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#media analysis should be about trying to understand what the author is trying to say through context and subtext
blackbird5154 · 5 months
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Papa Emeritus III: The analysis of mythological references
Here are my thoughts of Terzo as a character, finally translated to English. Thank you to @osirisiii-bc who is so kind and gracious!
Read on AO3
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Note: The author strongly recommends you to check out the Third Era's "policy document" - The Prologue and Introduction by Peter Bebergal before reading this article. This promotional material was sent out to the media by the label on the occasion of the Meliora release.
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This analysis is based on the Prologue to Meliora written by Peter Bebergal. At first glance, this text may seem like a set of nonconnected paragraphs, as well as the music video "From the Pinnacle to the Pit" can be considered as a simple cutting of scenes from old movies. But together these two materials can shed light on the mythology of the Meliora Era and the story of Papa Emeritus III - his origin, background and motives. Let's try to understand how it happened that in the image of Papa combined three mythological characters: Prometheus, Icarus and Lucifer.
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This is what the author of this analysis looked like when she wrote it
First, let's take a superficial look at the plot. The action of the video takes place in a fictional retrofuturistic city decorated in Art Deco style. The Prologue even gives us the name of this location - Meloria (not to be confused with the album title - Meliora). The city is ruled by a totalitarian cult, something like a Masonic lodge, located in the highest building of the city, which is often struck by lightning.
The protagonist is invited to take part in a cult meeting and to undergo initiation. There he meets a sultry demonic woman who gives him a magic potion (the commentary to the song "Spirit" hints that it was absinthe). The protagonist experiences a vision in which he sees how the city is actually run. Upon awakening from his trance, he escapes from the meeting and throws himself off the roof of a skyscraper. Crashing to the ground, he is reborn into the ghost of Papa Emeritus III, to whom a crowd of people flock. Papa proclaims that the light should belong to the people and rises above the city. By the way, this character has a special name, or rather, a nickname given to him by the press - Mysterious Spectre. This can be read from the page of the newspaper that Papa holds in another clip thematically related to this storyline, "Square Hammer". The headline states: "Mysterious Spectre wrestles power supply from oligarchs". Papa Emeritus in full vestments can be seen in the photo.
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Now, let's dig a level deeper. From the very beginning, the video gives us a hint of the concept behind it. The words "pinnacle" and "pit" appear in the splash screen, inscribed in two triangles. The upper word is written in the style of lightning bolts, while the lower one reminds us of stone catacombs. Besides the fact that it is a Masonic symbol (and not the only one in this video, and in Ghost's art in general), it symbolizes the contrast of the heavenly and underground worlds, sacred and profane spheres. 
That's what the Prologue says as well:
“Rock and roll exists in two worlds: the sacred and the profane. In the first, it harkens back to a time when people worshipped their gods by wearing masks, dancing, and often in the throes of ecstatic intoxication. In the second, rock exists in the here and now, as an expression of rebellion, sex, power, and even fame. In the realm of the sacred, the ego is destroyed when the god is seen face to face. In the profane, ego is the energy that gets things done. This is the eternal spiritual conflict: the will of the gods versus human will. Those who can keep a foot in both the sacred and the profane can change the world.“
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Freemasons are everywhere!
Considering Meliora, we are inevitably faced with its duality: on the one hand, it’s a down-to-earth story about a satanic musical group controlled by the Clergy. On the other hand it’s a legend of the city of Meloria, a kind of Gotham of this fictional universe. Even Papa seems to have two incarnations: a physical and a spiritual one. But the two worlds are not only the dichotomy of matter and spirit. The video shows two levels of the metropolis: the celestial - the world of thunder and lightning, power and electricity, and the subterranean - the world of the poor and the catacombs, the underground temples "under the streets". The society of Meloria is stratified, the upper classes exist at the expense of the lower classes, who bust their hump, generating electricity for their masters and covering the foot of skyscrapers with their bones. The totalitarian regime described in the pages of the Prologue is the oligarchy's way of keeping power in its hands and suppressing any expression of free will from the enslaved people.  
“Spies are everywhere. Their eyes are behind the screens of your televisions and devices, their ears attentive to every frequency in the air. Everything is mediated, pre-­packaged, and pressure sealed, your lives pre-­ordained.”
The watchful airships in the video are labeled grucifixes, but don't let that put us off: they are "angels," agents of the ruling class, an enemy force opposed to Papa Emeritus.
"What if man could harness the power of a god?" the Headmaster asks the protagonist. "In a sense, he would need god no longer." It may be recalled here that Meliora is essentially an album about a world without God. That's exactly how the Nameless Ghoul put it in an interview, which is cited in Revolver magazine. “Spirit Absent” ("spirit absinthe") is “Deus in Absentia”, absent God. It is a world in which man is doomed to choose his own path without prompting from above. Modern man, the man of the era of modernism, seeks to curb the laws of physics, to put heavenly fire at his service. We are getting very close to the image of Prometheus in this story.
“You have been chosen to wield this power,” the Headmaster tells the boy. “Here we are the gods.” Then he sends the protagonist to the top of the building on what looks like an elevator, which symbolizes his ascent through the lodge ranks.
The woman reveals to the protagonist that the deity called demi-surge is the source of the power that moves the gears of the city. And the same power is used to enslave its people. It is their backs that we see bowed before Moloch. The vision is replaced by the sight of a lavish ball. “Through industry, man can harness this power and attain all that which he desires!” - the woman tells and invites the character to join.
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This situation is also described in the Prologue:
"The world since he was last seen has changed. Called Moloch by some, the great industrial machine has been grinding away, grinding everything and everyone down in the process."
Historically, Moloch was an ancient Semitic deity to whom human sacrifices had to be made. In the 1927 film "Metropolis" Moloch is represented by an industrial machine with an insatiable maw that devours people who labor in its bowels. And since the music video shows us the 20s of the 20th century, this machine operates on electric power. So, in this story Moloch symbolizes the dark side of progress turned against people.
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Moloch in the “Metropolis” movie 
The protagonist realizes that the lodge is using ordinary people as fuel for its luxurious life. He is not ready to accept this, so he pushes the woman away and, scattering, jumps from the roof of the skyscraper, from the pinnacle to the pit. There's an important element not to miss here: while he's climbing to the top of the tower before jumping, he's struck by lightning. In that moment he perhaps becomes heir to the mystical power of the demi-surge. By this Papa gains the dramatic ability to shoot lightning from his hands (and a little from his eyes).
As a man of the modern era and a resident of godless Meloria, the protagonist is free to choose how to dispose of this power. Therefore, when he becomes Papa Emeritus, already at the base of the skyscraper, he proclaims that the light should belong to the people. Like Prometheus, who stole the divine fire, he is ready to give it selflessly to the people, so that they can curb the natural force themselves. This similarity must be what the following the Prologue fragment hints at:
“…some still remember the old tales of those who tried to defy the gods. It was said they stole the fire from heaven, or called themselves equal.”
The people who rally around the sacrificed hero become Papa's flock, which is mentioned in the text:
“He is a shepherd of black sheep, the sewers are his cathedral. Here in the darkness they follow the path of the hero’s journey, the necessary travel to the underworld to become transfigured, to become something new.”
The Hero's Journey is a concept invented by Joseph Campbell to describe a monomyth. This archetypal story depicts the way of personality formation, accompanied by psychological transformation. According to the plot, the hero goes on a journey, meets a mentor, passes through a gateway where temptations await, which he must resist. Then he goes to the abyss, where he undergoes a transformation, along with acquiring the gift of the gods, and eventually returns reborn. 
Doesn't that ring a bell?
Probably "From the Pinnacle to the Pit" is also a statement about art. Electricity can be perceived as a metaphor for creativity. It is a bit of heavenly power, which the creator (musician) draws from somewhere in the higher spheres and gives to his audience for free. Here Tobias himself appears as a giver of light.
The story of Mysterious Spectre will be continued in the "Square Hammer" video, where we are told that he successfully wages war with local oligarchs, wresting power from them. Let's wish him luck and pay attention to the similarity of Papa's story to two other mythological characters.
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Mysterious Spectre in the background of the moon. Handsome as hell.
The cover of the single "From the Pinnacle to the Pit" shows us Papa as Icarus. Let us recall that this ancient Greek young man daringly ascended to the sun, scorched his wings with its heat and fell from heaven to earth, losing too many feathers attached with the easily melting wax. Here we can exclaim after the prophet Isaiah: "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!" Because the image of Icarus in this song is combined with the image of Lucifer. In Wikipedia we can read: "Lucifer is the Latin name for the morning appearances of the planet Venus. It corresponds to the Greek names Phosphorus Φωσφόρος, "light-bringer", and Eosphorus Ἑωσφόρος, "dawn-bringer". The entity's Latin name was subsequently absorbed into Christianity as a name for the devil."
Or maybe he didn't fall, but jumped, as the Prologue directly tells us. A man of the modern era is free to choose his own destiny. And it is up to him to decide whether he will be thrown down from heaven or will take a step into the precipice himself, without waiting for a kick from above. Because there is no other way than "from the pinnacle to the pit". Such is the Hero's Journey.
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“One figure was considered so prideful he was imprisoned in a pit where he gathered a legion to plan a great rebellion. Now they are merely stories to scare children, to remind them that defiance is a sin. Papa Emeritus III will steal your breath, the parents say. He will unscrew your hands and feet. He will take your eyes.”
Here the image of Papa is so merged with the image of Lucifer that it is difficult to understand who the text is talking about. It seems that the figure of Papa has been defamed: now he is a monster of the underworld, who is used to scare children to make them obedient. He was transformed from a light-bearer into an evil character through slander. Once again we are faced with an almost direct analogy with the Devil. By the way, isn't that why Papa addresses Cirice with the words "I know your soul is not tainted even though you've been told so" that he himself has been stigmatized, presented as a villain? Isn't this the essence of the fall and the punishment?
However Papa Emeritus appears to us: whether he is a rebel, a Melorian revolutionary who made the oligarchs tremble in their skyscrapers, a hero of the common people who brings the light of electricity and freedom to the populace, a fallen angel banished from heaven for his defiant thoughts, or a chthonic demon to scare children, he is a figure who appeals to our unconscious layers through mythological archetypes. Only one question remains: are you, dear reader, ready to follow Papa Emeritus into the abyss, taking the path of rebirth, feeling the halo above your head melting and being replaced by a mitre with an inverted cross?
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metanarrates · 8 months
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honestly how are you so smart? How do I become smart? My entire life I was put in the gifted classes and I really think it made me think I was smarter than I am. I'm "intelligent", sure. But I'm also really dumb and it's a huge sore point for me :( I'm always falling victim to believing anyone who sounds the most convincing and I never have my own opinion. It's like those discourse posts where I'll have whiplash reading them thinking "OK this is the most morally correct stance on the matter got it!" And then there'll be a new response and I'll go "OK scratch that! This is what I should believe and parrot back!". I'm really worried that I don't have any firm stances on anything and I'm a sheep who just follows the most ""correct"" sounding take. Sorry to dump this on you, I'd just like to hear your thoughts on it!
that sort of thing is more common than you think, anon. lots of people have trouble not following a herd mentality. it's scary to go against the grain! and i do think the educational system can reinforce that in certain people, since having the "correct" thought as determined by educators is prioritized more than a student having their own independent opinions.
my advice is to start small. if you see a post on your dash talking about a certain topic, really take a moment to step back. does this argument seem convincing? does it seem accurate? if so, why? do you have all the information? if you don't know enough about a topic to formulate your own opinion, maybe you should do some research!
and im not saying you should by default disagree with everything you see. that creates its own host of problems. I'm saying that whether you agree OR disagree with something, you should take a step back and evaluate why. can you explain your own opinions to others outside of "people I want to agree with have this opinion?"
it's also perfectly fine to not have an opinion on certain topics. if you don't know very much about something, there's no shame in waiting to form an opinion until you have more information. don't be afraid to ask questions. don't be afraid to investigate the trustworthiness of sources!
but if all that is overwhelming, and stepping in discourse sounds scary, you can even try this with fiction you read or watch. (im primary a media analysis blog, so i really do think fiction is a great practice ground to practice your analytical skills.) how does this story make me feel? can I identify why it does that? do I like this character? why? can I pick up on any subtext here? can I identify any literary devices the author is using? small questions like that.
in my opinion, a lot of my seeming intelligence comes from my ability to know and explain myself. I spend a lot of time reflecting on why I hold certain opinions, and seeking out further information when I don't understand something. you're probably here because you like my opinions on media analysis - those opinions are formed by not only reading and watching a wide range of things, but by seeking out different lens of analysis, and yes, seeing what other people have to say, and evaluating whether or not I think their opinions are well-supported. I try my best to expose myself to a lot of different types of thought. and I try my best to understand my own mental mechanisms, and to challenge them when necessary. I do think that's crucial to being an independent thinker.
I am sorry if this comes across as a lot. this stuff is overwhelming! you don't have to take all my advice at once. if you can pick even one suggestion from this post, and make an honest effort to try it, you'll start getting better at confronting your fear of being wrong, or the odd one out. over time, it will get easier for you to understand yourself as an independent person.
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bestworstcase · 6 months
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How exactly does intertextuality work?
I'm trying to improve my media literacy, but I'm not that great at understanding certain terms.
intertextuality is a REALLY broad term. in the most basic sense it refers to the relation between one text and another and how that relationship informs the meaning of the text being examined. think about parodies: the humor is referential, either to a specific work being parodied or to conventions of a genre, and relies on the audience having familiarity with the parodied text. a great parody should be able to stand on its own merits as a story, but knowing the parodied text(s) enriches the parody because you’re in on the jokes. that’s intertextuality in a nutshell.
as a writer, there are myriad ways to do this: direct parody or pastiche, quotation, allusion, translation, so forth. and as a reader, intertextuality needn’t necessarily be an argument for authorial intention—you can (and indeed should, if you’re interested in textual analysis, because it’s a good exercise) apply intertextual analysis to a text by comparison or contrast against another text in which you find resonant ideas or themes or patterns, and build an argument about the text you’re reading using reference to that other text, regardless of whether the author intended it that way. the author is dead: the point of textual analysis is not to divine the One True Meaning intended by god.
(that said, steer clear of joseph campbell and monomythic analysis; it’s notionally similar to an intertextual approach, but the underlying thesis that all stories, or at least all stories of mythic scope, are variants of a sort of pancultural ur-story, is ethnocentric garbage that incentivizes deliberate misinterpretation in a when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer way. intertextual analysis encompasses both similarity and difference because both are meaningful.)
rwby, for example, makes very deliberate use of intertextuality—in the character allusions and also in its weaving together of a few key texts (marvelous land of oz, petrosinella/persinette/rapunzel, the little prince, and cinderella) into the backbone of its original narrative. a lot of the fandom tries to rely on the character allusions to guess what will happen in the plot, with generally poor accuracy, because that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what rwby uses intertextuality for. 
its purpose in rwby—in rwby, this is a common use of intertextuality but not a universal one!—is to develop a symbolic and thematic vocabulary that enhances and clarifies what the story is trying to say. what does it mean, for example, that ruby is red riding hood? well, little red disobeys her mother and endangers herself and her grandmother. she’s also gobbled up by a wolf and survives unscathed with the aid of a huntsman. her grandmother, too, is eaten and at least metaphorically revived. the wolf is undone by his own hunger. it’s a story about childish rebellion and dire consequence, but also a mistake ultimately bringing about the end of the danger little red was warned against. and it is, symbolically, a story about death and resurrection. the wolf eats the girl and the girl is reborn from the wolf’s stomach: thus children become adults. and then in v9 we have ruby straying from her path, drinking the tea, facing the wolf, returning to life whole and unchanged. see how it rhymes?
that holds true for the narrative allusions as well. the marvelous land of oz, boiled down to essentials, is about restoring  balance to a world upset by the hand of unworthy ‘gods’ (the wizard, whose machinations are maintained by his co-conspirator mombi alone after his departure from oz); the conflict is principally between deceptive illusions and ruthless honesty. 
likewise the maiden-in-the-tower tales all twine around the central conceit of an imprisoned young woman who is both rescued and rescuer: petrosinella outwits and slays her captor to win herself and her lover free, and both persinette and rapunzel suffer in exile until their voices guide their lovers home and they heal their lovers’ blindness with their tears. 
the little prince is about growing up and what it means to be alive not just in body but in soul—and like red riding hood, it uses the symbolic motif of death and resurrection to explore these ideas—and one of its core themes is that uncertainty and fear and acceptance of reality, of death, of danger as unavoidable, are necessary to truly live. 
and cinderella is a story about cruelty and injustice and having the courage to do what it takes to survive, and also—inherent to the course of the fairytale narrative—a story about the obligation for those on the outside to help in the ways that they can. cinderella saves herself by asking for help. rwby doesn’t turn this story upside-down, exactly: both cinder and salem ask for help, and suffer brutal retaliation for it. how does cinderella save herself alone?
and so on. rwby handles intertextuality very well, so there’s a lot to tease out and a lot of threads to pull. it is that deep. but this is how intertextual analysis works, in the essentials. you connect one text to another and use the second to examine the first: why is ruby little red riding hood? what’s the common thread weaving the marvelous land of oz, the maiden-in-the-tower tales, the little prince, and cinderella together into the story rwby tells? the wolf eats red riding hood and red riding hood is reborn from the wolf and petrosinella’s ogre is eaten by petrosinella’s wolf: what does the wolf mean in rwby, and how does that color the parallelism between ruby and salem? it’s like if subtext had a megaphone. 
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impunkster-syndrome · 28 days
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thank you so much for talking about sparklecare's ableism. ive always had issues w the comic (the aus as well) for the terrible portrayal of physical disabilities and you made me feel really seen. - another physically disabled, chronically ill person
Sorry anon, taking this whole ask as a chance to explain why. I do appreciate it, though.
I see almost all media as somewhat political because it often comes from the politics of the author. It comes through in choices that might not even seem to matter to most- like Alice killing Dr. Bumby in Alice: Madness Returns. It was intended to be McGee's own moment of catharsis and to make sure he wouldn't come back in the story. He, as someone who has experienced abuse, got catharsis from killing a fictional abuser but he is also fully aware that most abusers never face consequences for their actions. The game is about trauma, abuse, and how abuse is perpetuated by many people who have power in different ways. That game altered me so severely with one line that it had sown the seeds for turning me punk: "Who benefits from your madness?"
I've been slowly trying to work through Lolita because I come through it from the angle that Dolores Haze's story is silenced by Humbert Humbert's. Vladimir Nobokov claims that it means nothing, but has also likened it to the idea of a caged animal creating art of the cage that surrounds it. He knows Humbert Humbert is a predator and has always stated that. He saw a problem with the world and wanted to talk about it.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld is social commentary all the way down and the man took pot shots at JKR for her bad queer representation with Dumbledore and the house elves heads on the wall. JKR's writing of Harry Potter is inseparable from her politics because there is no systemic change. She mocks the character who sees slavery as bad and wants to provide systemic change. The blood racism house is never changed or removed after it literally leading to wizard fascism more than once.
Fictional media is fundamentally how people parse the world around them and get to understand it, which is why critique and analysis are so important. This is not to say "Problematic media should never be interacted with and anyone who likes x is inherently bad" but instead "Know when your favorite media is being bigoted and how."
I'm no stranger to being so abused and unheard that your outlet is fiction as a cry for people to listen to you. I was going to make a twine game about my own child abuse and sleep deprivation hallucinations that I dealt with before I even was a teenager. I wrote about a dog wanting to kill itself. I wrote about being so devoted to someone you would let them kill you. I had things to say that were unheard because of how abuse victims and children are never listened to. In shorter terms- Fictional media is extremely powerful and there's a big ass reason why Atlas Shrugged is not only political theory but also fiction.
Sparklecare is important because it clearly is not merely vent media. It has things to say. Kittycorn can say it is vent media all kit wants, but it went from being called a social commentary to being called a vent piece and criticism of healthcare systems because of me pointing out the issues within it and treating the comic as it wants to be treated. Kittycorn has things to say and uses claims that it is only vent media to protect kits actual views from critique.
Being a creative exposes how you see the world in a very personal way, even if it is not directly a social commentary at all. What you create, how you create it, and what the audience is are all ways that you can get a glimpse at who the creator is and what they believe. The audience for Sparklecare is people who have not been institutionalized or hospitalized so they can understand kits experiences. It is done in episodes online and often uses drawn gore and strong visuals to try to get its point across without giving people a moment to digest what happened and reflect on it. Dissecting media is super important to creatives because it means people understand the messages we want to say.
Using an example from music- the song Dirty Harry by Gorillaz is anti-war. But people don't really seem to care all that much. If you pay attention, it criticizes how soldiers are pawns to the powerful and ultimately expendable to the people at the head of the conflict while the soldiers suffer as a result. It talks about the fear after 9/11. From books- Animal Farm is not anti-socialism. Orwell was a socialist who fought fascists.
Creatives need critics and analysis in order to help understand ourselves and how others view the content we make. It's a part of a healthy creative ecosystem. The response to Sparklecare's ableism being pointed out being absolute shutdown from the fanbase and meltdowns from the creator is indicative of an unhealthy fanbase that functions with little thinking about the media and what it is saying.
From the text, I can tell that Kittycorn has little experience with physical disability based on the ableism seen in the comic and the writing of physical disabilities barely having any impact on the characters, as well as the fact that she is using a general hospital in place of her experiences in a psychiatric hospital as if they are the same. I could tell no one involved is active with disability advocacy or justice because of writing all nurses as good when in reality nurses hold power over their patients and that can harm us through neglect and abuse, not just doctors. Nurses are a part in systemic ableism. In order for the comic to not continue ableist rhetoric, Kittycorn needs to confront things from a systemic issue point of view and not "Greedy capitalist bad" view which is reductionist.
Kittycorn wants to inspire others with her story- a noble aim, sure, if a little idealistic. But how it (Sparklecare) is going about doing so is harmful to the people kit wants to advocate for.
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why on earth do ppl call Lucien an abuser apologist? like how is he one? Him being unable to properly stand up for himself was so fucking understandable give the fact he grew up in an abusive household and then ended up with tamlin who also low key treated him like shit. Lucien has been stifled and pushed down (by tamlin a lil an his brothers) an yet he feels this loyalty to tamlin because he saved him. He’s unable to stand up to him because he feels this twisted loyalty to him. doesn’t that happen to so many fucking ppl in real like? an Lucien tried so hard for feyre even when HE was also a victim of so much abuse. it’s so random to me because I love Lucien an I love feysand, but some of these feysand stans say such ridiculous things abt the other characters yet never call out feyre or rhys on their shit. like Luciens an abuser apologist? hell no.
#i love Lucien vanserra
I wasn't going to respond to this but I'm doing some work stuff and it's on my mind.
I think there are two things when it comes to abuse and abuse apologism in the fandom.
SJM addresses it very poorly narratively and the readers pick up what she's saying. Sometimes I think she likes to sprinkle in a little sexual assault/domestic violence just to make things spicy but she doesn't want to follow through with it. So Rhys/Lucien are suffering...but only when it's narratively convenient and then they're not. Everyone KNOWS they're suffering...until it doesn't serve her anymore. And that's a problem because why should the fans care if, say, Feyre thinks that Lucien did nothing to help her or what he did wasn't enough? She thinks it, the author wrote that and even if we're not meant to agree (and I think we were), it gets said and people genuinely DO feel that way. Which takes me to my second point
this fandom fucking has 0 ability to address nuanced topics. Look at how Gwyn has been spoken about, how sexual assault gets weaponized for ships, and how people truly buy into "perfect victim" narratives, or the media shiny belief that you're somehow "broken" or "damaged" or otherwise incapable of moving forward once this happens. For Lucien specifically, he often gets painted with the "your parents are abusers so naturally you are too" brush and SJM uses it LIBERALLY all over the place.
Tomas Mandray is said to be a bad option for Nesta because his dad hits his mother (though we later find out this is true, he's a bad person not BECAUSE he has abusive parents). Eris (and his brothers) are merely extensions of Beron's worst impulses. The fandom loves to dunk on Lucien as being just like Beron and I've seen many, MANY bad takes where someone is calling Lucien out for being like Beron/drawing comparisons between Elain and the LOA. And part of that isn't even unreasonable because those are the authors opinions, too (though Lucien is Helion's son, which distances him from Beron and I know people like to pretend that's not canon)
Additionally, I do think a lot of people just don't think men can suffer from abuse and if they do, it's not as bad. So Lucien and Feyre are both suffering but hers is worse and Lucien is complicit for not killing Tamlin. Again, there is no nuance and if you attempt to inject it, people get angry because they take these books too personally. But these are real-life attitudes merely magnified in fiction which is why I'm always harping that analysis for these books too heavily focus on individual readers and not the authors on attitudes or the attitudes of the society we live in. SJM is merely reflecting the world we live in. Lucien just didn't try hard enough. He sided with Tamlin, he helped Hybern, blah blah blah.
Lucien lacks power across the board. He's the only person who helps Feyre in tangible ways when she's human and beneath the mountain- from screaming BEHIND YOU with the worm, to refusing to give up her name knowing he's going to die, and fixing her face and giving her a blanket in her cell, Lucien puts his body in front of Feryes over and over and over again. He does it because she is part of his court but in ACOWAR Lucien also says he's her friend. He's the only person, between the push-pull of Rhys and Tamlin, who is doing things because he is concerned about HER and not because he wants to fuck her.
And I know the criticism in ACOMAF is he tried to drag her back to Tamlin and ignored her letter, but Lucien didn't fucking know Rhys wasn't a piece of shit. In her mind, Feyre condemns him for thinking Rhys is, but the last interaction Lucien and Rhys have is Rhys in his mind about to kill him, and the time before that is him taunting Lucien about his dead love and his mother getting assaulted by his father. The author likes to ignore the things she wrote, but in order to prop Rhys up in ACOMAF, she just...ignores huge sections on ACOTAR.
And I think, finally, Feyre is the one who invites Lucien to Velaris. He keeps her secret all through ACOWAR when he knows she's lying. He teams up with her against his best friend on more than one occasion and out of everyone serving beneath a High Lord, Lucien is consistently the only person who defies orders in order to give Feyre help/information (Cassian and Azriel and Amren all hide that pregnancy, but Lucien defies Tamlin with the bogge and again when they just leave Spring behind after Ianthes hands get wrecked).
Anyway, I didn't mean to offer such a passioned defense of Lucien but if you stan Feyre and not Lucien RIP i guess. She considers him her friend, she brought him to Velaris with her, and Lucien still goes to Spring even though Tamlin uses him like a punching bag in order to ensure HER safety. He's the person who goes back when they find out she's pregnant to keep Tamlin from doing something foolish. He's keeping the human lands together for HER and HER court.
They're friends, die mad about it I guess
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What does this say about the author anon, no you're exactly right! As an English major I'm basically going to collage for this kind of media analysis, and i took a class that was specifically about reading for intersectionality in texts, and every book we'd read in that class we would go through and say 'what was the author trying to say with this detail, what does that say about the author' then go through and look for other potential readings (the example that comes to mind is a queer reading of passing by Nella Larson, which isn't About queer attraction it's about being a white passing black woman in the 1920s, but there is absolutely a Sapphic reading to be had there) and it really opened my eyes to how... silly so much fandom stuff is lol
If you focus solely on any one of those schools of analysis (in a fandom sense specifically here), you get the 'death of the author fanon rulzz!!' people and the idea that ships should be canon or bust, which.. I mean I'm not the fandom police or anything what do I care but it's not how I want to interact with things I like you know?
I dont really have a point with this, I just like rambling about literary analysis :p uhhh medic tf2 boobs there now we're back on track
YEAH! I have not and have no plans to go to college to study English, but I have taken multiple AP English courses and just in general like, read a lot and have parents who read a lot and when u do literary analysis, you approach it from different angles! Lately I've been watching Breaking Bad, which is a very big boy smart show with lots of themes and symbols and etc that really invites academic analysis, and I have done analysis of the masculinity theme, I understand what it means for the "canon" of the text, and I STILL have a trans Jesse read that I think holds up to the content and themes of the text, even if it's not "canon" (for anyone curious I think both transmasculine and transfeminine Jesse hold equal amounts of water, the trans experience can be a lot more shared than u think!). Uhhh lemme bring it back to tf2 to justify this being on this blog: I also don't think u should just "fuck canon", everyone knows I bemoan "soft boy Medic" and "evil grimdark sicko Medic" and etc characterization, but I also don't think that the fine print of "canon" should be treated as the end-all be-all! I don't care if Medic tf2 isn't "canonically" gay or trans or Jewish or autistic or rawdogging Heavy every night or what, I don't even care if he doesn't "canonically" have fat titties! I've academically analyzed tf2 and decided that "Medic tf2 has fat titties" is a VALID academic read based on what is presented to me by the text and I encourage you all to do the same. Art "belongs" to the audience just as much as it does to the creator! Have fun!
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citrusotakutea · 3 days
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People that make it a joke to be like: "Omggg the introductions to classic books are soooo annoying, why would they put so much of this useless shit here?" after they only started reading classics to be a part of the pretentious booktok fucks who read classics just to say they read them... Hi, pretentious fuck who always reads the introduction... It is literalllyyy a free literary analysis you dipshits. If you're reading some abstract shit, well it was written that way and people have been trying to read and interpret it since it was published. There is 200% popular explanations or theories of the plot there, if not straight up quotes from an authors diary/notes on their process and intentions for writing their novel (if those were left behind by the author). Fun facts, relevant historical context, translation deep-dives (which are fucking great btw, translation is an art and even the best translations will always lose something) and more. Honestly, people bragging about not reading it is like. ok fine whatever. To call it useless is just indicative that you are a VITCIM of the media comprehension crisis. If you're just going to parrot some rando from tiktok who summarized the plot (badly) in fortnite terms (do not recommend) read the fkn intro instead. If you're not going to try analyze the book yourself, or if you don't know where to start- read the intro!!!111!!! I am old enough (21. sarcasm.) to remember the time when the media lit crisis was in full swing before Lolita blew up on tiktok where people were making the most bare bones, surface level interpretations of it, calling the author and people who liked the book pedophilic. Saying they didn't know why it was a classic because it was just some old man's sick fantasy. I'm pretty sure there are old arguments on this blog of me trying to explain it to people. Nabokov was very open about the true meaning of his novel, there were many resources for people on and offline, plus the book that I had (not special, from library and then one from B&N) had an intro AND author's note. Yet people only got it when it was oversimplified for them on tiktok? Introductions are literally some nerd who was so obsessed with the author/book that you're reading that they who wrote something (barely anything usually, not a fucking lot) to help you understand the book better. Obviously, its meant to be supplementary and you can and should find your own meaning. Plus, usually for compiled works, the introduction are the guy(s) who made the fucking book, but ofc they are only credited in the intro (& copyright page) because they didn't write it. Surprise, people actually have to pick what works go into those types of books. Intros are usually just: "wow, I love this author so much that I did research on their entire life, read every single word they left on this earth, read 50 decades of analysis of their works and researched the era they lived in to understand why and what they wrote the wrote better, " and you mfs that don't even read it call it useless. fuck you. Oh and before anyone with -80 IQ reads this and gets upset, if you want to avoid spoilers for the 103935405739 year old book, read it after you finish the book...
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roobylavender · 9 months
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on one hand i do tend to be more critical of non-white produced media than white produced media but on the other hand within paki and more specifically paki muslim circles there's this constant tendency to look at a diaspora work and read it first and foremost to see if it has a positive portrayal of pakis or muslims. and it's like okay i get it we've been terrorized a lot and our rep in media at large is not particularly stellar but i also think there's a difference between critiquing that in media produced by white people versus critiquing that in ownvoices stories that are largely written as a reflection of these authors' lived experiences. like at some point you gotta understand how insulting it is to tell a diaspora author "you should be ashamed that you're making us look bad and giving white people more reasons to stereotype us" like first of all i don't think white people are their concern if what they're writing about is truly traumatic to your perception of culture outside of the bubble you live in. these are people trying to unpack their own experiences and yes maybe there is something to be said of trying to sell it off as an easy product (rupi kaur) but that is not to say every diaspora creative is like this and esp not the authors who are from smaller labels or who even self publish. like they have no grand white audience to which to pander and are often working off of word of mouth to get their story into people's hands. and admittedly this is a dynamic that changes as you move into tv and film but i nonetheless am not one to really embrace the idea that bc of white people's ignorance and bigotry we have to stick to telling "good" paki or muslim stories. like why? what is so bad if our current generation is questioning certain things and expanding their world view? if anything this constant focus on "good" portrayals of paki muslims leads to the obscurity of critiquing anything else in a review. i can't count how many times i've read books where that's all other reviews talked about meanwhile i had concerns like: well the mc's best friends felt underdeveloped, or i can respect that the mc felt suffocated by the idea of an arranged marriage but her white boyfriend didn't have enough personality to really feel like his own character, or the book painted parents as one dimensional villainous caricatures rather than fully realized people who are as much victims of abuse as they are perpetrators of it, etc. those are the kinds of things i'm thinking about when i dissect diaspora media. not whether what they've portrayed is close to an ideal that combats all pre-existing bigotry but whether they've given me a complete and fleshed out story with which to engage, rather than a collection of stereotypes that is never actually afforded any real analysis. this is where our critiques need to go if we want to get anywhere
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lordelmelloi2 · 18 days
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a lot of work that was done for feminist media analysis in the 90s-2010s was thrown out the window thanks to modern "fandom" etiquette and stuff that just boiled down to "muh ships" and a lot of the mindset that resulted in this shift is outright rooted in racism per the "fiction has no bearing on reality/you should know the difference". I really think honestly its a very privileged & white mindset to have to believe "it's fictional/pretend/private so I don't have to think about if it affects anyone". if you are against racism you should know the impact of media on reality, black feminists and civil rights activists have been pointing out the effects of propaganda and also representation of groups on the social consciousness forever; And I think quite honestly for the whole "well it's common sense to not treat someone a certain way just because you enjoy media that depicts it being shown!" argument, the minute you learn about the history of Minstrels and the Mammy stereotype or the Sapphire stereotype or etc. It should become blatantly clear to you how depictions of anything affect how people act in real life. This in turn also relates to media showing children as sexual objects, incestuous relationships as being funny/desirable/normal, rape as being "tough love", all of these are things that feminists have been doing work to try to combat for YEARS, and right now because of the whole ""pro ship"" BS it's kind of going out the window because people value their own personal comfort over making any meaningful changes. It's not like you get a manual stating when you turn 18 "here's all the crazy stuff you should unlearn so you can help break cycles of abuse and normalization of abuse", but people seem to have given up on trying to understand anymore. Nothing is exempt from criticism, we don't live in a vacuum, media has and historically has impact on reality, social attitudes, normalizing abuse. It's... obvious. Like its blatantly obvious. If you've cared about anything, ever, if you've ever been like "ugh. I hate how (animal movie) made people go out and buy (animal) as pets even though they're not meant for domestication!" you understand already how media impacts reality and people's behaviors, you're just choosing to pick and choose which ones you personally feel are valid.
And I think that when there's epidemics of children being groomed and an abuse and mental health epidemic that's because of rampant pedophilia, incest and rape we need to be more aware of the ways that media feeds these messages to you about what is and what isn't acceptable to do to another person. I don't believe in Neutering media to Never Show it, but I do think people are very stupid and despite saying they don't believe in condoning stuff "in real life" I think there's a wild amount of people who truthfully have no idea what boundaries are acceptable anymore and will gratefully allow the messages to permeate their brain without stopping to think like what the director or author is trying to say or what overall message they're trying to convey. I don't enjoy the discussions being held about "media literacy" in fan communities anymore but there is kind of a shocking lack of discussion about trying to understand the overall point of a story. The big picture. Overarching narrative meanings. Messages communicated. Themes and what they mean and how they tie into the narrative. Idk. There's better ways of writing all this up and I have to get ready for work
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HYBE Surveillance Content and Self-Monitoring Behavior. Jungkook's Camping Vlog
My initial idea when I decided to write about Jungkook's vlog was to look it as a mode of self-presentation, given that it's a travel/journal-vlog. But, after doing some research, I came to the conclusion that I need to dig a little deeper. So, I will use Foucault's understanding of the panopticon, the concept of synopticon, regular media surveillance and self surveillance which would produce intimate surveillance. I will make a comparative analysis of three types of media contents related to BTS: reality TV with In the Soop, Vlives and Jungkook's camping vlog. The aim is to try and make sense of how the subject self regulates their behavior and why the audience is attracted to surveilled subjects.
First, I want to briefly talk about ITS. It would seem that we have the perfect example of a panopticon, in which people who are stuck in an environment are subjected to surveillance which ultimately leads to self discipline on part of the individuals because they regulate their own behavior due to knowing that they are being watched. Some scholars argued that reality shows are not really a relevant material to apply the concept of panopticon because the purpose, in order for the show to be entertaining, is that the participants shouldn't self regulate their behaviors and should act as if the cameras are not there. I think the debate here is more complex, but I'm not going into that. My purpose is to talk about ITS because I think we do have a case of clear self regulating behavior in a situation of surveillance. There are staff in charge of the cameras, on top of motion-activated cameras positioned throughout the space, including the bedrooms, which creates permanent visibility (with the exception of bathrooms). The idea in the panopticon concept is that there is no need to use force, mere observation is enough because eventually it serves its purpose which is constraining the watched subjects.
In one of the papers I read about these concepts, there's this idea that ''in a context of neoliberal theories of surveillance society, citizens have internalized surveillance''. This can be seen in how I personally believe the BTS members behaved throughout the two seasons. They self-monitored mostly in terms of the topic discussed, or more precisely, what they left out. They did that because they knew that this was content for their fans who are accustomed to a certain image. For example, no talks about their personal regular life, despite this being a topic regularly encountered in other Korean shows. This is also connected to their position as idols who are not in a position to share that much to the audience. I would say that one of the few examples (if not the only one) in which there was no self regulating behavior was in Season 1 when Jimin and Jungkook were drunk, played around and eventually broke a mosquito net in one of the rooms, despite the presence of surveillance.
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Another concept that I want to use is that of synopticon (Mathiesen, 1987) in which the many watch the few, and not the other way around, and that is because of the mediated environments. This can be applied to ITS as well, because the material is also surveilled by the audience who becomes an active participant by reusing and analyzing the material, what Hybe calls derivative works. This is a concept that is best applied to live streams, which was a major means of communication with the fans for many years and still is, but to a lesser degree currently. In that same paper, the author makes a point about how surveillance takes place through the intimate-self revealing in reality tv, which produces ''intimacy surveillance''. A Vlive is a combination of types of surveillances and one of the most fascinating media contents that I'm discussing today. In a Vlive, the subject self-regulates their behavior in the synopticon because millions of people are watching the few, or just one, in most cases. At the same time, there is also regular surveillance made by staff who are not only monitoring the behavior of those who watch the subject (surveillants themselves), but also the actual subject. The outside monitoring became more apparent in the pandemic Vlives. In the old ones, we have a different situation. Despite the all multiple sources monitoring, including the self regulating behavior, the subjects would sometimes have slip ups, because they weren't capable of completely regulating their behavior because of external factors. One example would be a Vlive from 2016 in Osaka where Taehyung went to Jungkook's room, without him knowing he would be immediately put in a position of monitoring his self. What we end up seeing is an attempt at trying to regulate his behavior according to what would be appropriate to show and talk about on camera.
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The way the diary vlog was created was through a combination of ITS surveillance and intimacy surveillance more typical of a Vlive. We have multiple cameras inside the car, the subject has a handheld camera with himself and he's also filmed by two other staff members. This is a combination of regular surveillance and self-surveillance. How does this affect the behavior of the subject, in the context of a diary vlog? Jungkook has one way of exercising his power though self-filming, but he's also in a constant state of self-discipline and surveillance of himself, as this comes from the inside, not the outside, due to the internalized self-regulating behavior because he knows he is going to be watched in the future. The format of the vlog is supposed to create intimacy, as this is its main purpose which they try to achieve in several ways: the other staff who are monitoring are not shown, but their presence is made known because Jungkook talks to them. The subject also addresses his audience – Army – contributing to the illusion of intimacy.
What is the most fascinating aspect of this vlog are the captions added by Jungkook. He tries to present a disciplined image of himself, while at a later date, through the use of captions written by him during editing, he points out the irregularities in the attempt at self discipline, with comments such as ''Why are you lying?'' ''How many times are going to repeat that word?'' and so on. The questions that arise here are if by adding the captions, does this mean the subject points out the artificiality and brings into attention the idea that what we see is self-regulated behavior because of its surveillance nature, or do the captions end up being just another part of the self-regulating behavior? Can it be argued that both things are happening, but at different moments in time? Jungkook is automatically moderating his behavior in real time during the time of filming because he is being ''watched'' (filmed), but he also makes an attempt at further moderating his behavior after he makes the surveillance himself, when he looks at the material in the editing process. He tries to artificially add remarks about what he sees as behavior that needs to be corrected. This is tied to the image he has of himself, which is heighted when he is in charge of dissecting and choosing what he shows to the audience. In a context of constant surveillance from multiple sides, the surveillance made by fans is one of utmost importance.
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The last aspect that needs to be discussed is why does the audience have a fascination with surveillance material? It could be because it gives them the illusion of being able to see something private, of comparing their own reality to what they see on the screen. The audience is ultimately a voyeur who gets the chance to ''feel'' close to the subject they are monitoring in a content based on intimacy surveillance. Jungkook's vlog is not fascinating due to the camping activities, but because the audience is there to monitor the subject, not the activity. They get another chance to have a glimpse at his behavior, his quirks, the way he talks, the way he looks, even if what he says it's not that interesting (this also applies to the audience that watches a two hour Vlive of someone just talking, without saying anything that has a clear purpose, a free-flow monologue). The cult of personality is the one that makes the surveillance much more attractive to the audience.
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lunarsilkscreen · 14 days
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Large-Language Models and [Bleh]
I wanted to take a stab at understanding why LLMs have a tendency to output word soup. [Word Soup] is the creation of sentences, paragraphs, and entire articles as if the LLM was using [AutoComplete] like in your mobile device. As if it were playing [Let AutoComplete finish your sentence for you]. Like ppl on social media tend to play.
There's been analysis of the word output by authors, editors, and software developers that have suggested a few things. The first is that the LLMs tend to pull up a writer's template first. Something like [The Hero's Journey] or a [Style Guide] that gives a set of rules on how to write a professional looking and sounding document.
The output of the LLM matches about what you'd expect from a novice author or writer filling in those blanks. The idea is that; if the template says "You NEED to fill in these blanks." Then the LLM will fill in those blanks; even after it runs out of data doing so.
Essentially using [AutoComplete] rules after it runs out of information that matches. There's not something that says; "We can't fill in these blanks, we've run out of correlating data" it says "Go find the next set of closest correlating data to finish." Which might have a probability of like 10% of being correlated at all.
This mimics exactly what we'd expect from your typical search engine; which returns a list of data based on what the search engine expects the users are really trying to find. With the highest probability of being "correct" being at the top of the search results. At page 3+ being not as high as what was on the first page.
This is part of the reason why there's a skill-gap in how we think LLMs should work for your average user; and experienced individuals who know more accurately how the LLMs "think".
Because like a search engine; tailoring your search query will return results closer to what you're looking for in the case that it doesn't return what you were expecting at all.
This also means that Novices using an LLM should have an idea for what they're using it for. It can reliably return a website you're expecting; but if you're looking for a StackOverflow from several years ago (because every modern post is closed for being a [Duplicate Question] without referring to said duplicate) you need to know how to search approximate dates, expected key terms and hashtags.
I'd personally prefer something that returns a Wikipedia entry with further results to peruse. But I can see where there's demand for the "Give me what I want NOW." Veruca Salt type queries.
Honestly; Should the LLM return customized content as if it really did know everything? Because we tried that with Alexa "Here's what I found: [Thing tangentially related to the thing you asked about]."
I dunno.
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skulltopcomputer · 5 months
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I Have So Much To Say About Transmasc Jake English
Disclaimer: This is my opinion- I definitely don’t think you have to interpret Jake this way, both gender and character-wise. Also, this is just for fun (I swear). Although I am interested in working in the confines of canon for as much as possible, I'm not trying to "prove" Jake is transmasc, I'm sure Hussie wrote him as a cis man. Content warnings under read more.
Content warning for discussions of transphobia and misogyny (if I need to add anything else let me know).
Just for context, I believe Jake realized he was a boy very early in his childhood. Thematically, it would be most appropriate shortly after Grandma English dies, so basically, as long as he's been old enough to understand the concept of "gender", he has known he is a boy. (I have a lot of ways that I think transmasc Jake would interact with the text of Homestuck, but that's all you really need to know for this post).
Also I’m going to talk about “the narrative” a lot here, which I'm mostly using to mean the perceived author of Homestuck, that is, the person who writes the narration, controls who to focus on and how the plot plays out, etc. I say "the narrative" instead of "Hussie" because 1. Hussie is a literal character within the comic and I'm not referring to them there and 2. I don't think they intended everything I'm going to say "the narrative" pushes here, even if their vitriol towards Jake was very much deliberate. It's important to have a term for this as Hussie's background as the specific type of Internet Poster they were greatly impacts how Homestuck is written- in Jake's case, how the reader is made to perceive his character.
OK onto the actual analysis.
(One of) the whole point(s) of Jake is that he conceptualizes himself in certain ways that aren't reflected in the reality of his actions. Specifically, he thinks of himself as some grandiose, charismatic action hero, even though in reality he’s just kind of a nerdy teen who watches movies all day. There are many reasons he views himself that way, but most relevantly to this post he’s raised solely on media to influence his worldview, and therefore both consciously and unconsciously assimilates the roles of movie character archetypes onto how he thinks of real people. This is easily mapped onto Jake’s perception of himself as a “man”, as (most of) the men he knows are the rough-and-tumble, kick ass adventure type. He thinks that since these are traits of men, and since he is a man, he must inherently be that way as well- even though in actuality, he's done very little to show it.
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By the narrative’s standards, Jake makes a lot of mistakes as someone who wants to be considered a “man”. He idolizes female heroes alongside male ones (most likely influenced by Grandma English’s being his first model of what a hero should be), even going so far as to dress like them. He’s not ashamed of his attraction to men. In fact, he's open about his attraction to what the narrative considers to be abnormal (I know in the real world, an attraction to "blue women" would be regarded as incredibly tame, but considering what Homestuck considers a furry it's safe to say the standard of deviance is rather low. I think the emphasis on Neytiri is meant to accentuate Jake's affinity towards blue woman as "weird", especially as the narration highlights her nonhuman anatomy and she's repeatedly described as "furry"). The narrative punishes him for these traits, often in ironic ways. He is given a skimpy, uncomfortable, god tier outfit meant to objectify him (reminiscent of how women are objectified in the movies he likes), he messes up his relationship with Dirk so bad he convinces himself he's not attracted to anyone*, and he is embarrassingly awkward with the real-life blue alien girl he meets. Sincerity, especially among male characters, is often unforgivable to Homestuck.
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*To clarify, what I think is happening when Jake says he's not "capable" of romantic attraction is that he's trying to convince himself he can't feel attraction, because he doesn't want to have a relationship where he hurts people/other people hurt him that bad ever again. I don't think it's "wrong" to interpret him as aromantic, and I especially don't think aromanticism should be treated as a "punishment". I just don't think of him as such.
Jake’s whole SBURB adventure is the narrative repeatedly, humiliatingly tearing down Jake’s perception of himself by placing him into situations wherein he is shown to fail to uphold it, both internally to the characters and externally to the reader. The “charismatic” part of his persona is all but demolished in his conversations with Aranea, as well as his relationships with the Alpha kids in the void session. In the Game Over timeline while Gamzee is fighting Terezi, all Jake can bring himself to do is politely ask him to stop. His most damning blow comes in his confrontation with Crockertier Jane, as he fails twofold at what a “man” would do in his place- he doesn’t want to fight her, and he doesn’t want to have sex with her. His admission of “not wanting to be a man and not wanting to punch her in the face” at BGD’s pestering is the narrative finally succeeding at pressuring him into admitting he’s too weak for the standards of masculinity imposed on him, or put another way, that he’s not a "man” at all. (Relevantly, BGD functions as both a Dirk [a character praised for his adherence to masculinity] analogue and Jake’s internal monologue, proving Jake is aware and ashamed of himself in the moment and that he thinks his friends would most likely judge him too). Once the narrative has proven Jake has failed at the standards of masculinity, it forces him into what he, and the reader, would understand as positions typically held by female characters in media (objectifying him, assaulting him, etc.).
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Jake is often treated as “silly” and “stupid”, both outright and insidiously. He's the kid who grew up on an island, isolated from society, and therefore doesn't understand how the world "really" operates. He also shares Caliborn's unspecified "learning disorder", which in the narrative's terms, is just another reason he's out of touch. The more characters who think of him as stupid or ignorant, the more Jake's autonomy is diminished- how can he claim to know anything about his identity when he so disconnected from reality? Jake's continual crying falls into this too, as large displays of emotions are often conflated with stupidity, or at the very least irrationality.
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All of this is so resonant for me as a transmasc person, especially since Homestuck is so influenced by internet culture. I was never a forum goer but I did a lot of digital self harm on Reddit and the sentiment that transmasc people are stupid, fanciful, confused teen girls that only want to be men because they want to imitate characters in media is (was? I try not to go on Reddit anymore) very common in those types of spaces. (This is amplified if you read Jake as autistic [as I do] as the “confused autistic teen girl” is unfortunately a very prevalent transphobic stereotype). Anyone who did not live up to a very specific caliber of toxic masculinity (wearing only masculine clothes, being attracted exclusively to women, repressing grand acts of emotions, etc.) was labeled as faking, and often subject to misogynistic harassment. I hope by now you can see how this connects to Jake.
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(One of the reasons) why John's conversation with Jake in Act 6 Act 6 is so important to resolving his character is that John shows Jake that there's more than one way to be a man. John introduces a new type of masculinity to Jake, that of a "side kick", evidently referencing Robin, as he contrasts this archetype with "bat man". He recontextualizes his outfit meant to objectify him as something this character would wear. Robin- and therefore this role of the "side kick"- is still very much a male character who is allowed to be male even though he's goofy instead of a chiseled, emotionally repressed paradigm of masculinity. Jake shows a lot of joy at inhabiting this idea.
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In summary, transmasc Jake is an extrapolation of the themes of how the narrative punishes Jake for not meeting the expectations of masculinity put upon him. There are other reasons why I view Jake as transmasc, but this is the most important one to me, as it's the most poignant. There are few stories that portray the experience of growing up on the internet, fewer specifically with a transmasculine lens, and even fewer that discuss the hardships of doing so in both cases. Ironically, the narrative's contempt towards Jake made for a more realistic, and therefore more evocative, experience for me.
Of course, not all transmasc people are going to view it that way, so please don't generalize. I like seeing negative experiences reflected in media, but not all people do. Also, I don't want to give Hussie credit for all of this- some (probably most) of what I talked about was legitimately intended to be bigoted, or at least rooted in bigoted assumptions. Homestuck is a text you should read critically, as it is embedded in its author's history, for the better and for the worse.
This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg concerning both transmasc Jake and especially Jake analysis in general so hopefully more posts to come. Also, despite the fact I didn’t go into them much as characters in this post, know I am a staunch Jane and Dirk defender (crockertier Jane is not really representative of Jane and BGD is not really representative of Dirk. I also don't think Jake is perfect or anything). They are also both transmasc but that's a post for a different day.
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I feel like the reason some fandoms get so hostile and cannibalize each other over ship wars and callout chains is that they’ve stalled their “complex media analysis” growth.
I mean think about it. Most kid’s shows deal with pretty simple concepts like “sharing is good!” and “lying is wrong!”, very black and white takes on very easy-to-understand issues. There’s some notable exceptions, especially in more teen-focused media (ATLA being a prime example for genocide and the complex reality of war,) but generally speaking everything is surface-level escapism with easy morals.
Compare that to more “adult” media and the mindset is wildly different. The themes are way more complex, the morals are grayer and blurrier, there’s symbolism and metaphors and all that good deep-level stuff.
Crucially, though, the latter requires you to engage with it beyond observation.
If you’ve been in online fandom spaces, especially on (shudder) Twitter, you’ve seen the damage of “the curtains were just blue!” So many people just refuse to engage with media beyond the surface level. Everything is escapism, because what other purpose do stories serve? And in that mindset, anything complex or gray means you support those actions and ideas, because you’re escaping to a world where this happens. Media is supposed to turn your brain off for a bit, not force you to grapple with the horrors of our society and question the views you uphold. Analysis is to find the One True Interpretation and lord it over everyone else.
In case you couldn’t tell, that last bit was sarcastic.
So you have a bunch of people only looking at the surface level and only engaging with the material as entertainment, as something you watch for fun and nothing else.
This isn’t to say this is all of fandom - for my fellow good omens fans, please keep analyzing every second for more devastating fascinating details. But I’ve seen enough secondhand complaints from people I follow and screenshots to know this is a real issue for a lot of online fandoms.
No, a character doing a Bad Thing does not inherently mean the author/creator supports the bad thing. Yes, even if the protagonist does it.
Neither characters nor real people are purely good or evil. Stop trying to make that true, it never will be.
On that note, sometimes very nice-looking people do horrible things and still act nicely to others. Sometimes people who seem very cold are the kindest you’ll ever meet. First impressions are not the full picture, in fiction or reality.
(Abusers are very, very good at seeming like such nice people to everyone else.)
Yeah, some stories are just brainless entertainment. But you should still be critical - actually critical, not criticizing, there’s a huge difference - of what you see and what you think. Sometimes it IS that deep. And writers love when you notice the breadcrumbs! It means they did their jobs well :)
If you’re not sure where to start, try stuff like this:
What visuals or ideas are repeated? Could it be a symbol or motif?
Why does this action seem “out of character?” Is there anything from their past/background that might provide context to what they did? (Tbf, this one can just as easily be “we don’t care about continuity, this is a Marvel movie”)
What is the arc for this character? How do they change or evolve? Alternatively, why don’t they change?
What real-world issues could this be a proxy for? What does it say about the creator’s views?
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dekusleftsock · 2 years
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Random observation (and take as long as you need in replying) but I've noticed that people often treat main characters like self inserts, even if that main character has a clearly defined personality. In general, people tend to project onto main characters a lot, making it more difficult to evaluate a main character's psychology. Like, a lot of people call main characters vanilla even if that person has a clearly defined personality and flaws of their own. At this point, I feel vanilla has just been boiled down to describe any character you don't like... I feel like it's particularly unfitting when people call Deku a vanilla character. If they stopped projecting and looked at his actual personality, they'd see that he has tons of personality. You know what I mean?
YES! Oh good fucking god yes this is so common.
I feel like there’s two sides to this. Like, sometimes an author sacrifices the possibilities a main character may react (like ryota from kakegurui) in order to make them more relatable. Their arcs are usually very simple, like getting more powerful or better at the thing. (like gambling or winning over the girl) The women who might be the deuteragonist or simply just a supporting character to the mc may even be more interesting, because the point is for men to project onto the mc so that they can be with “sexy” women or “feel powerful.
That being said… most media outside of a few genres DO MAKE interesting mc. Which is why projecting onto those mc by sharing your own experiences while talking about them (yes I know I’m guilty too, never said I was perfect sidhosjdo) sometimes just doesn’t make sense. They may have relatable ideas but they are not inherently made to be relatable. Sometimes it’s just the authors own personal issues made into a character, or even interesting traits that they like.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, all analysis has bias. Maybe my opinions on Izuku’s anger issues are projection because I too have anger issues. Sometimes bias actually helps us understand characters more because, hey, maybe I’m actually right about it!
I’m confident in my opinions ofc, but while being critical about your pov is important, people sometimes read things differently. There’s no real problem with that so long as it isn’t like, ungodly bad opinions.
There’s some things though that should NOT be read in a different way. For example, the matrix is actually an allegory for being transgender, but because of mainstream media that allegory has been erased.
It solely depends on if you are erasing diversity and importance to that story, or if it is something that could be counted as an HC. (Adding onto canon content that is not exactly specified)
Mis characterization often comes into play because of that bias and our inherent need to project our own feelings onto a character. We have to be aware of that and be able to still look at a character and their relationship to others with a critical eye.
I may not ENJOY todo//deku, just, personally, but that doesn’t mean I can’t APPRECIATE IT for what it is. They have chemistry, a personal and interesting relationship/dynamic overall. I should and do give credit to them for that.
Getting past our biases within analysis is just, so important in trying to look for both the authors intention and the overall message.
So my just, overall take on this is self reflection. Questioning WHY you think something and then estimating on the likelihood in which that evidence indicates the conclusion you believe. If it’s for morals sake, especially when it contradicts the story’s messge, (unless it’s something like genuinely terrible ofc, like use your brain lol) then yeah. It probably is projection.
I’m kinda just tired of people not understanding which parts of their opinions are their bias and which is based in logical evidence.
So, FOR REFERENCE TO ANYONE READING THIS: your personal OPINION of a character is your BIAS, and what they’ve done is your EVIDENCE.
Example:
I think that Izuku is boring.
Vs
Izuku is perceived to be boring BECAUSE he is not as relatable.
ITS ABOUT EVIDENCE! AND LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS! DIDNT WE ALL LEARN THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD????
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lindwurmkai · 1 year
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When I was rambling about my blorbos the other day, I described something as "kinky from a meta perspective" and I think that's an important concept to understand
Like, let's say a character is being restrained and actively trying to escape. In-universe, there's nothing kinky about that because no one is engaging in BDSM pretend-play here. It's real. It's not consensual. But you know who is in fact engaging in pretend-play?
We, the audience. And, regardless of whether they were thinking of it as kinky or not at the time, everyone who contributed to the creation of the story such as writers, directors, actors etc.
Unlike actual BDSM roleplay, we're all doing this separately. Each person involved in the creative process, as well as each viewer/reader, may have completely different interpretations and intentions, some of them perfectly innocent. We're not all doing an actual scene together, gods forbid.
But nevertheless, it's still pretend. It's still play. You can absolutely describe a character's experiences as kinky even though they do not engage in literal kink in-universe.
And when you're reading something where you know the author wrote it that way on purpose, as is often the case with fanfic, it is a little bit as if you consented to letting them help you RP in your head the moment you saw the tags and summary and decided to start reading.
The characters aren't people. They're neither consenting nor not consenting because they're not doing anything. They're being described for your benefit, in this act of pretend-play between you and the author. Which is why it does not matter if consent is sometimes not made explicit between the characters, and why you're not a bad person if you enjoy a story where kinky shit happens despite a glaring lack of pre-scene negotiation.
Now, can such things be jarring to encounter unexpectedly? Sure. It feels especially bad when you get the sense that the author had no idea they were describing an unhealthy dynamic. Yuck. And of course, explicit consent can greatly improve a story! More people should write about healthy, realistic kink imho.
But if you can understand that some people enjoy roleplaying things like being restrained against their will, then perhaps you can also understand that reading about characters being restrained against their will is essentially the same process?
I didn't get it until a few years ago tbh. This roleplaying analogy suddenly came to me one day and finally I understood how people could enjoy things that always broke my immersion. By now I even enjoy a number of these things myself. 🤷🏻‍♂️
And when it comes to visual media, hoo boy. That's on a whole other level. The kinky atmosphere of the scene can affect you before you've had time to get a single thought in. Maybe, on rewatch, you'll even be convinced that the director and at least one of the actors knew exactly what they were doing. It's fine to have fun with stuff like that!
I feel like this can be a difficult concept to wrap one's mind around, even if you don't have my unfortunate tendency to take things too literally combined with lack of education about media analysis. I got there eventually, but I regret the judgemental thoughts I used to have before I understood.
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a-moth-to-the-light · 2 years
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What is Valid Criticism of J-Hope's "More"?
For a few years now, I've been following a k-pop review blog called TheBiasList, and I really enjoy its content. Through my time as an avid follower, I've come to understand that Nick, the author, takes a very specific approach to reviewing music, one which stays pretty consistent throughout all of his reviews. Nick's focus is sonic: viewing a song as a product of production and vocals (read: sound) rather than as a product of writing, or visuals, or album direction. I really respect the focus of Nick's approach, and over the years, TheBiasList has introduced me to songs that I, as someone who prefers to focus on album direction, never would have paid much attention to otherwise.
In the comments under TheBiasList's review of J-Hope's "More", a war began when a few commenters, likely upset about the mid-7's score Nick gave the song, stressed that Nick should have focused on the lyrics instead. One commenter actually left their own criticism of the lyrics in the comments, after which they were harangued by the same commenters from before about not appreciating the music video enough. The criticism of criticism made by these commenters is frustrating to me because the viewpoint offered, in my mind, encourages a lack of variance in the way we look at media.
In literary criticism, there's this concept of critical lenses; basically, these are ways of approaching a text--instead of trying to take in every idea a text has to offer at once, you use a lens to focus your study. For example, I studied Hamlet through a feminist lens while my classmates took on other lenses, like psychoanalytical & Marxist. Some texts certainly lend themselves to different lenses; for example, the Webtoon The Remarried Empress provides ample opportunity for feminist analysis because of its central heroine(s) & focus on women's capability (and lack thereof) to maneuver within a patriarchal system, but opportunity to find evidence for an interpretation through the lens of queer theory is much smaller. That being said, I can do (and have done) analyses of The Remarried Empress through both of these lenses, and I don't think it's reasonable to say that only understanding a work through the most obvious lenses that can be applied to it is valid--I think both of my interpretations of the Webtoon are equally interesting, and my thoughts on the story would be much less interesting without the combination of both.
This brings us back to J-Hope. I completely understand the emphasis these commenters place on the lyrics; BTS themselves have frequently directed our attention to the stories told by their songs, and rap is generally a lyric-focused style of music, anyway. That being said, "More" is heavy on sonic experimentation, too, most noticeably with the garage-rock turn the chorus takes, so there is certainly material to work with when looking at the song from a sonic perspective. Rather than choosing to focus on sound because of some lack of intelligence, I consider it to be an artistic choice on the part of TheBiasList, one that adds to the lyrical and visual analyses done by others rather than detracting from them.
In conclusion: I don't think criticism through the most directly applicable lens of interpretation should be the only criticism respected. TheBiasList has a long history of offering criticism through a sonic lens, and I think it's wrong to say that Nick's look at "More" is invalid because of that. Like I mentioned earlier, I personally am more of an artistic vision enjoyer; I love strong concepts and cohesive discographies that tell a story, and I choose many of my favorite songs and albums based on this. As a result, my taste doesn't always overlap too much with Nick's, but I still find the criticism on TheBiasList to be an extremely valuable supplement to my thoughts on music. I think there's a lot to appreciate about it, so I hate to see cruel comments that step all over what I think makes the blog so wonderful in the first place.
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