MISC: Analysis, The Waste Land, What the Thunder Said, lines 400-410...

[etherati]

...as loosely related to eventual zombie!porn. D: D: YES I'M GOING TO GO THERE. BLAME LIODAIN. Well no that's not fair. Blame me. It's my freaking AU.  D|

11 lines from Eliot's Waste Land, analyzed, free associated, dumped into the stream of consciousness. Thought it might be of vague interest. If not, feel free to ignore.

Transcribed from paper!journal:

---

"Then spoke the thunder                                                          400
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed."

Eliot is for once (and only once) condoning and accepting our lust and our surrender to it as conditional to existence. Sinful action at least signifies existence, and is therefore better than inaction, which signifies nothing. Reference? Earlier work, covered this already. Moving on.

Moments that hang on past themselves and give a sense of self, of a position within time; surrender to ourselves shows us who we are. I exist I exist I exist. He says 'friend'; contrast this with the anonymous encounter in the fire sermon so roundly condemned. (Ref to Jean possibly? Am I seeing slash in everything?) Is the end goal(life vs satisfaction of base desires) the important part, or is the context more significant - lust wrapped in love rather than more lust. Water a constant theme. Water is a symbol for life all throughout but water is also a common cultural symbol for love. Condoning surrender to emotion perhaps, rather than surrender to physical sensation, with the goal irrelevant.

"Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms."                                                               410

Imagery speaks very solidly - that after we have gone to dust, the existence we have cultivated in the space between ourselves evaporates, with no one ever the wiser - no one understanding our motivations, our reasons, our excuses, our follies. Why we chose to make our home amongst these strewn moments of dissonance and fear. We become bodies in empty rooms and the intangible connections between us do not linger. There is value in these connections, or the language describing their dissipation would not read like mourning.

What have we given? We give the only thing that is ours to give. We give connection, we give self, we give sin and evil and grace and surrender, we give sympathy and control and isn't that the rest of the story? Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata. Give, sympathize, control. We give when we cannot bear to take, accept when we cannot ask. Control when sympathy is not enough to quell the chorus in our heads. Sympathize when control shatters. Give of ourselves and hope that it is enough, that blood shakes the heart in relief rather than fear, that the daring is worth its risk, that the surrender is received as the fragile gift it is, handled lightly, unbroken. That we do not wish to retract it. That the giving does not diminish the greater scope of our existence. My friend. My friend. Blood shaking my heart - "My friend," he says. "Love," he does not say, as friends never do, as no one who really should ever does, because there are too many kinds and only one word and language cows the spirit every time. My friend.

Eventually all the rooms will be empty, all surrenders forgotten with the reasons and the excuses and the guilt - all friends dead and gone. Will it have been worth it? And would an age of prudence have been worth it? At death's door, would any of us ask for the memory of a pure life and in the bargain, trade away a hand, a breath, a voice in the darkness, tears to fall on a numb cheek, arms to die in? These connections hum in our hearts and if the giving is base and vulgar, it is still better than giving nothing at all.

My friend.

---

Yeah, so. THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT I THINK ABOUT WHILE PLANNING FICS. Brought to you by Bic and Moleskine, and by the letter C. For CRAAAAAZY.

Comments

[brancher.livejournal.com]

ha! no extra charge.

Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz

[brancher.livejournal.com]

bunch of rotating pieces gradually slotting together until I realized that I only had a few ways forward, and only one that wouldn't completely gut me to write.

Yes, I saw that as the story was in progress, and it was marvelous to watch that develop, those pieces slotting into place to create a working fictional engine driving us to the inevitable, spectacular conclusion. God bless the kinkmeme; watching fic get written "live" is only one of its many pleasures.

[brancher.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you, lady. I haven't even owned up to the crazy shit I've written on kinkmeme, and I MAY NEVER. But it's certainly been a voyage of self-discovery. I *love* this crazy fandom.

[etherati.livejournal.com]

Nuuu not rehash (though to be fair, if you look up Eliot's notes for the poem I'm analyzing above it reads like a freaking bibliography or all of the images/themes HE rehashed from other people's work haha) more just wheedling out the basic human themes that make the piece mentally 'work' in the same way as the thing you're trying to write. Break it down into its constituents and start building from there, and build something that is new and not a rehash but still has that thread of common human experience running through it.

Again, I am aware of how pretentious this all sounds. I'm not trying to be.

Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz

[etherati.livejournal.com]

Hah. It's also kind of stressful because if you made a mistake back in chapter one you can't really fix it. XD and you have to keep your fingers on all the plot threads all the time so that it unravels correctly. But that said, it was still a freaking blast. It was the most 'improv' thing I've ever done with an actual audience and the moment that it all started slotting together was so awesome that I don't really have the words for it.

Re: moar point form

[etherati.livejournal.com]

I just got back from a SURPRISE FINAL D: D: it isn't even finals week what the fuck. When he said Thursday I thought he meant THURSDAY DURING FINALS WEEK because that is you know a LOGICAL ASSUMPTION THAT FINALS WOULD BE DURING FINALS WEEK.

Freaking out so bad, holy fuck.

See this is the problem. Ignore me, seriously, once this is all done with I will be back to my usual 'LAUGH AT EVERYTHING BECAUSE IF ITS ALL IN CAPS ITS FUNNY HURRRR' self but right now all my jersey irish is coming out with a vengeance. I get what you're saying and thank you it DOES mean a lot and i will try to stop worrying about it. Really. I'm just used to fandoms being super critical and with the impossibly high standards and so on, so whenever I jump into a new one I get really nervous about making the right impression.

Re: moar point form

[tuff-ghost.livejournal.com]

oh, we got high standards - you just pass them, easy :D

But ouch on the surprise final. If you think you didn't pass (well, I hope that your freaking out is just habitual and has nothing to do with how you actually did on the exam), I bet you'd have a case for some help/mercy from the prof due to the misunderstanding, especially if you band together (not in an angry horde sort of way to begin with lol) with your classmates.

Re: moar point form

[etherati.livejournal.com]

It's probably mostly habitual. Passing isn't really the issue but I have to keep my GPA up and coming out of a class that is otherwise a gimme with anything less than an A is an infuriating concept. D:

OH YES THOSE IMPOSSIBLY HIGH STANDARDS THERE THEY ARE AGAIN.

Re: moar point form

[tuff-ghost.livejournal.com]

ha, of course you're one of THOSE students. I used to be one. Which is not to say I grew out of it or anything snotty like that - just the opposite in fact: I regressed, degenerated, devolved D:

Good luck on the A anyway. I bet you're fine :P

again, PS

[tuff-ghost.livejournal.com]

check this out

Re: again, PS

[etherati.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD HAHAHA.

Geeze. That is technically what I did, isn't it? Only without the horrible title. D:

oh well no, I guess I would have had to have rewritten the actual story, not inserted something before it. But still that's freakin hilarious. Thank you. I needed that.

[22by7.livejournal.com]

Possibly I will sound drunk, I apologise, I just looked at the threads preceding my comment here, and. And. Watchmen has always had this air of seductive, defiant difference around it: it's the Original Serious Gritty Philosophical Comicbook Graphic Novel. But yknow what. It's a text. It's a piece of art. It wakes up a little more every time you poke at it and turn it over and maybe inside out. I don't know, hence the drunk!warning, being in this fandom has made me ferociously optimistic about imagination and art and ridiculously huge things like that, because it's pure play, but there's also all this touching conscience, and really what I get from this particular combination is (not that I don't get this from other fandoms, just more intensely here) that people are creative, texts are meant to be played with, and Rory and Dan BFF T.S. Eliot, Amiri Baraka, Alexander the Great, zombies and Nazi costume fetishes are getting down and dirty on the same plane and LOVING IT. Sweet, beautiful bricolage. It makes me happy. Now somebody step in and tell me to take a deep breath and get a life, because it's just the internet. But that's the thing, it's not just the internet. It's YOU. Really you. It's really us, making this crazy shit. AND THAT'S GREAT. Oh god, what was I actually trying to say? Yeah, I was trying to say that... that I totally agree with brancher about the weirdshit kinkery giving rise to fucking fantastic fanfics, and that this fandom is so constantly full of surprises that in it I do not think, 'That would NEVER EVER WORK. Ever.' without reading the fic in question first. I will try anything, and more often than not I will be happy I did. I was on the fringes of Harry Potter fandom ages ago, should probably have learned my lesson there, but this one burns brighter and crazier, somehow.

Ok, I think I lost all track of what I was trying to say. But... zombie!porn? Go there, for we shall follow.

ferociously optimistic about imagination

[tuff-ghost.livejournal.com]

Take a deep breath and keep going, you are exactly right :D

I'm really proud of this fandom.

[liodain.livejournal.com]

Haha, you say it was a joke, but I was halfway through drawing the damn thing when I realised that it was insidiously becoming zombie!porn. A few spatters of blood on Dan's face and sequentially it could come right after the chapter 10 sketch.

YOU SEE IT BECAUSE IT'S THERE :D

[etherati.livejournal.com]

That's. More awesome than I can communicate. Because when I first saw it I thought... guh that would work so well in the AU but not gonna say anything because I don't want to seem OBSESSED. And then when you made the joke I just about died. in a good way of course.

Of course, if that did follow on directly from the chap 10 sketch, poor Dan probably WOULD have wound up bleeding on the ground. D: Because Ror had absolutely shit for self-control at that particular moment.

BUT I DON'T CARE. There must be a version with the spatters added. FOR MY UH. PRIVATE COLLECTION. *coughs* If you want to, I mean.

[etherati.livejournal.com]

This post is full of win. Will reply comprehensively later. For now it is time for ice cream and catching the train to get home.

[xiangru-yan.livejournal.com]

Haha, I kind of get what you mean. Are you a literature student, by the way?

[liodain.livejournal.com]

CAN DO

[etherati.livejournal.com]

No, I'm a physics major. XD WHICH MAKES NO SENSE I KNOW. HAVE SOME UNEXPECTED!MOTHMAN TO DISTRACT FROM IT.

[etherati.livejournal.com]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO WORDS. YOU HAVE KILLED ME DED.

I LOVE YOU FOREVER.

[etherati.livejournal.com]

Okay so:

I agree on basically everything you said. I love how the fandom can be so inclusive of influences from every which way; that there is enough depth there to support the hardcore literature and enough irreverence to support the crack and usually all at once, blended together into this bizarre ... thing... (my words just ran out of steam completely there) ... that feels completely honest and surprising and real.

Because as you said, it is real, it is real people doing it, and the internet is not some monolithic 'thing' that instantly reduces the significance or importance of anything that passes over it. It's just another communication medium, another way real people talk to other real people, and there's just as much serious beauty to be found in those human connections as there is to be found through letters or over a telephone or face to face. It's just people. We are all just people putting ourselves out there and I think that the medium helps, but yes. It's just us, making crazy wonderful shit. And you're right. That's wonderful. XD

Jury's still out on whether zombie!porn falls into that category though. With the exception of the image liodain just posted HOLY CRAP WOW.

And thank you. You don't sound drunk to me.

Re:

[(Anonymous)]

To that end, Im surprised that you have not written any Dr. Manhattan Fics.

On an unrelated note, are you in a phd program?

[etherati.livejournal.com]

D: Yeah I dono, he just doesn't grab me so much as a character, and as far as academics and so on, I'm less interested in particle/quantum/atomic physics(though some things like supersymmetry and entangled pair communication are crazy fascinating) and more interested in relativity, cosmology, the topography of the universe etc. Singularities, the finite vs infinite universe, and so on. And in unified theory research but that's really way beyond our technological development to much besides theorize on atm. Anyway this is all mostly hobbyist sort of stuff; feynman and greene and hawking make up a good chunk of my recreational reading, with vonnegut and random poetry(mostly eliot OBVIOUSLY) making up the rest. XD But you gotta major in something, right?

And no, just a BS program at the moment. :)

dan's list of kinks...

[tuff-ghost.livejournal.com]

i like hungry zombies and i cannot lie
the other vigilantes can't deny
when rorschach breaks in with a lust for brains
and his bared teeth in your face
YOU GET SPRUNG

Re: dan's list of kinks...

[etherati.livejournal.com]

Well played. XD

Dan's list of kinks just goes on for MILES.