Emiris

I’m glad I’m not the only one that finds they write best at night. There’s something about being the only one awake that opens the world for exploration. While everyone else dreams, you write… Or try to. I like the author’s note about needing to find the best way of articulating oneself. I struggle so hard sometimes to write down what I can say so well. If I could communicate through speech all the time, I would, but there’s something about capturing those ideas in a more fleshed out form that makes writing worth it.

This section I’ve copied from the article is fantastic. Without people to bring Satire to certain ridiculousnesses, it would be hard to look at the other side of things. Trolls force us to look at the flip side of what’s popular, tilt our heads and wonder. The author perfectly describes that here.

“Their politics may occasionally be questionable, condemnable even, but internet trolls occupy a position alongside cultural borders that allow the rest of us to better understand our roles within society. Like the Athenian Philosophers and the Tricksters, they bring ideologies into focus, into conflict. The internet troll calls back to the mythological past of various global cultures and forces us to consider what kinds of future may lay ahead for us. But equally important, if we do let the internet trolls point the way ahead, we must consider, as the Sophists did, what other alternatives exist beyond the borders that trolls make readily apparent.”

I loved the revenge streak running through Arya. I’d say just about the only thing her and the Hound had in common was that they were driven to harm the ones that harmed them (and were pretty stubborn which made for great tension and a unique relationship between them). I
‘d like to compare her and the Hound to Jon and Ned. While Jon followed suit in Ned’s blindly honorable footsteps, we see the Hound, having taken on a father figure role to Arya, convince her in the last season to abandon her greatest desire for revenge on the Queen and save her own life.
Perhaps the contrast between Jon following in Ned’s footsteps and leading himself through more trouble than was worth it, compared to Arya accepting that there is more to life than completely embodying one emotion, was meant to show that the true danger we face as humans is not the evil of an emotion itself, but the danger of gaining pleasure from seeing its ugly acts through.

I think that Fin breaking out of the Stormtrooper mold in The Force Awakens is reflective of a Post-Modern sentiment coursing through North-America’s veins as we speak. With the fear of overlords and movement towards non-conformity, I’d like to touch on the point of Communism. Even though many felt they were breaking the mold and doing the non-conformity thing by becoming Communist, it was the conformity to fear of Communist overlords and rules that caused much of the destruction echoing still from the 20th century.
With a return to these ideas felt through Post-Modernism, I’m asking myself not how Star Wars could relate to this even further. Perhaps Darth Vader, when he kills Sidius and saves Luke, both breaks the Sith mold and conforms to the prophecy he was slotted into as a child – the prophecy which weighed on him in such a way that it tipped him towards the dark side.
Overall I think that this article touches on an interesting strain of Western thought, but I’ll still think of the new movies as a curse from the Dark Side.

This will definitely result in the expected Twilight/Batman mashup memes. I agree with the position entirely. Roles like this are the fun of Hollywood because they keep old fandoms alive with new life in our favourite characters. I wasn’t even aware this casting was planned before reading, but now that you mention it, Pattinson, having mastered the brood as Edward Cullen, might be able to pull this off. I’d watch the film, and I’m sure the casting in itself will attract both 20 somethings and 40 somethings who were Team Edward. Definitely a flick to look forward to.