i think this is my new favorite thing

I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.

Ms. Tippett:

Really?

Ms. Howe:

They really find it hard.

Ms. Tippett:

What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?

Ms. Howe:

Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.

Ms. Tippett:

It does.

Ms. Howe:

It hurts us.

Ms. Tippett:

You naming something.

Ms. Howe:

We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.

Ms. Howe:

It’s the this, right?

Ms. Howe:

Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.

Ms. Tippett:

In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.

Ms. Howe:

Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.

So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.

You can read about it here: https://minds-africa.org/fabric-map-of-africa-the-art-of-storytelling/

so anyway that's all true and important but i'm not going to talk about it here because many many other people have already said it better, instead i am going to talk about something that really impresses me about season 1 of ofmd on a pure writing-craft level, which is how it handles the tone shift.

you're watching the first episode for the first time and it's this funny little workplace sitcom about pirates and it's enjoyable in its own right but you do not think for one second that it's ever going to make you sad, right? and you can proceed through seven or eight episodes continuing to think that, and then the last two hit and you suddenly experience like fifty different shrimp emotions you are absolutely not prepared for, and right as you are absorbing that it ends on a cliffhanger that is completely focused on the relationship you have just developed a bunch of entirely new feelings about.

i know this is the point where i got weird about the show, because i have this very distinct memory of watching the first nine episodes - yes, all nine, even after the kiss - and liking it a lot but in a basically normal kind of way. and then after the tenth i remember just sitting on the couch kind of stunned for a minute and then going outside to walk the dog and being unable to stop thinking about it and just feeling like i was going insane, which i guess i did because i am still here talking about it.

the weird thing about this is how much the shift doesn't feel jarring, though? like there's other media i can think of that goes through a dramatic tonal shift. anime does it more often than western tv for some reason; puella magi madoka magica and the original 1998 trigun anime both famously start out very light and happy-go-lucky and then proceed to break your heart. but those don't really feel like what ofmd's doing. in both of those cases it feels like a change in the story - a sudden one for madoka, more gradual for trigun. but with ofmd it feels more like the curtain is being pulled back to reveal what was always there.

when i rewatch season 1 of ofmd i always feel sort of like i am watching two narratives at once. the first one is the surface-level story, which is a goofy sort of adventure-comedy about a silly frilly rich man and his absurd guybrush threepwood quest to become a mighty pirate. and then buried underneath it, the entire time, is this much more earnest and heartfelt story about queer self-discovery and romantic melodrama.

in the first episode that subtext is buried so deep i don't think anyone would see it if you didn't know it was coming, it lives mostly in the image of a little boy bullied for liking flowers and derided by his father for his inability to do "a man's work." but it's there, this dark space at the center of the story that no one's allowed to name, a silhouette you can barely make out lurking under the water, and for the rest of the season it gradually, relentlessly draws closer and closer to the surface: not all beards are beards and then jim's reveal to the crew then i was just uncomfortable in a married state then you want to do something weird? then we don't own each other then you wear fine things well then take your sword and run me through then this is happening.

and then calico jack says you two buggering each other?

and that's the subtext kicking the door down, that's the thing nobody was willing to say out loud before that point. izzy thought they were already fucking and lucius thought they should be fucking but neither of them would say it, but jack didn't know the rules, now he's said it and you can't put the genie back in the bottle, the subtext has become text, after that you get the chain and what makes ed happy is you and pining for his boyfriend (that's another word nobody was allowed to say out loud before this point!) and his name is ed.

this is a trick you can only do once; season 2 really could not possibly have repeated anything similar even under ideal circumstances, and in fact that's part of why the season opens on a scene you could see on the cover of a romance novel, to indicate that we're done with subtext and we're living in romance world now. (and despite this a lot of viewers seemed to buy into the surface-level story so completely that even after the way season 1 ended they're still confused by the shift; you can see this in several of the mainstream reviews of s2 that liked the season but sound genuinely baffled by stede suddenly appearing to care much more about pursuing true love than about his pirate ambitions. sorry guys the piracy was always a metaphor!)

link to the podcast, this section below is from timestamp 24.35

“andy weir provided a packet to the creature shop that was like a packet of eridian biology and stuff but there wasn’t much about eridian culture or eridian sociology and i made a bunch of choices going in because i just needed to have like a ‘who am i?’ right? 

[…] and i made a decision that rocky’s species, that eridians are really social animals that in fact are like a beehive or a pod of dolphins - it’s a unique and really integrated ecosystem of everybody doing their [specific] part. and the fact that rocky had to fly that ship for about 45 years - longer than grace has been alive, i wanna point that out - he’s been alone on that ship, having to run that by himself and- ryan and i would talk about that, one day we sat down and he was like “so what’s the movie from rocky’s perspective?” and i was like “oh it’s like ‘alien’, […] like he’s in a ‘contagion’ movie by himself and he has no idea what’s going on.”

he’s basically in castaway by himself which of course ryan is too but like, one reason why we never cut to the past of rocky is like, i think it was really horrifying! i don’t think rocky has slept in however many years and so a thing i was really struggling with is this idea of like “rocky must watch sleep” because how do you make that a need as opposed to like, a cute idea? and i just had to make the decision that […] he has a lot of unprocessed trauma around the things that he doesn’t understand and how much he is blaming himself because he’s the guy who fixes, he’s the guy who fixes and there was something really freeing about deciding that rocky was a deeply emotional, deeply anxious, deeply horrified person - being - that is trying to move through that in some way and how that affects the early scenes with him until there’s a point in the story where you can see we’ve physically softened rocky’s behaviour, because he’s finally feeling more safe and ok but all of that lore, all of that information [was essential].