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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.
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.
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what a knot you've got, sword plz
Date: 2009-05-07 07:19 am (UTC)I know canon has pre-Roche Ror as all chatty and put-together, but I do prefer fanon (ha ha, a lot of it is yours) where his messed up life and childhood does show a little more realistically even if he's not yet insane and speaking without pronouns. Canon also has every hero-like male character shaped like a Ken doll, even Rorschach.
It's a bit fangirlish, in the sense of "dubious artistic integrity", to think that bad things shouldn't happen to characters you love. I feel this way all the time, of course, and I adore good fixit fics. What do you think Spy's stories are anyway :D
But a point that's hugely important in this fandom is that the canon doesn't have perfect artistic integrity. It's not perfectly coherent and watertight. That's why we can have such a big, busy, crazy fandom. And anyone can write their own interpretation into their own fanfic; there's no mandatory level of /literal/ (I say literal because I mean that it's sufficient if your fic INVOKES the canon characters or themes in a way that's compelling and recognizable to readers; it doesn't have to parrot the canon exactly) canon-fidelity required for a fic to be counted as good. Who could even measure that fidelity anyway, Alan Moore?
Think about anyone who actually calls anyone else a "horrible fangirl" in earnest. You wouldn't seriously give half a crap for the opinion of a person like that would you? (tbh, I've only seen such opinions voiced on Fandom Secrets, but I'm convinced those people are trolls and thus the supposed Watchmen Fandom Police are actually mythical creatures, though loathsome to imagine) Never worry about A) stupid spiteful people B) stupid spiteful people WHO PROBABLY DON'T EVEN EXIST.
- No one deserves Rorschach's life, it just happened that way..."deserves" is kind of an odd angle, IMO
- It's probably fangirlish to want to give him something better. It's definitely plausible and fair to imagine that he'd have come out of it better - not crazy and broken - if only he had someone with him who knew and cared...that's how regular people deal with trauma, right?
- It's also plausible that Dan could have been that person. That's like a foundational tenet of our fandom, so no one will ever call you a hack for following it through.
- I had sympathy for him at first ronch (possibly it was "schlorp lep", I can't recall exactly ;), if only as a campy bombastic quirky protagonist in a genre that usually abhors quirkiness and is too oblivious to its own campiness. Then, the handshake, the lift shoes, the unmasking and psychologist interviews -- sympathy was EASY.
...see, this post, KIND OF like a sword in the sense that it goes into point form towards the end. hurr hurr hurr, GET IT?
don't mind me, it's late.
Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz
Date: 2009-05-07 07:38 am (UTC)And yes, heh, I personally had a ton of sympathy for everything he'd gone through and all of the issues he was still clearly dealing with despite claiming otherwise. I meant more like what the more serious elements of the fandom want/expect, where if you don't denounce him as a sociopathic barely-human almost-villian then you're missing the point and deserve to be run out on a rail. Which I never understood, because wasn't the whole point that 'real' masked heroes would just be human? The sort of fanatical need to avoid misaimed fandom ends up bordering on demonizing, to me at least.
That said, again: late. So probably not making a ton of sense.
Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz
Date: 2009-05-07 04:32 pm (UTC)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.
Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz
Date: 2009-05-07 04:59 pm (UTC)Re: what a knot you've got, sword plz
Date: 2009-05-07 01:24 pm (UTC)moar point form
Date: 2009-05-07 02:54 pm (UTC)I meant
- Fangirlishness and "dubious artistic integrity" are not crimes if you are smart about them, ESPECIALLY considering the size, complexity, and less-than-perfect integrity of the canon.
- YOU ARE SMART. You have been more than competent in expressing fangirlish fixit inclinations in a way that's respectable, not hackish or cheesy or silly at all.
- The scenarios and characters you have written are entirely plausible, and they don't betray or trivialize the canon in any way.
stop worrying about this, go study :P
I wasted a hell of a lot of studying time during my finals because I was fooling around in fandom; let me tell you, it is a bad idea
Re: moar point form
Date: 2009-05-07 05:13 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2009-05-07 05:33 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2009-05-07 05:49 pm (UTC)OH YES THOSE IMPOSSIBLY HIGH STANDARDS THERE THEY ARE AGAIN.
Re: moar point form
Date: 2009-05-07 06:01 pm (UTC)Good luck on the A anyway. I bet you're fine :P
again, PS
Date: 2009-05-07 06:03 pm (UTC)Re: again, PS
Date: 2009-05-07 06:09 pm (UTC)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.