Lost in what's forever more

The X post is purportedly about how writers on Tumblr will post, you know, ref sheets, character bios, fun facts, short skits, outlines and so forth without actually commiting to doing actual long-form writing, allegedly in the hopes of creating a sort of mini-fandom without an actual cultural product. It then goes on to draw some barely coherent sexual metaphor (I am still wrapping my head around the phrase "have a fetish for your own cuckoldry") and. the post overall sucks and is phrased much more dismissively than I'm recounting. The tumblr post, on the other hand, seems to be describing a phenomenon of writers creating characters before coming up with themes and goals and actual plotlines they are enmeshed in (therein dubbed "OCism"), which at least seems to be describing people who do want to make more comprehensive artistic endeavors. and doesn't employ bizarre projections of Erotic Feebleness

I'm not sure what I think of either but I do think there's something interesting about the "OC" as a cultural object - originally referring to a fan character that is inserted into an existing canon or universe, but then having its definition broadened to "a character but not necessarily one you want to insert into a long-form work of fiction". The character just sort of exists, sometimes with a more general idea or background behind it, floating in the phantom zone of experimentation - basically an idea given some elaboration. To use this website's parlance, "playing dolls"

I do think that there does not need to be any deeper purpose to plucking some person from your imagination and playing around with it - art can't simply be reduced to specific and discrete cultural products - but I also feel like there is this gray zone where you want to develop your ideas and concepts but you don't really know how or towards where, and other people's curiosity can be a catalyst for, if not the actual "consummation" of a hypothetical project, then at least the feeling you're going somewhere with this. And, as someone who does in fact follow artists who make up "OCs", sometimes I do idly find myself wishing they were in a concrete plot; there is a sort of "trade-off" to this, namely, that the pluripotentiality of a character with a degree of narrative elasticity collapses into a sort of imaginary reality. The fuzzy space in which you can make "headcanons" of characters you created congeals into actual(ish) canonicity

To an extent, I can't help but see this as a bit of a microcosm: the "OC" becomes a "character" in the same way that one becomes a "writer" or "artist" or whatnot, now having taken the plunge from potential to actual and thus being subject to scrutiny in a more concrete capacity. If you're just scribbling around, it doesn't seem right to chime in with a critique, but, if you're creating a novel or comic or whatever, suddenly there is a more tangible object to opine about. Paraphasing Dan Olson, a dream can be made real, but a fantasy cannot. You've made it and, thus you've "made it" - you're fair game in the manifold conversation that is capital-A Art, even if on a smaller scale

As I've said before, I have a frustratingly muddled relationship towards making art - is it fun for me, do I want to do something with it? - and that itself feels like an extension of my ambiguous relationship towards life and what I should make of it. I don't think I wanna just putter around and be satisfied with it, but I have hardly any goals to speak of. Do I want to be part of something? Do I want to express myself? do I want to stretch my wings? Do I desire ego death? I simply - and complicatedly - do not know

Art is something I seem to at least want to get better at, but it's one of the most vexing skills to hone precisely because "better" has a much fuzzier and broader and variegated bar for "good" than something like a practical trade. And not having something I want to use this allegedly-evolving skill for is unnerving. AND I gotta get in gear manage the logistics of my whole life. Owie.

I remember that there was a discussion a while back about infertility in women being sometimes used as this big dramatic source of anguish in fiction, ofen enough that it would feel like writers had a very narrow conception (heh) of what sort of inner struggle a woman could have - and I'm thinking about that in the context of Umineko as a story

Sometimes, I think - I believe I've mentioned this before - it's hard to tell whether a work is engaging with social mores of its time and place or simply taking them for granted. Because people in these contexts do internalize a lot of this stuff, so you have, you know, women being concerned and feeling anguish about their lack of "femininity" and such. I think a big factor in feeling out how this stuff shakes out is the simmer; there's an agonizing tension, a chafing contradiction between the full personhood of a given subject and the awkward shape they must stay inside of in order to be accepted by themself and the world around them - and something of it juts out, unevenly, with a shaky violence, in specific moments or as a long, drawn out note of anguish in the horizon of the music sheet

And I believe that's where Umineko lands. Natsuhi's shame is as constant and unrelenting as the pride and vehemence and energy and determination she can only express through the roles available to her - which, in the end, bring her little more than suffering and frustration. And her feeling of humiliation regarding her (apparent) inability to sire a descendant with the Ushiromiya heir apparent creates the disgust and distance that inadvertently set in motion part of Sayo's own anguish about infertility. The story is full of women who, implicitly and explicitly, are hamstrung and shamed and diminished despite their capacity for love and brilliance and violence; they claw at each other in their social impotence and nothing is gained. Infertility is a tragedy for Natsuhi because she is rendered - by the world, not by the text - naught but a vessel for the continuation of the patriarchal bullshit of which incest is the inevitable outcome