MplsEileen

Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata, first published over two hundreds years ago, is notoriously considered one of the most difficult-to-play piano pieces of all time.

In particular, when Beethoven sent it to his publisher in 1818, he allegedly said, “Now you have a sonata that will keep the pianists busy when it is played 50 years hence!”, and much has been made of the fact that it wasn’t publicly performed in its entirety until eighteen years later, by Franz Liszt himself.

Except that’s a bit of a deceptive statistic. See, when Beethoven published Hammerklavier, public solo piano recitals/concerts weren’t really a thing yet. Symphonies, sure; concertos, definitely. But sonatas were “parlor” music—a thing played by amateurs, often skilled amateurs, but amateurs nonetheless, in little sitting-rooms for a bit of entertainment after dinner, or at private salons with a guest list in the low dozens. (And mostly they were meant to be sight-read! The culture of obsessively polishing a piece to make it “performance-ready” wasn’t as much of a thing, back then.) People bought these things the way they bought novels, and, just as someone might buy a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses today and enjoy puzzling over the thing, even if they never read the whole thing or feel like they fully “get” it, well… some folks would enjoy sonatas the same way.

So yeah, Hammerklavier didn’t have its first public performance until Liszt played it in the Salle Érard. But also, Liszt basically invented the format of “star virtuoso pianist hogging the stage for two hours” in order to get a public audience at all.

But in the meantime—I think about how wonderful it must’ve been, tooling around on the piano during that 18-year-span where there was no evidence that thing even was playable, or that, if playable, that the thing even made sense. Beethoven was nearly totally deaf by this point, after all, a fact that was publicly known—had he totally lost it? people had to wonder. And the only way to find out would be… well, trying it out yourself!

It has the sound of a gimmick. And I’ll bet it was, at least a little bit—but just because something’s more interesting to play than listen to doesn’t mean it’s failing in its goal. (Though fwiw it is very interesting to listen to.)

It also has the sound of, like, Dark Souls, to be honest. Proto-video game culture. A new game drops and people are asking each other: can anyone beat this boss? can you beat this boss? do you still consider your time on the game well-spent even if you never 100% it?

Biographies generally agree that Beethoven’s metronome markings (which only appear in his later work, and only *some* of his later work) are preposterous—often borderline-unplayable, and certainly not very musical. I couldn’t find a recording of anyone trying to play Hammerklavier at the marked 138bpm tempo, so I got a computer to do it—and burst out laughing at the result because, yeah, 138bpm is fucking NUTS. But whether intentional or accidental, I love the audacity of its being there, like a taunt: I dare you to do more. I dare you to do better. I dare you to try.

Much has been made of how difficulty’s a way of keeping people out—but it’s also a way of inviting people in, I think. It says: do this hard thing and you will be rewarded. You will be rewarded in the trying. Because the trying is the thing that makes the music live; there is no music without you.

Here’s an old bit from an interview with the game designer Porpentine:

“The purpose of a puzzle [in a game] is to provide resistance. For me, that resistance doesn’t need to be coercive or challenging, just interesting and aesthetic. My mechanics are to be touched. Games are perhaps the most intimate art because the player must remain touching at all times. They must touch or the game does not exist.”

(* Striver Asians are a distinct population from Asian which is an ethnicity. Think Tiger Mom stereotypes. Striver Asians are mostly the offspring of 1st or sometimes 2nd gen immigrants, often are raised with an explicit focus on material success)

at both schools, any time there was a piano nearby, you'd end up with a group of like, the Gamer/ Sport Pianists. As in, they engage with piano as a fun challenge or game that sometimes can be competitive. One of the favourites was always Speed Piano, where everyone went home, learnt the same pieces (usually not an assigned piece from their real piano lessons - it might be a pop song, videogame or TV or movie soundtrack, etc - when I was in school the song Wedding Dress from some k drama was very popular for this, I'd hear it all the time played at more and more absurd tempos)

And then they'd come to school and sit at the school piano they'd Race Each Other. To play Wedding Dress or River Flows in You or some other pop song on the radio.

(oh yeah and their piano teachers haaaated this lol but they can't be stopped)

Other times they'd swap weird scores they found online to challenge one another. A lot of these scores aren't technically playable!

That's what this post reminded me of - the kids at school who yeah, did like music probably, but they mostly went on to do medicine or law degrees... but in high school they sometimes indulged in a bit of Piano-as-a-Competitive-Sport.

Qinheng-jun takes the shitty middle road. Protects this person from death but doesn't let them go free.

His brother raises his sons. We can assume they are constantly told, don't be like your father. If you are ever in this situation, take the righteous path.

It happens to Lan Wangji. He doesn't take the righteous path. He goes far further than his father. Prevents the murderer from being captured, injures his relatives himself to defend them. He is horribly punished for it, it's the worst thing that has ever happened to Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren, and it doesn't even work, Wangji's beloved still dies. Clear object lesson for Lan Xichen. This is the only, the greatest mistake Wangji has ever made. Lan Xichen can never, will never, make it himself.

Of course he would be thinking about it, after Wangxian bring their suspicions to him. Of course that's what's behind his conversation with Wei Wuxian about Lan Wangji and their parents. Of course he has to be trying to psych himself up about it, from the return of the Cloud Recesses pass to the final confrontation in the temple.

Even Wangji is reminding him that he knows what he has to do. And yet he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to, he'll take any other option, please-

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

Jonathan brings photographs of the properties to show to Dracula that he took with a Kodak portable camera.

Seward keeps an audio journal via phonograph recording.

Seward being a psychiatrist- the idea that you could actually try to talk to and understand a "lunatic" in order to help them get better instead of just throwing away the key was a depressingly novel concept in medicine at the time. Freud's Studies on Hysteria only came out two years before Dracula, for instance.

Blood transfusions. It's easy to make jokes about how Dracula was written before people knew about blood types and that's why Lucy gets transfusions from so many people with no problem, but because blood types wouldn't be discovered until 3 years after it was published, blood transfusion was still an extremely experimental and risky treatment that many doctors would hesitate to even consider, because sometimes when it was performed the patient would instantly die and no one knew why.

Mina's joke about "the New Woman"- anxieties about gender and feminism in Dracula are the kind of thing whole theses have been written about, but there's an obvious irony to this comment because Mina kind of is the New Woman. In contrast to Lucy, Mina is a highly-educated woman with a real actual job, and she works to hone those practical job skills because she plans to be an active participant in Jonathan's work.

When Van Helsing decks Lucy's room out with garlic flowers, he telegrams to Holland for overnight shipping across the Channel from a friend who owns a greenhouse, because garlic flowers are a good 3 months or so out of season at the time the chapter is set.

Pros: I’ll have access to them later because they’re fucking hilarious

Meanwhile, every 10-year-old with a cell phone has unfettered access to navigate this adult sexual world, but with no supervision or guidance to help them, because they know they are doing something “wrong” and therefore don’t ask for help when they are confused or being manipulated.

so here's the thing, I thought that what this person was asking me was why aren't my popslash stories online?

and I was so profoundly excited to come here and explain all about how I didn't respond for a few months because I was working on my ego death (accelerated by looking in the mirror and reminding myself, "you write hockey rpf.") and so here I was, ready to just Get Over Myself already, the stories are uploaded, and I was SO enlightened and had found love in my heart for all my past selves even though they were very embarrassing, maybe even because they were embarrassing, and then when I re-read this ask it actually wasn't about that at all (more ego death, since no one was really asking to see those stories at all, but I rose above it) and now I'm here because the ask was actually:

hey, look, if you have a moment, what happens in this unfinished untitled turn-of-the-century popslash AU that is based in its entirety on this picture?

and then I responded but tumblr disappeared my post and the ask but I have now come too far and must continue.

Okay, so of course, The Revolution happens and they overthrow the unjust dictatorship they've spent their lives fighting against and install a fair and democratic government and usher in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity.

first it was the klingons—they’re originally supposed to be this cruel, bloodthirsty, war-obsessed people—and then tng comes along and it’s like wait no maybe war and violence is a part of their culture and actually ties back to ancient traditions and philosophies so we have to be woke about it.

hey these are the ferengi and they’re supposed to represent everything we hate about capitalist society; they’re greedy, scheming, profit-obsessed, and they look like ugly little trolls to emphasize how much we fucking HATE capitalism. oh wait fuck here comes deep space nine and we have to recognize that they’re PEOPLE. okok what if the pursuit of profit is actually part of their culture and ties back to ancient traditions and philosophies. so we have to be woke about it.

this is the borg, they’re a hivemind race of cyborgs who have no sense of individuality and their only motivation is assimilating people into their society. they want to assimilate humanity and we are completely defenseless against them because their technology is eons ahead of our own and they’re incapable of being reasoned with. oh sweet we have a borg prisoner this is the perfect opportunity to commit genocide against them. fuck actually we can’t commit genocide we’re woke and communists and in space.

hey these are the cardassians, they’re part of a cruel and vicious empire which is supposed to be a representation of fascism and authoritarian regimes, they’re a cold, bloodthirsty people with no sense of empathy or compassion, their society literally references 1984 on multiple occasions, and they’re known for the insanely cruel and inhumane methods of torture they use against their prisoners of war. we hate the cardassians…….. except, here’s a cardassian kid who grew up on bajor, and……. fuck. he’s a person. now we actually have to consider his humanity. and being racist is actually……. bad.

this is the jem’hadar, they’re genetically engineered soldiers who have no sense of individuality and only live to defend the state. they’re all born addicted to a synthetic drug that’s manufactured by the state and administered by their masters—this is how they’re kept subservient. they’re ruthless and powerful and they’re incapable of being reasoned with because their only motivation is violence and killing. so we should kill them all, right? FUCK….. what if they’re actually people. goddamnit. now we have to consider their humanity.

no real people (obviously there are lots of real life women who are victims of fandom misogyny, but i feel like having those women compete in a poll against each other and also against fictional characters would be kind of disrespectful to the actual real life shit they were put through)

no men!!!! idc if he's like a woman to you, this tournament isn't for him!!!!

obviously, misogyny does not have to be the only factor here, it just has to be one of the factors. if racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. are also part of the problem, do not hesitate to bring that up in your submission! it's highly relevant! the last thing i want is a tournament consisting of only cis straight white women, especially because so many of the hated/mistreated women of fandom are also marginalized in other ways that the fandom hates them for.

idk if this is a rule exactly, but just to clarify, this tournament is about which one of these characters is your favorite. it is emphatically not about trying to quantify which character is the biggest victim of fandom misogyny. that seems like an utterly exhausting and pointless thing to argue about, please don't subject me to that. i just want to see people defend their favorite overly maligned or mistreated girlies in my notes, i cannot stress this enough

characters don't have to be overtly hated to be victims of fandom misogyny. they can also be perpetually ignored in favor of men, or constantly characterized as the wise mom friend who the fandom has apparently decided has no desires or goals or needs besides being a sounding board for their favorite white boy, etc.

there's no time limit on this thing. even if the hatred/fandom mistreatment has died down and the character in question has been re-examined since, if there was ever a period in which they were subjected to fandom misogyny en masse, they count.

that said, don't choose characters who are generally universally beloved and always have been but you saw one person shit on them one time in a misogynistic way and got annoyed. i hate when that happens too, but it's does have to be a trend, not just one annoying guy, even if the guy in question is really annoying.

submit as many characters as you like!

you can submit a character here: