#textual analysis

[gayofthefae]

"Being stuck in here" "You can't write the ending this time"

The setup for him to disprove that he cannot leave the situation he has felt trapped in for the past 5 seasons. The queer double meanings of these lines that he will disprove.

You can't write the ending this time speaks to a lack of choice. That he cannot simply choose to leave, he cannot escape. That he is trapped forever now in a decision he made when he was 12 years old.

But that's not true. He can leave it. He does have autonomy, and his choice do impact things. Yes, he is trapped.

But he can learn to pick locks.

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

i fucking LOVE citing my sources. i love sending people links to resources for every need they may have or situation that arises. i love whipping out a physical book in the middle of conversation whenever that book is mentioned and referring to it directly. i like my reference lists/bibliographies to be at least as long if not longer than the work itself. formatting sources to fit a style guide and arranging them in the appropriate order makes me feel alive. i love being able to back up claims with evidence and tie media i’ve consumed into every discussion.

[nopaintjustpain]

I’m so sorry Short Martin enjoyers…. I love and respect you, I think all your art and writing is delicious and I eat it up every time. But I do not believe you.

(HOWEVER I have seen no textual evidence saying Jon has to be short. Tall Jon enjoyers, I believe you.)

[anonymous56702]

more thoughts navigating TVL as a lover of the books and the show. thinking about rice's female vampires and the post-gender umbrella.

in the vampire chronicles, rice incorporates female play incognito, mediated through powerful male protagonists. even though the vampires are considered post-gender, the vampires who were female when mortal still tend to carry an external weight more than the males. gabrielle pushes past most of the suffering and takes a shorter internal journey to discover what she wants (and that’s why I love her).

the male vampires’ experiences are easily female coded in content because rice has said many times in so many words that she infuses the characters with her own experience. the books focus heavily on rejecting societal norms. the male vampires however are afforded the privilege to do what men have always had more time to do which is fall apart, and then find enlightenment, or end it on their own terms. simultaneously, rice illustrates the bad things actual men do and the catastrophic violence of men, before they find enlightenment or decide on death.

the female vampires tend to carry the burden of eternity but also keep it together for the most part. both are tragic burdens but they show up differently in the mortally defined genders even after turning. I tried to name one developed female vampire character who ended it themselves and couldn’t think of one. maybe it happened and someone on here remembers it. the old world vampire throws herself into the fire in the show but that doesn't happen in the book.

there is space for more show watchers to engage with the books further and explore the commentary that is present. we know anne rice wrote from total instinct and did extensive historical research. she was unapologetic about her work, even if there were times that it might have been appropriate for her to be apologetic. the show just seems to be apologizing for a lot of the wrong things.

i want to add that all of this isn't to negate the queer theory/activism reading which aligns academically with the post-gender context. the exception being some schools of thought position post-gender as being originally born to post-gender society whereas most of rice's vampires hold on to their mortal history. rather, in this particular literary context, it forces a larger umbrella where more progressive contemporary feminist theory and overarching gender theory are fused with queer theory. it represents post-gender as the ultimate transcendent state after a mortal life lived within norms. for rice's vampires, the ones that shed their human constraints and move toward post-gender, tend to have a longer shelf life.

_____________

the post above expanded on the post below

food for thought as a lover of the books and the show.

i love analyzing anne rice's chronicles so much. one angle i most often come from is, while she writes the dominant characters of this series as "male," we get this rich speculative post-gender narrative that incorporates beauty, aesthetics, and maximalism through radically free thinking coming from a female author who is searching to define herself and major structures through her characters. everything is female coded and there are so many interpretations. listen, i watch the show. i enjoy the show. but damn, do you think i have my female narrative analysis brain switched on while watching it? no, i'd go nuts. then i think about it later and this major blind spot in the show breaks my heart. the lack of this lens has been present since the first season. i mean, i probably built some of my framework around being a woman reading anne rice as a teenager. rice was radical about the female body, femininity, and female interiority through her writing for her time. for any time really. the show isn't thinking on that level or through those lenses from anything i've seen. a lot of groups are represented, which i love about the show. however, i notice that the show isn't engaging in rice's female narrative lens that makes her work so radical.

[politeanarchy]

I'm trying to gather up a lot of scattery thoughts about Season 2, and how it ignores or contradicts quite a lot of Season 1 and the original book. The cute opening scene Before the Beginning retcons the first meeting between Aziraphale and Crowley, and significantly alters their characters in ways that weaken and diminish them, but there's some less obvious stuff going on there, too.

Season 2: "You know, the current word from Upstairs is that we'll be shutting this all down again in about 6,000 years."

The book: "How long do you think we've got?"

A major piece of book!Aziraphale's character is his interest in books of prophecy. I suppose you could explain this by saying he likes to see what those silly foolish humans are thinking about the future fate of the world, when he knows better. But if both he and Crowley know for sure that the plan is to shut the world down now, why would they even bother thinking of plans to prevent it? The entire original story is built on the idea that Hell is trying to bring about Armageddon by introducing the Antichrist into the world, and that Heaven will approve of Aziraphale trying to thwart this devilish plan, even if they would like to have the battle themselves.

And then the other major foundational piece of the book's plot is that there did exist one human prophet whose predictions were correct. Agnes Nutter got it right. Perhaps we are meant to assume that, tucked away in her Nice and Accurate Prophesies, there was one that said "Doe whatſoever you like, for in seven yearſ time it shall alle be the same anyway."

Changing the whole over-arching plot into a foregone conclusion makes the whole of the original story a pointless dead end. Why bother reading books of prophecy if you already know how it's all going to come out?

[surrenderdorothea]

There is something truly toxic about how academic language is being weaponized in fan spaces. Historical, literary, and theoretical references used not to critique a text or lead to greater understanding of it, but instead to bludgeon anyone who disagrees or disappoints. It bothers me because these posts often look and feel persuasive at first, but don’t hold up to any scrutiny. They are also really long, which again, looks like deep analysis, but in the end, feels more like gish galloping disguised as critique/analysis.

I would love to see more meta in fandom, and it bothers me that academic discourse is being used for clout and influence rather than as an invitation to discuss.

[averytauntingletter]

the thing about stranger things that is so weird to me and is a large reason that i think many people thought byler would happen is because, narratively, its kind of unsatisfying if it doesn't.

this isn't even on a plot point and chekovs gun and parallels level; im talking on an actual narrative level.

the thing about shows and books and movies that tend to cover the same age range that stranger things does is that they, like stranger things, usually add in some kind of romantic subplot. the kids at the forefront of this story are pre-teens turning into teenagers, and that age is rife with romantic complexities and dramas, as a general rule, both in fiction and in real life. in action and adventure, fantasy, or sci-fi media, of which stranger things falls under, romantic subplots are used to propel the plot forward and to develop characters and relationships that we, as viewers, fall in love with.

the thing about stranger things' romantic subplots and endgames that I found odd, was the way that none of these subplots are a "slowburn"; that is to say, none of these subplots are the product of years of build up and tension that only come to a head at the eleventh hour.

think of percabeth in the percy jackson and the olympians series, one of the most widely loved relationships maybe of all time. the pjo series takes place over the exact same age range that the main stranger things cast go through, from 12 to 16, and over those years, our main couple, percy and annabeth, develop a relationship in which they are both willing to sacrifice everything for each other before they finally get together after the final battle is over. their love story spans the entire first series and has it's ups and downs along with the plot of the series. critically, it is a slowburn, and this slow burn helps keep interest and add another layer of suspense along with the actual plot.

in stranger things, jopper, lumax, jancy, and rovickie, and mileven are the main couples that we see throughout the show.

none of these are even close to being a slowburn.

mileven kiss within a season, at twelve, and get together within two. jopper get together in season 4. jancy get together in season 2. lumax get together in season 2. rovickie get together sometime off-screen between seasons 4 and 5.

for the biggest show on netflix right now and one of the biggest pieces of media, period, for the past ten years, its downright weird that stranger things never put in that effort to add that narrative device and suspense and intrigue that a romantic slowburn subplot over the course of five seasons would provide. romantic slowburns dont just pull people in- they keep people hooked, and they add to the themes of the show.

the fact that every other couple in stranger things does not fit the criteria for a slowburn and that byler seemed to be ramping up in seasons three and four meant that it made sense for them to make byler canon. stranger things season five is messy and unfinished for a lot of reasons, but the fact that not a single couple in the show has a slow burn relationship that gets resolved just further adds to the feeling that this season is unfinished and creates a feeling of an unsatisfying final narrative

[frustratedasatruar]

Some Narrators cannot be trusted

For example!

If our viewpoint character insistently claims that she is heterosexual, but her narration is largely disinterested in the appearances of men while being very very invested in detailing exactly how attractive (very) she thinks every woman she meets is...