On The Pointlessness Of Forced Categorization

Time in and time out, I see people trying to fit everything into an existing box or category rather than creating a new one. I know people don't like change, but some categories are entirely arbitrary, and most are ever changing. People love to pretend categories are important, and to some extent, I can see, why, it helps to make life a simpler experience, but most categories are entirely useless outside of abstract concepts. Unless we're discussing objective, provable facts, categories are functionally worthless. It's like people arguing about whether a hot-dog is a sandwich or not. Who the hell cares? Why should we care? Not everything has to have an arbitrary psychological distinction applied. Even Freud knew that. By extension, not everything has to have an arbitrary political, societal or other distinction applied. Certain things can exist on their own. Not everything has to be some kind of statement. The fact that I use an Xbox One controller on my PC isn't a political statement, I do it because my DualShock 3 stopped working on my PC, and the DualShock 4 lacked some rather important compatibilities with some of the games I needed to play for my other blog. Also, the fact that the controller was cheap helped. Likewise, eating macaroni and cheese with a spoon, rather than a fork isn't a political statement, but this is the level of absurdity we're operating on when people try to apply cultural, psychological or gender-based categories to arbitrary aspects of life. It's not useful, it's more effort than it could possibly be worth, and attempting to strictly categorize everything is folly, since ideas and attitudes change as quickly and frequently as the colors in the sky.

Minimums and Maximums

    For some reason, whenever I write a piece for an assignment with a minimum wordcount, my point is always conveyed in less words or paragraphs or pages, etc than was required, and I have to find some way to fluff the piece up to fit the count, and then it always comes across as underdeveloped, with loose threads of ideas. Yeah, because I was asked to stretch a topic out beyond its length. I like to punch the point hard, and convey as much meaning as possible in as little space as I can. I don't like being long-winded, but by that same token, whenever I have a maximum word-count, paragraph count, page-count, etc, I always wind up overrunning it by at least two pages. I don't know if that has to do with my writing, or if I somehow always wind up writing about things I don't care about in a place with a minimum, and wind up writing about things I can talk at length about and not exhaust my knowledge of the topic until I've well-exceeded upper limit, and ultimately have to cut things down. It doesn't help that my writing-style lends itself to brevity coupled with a bizarre level of detail. Plus, when I'm bored with something I feel less inclined to write at-length about a subject.

Meta-Narrative

I really don't like meta-narrative, especially when someone makes a movie about making a movie, or something to that effect. Making a movie about being a musician, or putting on a play, or writing a book, or something like that, that's fine, because you're working with different mediums and as such aren't treading into ouroboros territory. It's when people start making movies about making a movie, or plays about plays when it starts irritating me. Unless the story of the people making the movie, play, etc, is particularly interesting, most of the time I'd rather just be watching the movie within a movie. Take Tropic Thunder for instance. The meta-humor in that film is great, but I almost think the movie would have been funnier if they'd just made the movie within the movie and left the meta-narrative stuff as a twenty-minute epilogue to the actual film. This isn't so much an issue with music, because if a song about writing a song is particularly good, or even passable it can easily stand on its own, but can just as easily fall into the trap of thinking that simply being "meta" is enough to keep it alive. Movies about making movies, books about writing books, etc just seem self-indulgent, and that's part of why meta-narratives irritate me. Too much fourth-wall-breaking can destroy a work's appeal. It always irritates me when a song references itself as a song, and although it can work fairly well when used humorously, meta jokes are easier to mess up than just playing something straight. That's part of the reason I didn't like Thor Ragnarok, the comedy was botched meta-narrative nonsense for the most part and always made me wish they'd played it straight.

The Cycle Of Blame And Scapegoating

History appears to run in cycles. When a given group finds themselves at a disadvantage, the first instinct, for some reason, is not to look within and see if any faults can be fixed, but to attach all blame to some "other" group and claim that to punish, banish, exterminate, etc. that group will solve all their problems. It never does, and indeed, causes more. We still see this to this very day in politics and almost every societal interaction, and this reaction dates back probably literal millennia. People don't like taking responsibility, and thus find it far easier to pin the blame on someone or something else. Bad people in the world? Blame evil spirits and influences. Your area of the world getting kind of crappy? Blame some insular group that probably has nothing to do with what's going on, but whom people know so little about that they can be persuaded is responsible. If these accusations are exposed as the con-job that they are? You've got a ready-made point you can double-down on until the universe explodes, claiming the influence of the "enemy" goes deeper than you thought. Missing funds in your military budget? Pick the most widely (and unfairly) scapegoated group in the entire world and claim some guy along the military structure is a part of it and use that as an excuse to say he did it (As happened to Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes.) Lost an election? Well, the first accusation of almost any politician these days is to immediately accuse their opponents of cheating (Which, to be fair, would be a lot harder if we'd go back to paper ballots and actually followed the damn rules regarding the chain of custody every now and again but hey, I suppose convenience is more important than the results of our damn elections...) regardless of if those accusations have any legs to stand on whatsoever. It's becoming like a videogame, where Democrats and Republicans alike immediately accuse their opponents of rigging the election just to see if that tactic will work, because for some reason, that accusation has few if any consequences. Indeed, consequence is something we seem to be seeking to remove as a culture worldwide, regardless of if that actually improves human actions. Certain actions must have consequences, or at least the potential for consequences, otherwise people will just keep using the same failed tactics over and over again, content in the knowledge that they will not be punished for the attempt. While in some cases, this can make lives easier, in others, it makes life harder, and people seem to be on some kind of all-or-nothing pendulum, rather than looking at things from an objective angle and figuring out what works best when and where.

Marxism Is Useless (And Somewhat Dangerous) As a Critical Lense

Marxism is occasionally used as a lens with which to view fiction through, typically as a method of viewing class-struggle. But that's not necessary. One need not adopt the failed ideology of easily the worst regime of the last century to analyze a work from the perspective of a class struggle. That's like adopting a lens of Nazism for the same purpose, it's unnecessary, somewhat dangerous and ultimately pointless, as one need not take a COMMUNIST approach to a work to analyze something from the perspective of a class struggle. Class-struggle is not, and should not be exclusive to a Marxist reading of the work. To allow Marxism to dominate economic struggle and class struggle is unhelpful and somewhat dangerous. Again, it's equivalent to using Nazism for the same thing. Hell, it might be worse, as Nazis are far less likely to elicit a sympathetic response than their Russian brothers are. Somehow the Communists managed to convince the world they weren't as bad as the Nazis when they were objectively worse, and with as bad as the Nazis were, that's saying something!
Adopting Marxism as a critical lens normalizes viewing aspects of the world through the lens of one of the most dangerous and harmful ideologies the world has ever known. I cannot imagine how or why any right-minded human-being would even suggest such a thing. Critics need to broaden their viewpoints and realize that when they restrict themselves to critical lenses they ultimately cannot get a true view of the work. Indeed, no lens can give the whole truth about any work on its own, especially when one is not working with the correct terminology. In fact, one need not even use a specific lens to gain a full view of the work. Repeated readings of a book or viewings of a movie can unearth hidden themes that not even the creators know about, and a creative mind on the part of the critic can unearth far more than any lense possibly could. That's not to say that one cannot get any benefit out of a work when specifically searching for a given theme, but that it is far less useful than a less-specific, broadminded view of the work. When looking for themes, one may conjure up a theme that the work doesn't lend itself to in even the broadest of readings, as opposed to a less specific reading, which will likely put a better image of the messages conveyed to the average reader in one's mind. Looking at a work through a lens does not lend itself to anywhere near a realistic reading of the work, much in the way that going through one's life looking through binoculars does not lend itself to a realistic view of the world. The best lens to view anything through is no lens at all, entirely because one's viewpoint is not tainted. For instance, going into the movie Ender's Game looking for an anti-homosexual agenda is entirely pointless. No such themes exist in the movie, intended or otherwise, and all that lens does is diminish one's enjoyment of the film.

Argument Within A Framework

When one argues within a framework, one is not setting out to break the framework entirely by dismissing it out of hand. Rather, one is operating as if the framework of argumentation is reality, especially when discussing a piece of fiction. When discussing fiction, one must operate within the confines of that reality to argue points and ask questions as to why things are the way they are. One need not destroy the work from without, one can easily destroy it from within through the use and application of the story's own logic. External critique has a time and a place, mainly for the analysis of gaps in the story or figuring out why the author might have written something a certain way. Internal critique is how one takes apart a story to start with.

The Division of Culture Was Inevitable

As communication technology became better, inevitably it became easier to share full-length movies and TV series, either officially or unofficially, and prior to that, it facilitated original, viral content. This helped to individualize, and by extension, isolate the entertainment experience. Ultimately, this was always going to happen. Ever since the advent of home video formats, the entertainment experience has become more and more individual, and more isolated. Coupling this with the advent of miniature computers and handheld devices capable of storing and/or streaming high-quality video, and the isolation becomes greater. The printing press could be argued as the start of this phenomenon, as the widespread availability of printed materials, combined with increased literacy rates, means that reading becomes a solitary activity later in life. This combined with an increasing individualism in worldwide society and rising introversion means that this division of culture into subculture was inevitable.

All Religion Is Confucian?

    A topic that came to mind last week was that most religion is based in some worship of ancestors, akin to that of Confucianism's reverence of the elders and ancestors. All branches of the Abrahamic religions claim Jaweh as the Allfather. Greco-Roman mythology has all of the gods descended from the Allmother, even her own mate. From there, everything else came. Hinduism has the entirety of the universe born from one... Let's say "thing" from which all else came. Ultimately, all religion with any actual doctrine requires reverence of the past to the detriment of everything else. Decrees that were passed down based on opinions and whims get held up for centuries as the gospel truth. Passing words taken as absolute orders, and whatnot. Anyone who's familiar with Confucius should be feeling chills right about now.
    Even non-deistic religions, such as the various forms of Communism throughout the years, Nazism, most political dynasties, and many political systems, the way some revere public and political figures and loads of fandoms are heavily Confucian. They all hold an unhealthy reverence for those who came before, they all hold idealized versions of the past up over the reality of the situation, and they're all suspicious of new ideas, newcomers, and any change.

Cosmic Ret-Cons and nonsensical renaming.

The way the Romans adapted and adopted Greek myths as their own reminds me of what happened when Disney bought Star Wars. They renamed the characters, reorganized the entire history of the universe, and yet when everything's said and done, most of the same events happen, most of the characters are the same, but with slightly different names, and the order of events is slightly different. In fact, the Roman attitude toward Greek myths is also very similar to what happens with a lot of comic-book adaptations to any other medium. It's more akin to having read the original comics, then watching an animated adaptation. In fact, all of the the Greco-Roman mythological variations strike me as very similar to what happens when one story is adapted multiple times over centuries or decades, much like many comic book heroes, or indeed, other literary characters such as Robin Hood.

Du Fu: I Stand Alone As A Hardcore Individualist Poem

    The work of Du Fu strikes me as that of a man who conformed to what he was expected to in his youth, but rebelled later in life, as an older man. Ironic, considering how in most western societies, conformity comes with age, and rebellion with youth.
    Du Fu was a Confucianist poet, and Confucianism tends to shun the idea of individualism. However, Du Fu's I Stand Alone strikes me as an almost Randian level of radical hardcore individualism. A number of other works by this same author show a distinct tonal shift from the laments of youth that the young didn't respect their elders into the laments of an old man who's wasted his life in piety rather than forging a path for himself. It strikes me as somewhat ironic.

Medea As Fanfiction

    Apologies for the lateness of this post, apparently Blogger didn't actually publish it when I told it to.
    Euripides' Medea really strikes me as something written by an ancient-Greek Otaku fanboy who was mad that his perfect Waifu was married off to the wrong guy. Allow me to clarify that statement. You see, I've read a lot of fanfiction on FanFiction.net over the years, and I wasn't a particularly huge fan of the last-minute pairings in Harry Potter that basically contradicted the entirety of the character development from the previous six or seven books, so I've spent a rather significant amount of time looking for stories that retell the events of the last two books with my preferred pairings of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Unfortunately, it's somewhat difficult to separate the good from the bad. One might be reading what seems like a perfectly good story for the author to make Ron Weasley a Death Eater or a rapist out of nowhere. This is more commonly known as "Demonization" in literary circles and as "Ron The Death Eater" on the internet, given the nature of fandom to completely overdo their hatred for a character who's not necessarily even that bad. Authors tend to flagrantly destroy characters they hate, putting them through hell and portraying them as horrible people, regardless of the character's actual personality. This tends to go both ways, a character the author likes can do no wrong regardless of how objectively evil their actions may be. This is something that I've always seen in Medea. I'm a big fan of Greek mythology, and everyone seems out of character in Medea as compared to its predecessor, Jason And The Argonauts. I never once thought in my readings of Jason And The Argonauts (And in my viewings of various film adaptations) that Jason would have had fourteen kids with Medea and then abandoned her for someone else. Their chemistry was great, and the two of them seemed like the prime battle-couple. As if the two of them could take over the world together if they wanted to. It didn't make any sense for them to split up for any reason.
    Then, along comes Euripides. I suspect Euripides had some form of infatuation with Medea, and a dislike for Jason. This is fairly common in Japan, as popular actresses will keep their marriages secret to keep their fanboys from harassing their husbands. In America we see a similar phenomenon, but with the genders reversed, popular actors wives tend to be picked on and harassed by the actor's fangirls if they don't fit the exact picture they had in their head of the woman (or man) they wanted to see the actor paired with. In reading Medea I get the hint that Euripides had gotten fed-up with the antics of real women (as he was twice divorced due to their infidelity) and wanted to marry a perfect, fictional lady. This manifests itself today in a somewhat ironic context, internet waifu culture. Although it manifests somewhat less ironically in Japan, where birth-rates drop in inverse proportion to the popularity of fictional men and women, typically animated ones, although some manifest as CGI or holograms (Such as Hatsune Miku). As Euripides was a hermit, and a man scorned by two wives, he fits quite the picture of the typical modern 引き籠り おたく(Hikikomori Otaku), or, roughly, an obsessive shut-in in English.
    Given the omnipresent hate-fic tropes in the story; a protagonist who can do no wrong, a badly-demonized romantic interest and every major character acting vastly different to all previous portrayal, I'd say that this story is almost certainly a piece of fanfiction written by a fanboy who was disappointed that he was getting cuckolded by a fictional character. In addition to him being obsessed with the character, I also believe he used the story as a method of lashing out as a result of his divorces. I see Euripides as using Jason as an effigy of his wives, and Medea as the agent of his revenge as well as a self-insert avatar. Think about it, Jason abandoned a smart, capable woman for the sake of power and personal gain, and as Sanderson has mentioned a number of times in class, we tend to fall in love with aspects of ourselves we see in others, so I think Euripides saw a lot of himself in the character of Medea, and thus used her as his avatar of vengeance against his wives, represented by Jason, and those whom they cheated with, represented by Jason's new wife. I don't know what the murder of their children is supposed to represent. Maybe it's a representation of destroying the relationships. I see that as one of the most out-of-character moments in all of Medea, as I'd have thought Medea would have just taken the kids with her when she left.

Mutual Obsession Is Cute, One-sided Obsession Is Creepy?

    If two people are massively obsessed with each other, then it's portrayed as cute, romantic, etc, regardless of whether or not one of the two parties involved would be considered a stalker otherwise. Romeo and Juliet were both creepily obsessed with each other, to the extent that both of them killed themselves at the prospect of not being with the other. I read a series of Egyptian love-poems written from very much the same perspective this week, and both of the characters came across as incredibly needy and whiny little bitches who'd never consummate their relationship, much less grow up enough to not be so god-damn needy. If either one of them wasn't interested in the other, they'd be considered a stalker. Contrasting this to a character like The Phantom of the Opera, he's a stereotypical stalker, but if the object of his affections was as creepily interested in him as he was in them, then I'll bet the story would be viewed entirely differently.

Odysseus As Codifier for the Tricksy, Plucky Hero, And Other Influences In The Odyssey

    The entirety of The Odyssey is Odysseus utilizing his wits and will to succeed for the vast majority of the story, utilizing force only when absolutely necessary. Ever since I read The Odyssey, I've noticed its influence in a lot of adventure stories. Prior to The Odyssey, most protagonist characters in stories, legends, tales, or myths, characters won through a lot of brute strength. Hercules is one of the few characters from before The Odyssey who displays this kind of intelligence and uses it, and yet that only happens rarely in the tales of his adventures. To my knowledge, Odysseus codified the usage of intelligence as a heroic trait. This trait trickled down into a number of literary heroes, influencing everything from Robin Hood, to Bilbo Baggins, to Batman takes on aspects of Odysseus, and their stories tend to take on aspects of The Odyssey as well. The Hobbit is very much an odyssey, and Bilbo uses his wits to outsmart any number of foes and adversaries much in the same way Odysseus does. Robin Hood doesn't go on any journies, but his intelligence is equally as important to his survival and adventures as his fighting prowess and marksmanship, as is the intelligence of the rest of the Merry Men.
    Prior to The Odyssey, intelligence was seen as a nice trait to have, but not as one of the primary defining traits of a hero. There's also the fact that familial loyalty is a fairly massive theme in The Odyssey, and that concept is seen throughout loads of fiction. Taken, Homeward Bound, Ni No Kuni, Nier, loads of stories are about overcoming obstacles to reunite with one's family or to stay together with one's family. The influence of The Odyssey is ubiquitous.

I'm getting sick of lit-crit

I know this makes me somewhat hypocritical as a critic, but I have come to despise a lot of modern literary critique. I see so many reviews and analyses that have to be ignorant of either context, the source material, authorial intent (Yeah, I know, Death of the Author and all that) and even the content of the work itself. Why do people do this? Is there some benefit to it? If so, what? What benefit is there in ignoring the objective truth for the sake of a thought experiment? There is such a thing as objective truth and objective falsehood. There's also such a thing as objective nonsense, and I cannot say how many times I've seen articles written by people who were paid to write them who couldn't have had the slightest clue what they were talking about based solely on the fact that they either talked about things that didn't happen in the work being discussed, or went on at length about something that literally didn't matter and had no meaning at all.
This typically happens with recent movies such as Man of Steel, and classic literature such as the works of Shakespeare, various myths and legends, and songs as well. The Beatles notably wrote a few songs that were utter nonsense in an attempt to confuse literary critics who analyzed their music, at least if I still recall correctly. In fact, I think the entirety of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol's artistic careers were attempts to destroy the people who tried to find meaning. Sometimes there's no greater meaning, sometimes a spade is a spade, or as Freud put it, "A cigar is a cigar."
Every time I see something like this, I'm reminded of a fictionalized, yet entirely appropos scenario wherein an author writes "The curtains were blue." and some literary interpreter or critic goes on some spiel about the curtains being some emotional symbol, when what the author meant was "The curtains were blue."

On Creation Myths in Superhero Comics

    Recently, a clickbait headline about Batman #53 was published by ScreenRant stating that Batman is an atheist. This came despite him sharing a team with Wonder Woman, the daughter of Zeus, and having met not only most of the Greco-Roman pantheon but also a decent chunk of the Norse pantheon (The Marvel version at least) and fought some of them. Additionally, Batman has encountered a number of DC-original gods.
    This somewhat brings into question the nature of the origin of the primary DC universe, especially given the established multiverse nature of DC's comics, television programs, and films. A version of the Abrahamic deity, who herein will be referred to as Jaweh, does exist. This entity is known as The Presence, The Hand, The Voice, The Source, and Wally depending on what form it takes. While "Not believing in the Abrahamic deity" is not what Atheism means, let us address the core of the problem with how Christianity (And indeed, every deistic religion that's not Norse or Greco-Roman) works in DC's multiverse.
    There's a certain amount of conflict with what Christianity says about how the universe started. See, the primary pantheon within DC is the Greco-Roman one. As previously mentioned, Diana Prince, AKA Wonder Woman is one of Batman's closest friends and a member of the Justice League of America alongside the Dark Knight. This means that, in some fashion, the Greco-Roman creation story must have some aspect of truth, bringing a certain amount of doubt in the validity of the Abrahamic one. The Bible notably implies that there was nothing before Jaweh created the heavens and Earth, and spent the six days creating everything that was.
    In the main DC Universe, there's a group called Endless, and one of its members, Destiny, was chronicling the history of the DCU before The Presence came into being. Additionally, the creation of the Multiverse is directly correlated to a Dark Multiverse with its own dark god, the Great Dragon, Barbatos. Previously a servant of a completely different god, known as The Forger, who is a counterpart of two other gods or godlike entities known as The Monitor and The Anti-Monitor. In the series The Forger was introduced in, Dark Nights Metal, a creation story is given for all three primary multiverses in DC. All of them were created by a spark of potential. The Matter Multiverse that The Monitor was tasked with... Monitoring and The Anti-Matter Multiverse assigned to his brother, the Anti-Monitor. A relationship eerily similar to Kane and Abel, especially since the Anti-Monitor went on to kill The Monitor. A third entity, The Forger was assigned to that which would become the Dark Multiverse, The Forge of Worlds, where all that resided in both other universes would be created, right down to the various gods of each universe. This directly contradicts the idea that Jaweh could have created all that exists within the universe, especially when one delves into the Greco-Roman mythologies all primary DC universes are steeped in.
    Greek mythology places Gaia, spirit of the Earth as the mother to all beings that would follow within that universe, and given the nature of this universe, one can readily assume that statement to be true. Which places Jaweh as a lesser deity mistaken for a far more powerful one. In fact, he might not be a deity at all, he could be an alien or a superhuman for all we know. The Presence was given power by the God Wave, and only has power as long as people believe he does. There's also the fact that prayer is a form of magic within DC Comics, as one of Superman's weaknesses is magic, and in Superman #41, it is established that prayer magic can weaken Superman. This contradicts the idea from Abrahamic faiths that Jaweh is all-powerful and needs not the power of others to perform his works.
    Despite these facts, DC's primary multiverse is not all that exists, as was also revealed in Dark Nights: Metal and previously known throughout the history of pre-New 52-reboot. You see, DC shares a multiverse with Marvel Comics, especially the main universe of Marvel Comics, Universe 616. This was confirmed by the Avengers Vs. Justice League crossover event. This brings a number of other things into question about how the various universes came into existence. Marvel 616, rather notably, has a collection of Christian devil-figures, one of whom, Mephisto, tormented Silver Surfer and erased Spider-Man's marriage from history, a separate character named Lucifer (Who ISN'T a devil) who lives underground and paralyzed Professor Xavier, a Catholic Purgatory The Silver Surfer visited, a Norse Hel run by Thor's sister, a more general "Hell" that appears to be run by the aforementioned Mephisto, and a lot of gods. The Norse gods, some of the Greek ones, and a god The Fantastic Four went to visit in heaven to plead with to bring The Thing back to life. A god who was heavily implied to be Jack Kirby. Then there's the fact that the characters of Deadpool and The Joker know the multiverse they inhabit is fictional. And when you combine the fact that DC and Marvel all share a multiverse with the various live-action incarnations and adaptations of the characters, you wind up with some crossover into the rather bizarre Tommy Westphall universe. A universe created by the ending of a TV show called St. Elsewhere, that revealed the entire show was the product of the imagination of a young autistic boy. This revelation basically called all of reality into question, since one of the shows on the list is Law & Order, a series which repeatedly crossed over with the real world. It's amazing what a bunch of people with unlimited information can come up with.
    Origin stories and creation myths keep getting stranger the more one knows about them.