imbalancing toph

Apparently some 'shippers are convinced that this is a post for (or maybe against, I'm not sure) a specific ship. Or several ships. Like I said, I'm not sure, so for the record: the notion of shipping pro/con didn't even enter my head when writing this. If you want to read into the essay as an argument for/against A+B vs B+C, do whatever, but leave me out of it. I'm not even in the blooming fandom, so it's equally possible that fandom-savvy folks wouldn't even find any of this all that new and/or startling. This is me, deconstructing, for my own contemplation and entertainment. That is all.

A few thoughts — some prompted by the back-and-forth between snarp's posts and my own — and some prompted by comments and reports found in deep-link googling — and some prompted by just plain looking at the entire Avatar storyline as a story. The last of which really amounts to: let's treat this like it's a one-person-wrote-this, discreet unit with a coherent and continuous storyline. Can writerly logic inform the story's pattern — most importantly, to reveal where it got mucked?

There are three major areas I've been contemplating, but I'll start with Toph, because I think she's the hingepin. The first clue was a comment (where? grrr, it's all starting to run together now) saying Toph was a late addition to the playing field, and not part of the original vision of the basic storyline. Yet with writer's cap on, Toph's addition makes a great deal of sense. I might even say Toph's inclusion is practically necessary, though the reasons why are hard to explain from the outside (and harder still if you've not been in this position yourself, to be honest, though I'll try).

It's a sense of balance inside a story, which is what I was trying to explain in my post about Azula: that stories require a certain amount of... oh, not je ne sais quoi (though that's part of it)... but a kind of circular closure. Not 'closure' in the sense of 'how the story is resolved', at least not so simply; within the story's middle parts, it's closure in that every object has a mirror reflection of some sort. If you think of a character as representing a perspective, then when this perspective is reflected back in a distorted or altered form (the mirror, also sometimes called the foil), it creates a feedback loop wherein we discover more about this character/perspective via the alternate perspective of the mirror/foil. That's what I mean by closure: it's like completing a circuit.

( So let's see what Toph can tell us about the storytelling patterns in Avatar. )

a reflection on the having-cake post

In the aftermath of my post on digression in online discussions, I followed several suggested links. By a process I can no longer track, I ended up on an essay by Claire Light, Outrage, Pullback, Punishment: The Structure of One Common Antiracist Post. Her description of the dynamics in an Antiracist post really crystallized my understanding of what fundamental conflict lies within the issue of derailment vs digression.

The three concepts -- outrage, pullback, and punishment -- she defines as:

Outrage: something racist happens in the world. A blogger or group of bloggers pick up on it. They note it in their blogs and express outrage at it. The item gets passed on from blog to blog.

Pullback: of the bloggers who post on this topic, less than half will express anything other than outrage. But a subset of these bloggers will spend a little time pulling back from the outrage to contextualize this incident of racism and explain why it's a problem. They will go into the history of these types of incidents, they'll go into academic theories of X, they'll give talking points on why this sort of thing is bad for people of color, bad for justice, and bad for the world in general.

Punishment: of the bloggers who pull back and contextualize, an even smaller subset will propose or initiate action. This action is dual: it proposes advocacy of a particular view, action (usually apology and some sort of remediation), and threatens punishment if this action isn't taken up immediately.

There can be -- and I have seen -- additional conflicts (of an emotional type) [eta] tension even between otherwise agreeing positions [/eta] when some bloggers begin the pullback before the main core have exhausted the outrage. The timing of that second step is crucial lest it come across not as a valid digression and exploration, but as a derailment. Beyond that, though, this is the part in Light's essay that really got me thinking about what might be going on:

If you look back on any effective movement of the 20th century (suffrage, civil rights, Vietnam) their communication structure all had these things in common:

1. A clear, articulated overall goal towards which all participants were willing to work for years.


2. A set, but evolving discourse and vocabulary, which the movement controlled.


3. Media: alternative media organs (papers and magazines) dedicated to promoting this message and discourse; and, over time, allies in the mainstream media dedicated to promoting this message and discourse.


4. The necessity of responding deliberately and thoughtfully, owing to the lack of instantaneous communications technology. Because everything written was printed and had to be edited and proofread, everything broadcast had to be accepted by media corporations and could be heavily controlled, the message and discourse were very polished, thoughtful, respectful, and carefully tailored to appeal to listeners who may have held a differing opinion.

If you think about it, OPP simply cannot exist in a movement in which the above conditions obtain. Chaos and Freedom are the twin faces of the same internet beast. The viral responsiveness and speed of protests like Jena 6 and A&F owes to the Freedom face. The lack of a goal, a message, a discourse, and deliberate or thoughtful response owes to the Chaos face.

Go, read. Well worth it.