@patrice-bergerons - Tumblr Blog

PARALLELSSS!!! (based on this fic by the ever-inspiring @patrice-bergerons <3)

#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#THIS IS SO PERFECT I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE WORDS #this for my little fic???#I am going to combust from happiness and from joy #I am in awe of your talent #and you get what I was trying to paint with words as it were in those last two paragraphs what I was going for perfectly #the contrast in the colour palettes between the earthy tones of their living room (with Bertie awake)#Vs the cool tones of his half waking memory #the expanse of the night and the dark comforting sea?#and the care they both take with one another #and these truths that can only be voiced in these in between intimate spaces-#oh man #jeeves and wooster

lowpawly

people foolishly dismiss desserts and treats as having no nutritional value when they actually are necessary for refilling your sanity stat. to prove my point please observe the emotional stability of the next person you meet who doesnt let themselves ever eat any form of dessert

abbyroqueingit

it's summer which means i am constantly asking myself questions such as "who is on my hockey team" and "is that a good idea"

hymnism

"Bond is in the office." "What?"

#james bond #no time to die

petaltexturedskies

Zelda Fitzgerald, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

#not the entire july alas. however. i am on my way to the isle of wight #for a long weekend as we speak #(before I lose my mind etc)

achillesinhighheels

cognitohazardous

my luminous mama

spekterjester

i was so moved by this picture i had to draw it

And to add on that last thing: I wrote a story some time ago in order to explore a relationship which had a lot of love but not emotional security. The POV character was walking on eggshells around his beloved, not knowing which act or remark may draw his ire, always anxious. This story got a lot of kudos and a lot of comments.

Except without fail, every single comment gushed about how sweet and cute they were. Of the people who chose to talk to me about the story only one person – a friend who is not in that fandom I shared the story – got what it was about.

I can't read my commenters' minds but I have been wondering: is it a pervasive lack of reading comprehension that no one can get at the story – so to speak – within? But equally I wonder whether some readers, just like my MC, unconsciously accept this lack of emotional safety in their relationships without even being aware of it, and therefore do not see anything off about the seemingly fluffy story I was telling. OR whether they – these were all new readers to me – think *I* the author might believe this to be the height of romantic love and therefore hesitate to speak of that uneasy undercurrent lest it prove unintentional and therefore offensive. And I could have been, you know? That could have been a bias I wrote it without conscious thought.

So yes. Yes, absolutely try to discern the author's intentions – but equally have the humility to accept that you can't always.

#writing #fandom #reading #really

fforsythiaaa

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

hypokeimena

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

idiomagic

The most important next step, I think, is 'why is this there?'. What is the author trying to convey? Is it the character that is racist/misogynistic/etc. or the author? If the 'problematic' part is the character's viewpoint, what is the author trying to convey about that character? If it's a pervasive theme, how is the author treating it? What is the work as a whole saying about the 'problematic' topic?

patrice-bergerons

And you should go a step further to complicate that, too.

Art is always in dialogue with the world around it. Do you understand that world – whether in terms of its storytelling (painting etc) conventions or its ideological/moral frameworks? How does the author/artist feel about them? Can you tell? (Can you really?)

And equally what does your reaction say about your values/taste? Are they individually your own or more reflective of the ambient prevailing moral/cultural ideologies of your own time and place? "This character is a bad person!" Are they? What makes someone a bad person? How firm are your criteria on this? Is there a different interpretation of what they are doing than what you are thinking of and/or what is presented in the text?

And equally to the extent you believe you identified a genuine flaw with the work/its author what level of disagreement/discomfort are you willing to live with? What does that reveal about you?

This isn't to say agree with all art and never be critical. In fact to the contrary. But art is in dialogue with the world around itself and we are all better for it when we allow ourselves to engage in that dialogue I believe.