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.

All the Best People Have to Be Ghosts

For a long time now, I have wondered why it is that I like Utena without loving it. On paper, Utena seems like something I should love. I've described Angel Sanctuary as "all these people who don't fully understand each other always hurting each other inadvertently" with Gnostic overtones implying that "the physical world is evil because it separates us, divides us up into these beings that can't touch and careen about and hurt each other" and, of course, weird gender and incest issues. Given this description, there's almost no distinction between AS and Utena. So, given that Utena is obviously the more intellectual of the two, and AS is clearly sillier by far, why is AS the one I adore and Utena the one I coldly admire?

While I was walking around doing nothing for an hour today, I came up, for the first time, with an answer that makes sense - if it is clearly not the content, then it must be the structure! This is slightly hard for me to accept because the structures do seem superficially similar (well, those aspects of the structure that seem relevant - I do not think the reason I don't love Utena is because of the Rose Bride duels). Both of them feature a main plot in the present and a lot of backstory, which is revealed gradually during the course of the main plot, up until the final, most important, extremely Gnostic backstory that gets revealed at the end. However, the difference between the two of them is, I think, in the balance of the backstory and the main story. It's true that in Utena the backstory is the motivation for the entire present story. It's also true that almost every important individual character has his or her own different backstory, and even that the backstories connect (to some degree - Utena's, Saionji's, Touga's, Akio's, and Anthy's obviously do). However, first of all I feel that less time is devoted to backstory in Utena and the focus is more clearly on the present. Even if I'm wrong about this (and I haven't measured it to find out for sure), I think that it's still true in the sense that people in AS spend a huge amount of time talking about the backstory with each other even in the present, whereas although we see a lot of the backstory in Utena, it seems less common for characters to be discussing it with each other in the present, such that it still makes for a time differential. Secondly, the backstory in AS is far more convoluted and interconnected; all of the characters have motivations that stem from the motivations of other characters who are connected to still other characters, whereas the backstory of Utena seems (if you don't mind my saying so) far less incestuous (as for whether or not this is literally true. . . ummm. . . that's a hard one). These two features contribute to my sense that, despite the many similarities between the two works, the backstory plays a more significant role in my experience of AS than my experience of Utena.

And of course it's very likely that this would, in fact, be a reason for me to love one far more than the other. Because I love stories where a lot of the story time is devoted to figuring out what went on in the past - in fact, that's among my favorite things. If you look at the works of art I have fallen in love with, whether it's Hexwood, Lost, Xenogears, PSME, or Hitherby - these are all stories where a lot of the narrative drive and suspense comes from trying to figure out what's already happened rather than momentum forwards. The big climactic moment of Utena isn't finding out the truth about Anthy and Akio, it's Utena's duel with Akio and the aftermath. It's something that happens in the present. But, although it is the end of the series, it would seem odd to say that the big climactic moment of AS is in fact Setsuna killing God; it seems to be more something along the lines of discovering the true relationship between Alexiel, Lucifiel, and Rosiel and the catharsis for Alexiel and Rosiel of Rosiel's death. So the climax is the reveal of the ultimate truth behind the plot; the death of God is more like a necessary afterthought (as part of the climactic reveal is the revelation that God is to blame for EVERYTHING!). This is the kind of story I love, where the whole point is to discover the truth about the past - it's the reason I fell madly in love with Absalom, Absalom! the moment I read it - because it's a book where the entire plot is laid out in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is just characters researching and then making up an explanation for it.

I don't know why this kind of narrative appeals to me more than other structures when the content is so close - but there you have it, it does. And I think that's a very helpful explanation of my heretofore inexplicable reactions.

Yay walking around doing nothing for an hour!

_Lost_ Religion is Different from Real Religion

Many people on the Internet are kind of thinking that Esau is Cerberus. I am inclined to believe this as well.

Richard Alpert

Over the past week-and-a-half, I seem to have come to the conclusion that Richard Alpert on Lost is kinda attractive. Here are some related thoughts:

1) He is attractive.

2) His conversations (with Locke, at least) have a tendency to go something like this:

Locke: What does this compass do?
Richard Alpert: It points north, John.

Locke: You told me that I'm your leader.
Richard Alpert: Well, I certainly wouldn't want to contradict myself.

3) He is probably immortal. Anything that involves immortals is inherently a Grace-enticing thing!

4) This is a funny interview with the actor who plays Richard Alpert, Nestor Carbonell. Or, at least, there's one funny question/answer.

Reader (Etc.) Response Theory

One of the formative experiences of my youth was getting into an argument with other people at my high school summer camp over George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Everyone else argued that Maggie Tulliver was a very sympathetic character; I protested that I found Eliot as a writer to be very manipulative (a point on which I haven't changed my mind; I had the same reaction to Adam Bede 8.5 years later) and that her attempts to gin up sympathy for Maggie made me inclined to rebel. My memory, though it may be somewhat distorted, is that even the professors running the class were kind of aghast that I was unable to just "enjoy the novel" without analyzing it; sure, later on, after finishing the book, it was a good and respectable thing to consider what the author had apparently been trying to do, but when you were just reading the book for the first time, in order to get as much pleasure out of it as possible, you should ignore that kind of thing and just react, without having these bizarre meta-reactions.

Well, later on I came across this attitude as the anti-English department attitude - people should just enjoy books, all of that analysis just gets in the way. I'm unable to buy it, just because I can't imagine turning off that analytical part of my brain. I'm not trying to claim that, on my first reading of a book, I ever do an in-depth, sophisticated reading of it that remains my stable critical attitude towards the book. But, let's face it. My reaction to narrative is inherently an active one; I can't even imagine what it would mean to passively absorb a story. Reader response theory appeals to me to the degree that it assumes that the reader is always playing a role in creating the story, because that's very true to my experience. I'll finish a book and just KNOW things about the characters that the author never bothered to say. And, furthermore, I'll also always come out of a story with a double sense. Ignoring the authorial intent issue for now, let's just say that I come out of a story with two reactions - on the one hand, how did I feel about the characters, plot resolution, setting, etc., and, on the other hand, what would a sympathetic reading of the story have to say about the characters, plot resolution, setting, etc. Sometimes, to be sure, those two reactions are more or less synonymous - but even then I'm consciously aware of the synonymy!

As with Maggie Tolliver, these perceptions quite frequently focus on characters. Sometimes I'll find myself disliking a character that I feel the story itself wants me to like. And sometimes I'll find myself adoring a character where that adoration doesn't feel sanctioned by the story. The latter situation happens to me a lot with Dave Duncan books. Most recently, I read his novel Demon Sword (published under the pseudonym Ken Hood). The hero of the novel is a young guy named Toby, and there's a significant secondary character named Rory. Throughout the novel, Toby has a very vexed relationship with Rory. Rory often treats him badly, and Toby dislikes Rory on first site (later, it's suggested that he subconsciously realized that Rory was a romantic rival for the female lead when they first met). On the other hand, Toby also recognizes many good qualities in Rory and occasionally has moments of showing great respect for him. One assumes we're supposed to root for Toby, based on the fact that he's the hero of the book, makes mistakes but often triumphs, shows a consistent and at least somewhat laudable morality, and, in the climatic moment of what seems to be a fairly light book, triumphs. Thus, Rory is presented ambiguously throughout. Finally, in his last few appearances, it's revealed that, despite his many positive characteristics, he really is a fundamentally lousy guy; he's willing to leave Toby to his death in order to get money and the girl. The structure of the story makes me assume that the reader is being led to repudiate Rory, just as Toby's loyal supporter Haimish ultimately does. And yet I found myself unable to do so. I'm strongly inclined to forgive Rory for his admittedly horrible behavior towards Toby, because I just found him more likable throughout the entire book than I found Toby. So, even though the structure of the narrative made the hero quite obvious, as a reader, I had to ignore that and pick my own, somewhat more flawed, hero.

Actually, despite my divergence from the planned narrative, my reaction to Demon Sword was very positive; I enjoyed the book and didn't really feel bothered that I differed from the narrative's perspective! My reaction to Final Fantasy VII in this regard is more problematic, however. At least Rory is legitimately ambiguous throughout the book. But with FFVII, up until the end of the game, I was convinced that the narrative was setting up redemption for Sephiroth. He did some pretty bad things, to be sure. But the game seemed to stress that he had been lied to all his life, had been manipulated, had never really had any chance to understand goodness. At one point, the protagonist, Cloud, comes to the conclusion that all his life he had taken physical strength as the only means to gain respect and that he's now realized the problems with that attitude; since he specifically considered Sephiroth to be a model of physical strength, I really believed that this scene was set up for the end of the game, when they would reveal Sephiroth's strength to be just as much of a pose, hiding the abused, unloved boy within. I played the game with my brother, and when he told me that we were up to the final dungeon, I didn't even believe that was possible, since the whole part of the game that came after Sephiroth's redemption was yet to come.

Well, Sephiroth, rather famously, was never redeemed. And that struck me as very different from Rory's situation. In Rory's situation, although I liked him a lot more than the narrative seemed to, his ambiguity throughout the book seemed to justify both the narrative's negative end to his story and my own more positive stance. But, in FFVII, I never felt that the narrative was ambiguous. I was expecting the narrative to agree with me. And it was a real shock and disappointment to find that the narrative really didn't.

On the other hand, those stories where the narrative and my own perceptions seem to be in sync can be really powerful. This is probably at the heart of my deep, abiding love for Please Save My Earth - there, the story has some very ambiguous characters whom I love. The suspense of the narrative for me comes from the way it often seems to skirt the edge of throwing off them off the cliff - in reading it, I can't help but feel nervous - what if the narrative ultimately presents Shion or Rin as ultimately evil? But, in fact, the narrative always comes right back and reasserts that my positive understanding of the characters is right! It's a very empowering story for me to read; I love the delicate dance between the possibility that my interpretations ultimately won't be justified and the constant clues the story provides that they will be.

I'm thinking about this in the throes of anticipation for Lost - which I really am very excited about ;-). I feel like my perception of Sawyer might be like my perception of Shion or Rin - an ambiguous character, whom the story often seems to risk presenting as fundamentally problematic, but one in whom my deep faith will probably be justified in the end. And Ben Linus is another case entirely - an ambiguous character whom I find enjoyable to watch as a mostly bad guy, with a few good sides; I'm not on Ben's side, but I enjoy watching him and continuing to not be on his side. I hope the narrative doesn't end up justifying all his actions, but I find him fun to watch nonetheless. But Kate is more of a problem for me; she's an ambiguous character who the story seems to think is more justified than I do. The key difference between Sawyer and Kate is that Sawyer doesn't think he is a good person for having committed horrible acts; he does some pretty bad things, but he doesn't like himself for them and doesn't really expect anyone else to like him, either, because he doesn't think he deserves it. The narrative in that sense helps to exonerate him; it suggests he has at least the possibility of some day making up for his errors. And I'm in line with the narrative. But Kate is presented as a heroine, someone whom, while we're supposed to doubt her, we're also supposed to root for. However, she never shows the same kind of self-doubt or remorse as Sawyer; she expects other people to like and respect her despite the horrible things that she's done. The narrative seems to think that it's exonerated her, at least to the same extent that it's exonerated Sawyer, but I can't go along with it. That's the main reason why her character really gets on my nerves.

Interesting Women Or Men

I don't actually read Questionable Content per se, but it's one of those comics that I don't enjoy enough to read the full archives but do enjoy enough to look through occasionally. I spent the night a couple of nights ago reading it and enjoying the odd psychologies of many of the major characters, and it got me to thinking. You couldn't really call QC a harem comic in the way that I understand people call Megatokyo a harem comic (nb, I have never read Megatokyo myself, so this is just hearsay). Sure, I guess a large part of the comic at first was about the fairly average, socially awkward guy who had two girls who were interested in him, but there are far more characters than that, most of whom aren't interested in him, and the situation with Marten's love triangle has been at least temporarily resolved for quite a while. At the same time, I feel like QC has something in common with a harem comic, in that the male lead is a socially awkward guy who has girl trouble, and this is his main personality characteristic, and, as for the rest of the characters, the interesting female characters seem to strongly outnumber the interesting male characters. The most memorable characters in QC seem very definitely to be Faye and Hannelore, and, after that, the more memorable characters generally seem to be the women rather than the men. It's difficult to count this or quantify it, but I know that in reading the comic I always find myself looking out for the strips that involve the women and mainly only being interested in the men in terms of the way that they're relating to the women.

The interesting thing is that QC is a strip written by a heterosexual guy. This seems to fit with the idea of harem shows in anime, which are generally shows with one average guy picking from a large number of attractive women and are definitely aimed at (heterosexual) men (I enjoyed Tenchi Muyo, along these lines, since two of the characters in it reminded me of the same one of my favorite imagined characters that the actress who plays Charlotte in Lost could play). Azumanga Daioh, a manga/anime with a grand total of one male character (who's somewhat peripheral) was originally written as shounen. Meanwhile, there are reverse harem shows for (heterosexual) girls, featuring, of course, one average girl and the heaps of men she encounters who fall for her, things like Fushigi Yuugi. There are also more borderline cases - Fruits Basket has plenty of female characters, but my experience in watching it was that the writers of the anime directed most of their attention towards the men and the one female lead, although I don't know if this is also true of the manga or not. And of
course there are cases like Gundam Wing, where a show that was originally aimed at boys has a huge fanbase of women and girls attracted by the cast of attractive men with very few women involved to distract them.

I don't claim, of course, that these tendencies are universal, but I think it's interesting that they do exist in some mediums. Certainly my understanding is that Western comic books, mostly aimed at a male audience, tend to mostly focus on their male leads and mostly mistreat their women. And, although there are certainly reality TV shows aimed more at one gender than another, I feel as though scripted American TV shows probably don't have the luxury of narrowing their audience in that way. On the other hand, does Lost actually have more interesting male characters than females? That tends to be my sense of the show, but, if so, it hardly seems to be because the show is largely aimed at women (and the main showrunners are male).

Hey, This Post Needs a Title!

If you go to here and use the password "qilak," you can see three special features for Lost - some stuff from the Season 4 DVD, mainly focusing on Kate (including an interview with her actress and someone else talking about the actress), an interview with the actress who plays Charlotte, and a scene from the first episode of the next season, featuring Kate. I definitely like getting these updates through the e-mail, and they serve their intended purpose of getting me even more excited than I already was for the upcoming season. But I do feel slightly bemused by that particular set of special features.

I mean, okay, I like the actress who plays Charlotte, mainly because she has the perfect looks and, in the first episode in which she appeared, the ability to portray the perfect personality, for one of my favorite imagined characters. I've never before really seen someone who looks so close to the way I've imagined one of my made-up characters in my head, and the fact that she played a character who at least originally displayed a similar personality to my character makes it more exciting. Still, I think we can all agree that Charlotte is very, very, very far from the most interesting character on the show. . . .

And then why do both of the other two features have to focus on Kate? I mean, okay, I admit to being biased here, because Kate is my least favorite character. But I don't think I'd mind if they had one feature about her. But Lost is obviously an ensemble show. It seems really strange to devote two of the three features to the same character and then one more to a really minor character.

Oh, well. I suppose that at least this way I can hope that next time all three of the features are devoted to Sawyer or Desmond. . .