In defense of fanfiction and of course rats

I saw, on YouTube, recently one of those videos wherein a chatshow host shows to some celebrity fanart and fanfiction about them. Firstly, this is always cringe-worthy at best. The celebrities always look really uncomfortable - and rightly so: they didn't particularly want to see it, and it inevitably brings up thoughts to them and the audience of what they're like in bed, how they are emotionally, kinks and the sort. To be honest, it's a bit like public humiliation really, as the show host brings up subjects that are totally not their, or the audience's, business. Secondly, it's rather humiliating for the artist/writer. They never asked to go on TV, and the nature of fanworks is often very personal and emotional to the creator, and while they're comfortable posting this online, where likely only like-minded and therefore less judgemental people will see it. Now it is forced down the throats of those (the wider public and the celebrities themselves whom feature in the works) who were never really supposed to see it, and then the creator is humiliated and laughed at for their work - treated like degenerates because of a creative hobby.
 The internet has an implicit "don't like don't read" policy, and I find this fad among chatshow hosts to be a gross invasion of everyone's privacy. You wouldn't bring up specifics about porn and kinks on a chatshow, so why fanworks?

Furthermore, the whole nature of fanworks totally goes over the heads of the audience and celebrities. To those of you less than well-versed in the nature and motivation of fanfiction, this may come as a bit of a suprise, but fanworks are not actually about the canon material. When people write a 150,000 word epic about the journey of a serial killer and bookshop owner discovering their passion for BDSM, it doesn't fucking matter what character or person the writer uses to portray this story. The characters aren't the point. The characters are merely tools to help convey an idea, usually very personal and emotional, so that it's applicable to a wider audience that will appreciate it. Furthermore, by using non-original characters, the creator can assume a general knowledge of the character in the reader, and therefore can miss out a whole bunch of mundane, boring introductions which usually plague books. The writer can quickly get to the heart of a question or journey, explore (often taboo) ideas. Therein these works are much more interesting - not only because they're far more honest about human nature and desires (as there are less social repercussions to the creator), but also because they are usually written so quickly, without much editing, giving them a real rawness that can be fascinating. The pure honesty and freedom to post some really crazy shit, without having to worry about selling lots of copies, creates some of the most interesting writing around.

Fanworks allow people to unite in their differences and similarities, and explore ideas in a very creative way. The works also explore heavy topics, such as disability, mental health issus and depression - and by talking about these topics, it really helps young people feel less isolated and alone in their troubles. Furthermore, it has huge implications for feminism: namely, porn! There is very very little mainstream porn aimed at women. However, fanfiction allows women to not only take control of their sexuality - taking pride in enjoying sex, without shame, in the same when teenage boys do - but also explore different realms of opportunities open to them, in terms not only of relationships and sex, but also careers and ways of life. So, while staying indoors all day on your computer, isolated, isn't really the best way to be happy, if taken in moderation (as with most things in life), fanworks are actually brilliant for liberation and mental health. Furthermore, the online environment itself is also extremely positive, filled largely by very positive reviewers and fans of each other's work. Indeed, people actually make friends and fans in the community. The freedom and generosity to share one's thoughts is very valuable to society, I believe, uniting a previously-isolated minority.

I'll end with an extended metaphor to explain why, also, celebrities shouldn't flatter themselves or be creeped out by fanworks - back to this idea about how the works aren't actually about them. They are merely a convenience. When one sees a great painting of a beautiful man/woman, indeed one does appreciate the beauty of the model. However, that is totally not the point. People admire, to a much larger extent, the artistry of the painter themself. The painter indeed needs a model to showcase their own thoughts, emotions and talents, but the painting isn't about the model. Fanworks are the same: people who read fanfiction are admiring the thoughts and ideas of the fanfiction writer. And while the reader and writer certainly appreciate the original work (canon), that is totally not the point. Very often, characters take on whole new identities in fanfiction, across the board, because people are simply using the character as a partially-blank canvas - a sketch, to fill in, or a muse. On the whole, I think people don't read fanfiction to appreciate the canon, but to see the thoughts and creations of young writers/artists. To the extent that sometimes, people only watch/read the canon so as to access subculture beneath. E.g. most people who write for Teen Wolf think the actual canon is total shit, but instead provides an awesome set-up for their own creations.

Austen (obviously), Lawrence, Ian Curtis and of course rats

I'm going to carry on with the theme of Austen's Persuasion's "I am half agony, half hope." because I can't stop thinking about it.

Tonight I have limited time so these thoughts will be very half-formed.

I like characters who are torn up inside, like a chimera. Half-breeds. A friend of TE Lawrence, EM Forster, once said of him, "He has... a profound distrust of himself, a still profounder faith." Again, this idea of being torn in two contrasting ways, not out of personal indecision and weakness, but out of a recognition of the fallibility of humanity (and especially someone as smart as Lawrence who doubtlessly recognised more of the ills of humanity in himself and those around him than us normal folk), and yet still remains hopeful.

Indeed this balance is eerily similar to agony and hope. Perhaps it is an idea of looking past one's own many flaws, while hating oneself but loving things outside of oneself. It's almost like a "perfect" love - loving unselfishly. A willingness to dissolve into everything, as if camouflaged into the beauty of the world to hide your own ugliness. And yet, the "agony" from Persuasion is different... I don't have time now to explore!

To finish, a line from Joy Division, from "Isolation" (a very fitting song for this word vomit), that's always stuck with me:

 a blindness that touches perfection.

T E Lawrence, God, Austen and of course rats

I am half agony, half hope.

[Persuasion, Jane Austen]

There's a mangle of blood and hair on the floor and it beats with low thumps contracting and relaxing like heartbeats but obviously not heart beats.

I want to dig my heel into it and feel it pop, and blood bubble out from between my toes

like the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, or better yet a valley that doesn't already have a name or visitor track. There's a certain faraway look on T.E.'s expression in almost every photo of him - a distant, sad humour buried in sand and it always makes me wonder what he's looking at, what sad faraway world and memory he's drowning in.

distance on the look of death

[Dickinson]

Well I suppose wherever he'd buried himself, that's where he is now, in spirit and body. That place just out of the frame of the photograph, location, thought. He often speaks about a "household God", and indeed his journey in Arabia seems as much a philosophical odyssey as a political one, and describes remarkable events "like design"; a man goes blind from the brightness of the sun ("sun-blink had burned them out"), and creeps to him "chilled", "Lord I am gone blind", and Lawrence feels that he "shivered as if cold". According to the man (Aid, his name, the Harithi Sherif), "in the night, waking up, there had been no sight, only pain in his eyes". Lawrence mentions this story quite purposefully and precisely and yet gives it no conclusion. Needless to say, this obviously resonated with him deeply. Perhaps he too felt blinded by the immensity of his operation (both the literal political and emotional one), or by God and nature around him. Or perhaps, as he wrote this all with good hindsight, this memory resonates with him, how the sun and the outcome (read: failure) of his journey made him, to a large extent as I believe, lose his sense of direction and understanding of morality in life. Therein afterwards, in his lost-looking photos, he is blinded by sun-blink. Although it is of course notable that famous picture of him and his many brothers, as teens, wherein he is the only person who doesn't ever look into the camera. His whole body faces away. But I suppose then he was deeply lost in his dreams of knights and the Crusades. He calls the landscapes of his childhood imagination "vast and silent". Perhaps his thoughts and landscapes too were silent - a non-verbal humour and sadness, perhaps linked to God.

I shan't give context because, to an extent, it doesn't feel necessary here.

"The dark came upon us quickly in this high prisoned place; and we felt the water-laden air cold against our sunburnt skin." reminds me a bit of when, in Macbeth, the "sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care". 

Fascinating chapter LXIII. Lawrence decides to bathe his "soiled body", "I lay there quietly, letting the clear, dark red water run over me in a ribbly stream", when a "ragged man with a hewn face of great power and weariness" (very interesting here. "hewn" is an important word for Lawrence, in that "Wisdom hath builded herself a home. She has hewn the Seven Pillars.") comes up to him and groans "the love is from God; and of God; and towards God." which is a revalation for Lawrence as he had, before,  "believed the Semites unable to use love as a link between themselves and God" (herein he goes on interestingly about different kinds of love and understanding of God). But also hrere he explores the roots of Christianity which I find fascinating: that the only reason it even happened was because it originated in Galilee which the Jews saw as "unclean"; then it proceeded to become very popular in Europe because of the "stuttering verses" of the Gadarene poets, which "held a mirror to the sensuality and disillusioned fatalism, passing into disordered lust, of their age and place". Absolutely fascinating. Lawrence is a pool (although he sees himself as a "white thing splashing in the hollow beyond the veil of sun-mist").
Lawrence then gets this man to come with him and "utter doctrine" (discuss), and gives him a meal. However, the man only made groaning sound and eventually "rose painfully to his feet and tottered deafly into the night, taking his beliefs, if any, with him." Apparently "the man [life-long] wandered among [the Howeitat] moaning strange things, not knowing day or night, not troubling himself for food or work or shelter. He was given bounty of [the Howeitat], as an afflicted man: but never replied a word, or talked aloud, except when abroad by himself or alone among the sheep and goats."

A man and idea lost to history, but not his story, evidently.

Endless questions from here, accompanied by a distant, humoured looked. 

Geography GCSE, wilfull ignorance and of course rats

What I've learnt in my Geography GCSE (aside from a head-full of statistics that are wholly outdated and likely incorrect) is how we are taught about the huge wealth disparity and suffering in the world - from a carefully unbiased perspective - and how people come out of the exam with no better empathy or understanding at all.

Indeed, the course dryly confronts floods, earthquakes, migration, rivers (and yes, the infamously boring Ox Box lake), birth control and a whole wealth of information which, credit due to the exam board, was actually pretty interesting and useful.

However.

Never once in a lesson have I heard even the slightest tone of outrage or upset when reading aloud how mx + c people die when badly built factories collapse because we wanted our trainers cheaper and so the MNC (look, I'm learning and repeating!) cut down on the building structure.

It is remarkable that people nowadays need things to be presented to them with an obvious slant and bias for people to actually think about and/or/perhaps/ifyou'relucky have an opinion about any of it. In fact, it is an indicator of the dangerous level of reliance and ineptitude that our generation possesses.

The "West" (we also learnt that there is more to development than what side of the map you live on) has bloody hands. We 20% produce 60% of the pollution, stirring up Global Warming, leading to worsening tropical storms killing 1,100 in Bangladesh. We consumers cause the deforestation of the rainforests and extinction of the creatures we have cheaply printed onto canvases for our living rooms. We self-proclaimed humanitarian charity-donors are stirring up civil war across the world due to the wealth disparity, corruption and suffering we create across the world.

Furthermore, our fuse is burning down.

I saw the film "Interstellar" a while back, and one scene really stuck with me. We're talking a few generations into the future. Land is infertile. Most people have died. Humanity has only a few years, winds of dust and corn, left. The protagonist (a father) has a meeting with the headmistress in a "careers guidance"-like meeting. He talks of his daughter wanting to be an engineer. The headmistress replies that the world doesn't need any more engineers. It needs farmers.

And indeed, how many more bankers/marketers/programmers/yoga teachers/film directors does the world need. And how many can it support? "Education" is held up as the redeeming path of all evils of humanity. I want to finish by questioning this.

In my History GCSE (the best one. Seriously.), I read a letter by a Holocaust survivor, addressing the UN. Begging. Begging for education to be given a moral compass. For the engineers made bombs, the chemists made extermination gas, the politicians condemned millions to death and the people allowed it all.
The survivor asked what the point of education is if it doesn't make the world a better place.

Emily Dickinson, agony and of course rats

I like a look of agony,
to quote Dickinson

I LIKE a look of agony,
Because I know it ’s true;
Men do not sham convulsion,
Nor simulate a throe.
The eyes glaze once, and that is death.	5
Impossible to feign
The beads upon the forehead
By homely anguish strung.

this is the poem that really first made me realise that she's totally different to everyone else.

The image combing "beads" and "anguish" on the "forehead" recalls (to me) Jesus on the crucifix [which may have been her intention. Dickinson definitely found more genuine meaning and personal connection (and comfort) with God and Jesus (and religious passion (in the agony sense)) than most other people. Somehow she manages to make all her poems about God not feel trite or a following of the establishment. She conveys a more real image of God, I think). And yet, this image of Christ dying is interesting because "the eyes glaze once"- and of course, Jesus doesn't really die once, or at all. Some may see his death as "feign[ing]". Perhaps (now this is on a real limb. An "alternative interpretation" to the obvious one) this poem is partially reconciling the impermanence of life and death and agony with the permanent afterlife; the simplicity of "and that is death" mirroring the holy simplicity and restfullness of it all. And all the agony and life and death and permanence is crystalised by the real truth of agony and pain, which she indeed saw as "homely" - perhaps something grounding and comforting, as she is used to agony. Maybe she saw this constant agony as a gateway to the better, "true" existence, similar to a purgatory.

I love the image of a kind anguish, stringing beads upon her forehead (like a crown or Indian jewelry). However, it makes me question what "beads" mean: one assumes it means "beads of sweat", or perhaps rosary beads? Or like a child, when they make you a necklace out of shitty yellow wooden beads. Either way, this poem overall conveys to me this image of a woman totally at one and affectionate for the agony that plagues her and fellow humans, a link between all the superficial shit she encountered. The delicacy of a row of beads on her forehead giving whispers that the pain isn't permanent: the eyes "glaze once" and the calmness of that juxtaposed with anguish gives a sense of acceptance. This association makes it unclear whether she sees (in this poem) death as painless. "anguish" feels like a resignation. the simplicity: she "like[s]" a "look" of agony.

it's all rather quiet.

Jane Austen, IS, Foucault and of course rats

I've recently been trying to read "Persuasion" by Jane Austen - partially as a distraction, and partially because the name has always jumped out at me in that singular way that only Jane Austen can: there is something so dry and enigmatic, and yet unpretentious about her titles (and portrayals). Also, the idea of a less-beautiful, aged but wise heroine feels more than a bit poignant. Also I fucking love sailors.

I'm only at the beginning and I keep having to re-read pages because my eyes keep dripping from the page in fatigue (and probably also because Austen's characters generally take a bit of wearing in before they fit and become interesting). This means that I keep staring at sentences, when they suddenly jump out of context and feel abstract - or rather, bizarrely relevant. 

Specifically, this keeps disquieting me:

"It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape the solitariness and melancholy of so altered a village, and to be out of the way when Admiral and Mrs Croft first arrived, she had determined to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Anne."

This is in the context of a man having to rent out his home to Admiral Croft because he is very deep in debt due to his... unwise purchases. This is a man consumed by his own self-worth: he is obsessed with his own (and others') beauty, as well as the social status of his family. 

Anne is a quiet but admirable woman (unmarried, late twenties). The person whose thoughts these are is greatly fond of Anne, although many others are embarrassed by her - as one who has lost the bloom of beauty and was reaching old-spinster territory. So far, she feels tossed about like a hot plate between people, and filled with regret (and many loud despairing and nervous sighs).

This idea that is was "painful to look upon their deserted grounds" - an image of house, still furnished with many generations of a family's possessions, empty of the people who define it as home, left for those whom have the money to afford it - felt reminiscent of how I imagine it looks and feels in Syria right now. And perhaps, the "pain" is felt not only as the genuine loss of the house for the family, but "still worse" that the place will become occupied by people who will not see it as 'home' but as a 'house' - a "ground". 

In the same way that (Foucault) words take on different meanings depending on who and where and when they are said, places too lose and gain meaning from the same factors. The room in which your father died is seen as merely a room, perhaps with some coffee stains on the table. Indeed, I think this is the "solitariness" that Austen describes at seeing a place move on. In Syria (and elsewhere in time and place), land which to a family means the whole context of their life is degraded to a mere political conquest. Having to flee one's home is more than just losing what you own and to strip yourself of familiarity and memory, but also to strip the place of the same - leading to a feeling of injustice and many other complex emotions I cannot possibly understand, never having been forced to flee my home. Perhaps Anne here, one hand always tracing her footprints, can be the symbol of memory and a time left behind. 

This book, apparently, explores how Anne retrieves a past and possibility she'd thought was lost (and her fault). 

Persuasion. 

I anticipate that I shall learn a lot from this book. 

Purgatory and of course rats

Sometimes we need to go back to heaven and hell to give ourselves context. Sometimes I miss the definitive sense of direction and hierarchy that the priests I knew as a child would instill in me, sitting in the corner of a pew at church.Christ's pale wet face, a confusing yet poignant sign of redemption, a beacon between the arches. Or (my favourite) chancing upon a near-empty church on a Saturday afternoon, hearing that distinctive clop of my shoes across the cool tiles, standing before the heart-warm prayer candles when an organist begins to practice. At first, a few big heavy chords, before the harmonies break and the roof of the church seems to swell and splinter with the discordant cries of ancient longing, "O, O," like lost whales.

When we burn in purgatory, our past is burnt off of us and we become free of our memories. All conception of self  - our pride, our presumed morals, our likes and dislikes - vanishes, alongside our pretension and guilt. 

I, for one, think purgatory sounds like just what I need right now. And I bet that idea curled some pangs of longing in your belly, just now. 

And here comes the obvious leap: what is stopping us from visiting purgatory right now, tomorrow, this evening, when you're lying in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, unsure if you can actually see or feel or think anything at all.