Character Manifesto Purgatory

[malymin]

The main thing getting in the way of writing as much meta as I want to write, other than lack of time or energy, is that a key part of my process involves, like... throwing ideas out to other people, discussing those ideas, rotating them like a rock tumbler as we polish the idea, as they offer criticisms and I explain myself.

I've really been wanting to write meta about Mytho from Princess Tutu. However, it's hard enough to find fans of the show to talk to - harder still to find people who are passionate about this specific character, rather than brushing him off as "boring" and nothing more than a prop for the development of the "real" characters: Duck, Fakir, and Rue. I also will need to directly cite parts of the source material, and I'm unsure of how to do it. Hand-transcripting the subtitles is a pain, and I'm never sure where to put line breaks. How do I balance space efficient readability, and communicating the pace of a character's monologue or dialogue? In addition, sometimes the characters' facial expressions or body language are important, and I feel the need to include screenshots because I don't know how to properly describe these things in text. People definitely did include screenshots for some meta back on Livejournal, but I still worry about overdoing it. And what do I even begin with? I have textual evidence that Mytho's "emotionless" state fuctions is actually severe alexithymia, but I'm unsure how to properly introduce my argument and line up the evidence. I feel like I have something to say about how Mytho reads as a character with a dissociative trauma response (and I don't just mean season 2's unfortunate invocation of Evil Split Personality stuff, I'm talking season 1 stuff like the Fear Shard episode), even though his condition is textually magical in nature - but I'm worried I'll get something wrong and it'll feel disrespectful. I have thoughts about little bits of dialogue with implications about his thought processes and personality, about the existential horrors of his existence as (in-universe) a fictional character manifest from a tragedy into the real world. About how Mytho reads as disabled, about how Mytho reads as mentally ill, about how Mytho is objectified by other characters and his relationship to femininity despite being the manifestation of a male "prince" character archetype. But they're a formless stew in my head that I don't know how to refine on my own.

It's really hard to explain why my post-canon fanfic is the way it is without explaining how I see Mytho. One can argue that there's no point in interpreting the character that deeply, but isn't part of fandom supposed to be that we find value in both finding and inventing depth? It's what always drew me to the subculture, not shipping - analysis, theories, that sort of thing. We're supposed to interpret characters! I'm thinking a lot about T. H. White's notes on his interpretation of Lancelot, specifically the version of Lancelot that exists in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The Once and Future King, T. H. White's own telling of the Arthurian cycle, uses Malory's work as its primary source. A transformative work, if you will. White's notes on Lancelot remind me a lot of the sort things a person in fandom might say about a character they're deeply fixated on (in Tumblr parlance, a "blorbo"), right down to the completely undisguised projection where White lists himself in a slew of people he thinks Lancelot as a character resembles. I'm thinking about this commenter's description of White's notes:

I'm touched by the seriousness with which White takes Malory. I've read Malory as a grad student, taught him, and read a fair pile of scholarship in preparation for teaching him, but I've rarely seen anyone so thoughtfully explore Malory's Lancelot as a coherent character rather than a mere series of actions—but then, White appreciated Malory with a simplicity that I suppose isn't permitted to many grad students and scholars.

It's very soul-crushing to see a whole bunch disillusioned, bitter ex-fandom Tumblr users describe deeply identifying with fictional characters, wanting to explore their psychology, and even openly projecting on them as... a sort of perversity, a moral sickness caused by Late Capitalism, and in a better world these impulses just wouldn't exist. It makes me feel shame about caring so deeply about frivolous things. But when I don't care about anything but the serious and terrible things in the world, I can't stand to live. But I struggle to explain what's important to me about my little things! The words turn to worms in my mouth before I can fully articulate them.

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

When I cited the source material for one of my ship metas, I just linked a YouTube upload of the scene and then described it as neutrally as possible (clearly delineating between my interpretations and the text)

Is there a reason this isn’t possible?

[malymin]

Was there a youtube upload already online, or did you upload the clip yourself?

I'll be honest - part of it is that youtube links and embeds don't really preserve well, and what will I do if the clip gets copyright claimed? When I pull up a Wayback archive of an essay from a long dead blog or website, text is definitely preserved, images are sometimes preserved - videos are never really preserved. Part of why I hate the pivot to video for longform media analysis is that I can't save it as easily.

[stardust_rifle]

It was already online. I see your point, though. It was mostly a casual thing I did on a whim.

[malymin]

What media was it for, if you don't mind me asking?

[stardust_rifle]

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. If you scroll back a bit on my journal, you can probably find it.

[malymin]

Ah! That makes sense, then. When explaining why I like Sayaka Miki (from Madoka Magica) to other people, it's easy for me to pull up relevant clips already uploaded to youtube, because it's a popular show with a big fanbase. Meanwhile, the most obscure anime I've ever watched (Loki Ragnarok) doesn't even have a clean upload of the opening theme animation on youtube.

[kalium]

re: your last paragraph: I have never heard this before, and that is horrifically depressing. Screw hidden dystopias, the idea that in an ideal world people wouldn't care that much about fiction is awful. But I like building idealised worlds because I like the idea of people having the safety and security to devote themselves to what they love, so...

[malymin]

I think a lot of Tumblr "leftists" are desperate to prove that "being annoying" (in their perspective) is directly correlated to being an inferior person, and so if fandom culture annoys them it must be because Being A Fan is a sign of moral rot/bad politics/intellectual inferiority/etc. You combine that with a lot of those people actually having been Fandom Bloggers for Superwholock or MCU or Homestuck or kid's cartoons themselves in the 2010's and clearly deeply embarrassed by it, and well...

So it goes. Same kind of logic is used to harass whatever lgbt demographic they've decided is "annoying" this month. The ace community on there never really recovered from "ace discourse" stuff.