[Image ID: Daniel Danger's art print, 'To all who home to this happy place,' depicting a ruined Disneyland castle in a post-apocalyptic landscape with a statue of Walt and Mickey in the rubble.]
Thereâs this behavioral economics study that completely changed the way i thought about art, teaching, and critique: itâs a 1993 study called âIntrospecting about Reasons can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfactionâ by Timothy D Wilson, Douglas J Lisle, Jonathan Schooler, Sara Hodges, Kristen Klaaren and Suzanne LaFleur:
The experimenters asked subjects to preference-rank some art posters; half the posters were cute cartoony posters, and the other half were fine art posters. One group of subjects assigned a simple numeric rank to the posters, and the other had to rank them and explain their ranking. Once they were done, they got to keep their posters.
There was a stark difference in the two groupsâ preferences: the group that had to explain their choices picked the cartoony images, while the group that basically got to point at their favorite and say, âOoh, I like that!â chose the fine art posters.
Then, months later, the experimenters followed up and asked the subjects what theyâd done with the poster they got to take home. The ones whoâd had to explain their choices and had brought home cartoony images had thrown those posters away. The ones who didnât have to explain what they liked about their choice, whoâd chosen fine art, had hung them up at home and kept them there.
The implication is that itâs hard to explain what makes art good, and the better art is, the harder it is to put your finger on what makes it so good. More: the obvious, easy-to-articulate virtues of art are the less important virtues. Artâs virtues are easy to spot and hard to explain.
The reason this stuck with me is that I learned to be a writer through writing workshops where we would go around in a circle and explain what we liked and didnât like about someoneâs story, and suggest ways to make it better. I started as a teenager in workshops organized by Judith Merril in Toronto, then through my high-school workshop (which Judy had actually founded a decade-plus earlier through a writer in the schools grant), and then at the Clarion workshop in 1992. I went on to teach many of these workshops: Clarion, Clarion West and Viable Paradise.
So Iâve spent a lot of time trying to explain what was and wasnât good about other peoplesâ art (and my own!), and how to make it better. Thereâs a kind of checklist to help with this: when a story is falling short in some way, writers roll out these ârulesâ for what makes for good and bad prose. There are a bunch of these rulesets (think of Strunk & Whiteâs Elements of Style), including some genre-specific ones like the Turkey City Lexicon:
A few years ago, I was teaching on the Writing Excuses cruise and a student said something like, âHey, I know all these rules for writing good stories, but I keep reading these stories I really like and they break the rules. When can I break the rules?â
Thereâs a stock answer a writing teacher is supposed to give here: âWell, first you have to master the rules, then you can break them. You canât improvise a jazz solo without first learning your scales.â
But in that moment, I thought back to the study with the posters and I had a revelation. These werenât ârulesâ at allâââthey were just things that are hard and therefore easy to screw up. No one really knows why a story isnât working, but they absolutely know when it doesnât, and so, like the experimental subject called upon to explain their preferences, they reach for simple answers: âthereâs too much exposition,â or âyou donât foreshadow the ending enough.â
There are lots of amazing stories that are full of exposition (readers of mine will not be shocked to learn I hold this view). There are lots of twist endings that are incredibleâââand not despite coming out of left field, but because of it.
The thing is, if you canât say whatâs wrong, but you know something is wrong, itâs perfectly reasonable to say, âWell, why donât you try to replace or polish the things that are hardest to do right. Whatever it is that isnât working here, chances are itâs the thing thatâs hardest to make workâ:
But if I could change one thing about how we talk about writing and its ârules,â it would be to draw this distinction, characterizing certain literary feats as easier to screw up than others, having the humility to admit that we just donât know whatâs wrong with a story, and then helping the writer create probabilistically ranked lists of the things they could tinker with to try and improve their execution.
Which is all a very, very long-winded way to explain why I bought a giant, gorgeous art-print at Comic-Con this weekend, even though I have nowhere to hang it and had sworn I would absolutely not buy any art at the con.
I was walking the floor, peeking into booths, when I happened on Daniel Dangerâs booth (#5034, if youâre at the con today), and I was just fuckinâ poleaxed by his work.
http://www.tinymediaempire.com/
[Image ID: Daniel Dangerâs âIt stopped being about the panic,â depicting a ruined mansion interwoven with the skeletal branches of a tree, with a weeping statue and two human figures]
Now, see above. I canât tell you why I loved this work so much (and thatâs OK!), but boy oh boy did it speak to me. I just kind of stood there with my mouth open, slowly moving from print to print, admiring works like âIt stopped being about the panic.â
[Image ID: Daniel Dangerâs âheadlight in the path of,â depicting a ruined mall with a pair of stags standing at the top of the escalator.]
On the surface, this is moody, post-apocalyptic stuff, heavily influenced by classic monster/haunter tropes, but itâs shot through with hope and renewal and the sense of something beautiful growing out of the ashes of something that has toppled. Thereâs real â(Nothing But) Flowersâ energy in âHeadlight in the path ofâ:
[Image ID: Daniel Dangerâs âWe are no longer able to protect you,â depicting a ruined factory with a coming-apart sign reading âWe can no longer protect you forever,â and a statue of a sword-bearing angel.]
Danger isnât just a
very
talented artist, heâs also an
extremely
talented craftsman. As a recovering pre-press geek, I was (nearly) as impressed by the wild use of spot color and foils as I was by the art, like in âWe are no longer able to protect youâ:
[Image ID: Daniel Dangerâs âmade of smoke and chains,â depicting a ruined landscape with a pair of derelict subway trains at the foot of a hill on whose peak is a rotting mansion. A pair of human figures, holding hands, are approaching the mansion.]
Danger himself calls this work âweird sad hyper-detailed artwork of dreamy buildings of ghosts and trees,â which is a very apt description of this work, as you can see in âMade of smoke and chainsâ:
So I looked at this stuff and sternly reminded myself that there was no way I was going to buy any art at the con. Then I walked away. I got about two aisles over when I realized I had to go back and ask permission to take some pictures so I could put a little link to Danger in my blogâs linkdump, which he graciously permitted:
[Image ID: Daniel Dangerâs art print, âTo all who home to this happy place,â depicting a ruined Disneyland castle in a post-apocalyptic landscape with a statue of Walt and Mickey in the rubble.]
But then I got all the way ass over to the other ass end of the convention center and I realized I had to go back and buy one of these prints. Which I did, âTo all who come to this happy place,â because fuckinâ wow:
This was unequivocally the best thing I saw at this yearâs SDCC, but I also got some very good news while there, namely, that Emil Ferrisâs long, long-awaited My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Vol 2 is finally on the schedule from Fantagraphics:
Itâs coming out in April, which gives you plenty of time to read volume one, which I called, âa haunting diary of a young girl as a dazzling graphic novelâ:
If you are or were a monster kid or a haunter, this is your goddamned must-read of the summer. Itâs a fully queered, stunning memoir for anyone whose erotic imagination intersected with Famous Monsters of Filmland.
(Also, if youâre that kind of person and youâre in the region, you should know about Midsummer Scream, a giant haunter show in Long Beach; Iâll be there on Sunday, July 30, for a panel about the Ghost Post, the legendary Haunted Mansion puzzle-boxes I helped make:
https://midsummerscream.org/
Now Favorite Thing book two was the best news, but the best experience was watching Felicia Day get her Inkpot Award and give a moving speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkpot_Award
And then learning that Raina Telgemeier also got an Inkpot; I love Rainaâs work so much:
If youâd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, hereâs a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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âOpinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge⌠is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in anotherâs world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.â
â Bill Bullard
I was in the middle of a conversation with someone about ethics when the other person interrupted me and very politely in the most humble manner said, âwhy do you think that you always have to be right? When you really talk about looking at a broader perspective in a neutral manner, you sound like the most biased person ever and it just doesnât feel good to have conversation when the other person believes in how one should try to understand different point of views but it just doesnât show in their behaviour.â That person was right indeed, and the wiser me kept instructing me not to speak another word and just stay mum and accept and apologise for being wrong but my ego just burst out to make things only worse. How many times has this happened with you? Well Iâve been doing this for 18 years straight and regretting it every single time, every time I promise myself to change it but I just donât. Well I guess this time I would because Iâve learned a strategy to it.
Firstly, itâs not about me so i decide to look at other personâs intention behind their behaviour towards me or their words. What if theyâre not really trying to bring me down but in fact giving me a better perspective to look from.
If this strategy doesnât work and i still take it personally and itâs hurting me then itâs probably because,
It is about me, and Iâll try to look at myself in the mirror, introspect if it was my fault and how.
You take things personally when they hit your raw nerve, when they touch your insecurities which are deep rooted within your childhood. And you got to give yourself empathy this time, and speak up about how you feel to another person in front who according to you made you feel less important or worthless. Thereâs nothing wrong about being vulnerable sometimes.
Trust me, most of the times itâs just you making yourself important enough for everyone which shifts you from the actual problem to a self created problem. Whether be it different perspectives or our mistakes, we need to learn to accept and give ourselves room to grow.
Just remember that no matter how much people criticise you, crumble you, make you feel worthless or bad about yourself, you never lose your value, so start thinking in a manner where you keep those problems above you and not limited just to you because it might not be about you, rather itâs just your ego telling you stuff.
Like always I was surfing across Youtube for solutions and found this really amazing video, which Iâll definitely link down but this was a summary of what I learned from it. Hope it was helpful! And,
Thanks for reading!
(the link to the video: https://youtu.be/LnJwH_PZXnM )
it is with you that i learned to define the meaning of brutal honesty
in the way i loved you explicitly with no ifs ands or buts
i refused to hide behind the cowardice of my insecurities
plain and simple, i threw all my cards on the table face up
unbluffed my eyes and melted my stiff upper lip
because even though you have never laid eyes on me
maybe you would come to know my soul
so that when i finally catch the weight of your gaze
you would be comforted by the fact that
i was never at all a stranger in the dark
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
i learned a lot in 2017. i learned about the true obsessive nature of my personality. i learned what i want in a relationship and a partner and will no longer settle for anything less. i learned i can handle a lot more than i give myself credit for.