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.