s mother.

#the big story #long post

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hopoo · 6 years

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DEADBOLT Q&A

I tried to answer every question as honestly as I could, so I hope this is a good read. If your question isn’t there, it’s either identical to another one asked or joined together with another question. Cheers!

Q: In total, how much time does the campaign of Deadbolt span? It’s hard to tell, what with it being infinite nighttime and all.

A: I would imagine a month-ish. It is implied that the Candles are doing some sort of investigative work between missions, which would surely take some time. Q: Did you have any major inspirations for the visual design of DEADBOLT? A: John Wick is obviously the biggest one! Q: What would hopoo do if someone made a game completely based and inspired from Deadbolt and its… Concept? (with permission and not) A: There’s no way DEADBOLT is that unique in settings or thematics – ultimately, you know what’s right and what’s wrong when you’re inspired by a work, and so will everyone else! If you feel obligated to ask for permission, maybe you’re not exploring enough original ideas? Q: When will we get modding? if so could we get a simplified modding kit? Any plans for updating dedbort, even just the map editor? Feature for adding custom sprites, rotation tool, copypasta tool, just to name a few… A: So the thing with that is that the map editor is only half the equation – while the map editor may be writing stuff to files, it also has to be interpreted on the end by the DEADBOLT game itself. Therefore, adding features that aren’t supported in engine simply won’t work – it won’t know what youre talking about. While rotation is supported in the engine, it doesn’t know how to read that from the files, etc. I also am trying to avoid any legacy issues where old maps are required for old versions of DEADBOLT, or vice versa. Q: When is deadbolt 2 coming with werewolves and mummies A: Werewolves aren’t undead you dingus. But mummies could be cool.

Q: Will the stuff that came with the release of Deadbolt on Play Station, will be added on PC? A: Nope, that was sorta our deal-sweetener for getting on the Sony consoles. Q: Will we ever see expansion levels for Deadbolt or would we get Deadbolt 2 instead? A: DEADBOLT 2 maybe sometime

Q: Does Ibzan is gay? A: I haven’t really thought of the sexual orientation of any of the characters, and I definitely don’t want to pull a JK Rowling and retroactively assign them. So in terms of canon, that just hasn’t been explored.

Q: Would you prefer deadbolt 2 to be in 3d and 2d? Would you do a sequel? A: DEADBOLT is probably the narrowest design space I’ve worked with – there’s no dodging, insta death, insta travel attacks. By the end I felt very stretched out in terms of enemy design, and for that alone I’d think 3D. But hey, I may also just hate 3D by the end of RoR2 so who knows :^). I’d love to do a sequel one day, most likely from the perspective of Ibzan. But who knows! Q: Did Ibzan want to kill the Fire, or just try to reconcile with it? A: He just wanted to talk – but who knows what would’ve happened after the Fireplace rejected him? Q: Would you be interested in going back to the world of deadbolt sometime in the future? I remember hearing somewhere a 3D concept would be interesting to work on. A: I wish I was talented or driven enough to write comics for it – I think DEADBOLT is more about the stories of individuals, compared to RoR who is a story of the universe. I wrote the Cassette Tapes to reflect that. Q: Looking back, is there anything you’d change about Deadbolt? A: Hmmm… I just wish I somehow could expand more on the lore and gangs, and what their goals were. Gameplay-wise, it was a tad too short. I liked doing a few standard stages, and then a mix-up stage (sniper, trap, boss, etc) – maybe we could’ve fit in a few more rotations. Q: What’s your favourite loadout? A: Death/Taxes and Flashbang, like a scrub. Q: Would you ever be interested in restarting the asset suggestion thread A: I consider DEADBOLT to be done – as a 2 (now 3!) man team, we financially can’t do the games-as-a-service thing like most big companies can for smaller games like DEADBOLT. I also intended DEADBOLT to be a one-and-done thing as a contrast for Risk of Rain, which we updated for years after release.

=CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ALERT= I personally also think that EVERY game getting a bunch of DLCS and updates and patches for a long time is, in a way, exhausting as a player. I think it makes it hard to feel satisfied when you finished a game and it’s over and you feel completed in the journey, knowing it’s not ~technically~ over until the devs stop patching. I think it’s great for some games (mostly multiplayer-based ones), but some games you just gotta let… finish, on a good note. Semi-open ended endings are always unsatisfying, in my opinion, and so recently it just feels like you don’t ever complete a game. …On the flip side, we are planning on doing lots of post-launch support for RoR2 because it’s actually inline with our design goals, so don’t fret! Q: Will bugs like Scythe not having a cover sprite or some enemies not having a falling sprite (which causes the game to crash) be fixed? A: Which enemies have been missing a falling sprite? They should be resorting to idle, not crashing. Bosses? Q: Just wanted to say, you guys are my favorite games studio, hands down. Now for the question: Now that the Reaper has completed his task and is allowed to rest, what’s next? Is the Fireplace going to keep him resting for a while? Does our MC have another task to accomplish? A: The Fireplace has never let a reaper “rest” before - the reason he is allowed to rest is because Ibzan never got to, and the Fireplace is trying something different with you. This is unexplored territory for the both of them – presumably he just pets his cat and gets bored before getting back to work. Q: What happens to everyone else in the afterlife? A: People who aren’t in the Place? Who knows, and who cares about boring happy afterlife 😊 Q: I had a question about the lore. There’s mentions of places outside the city, across the river Styx. What are they and what are they like? A: The Styx connects the other realms together, including (presumably) wherever the demons came from. This is explored lightly in one of the demon cassette tapes. Q: Will you ever expand more on the world of deadbolt or are you 100% done with it at this point? A: Nope definitely not done, really wanna explore more one day Q: What’s your office address? For post and stuff, maybe I want to send you a box full of A4 sheets of paper with a thousand hoopters on each. A: Maybe this is the paranoia in me but I’m not comfortable posting my address online – you can just tweet it at me a thousand times instead Q: Did Ibzan think the flames would give warmth to the Dredged or was he just lying to them and using them for his own gain? A: He was lying to himself, but he did truly believe that this was going to work, because this (at the time, anyways) seemed like the only way out. Metaphor woawoawo Q: Could you add some sorta DEADBOLT reference into RoR2? Will the Reaper be playable in Risk of Rain 2 as a bonus? A: Definitely references happening in some form, but playable might be stretchin’ it a bit, especially since it’d be taking up the slot of some more in-universe secret character. Q: How excited are for RoR2? A: Honestly very nervous for the reception, with very big shoes to fill as a sequel for RoR. I just hope people like it, and that we don’t get burnt on 3D because there’s so many possibilities in the future for our games in 3D. Q: How are the Demons born? We know they’re made in birthing chambers, but then is it just like humans or is there anything specific needed for a demon to be born f.e. skeletons>suicide, zombies>overdose, etc. A: Demons aren’t undead and don’t naturally exist in the Place, which is why they have to be smuggled over – they exist in whatever version of hell is in the DEADBOLT universe, and are natural denizens of the underworld. Q: was izban hot before he died? A: The hottest Q: do all the nightclubs canonically have chris c. as the dj A: Yes Q: I love Deadbolt very dearly and i’ve listened to its soundtrack (particularly “Now I Am Become Death”) more times than i can remember. What’s your favourite tune from Deadbolt ? A: Defunktorum or The Proverbial Dust Biters Q: In the Hardmode Cassette Tape it talked about a Reaper that wasn`t the current Reaper that we play as in the Game. Was this Reaper Izban? Since in the tape, he talked about the fireplace as his friend and that could be why he wanted to go back to the fireplace through the portal at the end of the game, to revisit his friend. A: Yes yes and yes. This was most heavily implied in Ibzan’s “home”, which parallel yours. Q: Will RoR2 still have opportunities to create silly messy builds like covering the screen in missiles or releasing an endless stream of Thqwibs? If so, how are you working to mitigate the performance impact of those crazy builds? A: Yep! Currently we have a system that detects the average particle count in a scene and slowly adds a chance non-important effects (like hitsparks or impacts) don’t ever spawn. This will at some point also involve turning off expensive effects and reducing particle LODs. Q: I really love the attention to detail to the characters, environment, aesthetics and gameplay mechanics. Its themes on the criminal underworld and the supernatural give a unique identity in a high-octane/stealth pixel action game I have not seen before. Additionally what prompted or inspired you to make DEADBOLT in the first place? A: DEADBOLT in its entirety was supposed to be not-Risk of Rain. It’s a gorey, violent, moody singleplayer puzzle-stealth game. We were just burnt out from the Risk of Rain experience, and we also wanted to flex our design muscles a bit and show that hey, we’re not just a one-trick pony of gamedevelopment :^) Q: I just played through this game on PS4/Vita over the weekend. Huge fan of Risk of Rain. Even bought it through Limited Run Games. So I had to pick up Deadbolt (Didn’t previously know you had made it either.) and I love it. Its a super solid experience. I’m not sure I have any questions about it. I guess I was curious if co-op multiplayer was ever considered in development? Keep up the great work. Can’t wait to see what you guys make next. A: Nope, because of the reasons above – we wanted a single player game, since RoR was a multiplayer one. Q: First of all, congratulations!! I really loved the game since came out, I bought it for my birthday, since risk of rain made me fell in love with all the pixel art in it, deadbolt didn’t disappointed me!! Everything in it I love it! Thanks for the game!! Now the question You already answered about how the skeletons or vampires came to be in that Place, how the vampires are killed by their lovers, but, how a reaper, becomes to be a reaper? I mean a candle said “I’ve never been so close to one” A: Originally, the reapers were actually supposed to be from suicides – if I remember right, the reaper when going down the stairs to the docks still has the hole in the back of his head in his sprite. Currently, it’s not explored how a reaper is made – I think a bit of mystery is always needed in making a believable universe J Q: Lorewise how many reapers are there total? Why are they incredibly fragile compared to the undead? What makes the reapers not undead? A: IIRC there were 4 fireplaces in the final stage, which was supposed to represent the way the fireplace was communicating to all reapers in the field. Q: Do you like turtles? How about corgis? A: Yes, and yes (although there’s way too many in Seattle now). Q: Did you have any idea Chris would break out a whole band’s worth of musicians for the soundtrack? His work was superb and the OST remains my absolute favorite to this day. A: DEADBOLT OST was actually done with many people – it must be in the credits somewhere! If I remember right, there is at least a drummer and a musician.

Thanks for all the questions, and happy hunting :)

hopoo

#deadbolt

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sombytaco · 7 years

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Why DaveKat is Narratively Important

Let’s talk about DaveKat because I have nothing better to do!! So, whether or not you personally ship or agree with davekat, this is just going to be about how, from a narrative standpoint, it is 100% vital to both Dave’s and Karkat’s storylines and personal character arcs, let’s start with:

Knight Class- So, bit of class/aspect analysis because the fact they both Dave and Karkat are both Knights is absolutely VITAL to their character development and their connection to each other. Something Kanaya said, that classpects are not necessarily chosen to suit the strengths of each player but rather to challenge them in a way that is most beneficial to their personal growth? That is completely correct, Dave and Karkat being some of the best examples in the comic. The aspects are the elements which the game, and therefore the universe(s) are made of - literally. Like, these are the constructs out of which the world exists, the building blocks so to speak. However, they also represent more metaphorical concepts, Life=Optimism, Hope=Belief, Heart=Soul, so on and so forth etc. So paired with the Knight class, the active pairing of Maid class, we have to examine how exactly the aspect *applies*. Obviously, being active, the Knight class is self serving (more on active vs passive or knight vs maid specifically if y'all hmu with some asks I’d be happy to explain more in depth), there’s also a metric shitload of symbolism involved in the name. I’ve been reading this comic for almost five years and the sheer amount of symbolism never ceases to amaze me, but the absolutely loaded amount of metaphorical value behind this class has to be in my top 5. The classic “knight” iteration, sword and shield type of deal, is instrumental in the interpretation of how Dave and Karkat wield their abilities and grow as characters. The weapon is obviously the way in which they wield their aspects, but the shield is so much more interesting: it’s their PERSONA. Part of the blatant parallels between Dave and Karkat’s story arcs is how they allow others to perceive them in regard to their own internal struggles, they both put up a persona to protect themselves. For Dave it’s his “coolkid” facade, he doesn’t let others see his emotions, feelings, or motivations because he’s so wrapped up in this delusion of irony and toxic masculinity that he feels it would be a weakness to show himself for what he is, one that could very possibly (at the hands of Bro) get him severely injured at best, dead at worst if he fears for his life which is a distinct possibility. Karkat suffers in a similar way, his persona is this image of the overly aggressive, “shouty/angry” guy, he’s loud and obnoxious because he’s trying to keep people at arms length, similar to how Dave doesn’t let anyone in. Karkat also has similar motivations behind this persona, because of his blood color he knows he will be in immediate danger if people get too close, look to closely, care too much, so if he can shout and seem just as bloodthirsty and aggressive as other trolls, he can both keep them away and keep himself free of suspicion. So, they have their shields, their personas, this is how they protect themselves from the world. Let’s talk about their weapons.

Aspects- As I mentioned above, aspects are the literal elements that make up the world, but also have a more metaphorical meaning. In the same way that Heart=Soul, Dave’s aspect Time is not only literally representative of time, but metaphorically representative of PROGRESSION. Karkat’s aspect of blood is therefore, while literally blood (possibly a reference to his mutation), also more symbolically representative of UNITY. Now, let’s see how those apply to each players personal struggle, because remember that’s the key here, how their classpects tie in to their character arcs. Dave is troubled by his aspect at multiple points throughout the storyline, severely disturbed by dead Dave’s and essentially haunted by the multiple loops he has running, in what is a single day to his fellow beta players likely feels like *weeks* for him, he’s not progressing in the game, he’s running all these loops and doing so much and yet he’s not really going anywhere. He’s like a broken record, if you will. Dave doesn’t see himself as a hero, broken sword symbolism aside because I cannot get into that rn lmao that’s way too loaded and this is long enough, Dave *can’t* see himself as a hero because in his mind, Bro was a hero, and he will never live up to it, so why bother. Easier to just run his loops and do whatever Terezi says because she’s probably right and anyways it’s just easier to do something menial and meaningless that doesn’t move anything forward because he would probably fuck it up anyways, right? Dave is so stuck in the past, haunted by his loops, haunted by the legacy of his Bro, haunted by dead Daves, he is terrified (whether consciously or subconsciously) of moving forward, of Progression. Alternatively, Karkat’s aspect of Blood, or UNITY trips him up in similar ways. Karkat’s relationships are…complicated. It’s been *headcanoned* that he comes across as pale towards most of his friends, because despite how hard he tries to act loud and aggressive, he’s a big softie who cares way too goddamn much about everything. Terezi also represents his biggest struggle with Unity and relationships, he “wanted her in every quadrant like a desperate fool”, and she played along for a while to see if he would settle in any one quadrant, but when he never did she moved on. This is a huge blow to Karkat’s self-esteem, he thought he was being so suave and smooth just like his romance novels and movies, but really he was pushing her away either knowingly or unknowingly. On the topic of his romance novels, his obsession with relationships also shows him trying to compensate (more on this in a sec) for his lack of capability in the area, as if he’s studying them to get a better understanding of how relationships should work because he really has no idea. In his very first conversation with Sollux that we see, he ends by affirming that he hasn’t gone too far right? They’re still friends? Because underneath his loud, obnoxious persona, he’s just acting the way he thinks he’s supposed to in this hyper-aggressive society. Sound familiar? It’s because Dave is doing the same thing. They’re both using their personas to survive, to appear the way they think they should to other people, because when it comes to their aspects, they’re fucking terrified and don’t have a clue as to what they’re really doing.

Storyline Parallels- So, I’ve seen a lot of good analysis of this and I doubt any of what I’m saying will be news to any of you, but I’m gonna put it in my own words as best I can bc this shit is imperative to understanding why DaveKat works so perfectly in the narrative. Dave is obviously working an uphill battle the entire story to overcome the hyper-masculinity (see also: toxic) that his Bro has ingrained in his psyche for 13 years. Not the least of which is some deeply rooted homophobia. Dave fronts constantly, accusing others of being gay, accusing *Karkat* of being gay pretty amusingly. Obviously he pokes at this in other people because he’s so insecure about it in himself, he struggles heavily with his sexuality the way so many pre-teens do, only he’s fighting against a decades worth of anti-gay propaganda basically so there’s no room for him to search within himself too deeply without feeling deeply uncomfortable because obviously that’s Wrong and Bad and that’s not how society works in his world. Similarly, Karkat struggles with the quadrants which is practically unheard of on Alternia. It’s such a clear parallel to human homophobia that like. I’m left speechless when I think about it honestly. Their struggles are so overwhelmingly similar and parallel to each other sometimes I just have to stop and appreciate it. But back on topic, his whole life, Karkat has grown up with this over idealized concept of romance, the quadrants, and he obviously knows something is wrong with himself from an early age. Karkat’s obsession with romance novels is no coincidence, he’s clearly always felt off when it comes to that and so he most likely reached out to these novels and movies to get a better grasp of the quadrants, consuming what was essentially romantic propaganda to overcompensate. The problem is, in studying these works, he latched onto the wrong thing which is so funny to me. He’s reading these trying to understand, to make himself fit into this system because that’s what society is like *cough* heteronormativity *cough* and yet he latched onto quadrant vacillation like it’s the holy fucking grail of romance. Like oh, okay, this is normal? Obviously people do this, as long as they switch within the bounds of the system it’s Okay™ and even romantic in some occasions. Only, this is fiction he’s reading and if you try to apply the logic of romance novels to real life…well, we all know what happened with Terezi. He was constantly pushing the boundaries of vacillation, he was red for her, he wanted to act black on occasion, he cares so much about everyone it’s impossible for him not to be pale, and we see him (though I doubt he realizes he’s doing it) trying to auspistice for her and Gamzee in the pre-retcon timeline by staging a sort of intervention. He “wanted her in every quadrant like a desperate fool” and I don’t understand how people put Karkat into the quadrant system!!! That line is so IMPORTANT, not even taking into account that we know his dancestor, who shared his blood mutation which may have had something to do with his irregularities, loved the Disciple “beyond the quadrants”. It’s. So. Obvious. Karkat is overcoming the stigma of wanting to love beyond the quadrants in the same way that Dave is struggling to overcome the loaded idea behind being Not Straight. They’re both overcoming these extremely similar prospects and it’s an absolutely stunning feat of narrative that as an English major it makes me fucking weak in the goddamn knees like Hussie is a lot of things but this? This is fucking genius. I’ve never seen two characters written together in such an in depth and parallel way before.

Opposites Attract- So we’ve talked about their similarities, let’s talk about their differences and how those differences are also actually poorly disguised similarities. Karkat is obviously a Loud Boy, thats his coping mechanism. He keeps people out and away by being loud and aggressive. Dave needs to cope for similar reasons, to protect himself he needs to keep people out and away but he does it in just the opposite way, he gets quiet. He doesn’t talk about his shit. Sure, he’ll go on the rambling metaphor when the occasion calls, but although he’s always talking he’s never really saying anything. Karkat is an almost compulsive over sharer, like, the boy (bless his heart) has zero filter. Dave will talk your ear off just as well, but I’ll be fuckin damned if he says anything worthwhile outright (his many, many Freudian slips aside). It’s also interesting to note that while I’ve seen people talk about how part of the reason Karkat doesn’t fit into Alternian society is that he’s so human, as its stated in the narrative that after seeing this soft species, that shares his blood color and stupid, stupid compassion, even *Vriska* admits that Karkat seems to fit in better with them than he ever did with trolls, we don’t see the same for Dave? I’ve rarely, if ever, seen the situation flipped, in that Dave was more suited for Alternian society the same way Karkat was more human than troll or at least had severely human aspects. Obviously Dave’s romance is still very human in that he’s a big ol’ fan of monogamy (he and Karkat both faced problems in their relationships with Terezi romantically when she became involved in other quadrants, these boys love monogamy I’ll fight), but his upbringing? Yikes. Lusii are supposed to, while still protecting their trolls, prepare them for the harsh and violent world. Whether they had to kill other trolls and Lusii to feed them, or learn how to fight to fend off other trolls on their own, there was a shit ton of fighting in their pre-pubescent years. Trolls are a hyper aggressive, violent species that learn to fight basically as soon as they can walk, which is exactly what Bro did to Dave. Dave could fight practically from the second he crawled off the meteor, I doubt a day went by without a sword in his hand for some reason and god knows he suffered through enough strifes. Both boys were brought up just thoroughly *wrong* for their societies in a way that ensured they would never feel like they truly fit in.

Finally, Romance- In the final culmination of all this, let’s actually talk about how they work together as a couple. So, they have this overwhelmingly similar upbringing and life experience, what happens when they finally meet up? Dave thinks it’s hilarious that Karkat is always yelling, “get a load of this guy I was telling you about, Rose”, and while I have no doubt he thought Karkat’s shitfits were the funniest thing since Colonel Sassacre, there had to be a part of him that was just in awe of how someone could be so free with their emotions. Like, he’s angry? And you know it the second he walks into a room?? This is an entirely new concept to Dave, my son, who grew up with an insanely passive-aggressive psychopath who would sneak up on him and fight him with a crazy fucking puppet like what the fuck?? Dave has always had to be on edge at home, Bro was quiet so you never knew when he was upset and you never knew when he was coming for you. With Karkat, that’s such a non-issue it’s like the issue dined and dashed, no bill and no tip, vanished into the wind. You can hear Karkat stomping down the hall five minutes before he even gets into the room, and once he gets there oh boy he will Let You Know What The Problem Is. Why is Dave always provoking Karkat? Literally just to hear him yell because it’s so goddamn refreshing to know exactly with 100% certainty what someone is thinking, no irony, no bullshit, just genuine fucking refreshing annoyance. And for Karkat, well here’s the guy he’s always wanted to be, right? Cool and suave, the romcom hero who could smooth talk the paint off a wall. Only, Dave isn’t actually cool in the way he pretends to be, he’s not this smooth suave hero, he’s not even just a hero. He can’t be. He’s just…a kid. A kid like Karkat who has issues like Karkat and talks just as much when he’s nervous as Karkat and he’s relatable even though he’s trying not to be. He’s trying so hard to be what society wants from him he wants to be the tough guy with the sword but he’s just so not and that’s so refreshing! Karkat realizes he’s not the only one who’s trying to live up to some buttfuck impossiblestandards and he realizes…that’s okay. He doesn’t have to be anything he’s not. And they figure that out together.

So pardon me if I don’t understand how you can put Dave with John, or Jade, because they don’t fit. The narrative literally doesn’t benefit in any way for them to fit, and if it’s your personal preference then by all means go for it who am I to stop you, but there is no benefit to them being together. They will not grow from it, John is explicitly someone who doesn’t seem to focus or care much about romance even? And Jade has no concept of anything Dave has gone through, she couldn’t even begin to understand. Same with Terezi and Karkat, or Gamzee and Karkat or John and Karkat or whatever, Terezi likes quadrants. They make sense to her and she enjoys them, Karkat cannot bring himself to deal with with that and they’re so much happier as just friends. I’m not even getting into Gamzee, I’m not even gonna dip my toe into that discourse because everyone likes different characters for different reasons and I won’t begrudge you of that so I’m just gonna stay away. So again, if you ship those then that’s fine! Go for it! This is just an analysis of why the narrative, in my personal perspective, supports DaveKat and why I personally think they are good and healthy for each other and help each other grow as people.

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samjbatty · 6 years

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Comparing and contrasting the treatment of love in the Song of Songs and the Symposium. Contextualized by considering the different literary forms employed, and the times and places in which they were produced.

It is widely accepted that modern Western society is a culmination and combination of ancient Greek culture and Hebrew or “Bible” culture. The conglomeration took place when both cultures came into contact in the late 4th century – around 332 BC. Over time, the two civilizations began to adopt aspects of the other society and try to reconcile their moral and academic differences, dismissing those that could not be reinterpreted. Two notable works of these societies are the Holy Bible and Plato’s Symposium. Both contain a number of writings on the idea of Love. Since there are so many stories of love in these works, and since the works are both clearly products of their very differing societies, it is enlightening to compare the two. In the essay I will aim to compare and contrast the exploration of love in these works, focusing on the Song of Songs from the Holy Bible and Aristophanes and Socrates’ speeches from the Symposium.

Before analyzing the differences between portrayals of love in the books, it is important to have an understanding of the cultures from which they came. The idea of Hebrew culture comes mainly from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible. It was a moralistic society that put a ‘blind’ faith in God. The people followed the strict doctrine laid out in the holy book and dared not to question its teachings. The hierarchical structure of their society held God in esteem at the top, with saints and prophets below him with ‘mortals’ at the bottom. In Hebrew culture, there was no opportunity for progression or promotion, meaning mortals could not aspire to be anything higher than themselves. Saints and prophets gained their title through the most revered characteristics in the Holy Bible – humility, shame and piety. They became higher than mortals purely by their devotion to not being god-like, their constant remorse and their admiration of God. The Christians believed the Holy Bible to be the word of God and therefore an official view of how things are and how they ought to act.

This is a stark contrast to Greek culture, which above all-else believed in competition. The foundations of Greek culture were built upon self-improvement and progression. Their gods were beings who could be - and were often - challenged by heroes. Successful heroes were the ones who did not obey common morality to pursue their passions. These heroes fascinated the mortals and were often glorified and held to the same regard as the gods. Mortals could become heroes and heroes could become god-like. Knowledge in Greek culture was viewed as another path to achieving god-like status, and so creative thinking, philosophy and storytelling were also viewed as admirable. Stories from this society were told to explain why ‘something’ is the way it is; this was often in more emotional than literal context. The stories invited dispute and discussion and were focused on human nature unlike the Holy Bible in which human stories were of no value. As such, the Grecian stories could often be interpreted as ‘How-to’ guides for progressing to a higher state. Finally, the Greeks believed heavily in allegory and their stories having a deeper meaning instead of taking the words at face value as Hebrew culture did with the Holy Bible.

The Song of Songs is a poem found in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible. It is often accredited to King Solomon, however it is highly unlikely he is the true poet and the “Song’s daring erotic character and the fact that God is not even mentioned” (Perdes, 2013) make it more probable that this was a popular love poem that made its way into the Holy Bible in the times that the book was a collection of scrolls. Pardes claims the song is so popular in modern culture that “Between the 1930s and the 1950s, at least one hundred different musical adaptations of the verses of the Song were composed” (2013). The poem celebrates the love between an unnamed man and woman and can be read as an expression of sexuality. This concerned many members of the Christian and Jewish faiths as it seemed to directly discredit many of the Holy Bible’s teachings of purity and using sex only as a means of reproduction. This lead to an unusual approach to the biblical text as it is usually read as an allegory for mankind’s strong love and adoration for God. Some critics such as Brenner choose to view it as a metaphor: “human love is what it is and, simultaneously, a reflection of divine love.” (1993). The poem mostly employs use of metaphor and similes to illuminate its idea of love. Phrases such as “thy love is better than wine”, “thy name is as ointment poured forth” and “I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses” (The Holy Bible, Song of Songs, 1:2, 3 and 9), all make a comparison between either the lovers or their feelings and objects of finery and expense. Wine and ointment were extremely new and exotic liquids during biblical times and the horses would have been considered strong and majestic. The theme of expense and luxury is found consistently throughout the poem, particularly in Chapter 5. Items such as “fine gold”, “doves”, “bed of spices”, “flowers”, gold rings”, “ivory”, “sapphires” and “pillars of marble” (The Holy Bible, Song of Songs, 5:11, 12, 13, 14, and 15) are listed. This semantic field gives us an idea of what the Christians consider to be worthy of a comparison to love and therefore give us an understanding of how they view the emotion.

No matter how Song of Songs is interpreted, the treatment of love is clear – it is a luxury that mortals could never possess. If taken literally, the poem focuses on the love between a King and one of his many wives. They flaunt their wealth and power through the comparisons made and it is because they have these luxuries that they can experience such love. When read allegorically, the poem seems to be suggesting that God’s love and the perfect devotion to God is an experience that can only be imagined through correlation to worldly opulence. It humbles the reader to remember that God’s superior love is an indicator of his superior power. It is also notable that Song of Songs never questions the love or its cause. We, as readers, are forced to accept the love and wonder at its power and opulence, despite its mystery.

The speeches in Symposium are the complete antithesis of this. I have decided to focus on Aristophanes and Socrates’ speeches to explore the depiction of love in Greek culture, as I believe they show the variety of views on love but are also complimentary to one another. The Symposium is a book written by Plato based upon a Greek drinking party called a Symposium. At these parties, conversation was the main focus and each guest was usually required to give their take on the chosen topic. Warner believes this results in a book, which “appears to culminate in the paradoxes” (1979). In Plato’s book the topic of the symposium was love. Aristophanes, a comic playwright in Grecian times, gives the first of my chosen speeches. He attempts to explain the longing we feel for a partner by telling the listeners that in ancient times humans were round beings with four arms and legs and two faces. In this time “the sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number.” (Plato, n.d.) These sexes were two men, two women and one of each – known as Androgynous. Aristophanes claims these beings posed a threat to the gods due to their “Terrible […] might and strength” (Plato, n.d.). In order to quell their attack but retain the worship they received from the mortals, Zeus decided to split the beings in half – leaving each being with only one face, two legs and arms and one set of genitalia. He turned their heads around so they could face the scarring on their bodies to remind them of their hubris. The humans became distraught at their separation and began to cling onto one another, longing to return to their previous form. This led to the death of many of the humans as they devoted their life to rejoining their mate and refused to eat or drink or move. In order to preserve the race, Aristophanes believed that Zeus “turned the sexual organs round to the front” (Plato, n.d.), so the humans could be intimate and thus fulfill their need to become one. This allowed the beings to reproduce, if they were previously Androgynous thus attracted to their opposite, and also “go their ways to the business of life” (Plato, n.d.). Aristophanes ends his speech with the phrase “[Man] is always looking for his other half”, thus summarizing his view on love in Greek culture.

In his speech, Aristophanes attempt to explain the concept of desire to his drinking partners. Desire, in Grecian culture, had a much stronger meaning than “a want” as it has come to mean in modern society. Instead, the Greeks believed that desire was more of a need that someone would go to any lengths to fulfill. This can be seen in the way that the humans “were on the point of dying […] because they did not like to do anything apart” (Plato, n.d.). This relates to the aspect of Greek culture that believes in sacrificing everything to achieve one’s goal. It is the same train of thought that drives their heroes to become such. Aristophanes using the concept of Greek desire to explain love highlights how important love was to the Grecian people. It is held in high esteem and viewed as admirable if one were to find their other half.

At first this seems to directly contradict Socrates’ view on love. Socrates was Plato’s mentor and a well-known philosopher of the time. His speech is a retelling of a story he heard from a priestess named Diotima. He describes the origin of Eros, the god of love. Sandford reinforces the idea that Greek culture was used as a basis for our own by pointing out that the name Eros has been adopted into many words such as “erotic” in the English Language (2006). Eros was born of Plenty and Poverty and is “neither beautiful nor ugly, good nor bad […] but an intermediary between the human and divine worlds” (Plato, n.d.). Thus, Socrates claims that humans, who desire, always desire goodness. The desire to reproduce is a desire for immortality meaning “those fertile in their body beget human children” and “those fertile in soul produce philosophical knowledge, poems and laws” (Plato, n.d.). Socrates, Diotima and by extension Eros seem to place a higher importance on the idea of something than a physical example of the thing, they believe that the physical is ever-changing - including oneself as Warner identifies (1979) - which renders it meaningless. In terms of love, Socrates seems to be suggesting that true love is not a physical concept but instead a philosophical one. In contrast to Aristophanes, who believes desire drives humans into an endless search for their soul mate who will bring them happiness, Socrates suggests that finding happiness in a physical person is meaningless and that happiness should come from thought and philosophy. The two stories seem to compete against one another with one saying that true love is a higher plane of thought whereas the other states that true love lies in a soul mate. However, when viewed through the lens of Greek culture, the two have much in common in terms of their portrayals of love. This is because both speeches characterize love as a goal that must be achieved through discipline and dedication. Levy also points out that the Symposium suggests that “loving others well is sufficient for self-knowledge.” (1979). This is typical of Greek culture, which above all believed in self-improvement and promotion.

In conclusion, the lavish portrayal of love found in Song of Songs is an example of God’s exclusive love that mortals cannot experience and must never question whereas the speeches of Symposium give opposing accounts of love which all present it as an objective that must be achieved. It is possible to find examples of both kinds of love in modern society – fairytales and celebrity couples are an exaggerated example of love similar to Song of Songs which has now become an important part of both secular and religious wedding ceremonies (Pardes, 2013). Modern love songs and Valentine’s Day cards, which claim, “you complete me”, are evolutions of Aristophanes’ speech in Symposium. The treatment of love in Song of Songs and Symposium are vastly different yet are entirely representative of the cultures from which they came.

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References and Bibliography:

Brenner, A. (1993). To See Is To Assume: Whose Love Is Celebrated in the Song of Songs?. Biblical Interpretation, 1(3), pp.265-284.

Levy, D. (1979). The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium. Journal of the History of Ideas, 40(2), p.285.

Ly Tran, T. (2011). Expressions of the particular terms of love in the Song of Songs. Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, 25(2), pp.234-259.

Pardes, I. (2013). Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies : Agnon's Moonstruck Lovers : The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture. 1st ed. Washington D.C.: University of Washington Press.

Plato., and Jowett, B. (n.d.). Symposium. 1st ed. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg. [online] Available at: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html [Accessed 5 January 2017].

Sandford, S. (2010). Plato and sex. 1st ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Sandford, S. (2006). Sexually Ambiguous. Angelaki, 11(3), pp.43-59.

Sandford, S. (2005). Thinking Sex Politically: Rethinking "Sex" in Plato's Republic. South Atlantic Quarterly, 104(4), pp.613-630.

Shabad, P. (2007). Symposium on Personal Agency and the Limits of Analytic Love. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 43(4), pp.584-586.

Taylor, C. (2011). Platonic Sex?. New Formations, 73(73), pp.138-141.

The Holy Bible [King James Version] (1611). [online] Available at: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org [Accessed 5 January 2017].

Warner, M. (1979). Love, Self, and Plato's Symposium. The Philosophical Quarterly, 29(117), p.329.

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harvard-narravitas · 7 years

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Finding Susan Sontag: Her Work, Metaphors, and Legacy; by Jonathan Galla

When I began thinking about how to write around the idea of Narrative Medicine, I couldn’t help but turn back to what brought me here: to this field of illness, of narratives, of where the disease meets the written page as easily as it meets the patient’s body. I immediately thought of Susan Sontag, that tour de force writer-critic who redefined how we think about the mythologies of illness. In finding Susan Sontag, we see how life and literature do not have simple barriers. This essay explores how narrative medicine has grown from its initial understandings, through the lens of one of its prolific inspirations, and the legacy of her writing and activism.

Perhaps, a proper introduction to the practice of narrative medicine comes not from a clinician, or a student, but an outsider: one who does not have intimacy with the medical system or its hierarchies, a person who instead captures the experience of illness itself. Thus, I introduce Susan Sontag, author of Illness as Metaphor, “The Way We Live Now,” and many other groundbreaking texts on the relationship between illness, language, and experience. She was not just a writer, but also a figure who has heavily influenced activism and medical practice after her death. A truly international figure, she wrote not only in the US, but dabbled considerably in Parisian intellectual circles and was widely read and translated around the world. As an activist, Sontag spent a significant time writing and practicing her activism in Sarajevo, where she directed a production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot amid the constant threat of snipers during the civil war (1). Certainly, one could point to the many aspects of her legacy in the present humanities, but one that has often gone overlooked is how she challenged our understandings of illness through her own experiences: most notably, that of cancer.

Cancer was no stranger to Sontag: she was diagnosed once in the 1970s and again in the early 2000s, culminating in a ruthless struggle that took her life (2). This journey, as individualized as it was in her suffering, was one she ultimately chose to share. Her partner, the famous photographer Annie Leibovitz, graphically documented the final moments of her battle with cancer. One can easily find the images online, if not in her large folio-sized autobiographical photobook: Annie Leibovitz, A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. I leave you not with the ominous images themselves, but their resonances: just as Sontag famously wrote On Photography without images, so illness transcends the written page, the photograph, or any medium that circumscribes its wrath.

Pre-cancer shot: Susan is lying comfortably on a sofa in their long island house, looking in health with black hair and an intense stare.

Shot one: her long hair with the signature white lock is gone; in place is a jet-white barber’s cut.

Shot two: bedridden, Susan is loaded from the tarmac onto a charter plane headed for New York, her final resting place.

Final shot: a handsewn panorama of the no longer living. She is laid out next to the hearth, arms folded but the marks of a violent death left untouched. Her arms are bruised, and the body looks cold and pale in the light. No one is left untouched by death, the photograph whispers with its art of intimation.

To those familiar with Sontag’s work, her choice to allow these images to proliferate bear no discrepancy with her life’s work to understand, document, and humanize pain. As a public intellectual, she sought to bring the common experience of illness into critical or literary analysis, most notably in her book Illness as Metaphor, published shortly after her first bout of breast cancer. In Illness as Metaphor, Sontag describes the intimate connection between illness and everyday language. Sontag writes of the banality of comparison everyday life to the disease, slowly losing its weight in the imagination with overuse and misapplication. Most importantly, she described not the experience of illness--an experience we all come to know--but how illness metaphors have been appropriated into society: the ‘cancers on our society,’ the ‘plague’ of annoyances. She wrote, “My subject is not physical illness itself but the uses of illness as a figure or metaphor. My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking” (3). For Sontag, metaphoric thinking is not the antidote, but the very poison to experience.

What Sontag ultimately argued was that disease, as metaphor, inherently takes on a moral context through its equivocations. The phenomenon she traces is not only a moral dilemma, but harmful to how illness is interpreted and understood. Indeed, humanity has a capacity to trace illness with superstition, from the ‘miraculous starvation’ of female saints in the middle ages to relatively recent hypothesis of a ‘cancer-prone’ personality. Yet this appropriation of the illness metaphor weakens the gravitas of illness experiences, depriving them of their proper significance at best, stigmatizing and demeaning the ill at worst. These ‘ills of society,’ rather than defining social problems, cast judgment on those individuals who are ill, leaving greater questions unresolved.

Sontag’s line of thinking has started a legacy in how we think about disease and its languages. When someone is ‘battling’ cancer, why do we use that word, and what are the implications of the exchange in meaning between disease and war? Certainly, when one ‘loses’ their battle against a disease, it is hard not to wonder if those who won have any superiority, be it due to their genetic hand of cards or biological chance, or something more sinister: their ability to pay for the latest and greatest life-extending treatment, the environmental variables (read: pollution, geography, living in the ‘right’ neighborhood) that lead to the disease being a worse.

Of course, the debate continues, and still I have no answer as to why someone ‘loses’ and another ‘wins,’ dichotomies notwithstanding. But medicine is not about winning or losing--it’s about healing, the easing of the body and spirit. When metaphor dances a dangerous dance with illness, morality soon creeps into the picture. Without an impartiality of language, nobody wins from the inequity that follows.

Today, Narrative Medicine (capitalization intended) does not exist merely as an edgy experiment by writers like Sontag, nor is it a rebellion against the medical establishment, psychiatric institutions, or the common past suspects of indignity of the medical system. It is an everyday approach to best understanding a patient’s chief complaint, an economic alternative to the standardization of charts, Electronic Medical Records, and the endless quantification of the patient’s condition.

Are we returning to the past? An era in which a country doc writes out notes in a dusty workbook and pulls an aspirin out of a mason jar? Not quite. Comical as it could be, narrative medicine exists in a contemporary field of medicine, and importantly, a contemporary understanding of what narratives are--how they exert themselves not only in the medical world, but also our lives and society more broadly. As a future physician, I constantly ask myself what kind of doctor I hope I will become, and who else will work around me. In essence, this marriage of medicine and narratology seeks to acknowledge the limits of diagnostic tools: the chart, the physical exam, the narrative of illness.

Sontag left an indelible impression on the field, and indeed, there is something to be said for how clinicians and researchers think about language in their practice. What does it mean to understand someone’s story when their language is not the same as your own, coming through the translation of an interpreter? What if someone lacks the knowledge base to use that very language? How do clinicians work with marginalized communities to not only aid their understanding, but empower community health by acknowledging their language and narratives? Narrative Medicine, in its wide reaching arc across disciplines, certainly has learned and continues to learn from the ability of language to mediate and transform our understanding of disease, care, and the human condition.

Burns, John. “To Sarajevo, Writer Brings Good Will and ‘Godot.’” The New York Times. August 19, 1993.

Wasserman, Steve. “Author Susan Sontag Dies.” Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2004.

Sontag, Susan. “Illness as Metaphor.” The New York Review of Books. Jan 26. 1978.

#narrative medicine #sontag #illness #metaphor

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