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hydr0logicoutlook · 6 months

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How many books did you read this year? not sure, I didn't keep track until like october unfortunately. But 70+

Did you reread anything? What? I reread Lirael/Sabriel/Abhorsen by Garth Nix which I've read like 4 or 5 times. my favorite YA fantasy of all time

What were your top five books of the year? Top 17 in no particular order:

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepnzna-Samarasinha The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Matthews Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner Old Enough by Haley Jakobson Chlorine by Jade Song The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz Love by Toni Morrison

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? Yes I read two books by Ruth Ozeki and loved both. I also got more into David Graeber, I read Debt and Bullshit Jobs at the end of last year and really enjoyed The Dawn of Everything this year.

What genre did you read the most of? Hard to say since again I didn't keep track of everything and I haven't used goodreads in a couple years lol bc its owned by amazon but I would say leftist/leftist leaning nonfiction, contemporary fiction written by women and queer people, and fantasy/magical realism.

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? So much lol. But the oldest books on my tbr are No Touching by Ketty Rouf, Nature is a Human Right by Ellen Miles, Overtime by Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis, Ecrits by Jacques Lacan, and New Animal by Ella Baxter

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? Did not have any but I read way more than I have since I was in high school so I'm so happy about that!

Did you get into any new genres? I hadn't read a lot of magical realism (non heavy fantasy) that I'd really enjoyed before.

What was your favorite new release of the year? The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, or All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Matthews

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read? Geek Love by Katherine Dunn I think was the oldest book I read this year that I really liked. Or People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is also a strong contender. Or Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag. Or Love by Toni Morrison.

Any books that disappointed you? While I really enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and I would recommend it, I do think it has been somewhat overhyped and failed to live up to my expectations in some respects. I also did not enjoy Venco by Cherie Dimaline as much as I wanted to, given the premise is like a perfect intersection of things I enjoy in books. Try Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson instead, or the Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix for similar vibes but way more enjoyable.

What were your least favorite books of the year? I usually DNF books I don't like so hard to say for sure. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder was really not my vibe. I wasn't really surprised because I couldn't stand her previous book about the mermaid(?) but I did like her So Sad Today stuff. I also liked Norwegian Wood exactly as much as I was expecting to, which was, not very much. I've also decided I don't really enjoy reading short story collections.

What books do you want to finish before the year is over? I am currently reading My Tiny Life by Julian Dibbel and Fossil Capital by Andreas Malm, both of which are very dense and I have kind of been sloughing through. Both are super interesting though so hopefully I finish them by the end of the month instead of just reading fiction which I read way faster.

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them? I just looked at the lists for all the awards listed here and literally the only book I read was Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldor which was nominated for best novel at this years Hugo awards LOL. I added some other ones to my tbr though. I thought it was fun but nothing incredible! I'll read the sequels (my standard of quality for fantasy is a lot lower than other genres lol)

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? Def Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin even though it WAS really good!

Did any books surprise you with how good they were? Yes I was not expecting to enjoy Pageboy by Elliot Page as much as I did! Really well done celebrity memoir. Also I was worried that Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz would just be about stuff I already knew but it was actually super interesting and went down a bunch of rabbit holes I didn't know a ton about and had great analysis.

How many books did you buy? Way too many. But mostly very cheap on Thriftbooks!

Did you use your library? Oh boy, you wouldn't even believe.

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations? I was very excited for README.txt by Chelsea Manning and it did not disappoint (yes it came out in 2022 but I took a second to get to it okay). I also had The Free People's Village by Sim Kern on hold way before it came out and I really enjoyed it!

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama? no lmao. i watched a couple youtube videos about tiktok book drama and it was the stupidest shit ive ever seen

What’s the longest book you read? Probably Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. I did listen to it on audio which is the only way I am really able to get through books that long. The longest book I read with my eyes was probably The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki.

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book? This is a silly question bc I read some pretty short books. Several books under two hundred pages only took me a few hours.

Did you DNF anything? Why? so much stuff i can't even explain

What reading goals do you have for next year? Keep reading at the pace I am now! and hopefully keep track of the books this time, but not feel pressured to share about books im reading if I don't want to

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yanagibayashi · 2 years

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here's the lowdown on how i feel about the twenty-five twenty-one ending: art should have the grace to not be punitive towards its audience for reading the signs set up by the creator and reading them well. the idea that life is sometimes punitive / youth is fleeting / the times force us into change as an abstract concept belies the fact that these punishments, short of natural catastrophe and illness, are usually the result of decisions and systems that are inflicted upon us by each other. forcing an agenda so ripe with moralism about Adulthood and Time and RealismTM onto a story regardless of its organic development beyond your pen is just not good writing.

why do we write stories? is it to reinforce an idea or is it to create a narrative that demonstrates this idea and does it in a coherent fashion? either way, what is the narrative purpose of mimicking a realism which is itself forcibly wrought? you can say that "life doesn't have to make sense", yes, sure, alright, but fiction does!!!! it really does have to!!!

also, on a personal note, i adored every single microsecond of this show up until the middle of episode 15. thereon out it just felt like the most abjectly didactic narrative, where the tonal shifts did not match the character development. all that love, all that communication, all that perseverance, all of hee-do's commitment to her career, all of it just dissipated with a whimper. i don't really even think its necessary for us, as viewers living through the real horror of covid, which cut short so many lives and so many dreams and relationships and friendships and ambitions and desires, to be so patronizingly reminded that life is transient and fickle and fleeting. i wont even apologize for feeling that bitterness as though we were owed a better story. moralistic fiction is like the most patronizing genre ever. it felt like being back in elementary school with an old teacher who used to tell kids not to cry after making them cry because "real life will not pay attention to you crying". buddy you are the real life! constantly, every single day, we have the choice to make a different decision.

literally, i am not even as mad about baekdo not working out as much as i am about the terribly shallow and dismaying arcs we see the friendships in this drama go through. yes, friendships do dissolve irl, but at the very least they could have done a show instead of doing a tell. time jumps are lazy writing! time jumps are just plain lazy writing! show the dissolution of a relationship by setting up the dissolution for the viewer to experience instead of narrativizing it like a whiplash for no sensible reason. show a friendship trailing away instead of telling it like a bad, cynical story at the funeral of a character no one cares about because no one ever saw him exist. show hee-do's interest in fencing waning instead of just a random conversation with her coach in the old school building! literally everyone died at the end of mr. sunshine but the plot made it all make sense because that's how the story was set up. what we get here, instead, is the viewer being flung out of the tone of the drama almost as though in punishment for having the audacity to believe that a healthy, supportive, communicative love would overcome the ordinary barriers of distance and "the times". if this was going to be a drama about how "the times" broke them apart, like, again, how mr. sunshine went, they shouldve set it up from the start instead of the bulk of the present-day scenes resembling a quasi-reply 1997/1994/1988 plot!

that's it. that's all. i am so done with this particular brand of creators who insist upon reinforcing the fact that life will disappoint you in a perfectly good story that seems to be leading up to the idea that sometimes life also won't. buddy, ok, tell a world living through covid times that life will disapppint us, but you don't have to! they don't even have to end up together!!! but just write a story that makes sense!!!!

#twenty five twenty one #2521

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peachymess · 3 years

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what's the reason you like Freddy Krueger enough to list him as one of your favorite villains? do you actually feel bad for him and think he didn't deserve what happened to him? or do you just think he's a well written character and that's why you enjoy him? i don't mean to nitpick but i think it's important for some of us to know the reason in order to determine whether your blog is a safe environment for CSA victims/survivors or not. i mean no disrespect i just feel like context here is key.

I grew up with his movies. It wasn’t about the backstory or the deeper analysis - just like with Friday the 13th and Psyko and all of those. Freddy was just another horror movie monster who killed people in whacky ways for me and to be honest, I neither remember, nor ever really cared about where he came from. He was just a dream-monster man to me, who gives me nostalgia today.

Only later in life did I read that Wes Craven initially intended for Freddy to be a predator - something which was dropped and turned to “just” a child killer (emphasis on killer) due to an at the time current criminal case going on in America.

I know they brought the initial backstory back for the reboot, but I neither knew about it as a kid, nor do I consider it as canon for those original movies, since it wasn’t at the time. Though, that isn’t to say that I’m not uncomfortable with this additional bit of the story of the making of him. I am, very much so. But I keep my fondness for those old time movies separate from the knowledge of where this figure came from, because I don’t want my memories tainted.

As far as I knew growing up with the movies, he was a dream-monster who would bleed into the real world to try and kill you with whacky practical effects just because. Me being very big on dreams only made it cooler. It was my father who introduced me and my brother, and when we were growing up he’d make this goofy sound effect and open his hand as if he had a clawed glove on, and pretended to stab us in the guts - to our laughing delight. Freddy bleeds into a father figure for me (which, yes, made me even more grossed out and sad when I read about the franchise beginnings). I never had the heart to tell him where the idea for Freddy started, he doesn’t know.

It was a mark of pride and achievement when he declared that we were old enough to watch this and that volume. It also was a bonding experience that I appreciate, because he’d tell us about him watching it with friends, how he’d scare them afterwards and what practical effects he admired the most.

So yeah... I remember the franchise fondly, though not the details of the story. Learning later that there was an extra malicious backstory made me very uncomfortable, but I view that aspect as separate to the goofy practical horror movie childhood I had and cherished.

Of course I don’t appreciate Freddy as a person. And of course I don’t condone what he did - in any version of his character. But it is as I said in my lengthy villain post - how much I look at morals in fiction, depends on how much I’m invested in its realism. A nightmare on Elm street isn’t something I take very seriously (unlike real life CSP, as I can think of no worse thing).

The big mistake I have made, though, is not taking into consideration that others don’t have the same relationship to those old movies as I do. I have also taken for granted that not everybody sees those pop culture horror icons - Freddy, Jason, Myers, Leather-face, Pinhead, etc - as lightheartedly as their constant referrals in pop culture makes it seem like everyone does. I forgot to consider that even fiction that I consider “not deep/meant to be taken seriously” can still trigger. And I’m sorry for that ignorance on my part. I’m sorry for not prefacing Freddy on the list with some sort of explanation to easy those of you who look at Freddy and only see that. It simply did not occur to me, and that embarrasses me.

Now, I won’t lie. The A nightmare on Elm street franchise will always mean a lot to me, regardless of how others see it. Even regardless of whether that makes you uncomfortable with me or not. I cannot undo the impact it had on me growing up. And I will not censor that fact here. If I for some reason want to talk about it or reblog a gif set of it at some point, I will. I still have to be true to me. I know my own intentions. I just want you to know that.

However, I WILL tag Freddy from now on. I’m always open to receive tag requests. Always! And I’m very appreciative of inquiries like these, rather than people assuming things and holding those ideas in their mind as fact without asking. So thank you for asking, anon.

I hope that can give you some ease - or in the very least clarity in where to place me.

#Freddy Krueger #a nightmare on elm street #tw csa

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musicallisto · 3 years

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without fail tag

THE “WITHOUT FAIL” TAG — List five things that you, WITHOUT FAIL, weave into or explore in your stories, whether it be specific themes or tropes, character archetypes, allusions to other literary works, what have you! It really can be anything that you consistently include in your narratives for whatever reason. Then invite others to share theirs by tagging them!

I was tagged by @deadlymodern - thank you so much for tagging me, this tag is amazing and I loved reading your answers! I can tell you have a very thorough approach to your writing & themes, it’s so cool!

(tagging people at the bottom of the post if you want to skip)

1. flowers, skies & words

grouping them together since they're all related to a wider, general literary device: symbols and allegories in my stories. Without fail, I’ll always use flower symbolism to evoke certain themes, places, characters... withered petals for death, blossoms for youth, you name it, it’s probably been in one of my stories. just consider my main WIP’s title, The Grave of Roses (Le Tombeau des Roses). It’s a little basic, and has been used time and time before in literature, but I still love it.

Other elements that often make it into my stories as symbols are planes (because I love aviation obviously, but also as a symbol of breaking free, independence, of man’s domination on mortality, what with having tamed the skies, but also his frail condition and how everything hangs on a thread). Also, the sky is pretty.

And lastly, words, stories, novels always have their place in my stories, and more often than not one of my characters is a writer, or someone who uses words and stories as some kind of comfort, outlet, or a driving force.

At its [the tombstone] foot, below the name, red roses piled up, enough of them to cover ten graves. A single vermilion bud, a wind-swept poppy, clashed with the rest of the bouquet, and Samuel knew that it was William's children who had placed it there. Only they knew that he didn't even like roses anymore, and that he would come to lay poppies on his father's memorial every time he returned to London...

The tomb was both smaller and prettier than Samuel imagined, less opulent than England would have wanted to give its precious child. The morning sun, like a caress, illuminated the epitaph, a Latin verse that Samuel had known in the past. “Bury me southward,” he heard William say so clearly that he almost turned around, "so that I can look at England and France in the same breath." His name, however, was drenched in full light, facing east, and inexplicably this saddened Samuel.

“And there it is... it's pretty, don't you think? I don't know if he would have liked it... You probably know it better than I do...”

“And why do you care about that, huh? You don't even believe in God.” “He's a writer. He believes in symbols.” “He believes in vanity, alright.”

“I think he would have liked it anyway,” he nodded in agreement, his eyes glued to the lonely poppy. (Translation)

2. parental roughnesses

this was bound to come, because I feel like we were all pretty fucked up at some point in our lives from our upbringing. I didn’t go for straight up “parental issues” because I don’t deal with like, abusive or absent parents or anything, just complicated relationships between parents and their children, but who still love each other. Oftentimes it has to do with one of the children idealizing the heck out of their parent and slowly realizing that they make mistakes and are not a hero at all, and/or unmeetable expectations and parental pressure. but it’s not like I’m projecting or anything lol

“You never knew Father, William,” Grace stopped him immediately [...]. “Don't you dare pretend you know what it's like.”

“Growing up without a father is not necessarily better than losing him in childhood! Everyone here has suffered from his disappearance, Grace. You have no idea how much I miss him, despite never meeting him. But that's all in the past now. And there's no reason for there to be another war.”

“Of course there is!” she retorted ferociously, despite the tears spilling from her eyes. “Of course there is, and they're going to send you there like Father, and you'll want to play hero like Father, and then you'll get shot down like a dog! Where's it going to be this time, huh? Above Luxembourg, just like him, or maybe somewhere in your beloved France?” (Translation)

3. patriotism

One way or another, all my stories always deal with patriotism, nationalism, pride in one’s country and more broadly speaking one’s relationship to it. It questions what it means to belong to a country, to share one culture, one language; does it justify acting in the benefit of one’s country, and where do you draw the line before you intentionnally harm others’; what even is a country, a nationality, and it what sense do you belong to one, and what do you owe it, if you even owe it anything? Is it wrong or right to feel love and attachment to your place of origin? And what does it mean to fight for your country, for its values, for its people? & other things of the like. It probably stems from my own experience as a binational person; growing up, I was always asked stuff like “but who do you root for in a football game” “but are you like really French or not?” “if Spain and France got into a war what would you do?”, and this all lead me to question “am I more French or am I more Spanish - which one am I, and which one would others perceive me to be - do I need to pick a side? And how can I express my affection to these places that raised me both differently, without undermining the other - or others? can I still be proud of my heritage given the horrors my countries have committed in the past?”. I still haven’t found a definitive answer, so my writing is just me throwing trails out to the world and hoping I’ll figure it out someday. that’s why my stories often have a war setting; firstly I just love historical fiction, and secondly it’s the perfect backdrop for all these questions to unfold.

William laughed at the idea - he, a true Frenchman! It was a very silly thought. He may have loved what he had seen of Charlotte's country, but England was not to be ashamed of any other land, for it was the only one he would love until his last breath. (Translation.)

4. just a hint of supernatural

I love me a good ghost story, and I’m a fan of everything spooky, but what’s subtly spooky, and not the gory, in-your-face horror. This particular theme may have increased since I saw The Haunting of Hill House which completely OBLITERATED ME with how it uses the house and its ghosts to tell a story of family and trauma and memories... but I’ve loved ghost stories forever. Another piece that truly resonated with me was One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) by Gabriel García Márquez. It was my first dive into the world of magical realism and I didn’t make it out of there the same person I was when I entered. This one is not necessarily included in every piece without fail, because some are just too anchored in reality, but if it’s not a straight-up spirit or an otherworldly creature, I’ll always find a way to include an aspect of superstition, a myth, a legend, a tale from faraway that is neither proved nor disproved throughout the story. It truly adds to the atmosphere of the world, even in a very realistic and gritty setting, I believe.

I hear murmurs of legends among the soldiers. [...] One of those stories caught my attention, I must admit... It is not very special, nothing more than a children's tale, but I thought it was beautiful enough to please your Romantic soul. Some pilots speak of a cemetery, somewhere in the countryside north of London, which has something mystical about it, lost in the flowers that sway as far as the eye can see, in the calm rhythm of the wind, wrapped in the heady scent of eternal spring, and where the bravest warriors would go to rest forever, tired of their exploits and the continual explosions. No one knows exactly where it is or what to do to be buried there, but this beautiful image simply floats like a dream in the minds of many and, I confess, in mine as well since I first heard about it.

It is said that there only flowers dare to disturb the heroes in their sleep... This fragment of silence is called the Grave of the Roses.

So if I were to leave you, if you were to hear that I am gone...

With a bit of luck, that is where you will find me.

5. love

this one is broader and less obvious than you might think. Of course, I’ll always, always implement an element of romance to my story (and more often than not it’s angsty with star-crossed lovers or insurmountable obstacles or forbidden romances and whatnot), but there’s more to it. I don’t think I have ever written a story that is entirely grim and bleak, simply because I do not believe the world is built like that. I’ve said time and time again that love is my favorite thing in the world, and I believe it is the force that drives us all forward and connects us all together; love is, to me, the truest power of humanity, and its inherent purpose. And love covers all subjects and all types of relationships, but my absolute favorite ways to explore and show love in my stories is through long-lasting, rock-solid friendships (because friendships are often overlooked both in fiction and real life), and just a grandiose love letter to humanity as a whole. I’m an optimist, and many people who have suffered more than I have would deem me naive for thinking this - and I cannot blame them -, but as Anne Frank put it more bravely than I ever could, “despite everything, I still think humans are good at heart”. My stories are always born out of love and made for love. For the love of humanity and kindness and literature and love of myself, too, because sometimes I just like rereading the words and thinking, “wow, I’ve made it this far. look at me go.” In a word, yes, I would say that is what it boils down to; my work, but also what I hope my entire life and being will be. An ode to love.

“He admired you and truly loved you, you know. You were a good leader, I'm sure, and a good friend, above all.”

He thought she was going to put her hand on his shoulder, and prepared to bend to avoid it, but instead she came to rest on the polished marble of the tomb, which was already beginning to erode at the corners. The soft light bathed her hand, and Samuel's on the other corner, still resting above William's surname, the only thing he had been proud of from beginning to end.

“And I loved him too. I loved them all. If you only knew...”

well, I got carried away, as I always do when talking about my writing, but it made me miss it so much. I haven’t worked on any of my projects since literally October and I’m feeling the void rn. anyway, thank you again for enabling me to ramble about what I love most, Thais! and I’m tagging @softeninglooks, @lxncelot, @myriadimagines, @swanimagines & @randomfandomimagine + plus any writer who wants to talk about their marvelous work <3

#tag game #mywriting #long post #writing #ltdr

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shiros-boyfriends-are-pretty · 4 years

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Why I'm worried about the ATLA live-action series: A look at the importance of suspension of disbelief

*disclaimer: I am not a movie critic, have never studied animation or film-making, and have limited experience in acting. I am speaking from the perspective of a consumer*

I'm sure many of you have heard, they're making a live-action ATLA, and although I'm happy they have a lot of the original creative direction and will cast an entirely Asian cast, I'm still really worried about the medium.

Firstly, what made Avatar so great was its INCREDIBLE ability to balance heavy topics with pure whimsy! In between learning more about the trauma of the past and how it affects the future, we have fun moments like Sokka tripping balls on cactus juice or Iroh being a whole mood or Toph's amazing ability to laugh at everything somehow.

Animation, whether it is 2d or 3d, has the ability to bring in exaggerated and hilarious facial expressions, impossible contortions, gags, and strange movements, creating a type of humour hard to replicate in any other way. It provides a suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is defined by Wikipedia as, "an intentional avoidance of critical thinking or logic in examining something surreal, such as a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoyment". In ATLA, the audience can ignore the fact that physics in this world are unrealistic because it's a cartoon! All the jokes and animals add to the colour fantasy world, and it is all accented by the bending!! As a medium, animation can achieve with ease what actors rarely can: pure, unaltered whimsy. And for ATLA that is essential.

I'm not saying conveying that whimsy in live-action is impossible, but when the Baloo from the Jungle Book remake talks while looking ENTIRELY like a bear that could very much kill you, you get a MUCH different vibe than when Yogi Bear exists as an exaggeratedly unrealistic talking bear in his movie.

Let's take a deeper look at the Jungle Book.

The original movie, although full of the influence of its problematic origins and creative direction, was fun, with upbeat songs and interesting animal characters in an easily digestible format. On screen was only what was important for the viewer to understand the story, nothing overwhelming or distracting. The medium provided that suspension of disbelief. Animals can talk? Sure, go ahead! Hypnotic snake?? Add that right in. A human boy could survive for so long in the jungle?? Of course!! It's a fantasy.

But the live-action version, was borderline terrifying at moments. It's a gorgeous movie!! But I really don't think it was anywhere NEAR as fun to watch. Any talking of animals seemed jarring against their realistic depiction. The scene where Mowgli leaves the pack is so much more heartbreaking and sets a much sadder tone due to the realism and darkened lighting. King Louie's makeover as a grotesque gargantuan monstrosity haunts me to this day. It doesn't feel like a children's movie anymore, it feels like a weird attempt to get audiences to praise D*sney for having amazingly talented staff.

The whole movie was an impressive feat, but by spending so much time and money on realism they lost the heart if the story as it originally was, and created something completely distinct. Which isn't bad, per say, but in the pressure of realism it lost all the fun that made the original good.

A good counter-example is the Alice in Wonderland series of remakes, which i believe was the first live-action remake D*sney did(correct me if I'm wrong). They perfectly captured the off-kilter, whimsical air of the whole tale. But with Alice, suspension of disbelief was written into the story. She spends her whole time in Wonderland! A topsy-turvy off-putting new reality that tossed all known laws out the window. Realism had no place there to begin with, so creating a surrealist fever dream did the trick in suspending the audience's disbelief even through the live-action medium.

Avatar the Last Airbender is right in the middle of these two. It has the suspension of disbelief in both its fantastical elements and its animated medium. But it also is heavily influenced by meticulous study of real cultures and their myths.

I fear that the necessity to depict these worlds in a complete and accurate way will detract from the fairy-tale like aspects of the whole story if not done with IMMENSE consideration and care. They need to depict the amazing creatures in the story, have age-appropriate casting, write the characters with all the nuance of being REALLY young kids with the fate of their WHOLE WORLD in their hands. And on top of all of that, the suspenison of disbelief needs to be there!!! If they can follow in the Pokémon live action movie's footsteps and depict loveable creatures of the fantasy world, that could help balance it out, but the epic potential of the bending scenes in a live action format will likely push them to age up the characters and essentially turn it into almost another action movie, losing the beauty and nuance of the original.

That's not to say live-action has no place in the ATLA world! For example, the story of Avatar Kyoshi (video description here) is so heavy and dark that I don't think an animated cartoon would do her justice, because there is no place for the whimsy of ATLA in her story. She is arguably the most "yes murder" of all the known avatars, and her story is so action-movie-like that it would be a perfect candidate for a live-action medium (not to mention canon LGBTQ+ rep!!!)

I hope they can pull it off, but I really dont wanna put my faith that a live action medium won't turn ATLA too serious. They need to find a way to add whimsy and fantasy into the world to the same degree they add the realism necessary to pay respect to the influencing cultures, and though it isn't impossible, it will be difficult.

#atla #atla remake #avatar the last airbender #essay #analysis #atla analysis #writings #movie analysis #suspension of disbelief #in this essay i will

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dawnfelagund · 5 years

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So I just listened to your presentation about the Tolkien fandom - which is really good btw, very informative - and the point that transformational fanfiction is mostly female got me thinking (mainly bc in my experience fanfiction in general seems more female, I have knowingly read only three authors who identified as male). Do you think that's bc most fandoms have a distinct lack of fem characters, so fem writers have an incentive to write transformational fics that male writers don't?

Oh my, oh my this is such a good question that I fear I will not answer it as well as it deserves. But I’ll try!

(Here is the presentation mentioned in the ask, for anyone who wants context. Both video and text are available at the link.)

Why transformational fandom trends female is complicated and has been the subject of much discussion/debate since the advent of fanfic studies back in the early ‘90s. Early scholarship focused on women using fanfic to expand the original texts so that the better reflected the women/author’s own experiences, especially where emotions and relationships were concerned. From Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1991):

Fans want not simply internal consistency but also what Ien Ang has described as “emotional realism.” Ang (1985) suggests that Dallas fans viewed the program not as “empirically” true to real-world experiences of upper-class Texans but rather as “emotionally” true to the viewers’ personal lives…. (107)

Female readers entered directly into the fictional world, focusing less on the extratextual process of its writing than on the relationships and events. … The female reader saw her own “tacit inferences” as a legitimate part of the story …. Moreover, male readers tended to maintain the narrative’s pre-existing focus on a central protagonist, while female readers expressed a greater eagerness to explore a broader ranger of social relationships …. (108-9, citing David Bleich [1986])

Camille Bacon-Smith, author of Enterprising Women (also 1991) writes:

Fanwriters, like soap opera fans, want to see characters change and evolve, have families, and rise to the challenge of internal and external crises in a nonlinear, dense tapestry of experience. Whether because of innate qualities or socialization, women perceive their lives in this way, and they like to see that structure reproduced in their literature. The writing experience becomes one of participation in the lives of the characters. (64)

Jenkins and Bacon-Smith really established fanfic studies as we know it, so I include these ideas to show how foundational they are and, I believe, underlie more recent resistant/reparative motives. Underlying this early assumption is that mainstream media and literature doesn’t represent the experiences of women, so we have to create it ourselves. Hence what we’d now call transformational fandom: the shifting of authority onto the fanwriter to rework a fictional universe according to her own experience of reality. I think this holds true in Tolkienfic fandom, although it is more complex than the theories above (rooted in media, not book, fandom) suggest, in that my research shows that Tolkienfic authors engage in much more negotiation with canon details and (most importantly) Tolkien’s authority. In other words, they care about how to create that “emotional realism” but within the confines of the canon, which many would take to include Tolkien’s views, unstated in the texts, on the canon and even his moral prerogatives.

My sense is that there is a definite connection between the early ideas of women creating fanworks to see their realities and experiences represented in the fictional universes they love and the present-day idea of fanfiction as a form of resistant reading. (Here, I am perfectly willing to have my hand smacked by people better versed in fan studies history if I’m mangling or missing key pieces of the relationship between these two schools of thought. Just speak up.) Because part of the experience of being a woman is opening a history book and not seeing the lives of women represented or going to a film where women usually make up a minority of the cast (and are often cast into stereotyped roles). Part of our experience as Tolkien fans is coming to terms with our love of a book (LotR) where, to borrow the wince-inducing stat cited by Una McCormick, there are more named horses than women. (The Silmarillion fares better in terms of named women but still isn’t great, as I have argued elsewhere, in providing those named women with roles and agency equal to that of the men.)

(Here I’m going to focus on the Tolkienfic fandom. I know your question was broader than that, but I study the Tolkienfic fandom, and as a fan, I’m monofandom myself, so I’m hesitant to speak about the norms and practices in other fandoms, nor am I as familiar with their scholarship. Others with insights about other present-day fandoms, please do add on.)

Una McCormick has a fabulous essay in Perilous and Fair that positions Tolkienfic as a form of what she calls “reparative reading”:

The complexity of such reading and writing practices and the ambivalence of the creative labor involved in making repairs upon such texts have driven some women readers to find a presence for themselves in The Lord of the Rings through writing fanfiction as a creative-critical response to Tolkien’s text. By weaving female characters into the familiar narrative, or else focusing upon marginalized characters such as nurses, servants, and non-combatants, these authors write themselves–or those like themselves–into the events of the War of the Ring. (310)

Una is a fanfic writer herself and a Tolkien scholar, and her work is unique in this sense, because she is intimately familiar with the Tolkienfic community as a participant and also because she has written one of the rare fanfic studies pieces focusing exclusively on our fandom. However–and I don’t think Una would disagree–reparative reading is just a part of Tolkienfic fandom, so I don’t think it fully explains the “transformational is female” trend. It is certainly part of it. My survey data shows a strong interest among Tolkienfic authors; 78% agree that “Writing fan fiction lets me explore the perspectives of female characters.” (80% of readers “like reading fan fiction about female characters.”)

What is interesting is that there is not a big difference in how women and men respond to the statement “Writing fan fiction allows me to explore the perspectives of femalecharacters.” 78% of women agreed; 73% of men agreed. Where there is a significant difference: 90% of nonbinary survey participants agreed with this survey item. (It’s worth noting that the sample of men was small. Less than 4% of survey participants identified as male.)

I also feel that I have to note that, historically, Tolkienfic fandom has had contingents hostile to including women characters in Tolkien-based fanfiction. Many who started in the fandom when I did (mid-2000s) will remember when “OFC = Mary Sue” (itself a term that I find sexist since the number of scrawny, nerdy dudes who become superheroes in comics attests that adding a dose of Awesome to a whopping pile of Ordinary is not inherently deserving of derision), and many people avoided writing women characters because they were a flame magnet. Key to this piece of history, too, is that, in my experience, the detractors and bullies of creators who wrote about women? Were, like the rest of the Tolkienfic fandom, a majority women. This was not guys trying to preserve a boys-only treehouse in the canon; this was women policing other women’s production of fanfiction, often using the canon itself as a tool to do so.

It’s also worth noting that changes in fandom perception of women characters has been due to the concerted effort of fans to draw attention to sexism in the canon and in the fandom and to celebrate fanworks that feature strong women characters. @vefanyar‘s concept of the textual ghost is the prime example in my mind, in that she not only drew attention to the problems in the canon–simply scrolling through her Textual Ghost Project is a visually provoking experience–but the potential for fanworks creators to address those problems in the reparative way that Una McCormick identifies. @vefanyar, among others, has paired this work with the canon with a concerted, years-long effort to encourage and celebrate fanworks about Tolkien’s women, creating a climate where, finally, it feels like writing about women comes with more rewards than risks.

So. To conclude. I think that the scholarship, my data, and my own experience as a Tolkienfic author/archive owner points to an answer to “Why is transformational fandom overwhelmingly female?” in the context of Tolkienfic fandom, as: It’s complicated. Yes, some of us are working to address the inequality both in the number and quality of female characters in the canon. But as my presentation states, this is just a partial picture because Tolkienfic fandom is not fully transformational, and women are attracted to this fandom for reasons that have nothing to do with establishing gender parity in the canon. I earlier held up the stats of 78% of authors (and 80% of readers) enjoying fanfiction about women to suggest that there is an interest in telling women’s stories in the fandom, but I’d also say that the one in five not interested (or not sure if they’re interested) in stories about women aren’t insignificant. This is still a sizable contingent of the fandom, a majority of whom are women. The desire to produce transformational fanworks runs deep in women fans and may hearken back to Jenkins’ and Bacon-Smith’s broader ideas about women’s experiences, may suggest a difference in how girls/women are socialized, may reflect barriers to entering more affirmationally oriented fan communities, or may come down to something else (like the social/community aspect of fandom) entirely.

#tolkien #tolkien fanfiction #tolkien fan studies #tolkien fandom history

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