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Final misc/lit/feels crossposts: the Fuddles, Cats: The Musical, Cherryh & trauma
These are, and I swear it's (almost definitely) true, the final crossposts. Hurrah! Hurray!
#'whenever a stranger comes near them they have a habit of falling apart' same tho; a hard same #The Emerald City of Oz was intended to be the series finale and so has a getting the band back together vibe via #Uncle Henry and Aunt Em falling on hard times so Ozma invites the entire family to live in Oz #(and then travelogue) #it's an Oz ex Machina which creates peace and love and security forever & it's so sincerely comforting #would it work outside a kid's book? not really; is Oz as peaceful or friendly as Ozma advertises it to be? not at all #it still brings me such joy; and none the least b/c the boy reads it to me late at night when I can't sleep #anyway the Fuddles: 'they're not a bit afraid when put together and usually they're very jolly and pleasant' resonates not at all #but Baum does this a number of time through the series: these weird and disenfranchised and strange and inconvenient colorful unique people #who love & are loved in return b/c in Oz no one goes wanting for apparently either emeralds nor compassion #he still fucks up—there's a lot of people who are inherently evil & people who are ugly which is how we know they're evil #but I appreciate it when he gets it right
Cats (the musical) came up in conversation when I was visiting my parents
Cats & Juu stories from my childhood that I already knew:
when I was young—sincerely young, 3-5 years??—my parents took me to a stage production. I was enraptured and flawlessly well-behaved the entire time (of the performance, at least); so much so that an audience member told them she had been worried that I would fuss and was impressed by my behavior
when I was somewhat older (and this I actually remember!), I would listen to the original cast recording before bed. I had it on cassette, ripped, I think, from vinyl. "Memory" was my favorite song, and the third-from-last, so I would listen to the entire recording. every night. all the way to (pretty much) the end. my parents loved it!! (they did not love it)
Cats & Juu story with which I only recently became familiar:
I knew I grew up on Cats, but I didn't know how completely—apparently I've been listening to it since I was a newborn, they played it for me in the crib. "the one nice thing is that both you and your sister used to sleep through the night when you were babies." I've been listening to Cats all the way through since birth.
formative media, "media you should review in order to understand me," is one of my favorite things as a sort of personal trivia, but nothing, literally nothing, can explain me as well as "came into this world mainlining Cats"
TAGGED: #my favorites now are absolutely the TS Eliot originals #(particularly Rum Tum Tugger & Macavity & Song of the Jellicles & Addressing of Cats #but most especially The Naming of Cats—I believe it is literally true #self-knowledge as an ongoing process in equal parts ridiculous and essential—for cats and for people and for me-the-cat) #but the adaptation required more structure and so I do love Memory & too #I love the poems & love the musical and it's in no way a guilty pleasure #it helped build how I understand cats—as people! individual people!—and myself #b/c apparently you can't get any more formative than 'in the literal actual cradle'
Interpersonal relationships, trauma, hurt comfort, and socio-political commentary in Cherryh
The relationship between interpersonal relationships and trauma is actually my favorite thing that Cherryh does. Cribbed from my comment on a discussion about Cherryh elsewhere:
I've read 12 [14 now] of the Alliance-Union books. Cherryh frequently returns to the issue of emotional needs (especially as regards trauma/mental health), what prevents individuals/societies from fulfilling those needs, and how individuals (but rarely societies) manage to fulfill those needs. Preventing is usually the text, and usually social commentary, particularly about the relationship between government/economics/social structure and social custom; fulfilling is usually the subtext and often has an air of the illicit or taboo: it's a profoundly intimate act which generally violates social convention or is part of social change.
I can't speak to Cherryh's intent, obviously, but: I feel think this is simultaneously a form of social/political commentary, which obviously there's a lot of in Cherryh, especially in Alliance-Union; and that it just speaks to Cherryh's id, because the way social needs are fulfilled, while functionally subtextual, is heavily emphasized & often the book's emotional core.
I'm profoundly invested in making mental health treatment non-taboo/non-subtextual, but I find Cherryh's depiction of these issues personally gratifying—maybe because for me they reflect my reality (the system is bad and can't/won't help) and my wish-fulfillment (but individuals will defy the system to help). I find that emotional payoff so cathartic. But I can understand finding the fundamental worldbuilding frustrating. There's an innate pessimism in the (nearly universal, in the Alliance-Union setting) insistence that even diverse, opposing (and occasionally alien!) societies will have this limitation.
This isn't perfect—for reasons discussed above, also because the homosocial tendencies of Cherryh's subtext make imperfect marriage to these narratively-weighty faux-subtextual interpersonal dynamics: what is actually legitimized, either by plot or by narrative structure, is largely dependent on what's hetero, and eliding "gay" and "taboo" has obvious problems. (Cyteen begins to differ in this! mayhap that continues! the books I've read so far were published in the 70s and 80s.)
But if there's anything we've learned from living in 2018, it's that political and economic systems are not prejudiced by accident: social systems explicitly benefit from and are sustained by causing harm. The system also benefits from convincing us it's a problem to large to overcome—but an alternate narrative, a narrative that finds relief in peer-to-peer relationships, is both productive and comforting. It's not enough—and that's in Cherryh's novels, too, where large-scale social change is perpetually imperfect but still necessary. But it's something.
TL;DR: Did you know that h/c is socio-political commentary as well as a cathartic trope? Because it can be.
"Are the Fuddles nice people?"
"Oh, very nice," answered the kangaroo; "that is, when they're properly put together. But they get dreadfully scattered and mixed up, at times, and then you can't do anything with them."
"What do you mean by their getting scattered?" inquired Dorothy.
"Why, they're made in a good many small pieces," explained the kangaroo; "and whenever any stranger comes near them they have a habit of falling apart and scattering themselves around. That's when they get so dreadfully mixed, and it's a hard puzzle to put them together again."
"Who usually puts them together?" asked Omby Amby.
"Any one who is able to match the pieces. I sometimes put Grandmother Gnit together myself, because I know her so well I can tell every piece that belongs to her. Then, when she's all matched, she knits for me, and that's how she made my mittens. But it took a good many days hard knitting, and I had to put Grandmother together a good many times, because every time I came near, she'd scatter herself."
"I should think she would get used to your coming, and not be afraid," said Dorothy.
"It isn't that," replied the kangaroo. "They're not a bit afraid, when they're put together, and usually they're very jolly and pleasant. It's just a habit they have, to scatter themselves, and if they didn't do it they wouldn't be Fuddles.
—The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum
#'whenever a stranger comes near them they have a habit of falling apart' same tho; a hard same #The Emerald City of Oz was intended to be the series finale and so has a getting the band back together vibe via #Uncle Henry and Aunt Em falling on hard times so Ozma invites the entire family to live in Oz #(and then travelogue) #it's an Oz ex Machina which creates peace and love and security forever & it's so sincerely comforting #would it work outside a kid's book? not really; is Oz as peaceful or friendly as Ozma advertises it to be? not at all #it still brings me such joy; and none the least b/c the boy reads it to me late at night when I can't sleep #anyway the Fuddles: 'they're not a bit afraid when put together and usually they're very jolly and pleasant' resonates not at all #but Baum does this a number of time through the series: these weird and disenfranchised and strange and inconvenient colorful unique people #who love & are loved in return b/c in Oz no one goes wanting for apparently either emeralds nor compassion #he still fucks up—there's a lot of people who are inherently evil & people who are ugly which is how we know they're evil #but I appreciate it when he gets it right
Cats (the musical) came up in conversation when I was visiting my parents
Cats & Juu stories from my childhood that I already knew:
when I was young—sincerely young, 3-5 years??—my parents took me to a stage production. I was enraptured and flawlessly well-behaved the entire time (of the performance, at least); so much so that an audience member told them she had been worried that I would fuss and was impressed by my behavior
when I was somewhat older (and this I actually remember!), I would listen to the original cast recording before bed. I had it on cassette, ripped, I think, from vinyl. "Memory" was my favorite song, and the third-from-last, so I would listen to the entire recording. every night. all the way to (pretty much) the end. my parents loved it!! (they did not love it)
Cats & Juu story with which I only recently became familiar:
I knew I grew up on Cats, but I didn't know how completely—apparently I've been listening to it since I was a newborn, they played it for me in the crib. "the one nice thing is that both you and your sister used to sleep through the night when you were babies." I've been listening to Cats all the way through since birth.
formative media, "media you should review in order to understand me," is one of my favorite things as a sort of personal trivia, but nothing, literally nothing, can explain me as well as "came into this world mainlining Cats"
TAGGED: #my favorites now are absolutely the TS Eliot originals #(particularly Rum Tum Tugger & Macavity & Song of the Jellicles & Addressing of Cats #but most especially The Naming of Cats—I believe it is literally true #self-knowledge as an ongoing process in equal parts ridiculous and essential—for cats and for people and for me-the-cat) #but the adaptation required more structure and so I do love Memory & too #I love the poems & love the musical and it's in no way a guilty pleasure #it helped build how I understand cats—as people! individual people!—and myself #b/c apparently you can't get any more formative than 'in the literal actual cradle'
Interpersonal relationships, trauma, hurt comfort, and socio-political commentary in Cherryh
The relationship between interpersonal relationships and trauma is actually my favorite thing that Cherryh does. Cribbed from my comment on a discussion about Cherryh elsewhere:
I've read 12 [14 now] of the Alliance-Union books. Cherryh frequently returns to the issue of emotional needs (especially as regards trauma/mental health), what prevents individuals/societies from fulfilling those needs, and how individuals (but rarely societies) manage to fulfill those needs. Preventing is usually the text, and usually social commentary, particularly about the relationship between government/economics/social structure and social custom; fulfilling is usually the subtext and often has an air of the illicit or taboo: it's a profoundly intimate act which generally violates social convention or is part of social change.
I can't speak to Cherryh's intent, obviously, but: I feel think this is simultaneously a form of social/political commentary, which obviously there's a lot of in Cherryh, especially in Alliance-Union; and that it just speaks to Cherryh's id, because the way social needs are fulfilled, while functionally subtextual, is heavily emphasized & often the book's emotional core.
I'm profoundly invested in making mental health treatment non-taboo/non-subtextual, but I find Cherryh's depiction of these issues personally gratifying—maybe because for me they reflect my reality (the system is bad and can't/won't help) and my wish-fulfillment (but individuals will defy the system to help). I find that emotional payoff so cathartic. But I can understand finding the fundamental worldbuilding frustrating. There's an innate pessimism in the (nearly universal, in the Alliance-Union setting) insistence that even diverse, opposing (and occasionally alien!) societies will have this limitation.
This isn't perfect—for reasons discussed above, also because the homosocial tendencies of Cherryh's subtext make imperfect marriage to these narratively-weighty faux-subtextual interpersonal dynamics: what is actually legitimized, either by plot or by narrative structure, is largely dependent on what's hetero, and eliding "gay" and "taboo" has obvious problems. (Cyteen begins to differ in this! mayhap that continues! the books I've read so far were published in the 70s and 80s.)
But if there's anything we've learned from living in 2018, it's that political and economic systems are not prejudiced by accident: social systems explicitly benefit from and are sustained by causing harm. The system also benefits from convincing us it's a problem to large to overcome—but an alternate narrative, a narrative that finds relief in peer-to-peer relationships, is both productive and comforting. It's not enough—and that's in Cherryh's novels, too, where large-scale social change is perpetually imperfect but still necessary. But it's something.
TL;DR: Did you know that h/c is socio-political commentary as well as a cathartic trope? Because it can be.