David Levithan's _Every Day_ and the Contingency of Morality

NB: This post is redolent of spoilers for the book, in case anyone reading this ever intends to read it.  OTOH, if you don't intend to read it, I think I'm fairly clear in what I'm talking about for once?

Being the YA genre fangirl that I am, I have of course known about David Levithan (I keep on wanting to call him David Leviathan) for a while, as he is kind of a big deal.  That having been said, I never particularly wanted to read his books because they seemed to mostly fall into the sub-genre of YA realistic romance, which is not a sub-genre I like all that much.  I consider myself a YA genre fangirl because I love quite a lot of YA subgenres, including speculative fiction, stuff with no technically fantastic elements that nonetheless is far too trashy to portray a convincing sense of reality, and genuinely realistic novels that deal with teens in unpleasant situations and how they live through them.  But I've never really enjoyed the kind of books that focus on relatively normal kids in relatively realistically-portrayed romantic relationships; I tend to find them more alienating and offputting than anything else, so I don't really feel drawn to read them.

I read Every Day because of the recent controversy over this article on "YA Fiction and the End of Boys".  The article and controversy weren't actually all that interesting to me in-and-of-themselves, but the article included the following paragraph on Every Day:

"If books like these reward boys who give up men’s social power, more provocative still are books that imagine erasing men’s physical power. That’s the case in David Levithan’s just-released Every Day, which tells the story of A, a spirit who wakes every day in a different body: sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes trans, sometimes this race or that. Levithan, known for his suggestive work about queer sexuality, uses his central conceit to artfully suggest the complexity of gender and embodiment. But even so, Every Day is haunted by a negative idea of manhood. When A falls in love with a girl, Rhiannon, he does so while inhabiting the body of Rhiannon’s crass, emotionally manipulative boyfriend. The novel’s antagonist, the character who offers A the ability to kill a host body’s spirit and thereby stay with Rhiannon forever, is coded male too. And what these experiences teach A is that being the kind of partner this beautiful, sensitive girl deserves means not being a man. At least, not being her man. It means finding a sweet, artsy, outsider for Rhiannon, and A heading off into a future perpetually separated from ownership of the body’s strength — the ultimate sacrifice of male power."


So what I got out of that was - book about bodiless spirit that possesses a different person each day!  Naturally I wanted to read that book.  It fits in perfectly with my well-documented obsession with fiction about fluid identities, not to mention my well-documented obsession with fiction about possessing spirits.


I did read Every Day, and, as usual, I'm not that interested in reviewing it.  What I can say briefly is that I found it entertaining enough.  It wasn't a boring book, and, what's more, it wasn't interesting simply because it was irritating (as, say, that damned movie Crash was).  It had good parts that were appealing.  But the day after I finished it, I keep on coming back to how irritating I found it, despite my general feeling that I was engaged in the book.  And that seems like something you might write about.  You can't write much about boring stories - it's very hard to say why something just doesn't grab you.  But when something actively pushes you away, that's interesting, and that's why I thought I should try to write about Every Day - because I can't stop thinking to myself, why did I find it that irritating?  

Well, there's a lot of reasons, some of which come down to subjective issues that are hard to break down again -  there's this character who appears on, like, three pages, named Amelia, who I felt had much more personality than any of the main characters in the entire book; I kept on thinking that it would have been a much better book if A had fallen in love with Amelia instead of with Rhiannon since Amelia seemed to actually have an identity, but I suppose this kind of reaction is very personal since different people have very different ideas about what makes for well-developed characterization - but I want to get into one issue I have in particular with the book that I think I can express more clearly.

I'm going to start by recounting the basic plot of Every Day, although, of course, I'm going to do that from the standpoint of what I'm interested in, so this may be limited or biased rather than a thorough, accurate summary.  This entity A possesses a new body every day and has been doing so for as long as they can remember (a sidenote: as annoyed as I was by the book, I am also annoyed by reviews that insist on referring to A as "he" even though it is explicitly stated in the text that "when it came to gender" A is "both and neither."  Insofar as I can tell, the main reason why reviewers are referring to A as male is because they spend most of the book in love with a girl and therefore "sounds male," which makes this even more annoying than it would be if they were just misgendering the character.  Of course, A doesn't tell us which pronouns they prefer, but I have to feel that "they" is more accurate than "he.").  They don't have any idea of why this happens or of anyone else in the world in the same position as them.  There are various rules behind this switch, including that they switch bodies at midnight every day whether awake or asleep, never possess the same body twice, have access to the body's memories (although it takes some effort) and are influenced by its hormones but cannot feel the possessed person's emotions, always possess bodies of a certain age (which they therefore think of as their own age - it is sixteen at the time of the book), can only geographically travel in the spirit between bodies within a limited radius (about four hours by car, it would seem), although if the body travels to Hawaii that day then A will be stuck in Hawaii in their next body, etc.  It's important to note that, on the whole, with only one exception in the entire book (and that one is under extenuating circumstances), those who are possessed don't really remember the possession as a possession, so A doesn't leave any particular trace in the minds of those they have possessed.   A thinks of themself as human, just a rather odd one.  A realized that other people were not like them at the age of five or six or so and was very upset about it at first, but eventually came to terms with it.  At the time of the book's start, as a sixteen-year-old, A realizes that other people have lots of benefits that they do not, all of the advantages of rootedness, connection, lasting relationships, and so on, but they also see the positive side of their own life - they are free of the pressure of relationships, are able to get a wide perspective on the world and thus be wiser than those of us blinded by our own perspectives, are a good observer, and know how to enjoy living in the moment.  A is a fundamentally moral person, as well, if still a sixteen-year-old kid, and has set up rules for themself so as to avoid damaging the lives of those they possess.  Although accessing memories, as stated above, seems to take a lot of effort, such that A avoids doing it more than necessary, and although in order to remain emotionally stable A feels the need to detach somewhat from the lives of the people they possess, A does enough accessing and uses their keen observational skills to try their best to make sure no one notices anything odd in the person's life and that they don't screw things up for the person too much.  A does this purely out of a basic sense of morality and the fact that they feel guilt when they do cause lasting problems for others, since, being untraceable, there are no real potential external consequences for them were they to do anything very terrible.  The same basic sense of morality, of course, means that they don't do anything drastically out-of-character even when it might theoretically help the person; when A winds up possessing the body of an extremely selfish girl, for instance, they muse about how it wouldn't do much good to sign her up to work at the soup kitchen because that's her decision to make, even if she would normally make the wrong decision, and she would just abandon the decision if A made it for her.


So A already has a relatively healthy attitude to what is obviously a fairly difficult situation at the start of the book - as aware as A is of the compensations of their state, it's hard for them to fully appreciate the benefits when the benefits of everyone else's lives are so visible, but A is managing.  The plot of the novel deals with A's steadily decreasing ability to cope after they fall in love (at first sight!  I found this pretty annoying too.) with Rhiannon while possessing Justin.  At first, A starts doing out-of-character things in the bodies they're possessing in order to sneak away and spend time with Rhiannon.  Later on, A actually confesses their true identity to Rhiannon; when she does not automatically reject them and shows some understanding of them (and, depending on what body they possess, some physical attraction, although A really fails to understand or show any sympathy for the fact that Rhiannon's attraction clearly depends on what body A is possessing), their behavior only becomes worse as they genuinely start to imagine that the two could find a way to make the relationship work.  A stops doing a very good job of being a guest in other people's lives and devotes more and more of their time to their own agenda, most significantly when they possess a boy who is supposed to be on a plane trip to Hawaii and actually completely blows off the trip and runs away in order to stay in the Maryland area because they can't stand the thought of not being near Rhiannon (and if they went to Hawaii they would be stuck there).  The subplot which winds up with A being introduced to the character who claims that A is not alone and that there would be a way for them to possess a body for a longer period of time (which A clearly thinks amounts to murder of the original identity) is meant to parallel this general decline in A's sense of responsibility; it's when A, possessing the "sweet, artsy outsider" (although I don't particularly see evidence of the character being an outsider) Alexander, is tempted to murder him to stay in the body forever, precisely because Alexander is such a genuinely kind and good person that his life, friends, and existence are all appealing, that they realize that their love for Rhiannon is getting them to break their own reasonably moral code of rules and that they decide they must get as far away from Rhiannon and the murderer as possible so as to avoid the temptation and go back to their life as an outsider.  And yes, this is obviously necessary in large part because Rhiannon cannot accept A as a disembodied, ever-changing spirit - if Rhiannon were willing to commit herself to A as they are A would probably not have ever come to the realization of their moral issues - but Rhiannon's problems with A are not just about the changing bodies but also with the seeming iffiness of A's behaviour - is what A does fair to the people whose bodies they are possessing?  She isn't sure.  So the arc of the book, oddly enough, is actually somewhat limiting of A's character development; they end up in more or less the same place they started out with in the beginning, only, I suppose, with a greater understanding of both the temptations of being a less virtuous person and also a greater awareness of the consequences of falling prey to such temptations (A starts out the book having no idea that such a murder would be possible).

The premise, then, is one that instinctively appeals to me, but I don't particularly feel that what Levithan found potentially interesting about the premise is the same as what I did.  I suppose one angle to come at this from is that of A as the basically good person - in the context of the book, it makes sense that A would see themself this way, of course.  A may not, in fact, be human, although A certainly thinks of themself as human, but A has never, until the confrontation with the antagonist, interacted with a sentient non-human before, and has been treated by a human by everyone they have ever met until the age of sixteen.  So it's not that surprising that A doesn't perceive themself as different on some elemental level from the species that makes up all of their interactive opportunities, and that they take on a fairly conventional morality from within that species (since, presumably, A has been socialized as much to that morality as anyone raised as human would have been).  This is a perfectly logical and reasonable choice, and it's what makes the central internal conflict possible - well, basically A's desire to be human, both in terms of the relationships with other humans that they can't have but want and in terms of the fundamental moral code that they can have, is what drives the whole possible.  To the degree that we see that level of responsibility to other people that A eventually decides to sacrifice their relationship with Rhiannon to as a measure of humanity, the plot affirms A's decision to consider themself as human; we too can see them as making a fundamentally human decision and to be admired in doing so.

On the other hand, there's another side to that story, as both A and the implied author behind A recognize that there are some distinctions between A and humanity.  A's inability to understand the embodiedness of Rhiannon's affections and their genuine fondness for the advantages of detachment speak to elements of A which are not commonly shared among humans.  The fact that the book ends with A making the decision to reject love and connection in the name of morality also shows that on some level A is rejecting quintessentially human traits; we do not normally expect of your average, ordinary human being that the ability to make lasting connections with other people would come into conflict with the possibility of living morally, and so A, in having to make this decision, is rejecting the chance to be human in that sense even if it is in the name of alignment with the human in another sense.  What is more, the hint of a larger plot in the antagonist being another of A's kind who does not adhere to A's human morality, and who contacts A via a boy A possessed who is convinced that A is the devil, demonstrates that whatever A's kind is, A does have a choice; A is not purely a human in very weird circumstances but is an entity who, for whatever reasons, has actively chosen to construct themself as human in a situation where other alternatives could be proposed with equal validity.

And, yes, I would be more interested in that story.  Although as a matter of credibility I find A's way of interpreting their existence to be believable, it makes for a story that engages with concerns I don't find particularly gripping.  The question of how to balance love and morality is of course a valid one, even one I care about quite deeply at times, but in this story it seems to be passing up so much potential to deal with the more fascinating to me concern of what it means to be human in contexts where that is ambiguous.  An A who had not aligned themselves quite so clearly with humanity and that character's struggles with morality and responsibility would be a more interesting character to me than a character who basically starts out with a very mainstream, uncomplicated view of morality and never goes beyond that intellectually even when they are emotionally tempted away from their beliefs.  I think that is where I come down to being annoyed by the story - because it promises some philosophical depth to me, but that is dragged away.  What the story ends up being about thematically is the importance of both the universal truths that we all share as humans and also the individual idiosyncrasies that make us all unique.  I think this is problematic on the whole because, as mentioned above, Levithan doesn't really do a very good job with the second part - I don't find his characters all that convincing as different people who are each internally unique even as he runs through a large number of external differences - but even if Levithan were a Diana Wynne Jones or Henry James of characterization, I think that this theme is just less interesting to me that one that really grapples with questions of morality and why we adhere to it.  It is never called into question that A owes the kindness of their respect for people's lives to these people simply because A is a good person who is equal to the humans whose lives they inhabit; when A challenges these restraints it is not because A has any philosophical justification whatsoever to do so but merely because love is great and you care less about morality when you're in love.  A's self-justifications as they fall into the abyss are minimal; the story does not engage with the philosophical issues but remains on the level of pointing out that love is sometimes selfish.  This isn't something that comes as revelatory to me, and for me, the more interesting themes would have dealt with what was selfish in the first place, whether a being whose life differs in fundamental ways from humans really does have to live in a way that is morally spotless for humans even at disadvantage to themselves, what alternative lives A could build that would be less infringed on by human norms (keep in mind that A, despite all of the body shifting, does not know how to speak Portuguese, play the clarinet, or do gymnastics, even if they body they're in does, which is fine for a sixteen year-old but is going to be a huge problem when they're 36), and what morality really involves.  So, while I think it's believable that some characters in A's position might react like A, on a personal level I think that's not what I find appealing about the premise, and that's one major reason why this turned out not to be the book I wanted it to be.

Definitive Proof

While procrastinating, I just took a personality test to find out what classical temperament I have (this is on a Catholic website, which suddenly makes it slightly less fun and slightly more alarming).  I got melancholic.  Some of it fit me well, some of it didn't.  Then I went back to the Wikpedia page on the temperaments and discovered that "Melancholics. . . can become preoccupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world."  That's a link to "the problem of evil," guys.   If I have ever seen anything on a silly personality test that I was unable to argue with, that's it, right there.

I Confuse Myself

I was so happy just now to find that Martin has finally shown up in the new novel version of Hitherby.

I really don't understand my reactions to Martin.  Consciously, I'm not at all aware of liking him.  In fact, I find him really frightening.  But I'm fascinated by him.  But not for reasons as obvious as to why I have similar feelings about Ben Linus.

Reading _Alice_'s Footnotes

Maybe it's just me, but I find this a hilarious footnote in the heavily annotated edition of Alice's Adventures  in Wonderland that I'm now reading: "The Liddell children had a particularly distinguished drawing-master at this time, John Ruskin. . . ."  What an incredibly bizarre way to describe Ruskin, "a particularly distinguished drawing-master?"  Seriously?  Later on, the footnote says, "He taught Alice drawing in the deanery, lending her paintings of Turner to copy. . .," and I found that hilarious too, but that really is probably just me.  The thing is, most of my exposure to Ruskin was in my summer course back in high school on Victorian literature, where our big joke was that Ruskin suffered from profound lust for Turner because he just would not shut up in any of his work about how great Turner was. . . I suppose by this principle I myself suffer with profound lust for Byron, Shelley, Henry James, DWJ, Jenna Moran, Bowie and Kevin Barnes?

I also seriously had no idea that the Liddell in Alice Liddell was the same as the Liddell in Liddell-Scott.

Obviously, these are the kinds of things I am going to blog about.

Mists and Mellow Fruitlessness

I grew up in a temperate climate and spent the vast majority of my life in regions whose annual cycles were shaped by the passage of the seasons.  Living as I do now in the tropics, I obviously don't experience that so much anymore.  Of course, there are still annual cycles in my life.  Especially because I work as a teacher, the passage of time remains cyclical even without the drastic changes in weather and lighting that accompany such cycles further to the north and south.  And yet, of course, there's some visceral element that has been lacking over the past two and a half years, something that is not quite the same when the change you experience is only in your mind and not in your bones.

Except maybe not?  For a few weeks, unusual in the rain forest climate of the city where I live now, there was no rain.  The weather was unbearably hot and stifling.  And then yesterday, as August got over its hump and amiably ambled towards its close, the skies finally released their pent-up tension.  Once I saw the clouds and the inevitability of rain, I was already overjoyed that it would finally cool down.  And it was so pleasant to be outside yesterday evening and this morning after the rain, comfortable at last - at last!

Even in this tropical climate, November, December, and January form more of a rainy season when the frequent downpours and cloud cover keep the temperatures down a little.  Even before that, in October, rain is somewhat reliable, and the pollution from the burning of rain forests drifts over the city - something I suppose I should complain about, given that it definitely makes it harder to breathe, but that I can't help but partially appreciate for the cooling effect.  I guess now that I will soon achieve my third autumn in this country, I'm beginning to get used to the seasonal cycles, because I suddenly find myself, with this outburst of rain, looking forward more than I ever expected possible in a very visceral way to the advent of autumn.  I can almost feel it coming, just as much as I ever would in the more temperate countries I've inhabited in the past.  Although I suppose summer was my favorite season as a child just because of the absence of school, as an adult in temperate countries autumn has been my favorite season, especially the earlier autumn, September and October.  I'm exited to find myself transferring some of that affection to the tropical autumn in November, glad that I'm able to find some physical relation to life even in a place where the seasons as I know them are void.

But on the Other Hand

I mean, when I write sonnets about writing sonnets, they do not actually make use of water imagery!

I Only Ever Feel Tempted to Write Sonnets about Writing Sonnets. . .

The pleasure of the chains lies in the sense
Of pride one feels when doing something well.
For even when surrounded by a fence,
One can slip through the links and go to hell.
But transgression does offer its own thrill –
A nice escape’s a pleasurable thing.
It feels like an exertion of the will –
Like one’s caprice is now the reigning king.
One therefore must always balance the scales,
Leave room for pride and yet room for caprice.
A lack of caution may well end one’s tales
Or too much structure cause the soul to cease.
I feel a tightrope tension in this quest;
That’s why avoidance usually seems best.

_The Sacred Fount_

From the Wikipedia article on The Sacred Fount - "This strange, often baffling book concerns an unnamed narrator who attempts to discover the truth about the love lives of his fellow-guests at a weekend party in the English countryside. . . . many have expressed simple bewilderment over what, if anything, James was trying to accomplish in the novel. James himself said that the book was "calculated to minister to curiosity," but many have maintained that the novel does little or nothing to reward that curiosity. . . .  . Indeed in a letter dated March 15th 1901 to Mrs Humphry Ward James declared 'I say it in all sincerity – the book isn't worth discussing [...] I hatingly finished it; trying to make it – the one thing it could be – a consistent joke.'"


Honestly, it's a pretty amazing book - not that I would recommend it to you if you are not already a James fan.  But coming from my perspective it sort of corroborates everything I've ever believed about James.


Here's a quotation: "If I was free, that was what I had been only so short a time before, what I had been as I drove, in London, to the station. Was this now a foreknowledge that, on the morrow, in driving away, I should feel myself restored to that blankness? The state lost was the state of exemption from intense obsessions, and the state recovered would therefore logically match it. If the foreknowledge had thus, as by the stir of the air from my friend's whisk of her train, descended upon me, my liberation was in a manner what I was already tasting. Yet how I also felt, with it, something of the threat of a chill to my curiosity! The taste of its being all over, that really sublime success of the strained vision in which I had been living for crowded hours—was this a taste that I was sure I should particularly enjoy? Marked enough it was, doubtless, that even in the stress of perceiving myself broken with I ruefully reflected on all the more, on the ever so much, I still wanted to know!"  It's alarming the degree to which I can really empathize with the narrator as James describes him, even if one freely admits that my interests are rather different from his.  But frankly this book is the most accurate, persuasive description of what obsession/inspiration feels like for me that I have ever read.

"Kalifriki of the Thread"

Roger Zelazny's short story in the Hidden Turnings collection, edited by Diana Wynne Jones. I took this out from the library once or twice as a preteen. Then for years it was still listed on the library catalogue as being owned by the library, but the anthology itself had entirely disappeared from the shelves.

I think it says something about the story that I must have last read it well over fifteen years ago, and I have no memory whatsoever of the plot, but I totally still remember the name. I even correctly remembered how to spell "Kalifriki." I should really try to read that story again someday. . . .

Oh. My. God.

When I sign in to my blog these days, it automatically takes me to a page with a link to Google Analytics, which, naturally, I check. When I signed in this morning to post about Rachel and Napoleon, I checked my blog and found that someone had found it with a search on the topic "percy bysshe shelley jervis [sic] cocker quote." Intrigued, I did some research and discovered that this happened. Well, thank you for your help, random Slovakian! Sorry I did not know this before you did, though!

Nature V. Nurture

While everyone has heard of Sarah Bernhardt, and I understand her to be the major influence on the portrayal of Miriam Rooth in The Tragic Muse, Rachel Felix also gets mentioned several times throughout that novel.  I don't think Rachel is as well-known today (at least in the Anglosphere) as Sarah, but I at least had certainly heard to her thanks to Henry James.  Therefore, I am kind of flabbergasted to discover that there are a large number of living people who are descendent of both her and Napoleon.  Huh.  They at least have a fascinating genetic heritage, even if they aren't fascinating people themselves!

Aftermath

1) From what I understand, there are poets out there who write poems not heavily reliant on water imagery.  How do they manage!?!?!

2)So after doing a bit of research for my poem, I find that I kind of want to actually hike all the way from the source of the Breg River in the Black Forest to the Danube Delta.  I think this would probably require a much longer vacation than I am likely to have at any point in the near future, though.

The Subject and Power

Cryptic Cryptic

I am so damn mad at T. S. Eliot right now.

Now, That's What I Call a Quotation!

"If poetry is to usurp the function of religion, then there must be a theodicy for it."


---Janet McCann, From Wallace Stevens Revisited: "The Celestial Possible."

I See Myself as an Endless Fountain of Immortal Drink

A friend linked to a review (of an episode of Legend of Korra, but that's not particularly relevant), offering up the quotation: "When I was a kid, I insisted on being an extra Michelangelo at recess instead of April. (Believe that I had a costume.) The lone female character who hung out with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles probably wasn’t as heinous as I remember... But 7-year-olds at recess have a way of boiling down characters to their defining characteristics, and [t]he job of the designated April was to hang out on the jungle gym until she was rescued, which was boring. An April couldn’t lead the gang. I could sometimes lead the gang, but only as Michelangelo. ...

"So even while watching 'The Spirit Of Competition,' in which significant time is spent on the long-dreaded romantic-polygon plot, my inner 7-year-old was still dead jealous she missed out on being Korra."

When I see people say things like that, I tend to find it somewhat alienating. Here am I, who was once a seven-year-old girl, and I just don't associate with that at all. I didn't have this kind of visceral reaction against the designated female characters in stories, that wasn't an issue for me. So I worry - does that make me a bad person? What does it say about me that I didn't feel that way? Shouldn't I have been offended by the limited roles open to females? Shouldn't I at least have shown more obvious evidence of having actually noticed?

But then I tried to dig more deeply into my memories of the time, and it occurred to me - I wasn't trying to play Michalangelo at seven, but, honestly, I wasn't exactly trying to play April, either. When I tried to envision myself as a character in an already-created fictional world, I was doing self-insert, at that age, and not self-insert as a Mary Sue heroine of either type, either. When I was doing self-insertion, it was as this kind of omniscient, omnipotent authorial figure. I didn't tend to envision myself as any of the characters in fantasy stories that seriously (I mean, I sort of associated myself with Nan Pilgrim in Witch Week in a kind of vague way, but when I tried acting out the book with my best friend, it was Charles's Simon Says spell that I was (alarmingly) obsessed with casting). Instead, I pictured myself coming into the worlds of the realistic fiction I was reading at the time, The Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley Twins and being in control. When I made up a huge BSC fanfic in my head, it was from Kristy's POV, even though I was a character, and I went around being mysterious and having magic powers and doing strange things to Kristy. There was this one SVT book about how Jessica arranged for Elizabeth to have a really terrible, unpleasant day in order to orchestrate giving her a surprise party at the end, and I hated that plot. I always felt intensely sorry for Elizabeth. So whenever I reread that book I would make up fix-it fanfic where I was the magical omnipotent author-figure saving Elizabeth from Jessica.

Even my imaginary games - the most significant imaginary games from my early life were Good Rabbit, Bad Rabbit and Good Mole, Bad Mole, which I played with my grandmother and little brother. I think Good Mole, Bad Mole was the long lasting one. It was a story about an orphaned little girl who lived with her evil stepfamily and whose only friend was the protective good mole, but they were at constant risk from the evil, dangerous, bad mole (I think that Good Rabbit, Bad Rabbit was basically the same plot but with rabbits?). So you'd think that I would be the poor little orphaned girl, right? Except I wasn't. That was my grandmother, and my brother was the good mole, but I was all the other characters, especially the evil ones. I don't think so much that it was that I wanted to be evil, though; I think it's more that the evil characters were in control of the plot, and that's where I wanted to be, in control of the plot.

Later in my childhood, once I was around ten or so, I became more involved in playing more normal imaginary games, the kind where I actually explicitly took on the roles of particular characters and acted specifically from their points of view. And at that time, I did default to playing largely female characters (with the occasional male). Those characters are still too important to me for me to easily classify them as "token females" or "powerful females" or anything like that - to me, they're just a lot of the best characters, and of course the best characters I create would include females, given that I see myself as female and I am the source of my own characters. I don't know how much all of my characters draw on stereotypical tropes of female characters, and to a certain extent I would even have to say it's something I'm uncomfortable thinking about. I love my characters too much and too personally to be entirely comfortable with the idea of confronting the potentially reprehensible cultural detritus that has helped to form them (this is a feeling that I wouldn't say I ever have about, say, books I adore, but somehow when I am the creator it's a lot more personal). Nonetheless, I would say that it's important that my experience of playing the games I love was very much still that part of the enjoyment was the sense of being the author, of creating plot. And this remains a feature of my collaborative imaginative life even as an adult - when I first started playing games like AD&D, I was disappointed because the only role for me as a non-GM was to be the character, not to be the author. And I've desperately enjoyed the "story games" that a friend introduced me to because, even if you have a bias towards one character in those games, you're still involved in collaborative plotting - and that's something that I need in order to feel comfortable with the game.

I think these aspects of my imaginative life say something interesting, especially in contrast with the more oft-told story mentioned above of the girl who wants to play boys' roles, about my imaginative life and what the function of imagination is for me - less the fantasy of escaping into being a different person with a more active role at the center of the story, and more the fantasy of escaping outward, into being someone with less personal stake in the world and a more controlling role at the peripheral of the story. It shows a lot about my personality and my expectations of life and my desires. It also reminds me of one of the many awesome papers I wrote in graduate school, the one about Endymion and Keats' letters. I was fascinated by the way that Keats, as poet writing about characters, tends to figure the poet not as the one in control, the one who was developing the story, but rather makes the poet a passive figure guided by others to create. Perhaps Keats was not imagining himself into his own stories as the author. And yet I have always done so, and I expect this will continue to be the form of engagement with stories that continues to appeal the most to me.

Neck and Neck and Not so Neck

Apparently I have seven posts tagged Byron and seven overlapping but not identical posts tagged Shelley. And three tagged Keats. Sorry, Keats! You're beating Blake and Wordsworth! And really beating Coleridge (unsurprisingly - I genuinely don't have much to say about Coleridge, even if I like "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel").

Well, eight and eight and four, now.

You know, I meant for this to be a very short post, but. . . the person directly responsible for the publication of both "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel" was Byron? And the motivation for the whole writing competition thing was Byron's recitation of "Christabel"? I swear to God that I wrote those two as the Coleridge poems I really like before learning any of this.

Yes!

"I know it's the shadow cast by what's looming and not the thing in itself that engenders fear."

---Kevin Barnes, "Malefic Dowery," Paralytic Stalks

Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood

I spent my weekend completely unproductively falling madly in love with ckret2's Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood. This is a Homestuck fanfic, which is somewhat regrettable, since it's significantly more accessible than Homestuck, and I'd happily recommend it to people, but I think you have to read Homestuck first.

I should note that I'm not saying that BtSDLb is better than Homestuck. I think that Homestuck is aesthetically superior to BtSDLb. But BtSDLb seems far more personal for me - it aims a lot more directly at my own personal kinks and interests, whereas Homestuck is technically amazing and sometimes really emotionally involving without being as consistently on the mark for my personal taste as BtSDLb.

Anyway, still can't focus on anything, so need to talk briefly about some of my favorite parts of BtSDLb so that I can maybe get my brain back?

1) The story is just about a large cast of psychologically screwed-up characters. Okay, so is Homestuck, but in Homestuck the importance of the cast is secondary to the importance of the story, whereas in BtSDLb it's the other way around. Of course, this wouldn't be enough to work for me quite as well as it does if it weren't for the fact that the individual characters work very well for me, but this is, personally, much more on an Angel Sanctuary level of, yes, people screw each other up so badly than an Utena level.

2) The story is mostly about trolls. I am such a mostly-there-for-the-trolls Homestuck fan.

2) Equius. Equius is already my favorite in Homestuck. Because he's a guy with long, straight hair. Am I kidding? I don't even know. Anyway, he's my favorite, and "[S] Equius: Seek the highb100d" is probably the single most effective part of Homestuck for me. However, in canon, Equius is a minor, one-note joke character. I love the joke and care deeply about him despite that, but I'm very glad that he's also one of ckret2's favorite characters and that she decided to develop him more deeply for her story. I also really like the way he's developed. So poignant! He's probably more universally sympathetic in BtSDLb, because he's oppressed and downtrodden and has internalized the oppression, rather than being an aristocrat, but I don't care, I love him in every incarnation no matter what.

3) Eridan. Eridan was ckret2's other favorite troll. I knew there were people out there who actually cared about Eridan in canon, but I was always completely indifferent to him. He was a joke character like Equius, except his joke wasn't particularly funny to me. Ckret2 has made him significantly more interesting. I especially like the fact that he's not completely pathetic like he was in canon and actually does some pretty awesome things at times, particularly in his interactions with Karkat.

4) Karkat. Karkat is a really appealing and likeable character wherever he appears. I think most readers are fans of him in canon, including me, even if he's not my favorite favorite. He's just fun to read about, and it's always positive when he shows up. I'm not sure that ckret2 improves on Karkat's development in the same way she does with Equius and Eridan, but I really like her version of the character, and how complex he is. At first, I thought he really did enjoy his position and his life, which I kind of liked - it was soooo cute - sorry, adorabloodthirsty - but of course it's even better to keep him all self-loathing and deceptive of others but still basically decent but really messed-up. So I love the way his character is done here.

5) Sollux - I just. . . this Sollux is amazing. Amazing.

6) Rhosyn - I have mixed feelings about Rose in canon, and the same is true about Rhosyn in BtSDLB. But what is done with her is just in general amazing. Her sarcasm is universal. It can be really hard to read. I think this is great.

7) DAIVAT - I don't actually like Dave much in canon. I mean, I like him when he is interacting with most of the trolls (TAVROS! GAMZEE! EQUIUS!), but I don't like him as a character that much - he irritates me. But I think I just unambiguously adore Daivat. His character is so interesting and so much more appealing than Dave and I CANNOT WAIT for all sorts of people to start realizing his deep, dark secret. It is going to be so awesome.

8) Vriska's scene with Dualscar - I am not a Vriska fan (this is a controversial issue). I don't hate hate her like some fans apparently do, and I do think I understand why some people like her. But she does irritate me, and I do generally root against her. I started out feeling similarly about her in this story, but I think ckret2's done a good job of using the scenario where, instead of being an upper-middle-class kid bullying and tormenting a lower-class kid, she's a lower-middle-class kid bullying and tormenting royalty, and generally using this to make her more sympathetic. Some of the parts of the comic that have spoken to me the most powerfully have been things Vriksa said (of course, because a lot of what she says is about the futility of hope and talking about how useful hope is is always the way to my heart), and in particular her scene talking to the ghost of Dualscar was really powerful. Oh, and ckret2 has actually also done a good job of making me like Terezi less (in canon, I don't necessarily feel passionate about her, but I do like her because she's my patron troll). Her reaction to what happened to Sollux and what she did to Vriska and Karkat were both really pretty awful.

9) Sollux and Karkat - Oh, man. I just love this. . . relationship. . . so much. Two self-loathing guys taking it out on each other and being massively screwed up about it. They want to get along but they just can't because they both hate themselves so much. Awesome forever.

10) The whole "Poor Unfortunate Souls" bit - Works. So effective. Of course, because part of it is Sollux doing that thing, which is amazing, and part of it is Karkat being sooooooo cu-adorabloodthirsty. But in general it is really awesome and lives up to the hype I saw for it on the WEBSITE OF EVIL AND DO NOT CLICK.

11) Equius <3 Tavros - This is not the most awesome relationship in the comic. But I found myself rather unexpectedly empathizing intensely with both of them. Okay, yes, this is both exactly how a relationship between a lowbl00d Equius and a highblood Tavros would go, and also something that is directly relevant to my own life in its terrifying awkwardness.

12) Equius <3< Gamzee - Epic. I had never expected before I started reading this comic that I would ever be drawn into shipping kismesis, because I don't ship much anyway (I don't really ship anything in Homestuck. Well, except for Equius <> Nepeta. But I would ship Equius <> Nepeta, given that Equius is my favorite character and moirails my favorite relationship) and because why would I care about kismesis, what relevance does kismesis have to me? But ckret2 does amazing kismesis. Equius and Gamzee is great. Especially the surgery scene. I love the way the power relations in the scene keep flipping. I love the way Gamzee casually threatens to tell on Equius, and how HAPPY Equius is to be cutting Gamzee up, and Gamzee moving, and Equius being driven to the point of confessing his hate, and hate snogs, and, yeah. I kinda ship it.

13) ERIDAN <3< KARKAT - I have come to ship it so much. And yes. I realize that neither one is capable of a true kismesis at this point, explicitly in canon. But the scenes here make me so happy. Karkat being soooooooooooo adorabloodthirsty. Karkat having no idea why he hasn't let go of Eridan yet. Eridan being so happy to find himself in Karkat's room. Eridan accidentally impersonating Karkat with Vriska. ERIDAN PURPOSEFULLY IMPERSONATING KARKAT WITH TEREZI (OMG OMG OMG, for some reason I just love the impersonation thing). Eridan and Karkat's duel and verbal duel. Hate snogs, near hate rape, and Eridan still holding out the possibility even when he isn't into it. Eridan's Jack Sparrow moment. Karkat's potentially final words being "Spade Laws." Eridan's happiness when he thinks Karkat is making it official. I just ship this so much. It really moves me. And it's about two guys who hate each other. Who knew?

14) Oh, btw, speaking of ERIDAN IMPERSONATING KARKAT WITH TEREZI - I do not like Suweet Broski, and I was initially glad that he did not possess Karkat. I was rooting for Karkat there. But ever since that happened I kind of regret my attitude there - there should be more possessing and, more importantly, impersonation. Suweet Broski pretending to be Karkat would have been awesome and so hilarious. I am so disappointed that when Sollux's body actually did get possessed Troll Britain's First Guardian turned it into a female body. Wouldn't it have been hilarious if she had pretended to be Sollux and confused the hell out of Karkat? And I know that Daivat doesn't want to impersonate Karkat, but I can kind of imagine Karkat wanting to impersonate Daivat? This should happen. There needs to be more impersonation.

15) Waiting so hard for the Ψiioniic to show up in the present day.

Do None of My Interests Remain Untouched by David Bowie?

I am boggled.