Comments on: Over 9000 meaningless words

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:51:52 +0000

I’m pretty sure SF.c is all about the long tail. It’s like nerd-dom’s long tail has another, smaller long tail, and we’re at the end of that one.

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:52:51 +0000

Thanks! The long tail is long, and it’s something I at least am trying not to forget.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:42:29 +0000

whoo. two hours worth of reading right here. just wanted to let u guys know that there are some people willing to absorb such material. great stuff! keep them coming!

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:51:28 +0000

Okay, ‘introversion’ is ‘refraining/withdrawal’ from discourse? Even that is a discursive act – it says something. A lot of what we read is from the silences, the non-explicit messages within the text. Is this the same silence we are talking about?

By: lelangir

lelangir — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:42:12 +0000

lol….just seeing this title still cracks me up.

By: THAT Animeblog - AMVerse - speculations on a ’sphere

THAT Animeblog - AMVerse - speculations on a ’sphere — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:36:08 +0000

[...] ←[101] The majority of AMV’s suck. Few are good. But the ones that are good have the potential to be trailers. Yes, there’s not much difference between a PR trailer produced by a company and a fan-made AMV. However, the difference that is evident is subtle yet has much larger implications. [...]

By: lelangir

lelangir — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:12:22 +0000

totalize the world*

By: lelangir

lelangir — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:12:02 +0000

was thinking: I think that the ability to analytically totalize the word is the mark of a “good” – or at least ____ologically capable – theory. But it’s precisely this totalization which pigeonholes the theory and sets it up for its own fallacies.

By: lelangir

lelangir — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:58:27 +0000

The idea that something humanity crafts transcends that very humanity doesn’t really settle in me. That sounds like the New Historicism Cuchlann described earlier. It’s like humanity forges a loss, it gains negativity. Weird. I can grasp what we talked about, but yeah, it’s still not quite settled…but I guess it’s not something easily settled!

By: Pontifus

Pontifus — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:39:43 +0000

I’m making a brief note about literary value vs. social/political value in a footnote to my next post, so I’ll leave that out, but there is one other thing…

Cuchlann: A crafted chair can be beautifully wrought, but ultimately it is a tool.

…

Cuchlann: And as such, eventually even the most sensitive person will view it as a chair, to be sat upon.

…

Cuchlann: But art, with no use but to be art, to be “beautiful,” can never be written off as anything else.

I would say that an object made to serve some purpose or satisfy some need, such as a chair, can be art. That a chair is meant to be sat upon — isn’t that authorial intent? One can do with a beautifully-wrought chair what one will. Now, I’m not about to argue that “chairs are meant for sitting upon” isn’t an idea that’s well and truly ingrained in the lot of us, but, despite that, you have people like my grandmother, who will buy an antique chair and disallow anyone from sitting on it. The chair becomes an object of admiration. Isn’t “meant to be sat upon” just one possible “reading” of a chair — a reading high in social weight, but nothing more or less than a reading all the same, granted that all readings have literary/artistic value?

Then again, is this a case in which both our answers are perfectly valid? The question of what art is seems, ultimately, to resist the application of logic.