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  • Reconciling Our Desire to Define: Canon, Copyright, and Creativity

    Reconciling Our Desire to Define: Canon, Copyright, and Creativity

    by Stephanie Pickrell

    As a writer and an English major, the word “canon” is my biggest pet peeve. Not the kind of canon that determines which books are considered among the “great works” of a genre (although who decided that, anyway?), but the kind found most often in fanfiction forums. It’s a relatively new word, born out of a need for some kind of distinction between author-created content and fan-generated fiction. A generally useful term, one might think, but my annoyance with it stems from how vague it is. Nobody seems to have the same definition for “canon,” and everyone uses it in different ways. Even among the fanfiction writers I know, I can hardly find an agreed-upon definition of the word. 

    But the main problem with this definition, of course, is that none of the events or characters of canonical or non-canonical works are real, strictly speaking, because all of it is fiction. 

    So, what is canon? As it is generally used, canon is used to distinguish the line between an original work of fiction and anything that draws direct inspiration from its world, characters, or storyline. The word designates that everything in the original work is genuine, and that anything written in imitation is not. The events and characters of the canonical work are real, while the events and characters of the non-canonical work are not. This isn’t a perfect definition. Among other things, it doesn’t account for canon fanfiction, which are fan-made works that try to remain as faithful to the original work as possible. But the main problem with this definition, of course, is that none of the events or characters of canonical or non-canonical works are real, strictly speaking, because all of it is fiction. 

    The question of whether an author’s word should be canon complicates things further. On one side of the spectrum, there’s Philip Pullman, who refuses to say anything about his books on the grounds that the meaning of a story arises between the words on a page and a reader’s mind—not from what the author may have intended. And on the other side, there’s J. K. Rowling, whose attempts to add new information to Harry Potter post-publication have become the source for several internet memes. These memes, despite their tendency to take things to the extreme, actually pinpoint one of the underlying issues in the search for the definition of canon: how much power does the author actually have over their story?

    The concept of intellectual property actually has a lot in common with the ever-elusive idea of canon. For one, they both try to determine how much ownership an author has of a work.

    In trying to pin down the true meaning—and importance—of canon, let’s turn first to copyright law. Maybe it doesn’t seem like an obvious place to start, but the concept of intellectual property actually has a lot in common with the ever-elusive idea of canon. For one, they both try to determine how much ownership an author has of a work. In copyright law, that usually takes the form of monetary compensation, while canon deals with the much more ambiguous form of truth. For another, despite its very real consequences if it’s violated, copyright law, like canon, tries to impose a hard line on something that is naturally impossible to logically categorize: creativity. And, in both cases, that line sometimes seems arbitrary. 

    Take The Great Gatsby, for example. With much fanfare, Jay Gatsby entered the public domain this January, a full 95 years after he was published into existence. In 1925, at the time of his publication, works in the U.S. could be registered under copyright for a maximum of 56 years, after which time the work would be released into the public domain. The increase of copyright length from 56 to 95 years was fueled by none other than Disney, who did all the congressional lobbying they could to repeatedly delay the copyright expiration of a certain mouse originally created in 1928. Thus, while The Great Gatsby would have originally entered public domain in 1982, the novel enters it instead in 2021, promptly greeted by a new tv series, an animated film, and scores of theatre nerds claiming to be writing the perfect stage adaptation where Nick and Jay Gatsby finally discover their love for each other. Disney’s repeated lobbying has created some strange limbo states for other works too. For example, most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (including the character of Mr. Holmes himself) are in the public domain, yet the few published after 1925 are still vigorously defended by the Conan Doyle estate.

    Copyright law, despite stirring up young creators’ fears of being sued, is a largely arbitrary distinction. It’s a constructed limit that determines what we get to legally create. It’s a relatively new concept, too, if you look far back to the days when the most common method of story transmission was oral storytelling. A story couldn’t be claimed by its teller for very long then, because it belonged to everyone who heard it, and to whoever retold it. In Shakespeare’s time, playwrights would regularly “adapt” each other’s plays for their own acting troupes, sometimes using underhanded methods to get at the script. Miguel de Cervantes satirized fanfiction of Don Quixote in his own sequel. Outright copying would, of course, never be tolerated under our modern understanding of intellectual property. We need only look to Disney’s possessiveness—which makes sure we can’t own the stories and the characters that have become, for better or worse, an integral part of American culture—to imagine what would result. 

    If copyright is an arbitrary line drawn around stories, I’m inclined to think that the concept of canon is something similar. But while copyright expires eventually (unless you’re Peter Pan), the idea of canon and originality still persists, no matter how old a work is. 

    We have created our own canon, based on the evolution of the tale over the centuries to form a story that we treat as true and original, despite the fact that the story wasn’t written by just one person.

    I first realized the connection when I started studying fairy tales, of all things. For example, if you search Google for the author of “Little Red Riding Hood,” the search results will tell you with certainty that the story was written by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. However, the actual answer is much more complicated. Perrault is responsible for the earliest known written version of the story, but the now-familiar ending in which the hunter chops open the wolf with an axe was actually an addition by the Grimm brothers over a century later. And Perrault himself can’t be credited with the creation of the story, as evidence from the French countryside suggests versions of the story already existed before Perrault put pen to paper. In fact, versions of the story without the iconic red headwear exist all over the world, known under other names such as “Grand-Aunt Tiger” and “The Wolf and The Kids.” And let’s not forget, of course, that the iconic riding hood is an English feature, swapped for Perrault’s little cap and kept in the story long after riding hoods fell out of style.

    Despite the apparent universality of little girls being eaten by large predatory mammals posing as family members, people are still trying to find out the origins of the story, going so far as to use mapping software to attempt to find its source. And while that hunt can be interesting to a certain extent, it is a futile pursuit, since most of us know that we’re never going to actually find the source. We will never find the original “canon” of Little Red. And that’s all right, because we don’t need to. We have created our own canon, based on the evolution of the tale over the centuries to form a story that we treat as true and original, despite the fact that the story wasn’t written by just one person. The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” that you find in a children’s book today is a collaborative effort that took place over centuries and across countries, and its “originality” isn’t owned by Charles Perrault, or anyone else. 

    Instead of trying to put a copyright-like line between official and the other, let’s think of canon, instead, like a fairy tale. There isn’t a solid map of any fairy tale, but we still never question that they are as real as fictional stories can be.

    Returning to canon’s usage in fanfiction—its original home—it might be helpful to look at a Young Adult novel that revolutionized fanfiction itself. Fangirl (2013) by Rainbow Rowell is about Cath, a freshman college student and an avid fanfiction writer who, among other things, struggles to explain how important writing fanfiction is to her in the face of the sideways looks she gets from her friends and even her creative writing professor. Cath obsesses over fictional Simon Snow, a Harry-Potter-esque wizard who attends—you guessed it—a magical school. While Fangirl is something of a milestone for accepting fanfiction as a form of writing and self-expression (and not just something to be denounced because it’s popular among teenage girls), the true innovation comes after Fangirl, when Rowell published Carry On (2015), which has the same name as the fictional fanfiction novel Cath wrote in Fangirl. Despite sharing the name, Rowell has been clear in saying that the real-world Carry On is not the novel Cath wrote, and is not supposed to accurately represent either Cath’s writings or the series she loved. 

     What I find most interesting is how Rowell responds to the question of whether Carry On is canon or fan fiction. She says, “Even though I’m writing a book that was inspired by fictional fanfiction of a fictional series . . . I think what I’m writing now is canon.”

    It’s a confusing statement if you’re still working with a definition of canon as the difference between the “real” fictional events and the made-up ones. Especially because the events of Rowell’s books are not logically reconcilable. However, instead of trying to put a copyright-like line between official and the other, let’s think of canon, instead, like a fairy tale. There isn’t a solid map of any fairy tale, we may never know from where or who they come from, but we still never question that they are as real as fictional stories can be. Rowell uses a similar meaning of canon here. She uses canon to assert that her story is true, in a way that is beyond questions of “what really happened.” 

    So, in conclusion, “canon” is truth, but it also doesn’t have to be true all the time.

    After all, fanfiction has always been more about “what could have happened” than “what really happened.” Consider the countless pages of Harry and Draco romances on the internet, enough to have created a mini-canon of their own. Or that the White Witch of Narnia from the book has black hair and a gold crown, but in the film she is blonde, and has remained pale as ice from head to toe ever since. Or headcanons—those canons so small they fit inside only your head, yet they too, are still a type of canon (I firmly believe that Liesel and Max from The Book Thief get married and no one can convince me otherwise).

    So, in conclusion, “canon” is truth, but it also doesn’t have to be true all the time. It describes real fictional events, but those events can contradict each other and don’t have to exist in the same space. It designates what everyone believes, but also what no one individual wrote. It articulates the possibilities of a fictional story and sets its boundaries, without actually preventing anyone from stepping outside of them. It’s a great soup of realness and fiction from which one can always draw with a ladle of creativity. And although the word still annoys me when people use it without knowing its power, I think it’s a beautiful thing.

  • 4,000 Years of Women’s Writing: Celebrating Women’s Month By Studying The Words Of The Authors Before Us

    4,000 Years of Women’s Writing: Celebrating Women’s Month By Studying The Words Of The Authors Before Us

    by Christie Basson

    These quotes are meant to encourage, uplift, and celebrate women today by remembering the generations who came and wrote before us. Spanning more than four thousand years, these words have traveled time and space to find us, penned by individuals who have experienced every walk of life. Written by women of all ages, classes, and geographies, these words prove that throughout time women have been resilient, funny, brave, intellectual, and hopeful in the face of every effort to suppress them. This month, we celebrate their legacies and remember that they did not live and write in vain. 

    Some of these quotations might take you by surprise – see if you can guess their original time period and author before revealing the answer by highlighting it!

    1. “You are your best thing.”

    ― 1987: Toni Morrison, Beloved

    2. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

    ― 1847: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

    3. “Well, we never expected this!” they all say. “No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!” How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am.”

    ― 1008 – 1010: Murasaki Shikibu, The Diary of Lady Murasaki

    4. “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

    ― 1813: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

    5. “Hope is the thing with feathers

    That perches in the soul

    And sings the tune without the words

    And never stops at all.”

    ―1861: Emily Dickinson, “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers”

    6. “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

    ― 1928: Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me

    7. “Now you see,’ said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, ‘why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”

    ― 1989: Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

    8. “I say,

    It’s in the reach of my arms

    The span of my hips,

    The stride of my step,

    The curl of my lips.

    I’m a woman

    Phenomenally.

    Phenomenal woman,

    That’s me.”

    ― 1978: Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal Woman“

    9. “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

    ― 1818: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

    10. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

    ― 1929: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

    11. “Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.”

    ― 1868: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

    12. “Women are wonderful realists.”

    ― 1936: Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

    13. “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

    ― 1960: Harper Lee, “To Kill A Mockingbird”

    14. “Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!” 

    ― 1944: Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

    15. “Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.”

    ― 620 – 570 BCE: Sappho

    16. “Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”

    ― 1977: Adrienne Rich, “Claiming an Education”

    17. “For you know that any evil spoken of women so generally only hurts those who say it, not women themselves.”

    ― 1405: Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

    18. “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!” 

    ― 1851: Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I A Woman?”

    19. “My mother always told me, ‘Hide your face people are looking at you.’ I would reply, ‘It does not matter; I am also looking at them.’”

    ―2012: Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala

    20. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

    ― 1776: Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams

    21. “If men have no respect for the most excellent creature in the world, then what will they respect? No other created thing is the equal of woman—not even man, as men themselves must needs confess.”  

    ― 1597: Modesta Pozzo, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Superiority to Men

    22. “I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue-my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”

    ― 1987: Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

    23. “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

    Who says my hand a needle better fits,

    A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong,

    For such despite they cast on female wits:

    If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,

    They’ll say it’s stolen, or else it was by chance.

    ― 1650: Anne Bradstreet, “The Prologue”

    24. Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

    Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;

    O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,

    Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!

    ― 1792: Anna Lætitia Barbauld, The Rights of Women

    25. “Instead, I got angry, and anger when it is used to act, when it is used nonviolently, has power.”

    ― 1993: Sandra Cisneros, Introduction to The House on Mango Street

    26. “O, woman, what a splendid being you are! For you have set your foundation in the sun, and have conquered the world.”

    ― 1148: Hildegard of Bingen, “Letter to Congregation of Nuns” from The Letters of Hildegard Vol 1

    27. “It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.

    Nevertheless, live.

    Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the 
whirlwind.

    ― 1968: Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Second Sermon of The Warpland ” from In the Mecca

    28. “I had forgotten this chant that was once mine, given me by my mother, who may not have know its power to remind. She said I would grow up to a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman.”

    ― 1975: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

    29. “Women are wonderful realists.”

    ― 1936: Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

    30.  “Holy Woman grounds your hallowed chamber / with desire / your queen Inanna of the sheepfold / that singular woman / the unique one / who speaks hateful words to the wicked / who moves among the bright shining things / who goes against rebel lands / and at twilight makes the firmament beautiful / all on her own.”

    ― 2285 – 2250 BCE: Enheduanna, “Temple Hymn 26”

  • The New Audiogeography of the Final Frontier

    The New Audiogeography of the Final Frontier

    From Frankenstein to Firefly, science fiction has taken many forms and encompassed all different kinds of stories. This means that there is boundless potential for creativity under a very broad umbrella, but it does make it hard to pin down exactly what someone means when they talk about science fiction. As a previous Hothouse article explores, “science fiction is expanding rapidly, but still remains largely unmapped and misunderstood.” As new methods and techniques of storytelling gain traction, the face of what science fiction can be is changing. One medium of storytelling in particular is rising to the challenge of what it means to engage with science fiction: the audiodrama. For some people, an audiodrama, or an episodic audio narrative, might be an unexpected contender for a science fiction story – especially when television series like Star Trek seem to dominate the science fiction conversation. 

    Star Trek envisioned a very specific future, one filled with optimism, celebration of diversity, and marvelous scientific achievements.

     It’s easy to see Star Trek, which rocketed science fiction into unprecedented cultural notoriety in 1966, as a prime example of the genre because of the futuristic setting. There are aliens, faster-than-light travel, humanoid androids; in short, all the things we’ve come to expect from science fiction. It’s important to note however, that all of the bells and whistles that I just mentioned were nothing more than set dressing for the intended message behind Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, had a vision for Star Trek with a decidedly political bent: to tell stories about current social ills and injustices, redressing them in a way that would appear innocuous to 1960s network censors. 

    Star Trek envisioned a very specific future, one filled with optimism, celebration of diversity, and marvelous scientific achievements. Roddenberry was very clear about how that vision came to be, saying in a 1976 LP that the whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. It’s like the Vulcans say: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination.” Obviously, Star Trek isn’t the only example of forward-thinking science fiction. Every science fiction story has vastly different settings and themes, from the damning anti-war message of Orson Scott-Card’s Ender’s Game to the playful absurdism of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the common thread connecting each one is a diligent speculation of who we are as people, and what we could be if things were different. Science fiction is a genre that looks to the future, so while the categorical traits of science fiction are hard to define, the values inherent in the genre aren’t. The “quietly revolutionary” diversity and laser-focused social commentary that Star Trek was famed for actually drives the entire science fiction genre. 

    But what’s really interesting is that we’re experiencing an audiodrama renaissance right alongside the sci-fi revival. And unlike Marty McFly befriending a disgraced nuclear physicist, I don’t think it’s an unexplainable coincidence.

    Science fiction has always been about speculation – whether the speculation concerns  things like human nature, dystopias, or the future as an instrument to explore contemporary problems, like Star Trek does. Science fiction encourages readers (or viewers) to ask questions, and stories like Star Trek posit that we can solve the problems that are holding humanity back. In a world so overwhelmed with dark, gritty fiction, watching Star Trek in 2021 feels like a breath of fresh air – and a momentary portal into a world where we are encouraged to believe that we could fix things for each other. It’s clear that I’m not the only one who was drawn into science fiction in the past few years. The sales of science fiction and fantasy books have doubled since 2010, and science fiction movies have recently dominated the highest grossing movies at the Box Office, with 8 out of the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time falling under the science fiction umbrella. With all that in mind, I think it’s safe to say that we’re experiencing somewhat of a science fiction cultural renaissance. 

    But what’s really interesting is that we’re experiencing an audiodrama renaissance right alongside the sci-fi revival. And unlike Marty McFly befriending a disgraced nuclear physicist, I don’t think it’s an unexplainable coincidence. An audiodrama is exactly what it sounds like – a dramatic narrative told through an audio medium. If this sounds similar to a podcast, that’s because it is – audiodramas are actually a type of podcast. Calling an audiodrama a podcast is by no means incorrect, it’s just not as descriptive or as indicative of the content a listener can expect.  As opposed to podcasts, which can encompass many different genres, like news updates, advice shows, and investigative journalism, audiodramas typically unwrap fictional narratives  and are closer to the radio shows of olde (think: soap opera broadcasts like Our Gal Sunday). Radio shows were wildly popular during the Golden Age of radio, with around 28 million people in the 1930’s tuning into their favorite shows every week. But as visual technology advanced, the audiodrama fell out of vogue and radio reoriented to the news and music functionality we hear on the waves today. Although contemporary audiodramas are rarely aired over the radio these days, we’re seeing a huge upsurge in how many are being made. As I’ve said, audiodramas aren’t newcomers to the storytelling scene, but it’s important to note that they also aren’t newcomers to the science fiction genre. Orson Welles released his notorious narration of H.G Wells’ War of the Worlds over the radio in 1938 and the 1974 BBC Radio production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was voted one of the 20 most influential podcasts of the last 50 years. But podcasts in the past 10 years have taken on a new face, and the next generation of audiodramas is distinct from the science fiction broadcasts of the 70’s and 80’s. First, they aren’t audio retellings of books. Generally, modern audiodramas are serializations that rely on cult-like internet fan followings for publicity and support. The zombie-horror audiodrama, We’re Alive, kicked off the trend in 2009, but the 2012 Welcome to Nightvale podcast propelled the concept of the audiodrama into stardom, and is commonly credited with kickstarting the audiodrama industry, which has continued to grow explosively since Welcome to Nightvale’s release in 2012. More and more audiodramas are being created, and a significant amount of them engage with science fiction. 

    Audiodrama creators rely on the same knowledge that early science fiction authors did—that the imaginations of their audiences can produce more lurid and strange images than any images or visual effects can.

    There’s no doubt about it: science fiction audiodramas are out there and thriving. As listeners (and maybe amatuer scientists at this point, after all of our studies concerning the nature of science fiction) we might want to think about why so many science fiction audiodramas were created, and how they’ve remained a consistent cultural force for over a decade. 

    The obvious answer is the content and creation. Like the pulp anthologies that characterized science fiction in the 30’s, most podcasts begin as DIY passion projects made by small teams of creatives. It’s not until recently that audiodramas started being adapted into television series and movies, a trend which parallels the waiting game that science fiction played as a fringe genre before cultural catalysts like Star Trek rocketed science fiction onto the screen. As for the creation, audiodramas work well with typical science fiction settings because of the relative simplicity of the audio medium. Much like traditional prose, audiodramas work solely in narration. Audiodrama creators rely on the same knowledge that early science fiction authors did—that the imaginations of their audiences can produce more lurid and strange images than any images or visual effects can. All an audiodrama needs to create vastly complex and intricate worlds are some stock sounds, basic editing software, and trust in the imagination of the listener. 

    The “spark” of the modern science fiction audiodrama is the same philosophical element that makes Star Trek a cultural force to this day—a commitment to diversity and representation.

    And, in an endearing celebration of the campiness prevalent in science fiction, many of these new audiodramas are also using tried and true sci-fi tropes to tell deeply evocative stories across the expanse of space, time, and species. They’re okay with being a little bit ridiculous in the process of telling sincere stories about the human condition, embodying the idea that just because something is a little bit zany, or is involved with dubious standards of legitimacy  doesn’t mean you don’t take it seriously. To note another standout, Wolf 359, created in 2014 by Gabriel Urbina, delivers gut punches of episodes and absolutely heart wrenching emotional arcs over its four-season run, even though an early episode features the crew members of a spaceship going to war against a plant monster with only a single harpoon to arm themselves with. Although Wolf 359 actually references the Golden Age tradition of radio dramas in its show bio, Wolf 359 and its contemporary compatriots have an important quality that the radio dramas of the Golden Age generally lacked—a quality that I believe accounts for the staying power of the modern audiodrama. The “spark” of the modern science fiction audiodrama is the same philosophical element that makes Star Trek a cultural force to this day—a commitment to diversity and representation. The new wave of science fiction audiodramas are fulfilling the legacy of diversity and representation that early science fiction began, and are expanding diversity far beyond what Star Trek envisioned in the 60s. 

    The importance of representation is well-trodden ground, especially when it comes to marginalized communities. Dr. Martin Luther King recognized representation as an integral reflection of what civil rights activism was trying to achieve, as he convinced Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series, to continue acting on the show, stating that “for the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen.” In the specific context of science fiction though, representation becomes especially charged, since a science fiction narrative without a marginalized group sends a message that there’s no place for them in the future. As I’ve mentioned before, Gene Roddenberry’s goal for Star Trek was to portray a humanity that was perfectible through diversity. But crucially, Roddenberry’s vision of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations didn’t include queer characters until 2016, with Star Trek Discovery. So although Star Trek was groundbreaking in terms of racial diversity, and science fiction as a broader genre has made great strides recently, queer representation is still largely absent in mainstream science fiction. This isn’t to discount the (many) excellent and inclusive science fiction releases, but when we look towards the mainstream, we still see a very heteronormative silver screen and it’s still too easy for queer people to feel alone in a genre that’s meant to be expansive and inclusive.

    Kaner and Vetiner offer validation and community for their queer listeners, and although the futuristic Martian landscape is still rife with government corruption and the small tragedies, it unapologetically shows a future where it’s normal to be queer.

    There have been some very public (and very recent) examples of how science fiction in novels and movies has dropped the ball with queer representation. What makes me hopeful about the future of the genre though, is the way that audiodramas have picked it back up. For example, the creators of The Penumbra Podcast, Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert, are both queer themselves and have applied Roddenberry’s earlier pursuit for racial diversity to queer representation in The Penumbra Podcast in a mission to write characters that are missing – or misrepresented – in other media. Kaner and Vetiner offer validation and community for their queer listeners, and although the futuristic Martian landscape that The Penumbra Podcast is set in is still rife with government corruption and the small tragedies, it unapologetically shows a future where it’s normal to be queer. Kaner and Vitner’s creative philosophy walks the same path for queer listeners that Star Trek did for its BIPOC viewers, asserting that their listeners deserve to see themselves in stories (in the audiodrama, of course, the “seeing” part is less literal, but just as meaningful).

    The overwhelming amount of queer content in audiodramas echoes this, and there’s lists and lists of queer audiodramas made by queer creators that show just how tangible and personal this message is. We see it here with audiodramas just as clearly as we did when Whoopi Goldberg was inspired to participate in Star Trek: The Next Generation by her predecessor, Nichelle Nichols. Representation and inclusivity generates a legacy of participation that is vital to the future of media – and audiodramas are carrying the torch for queer representation . This isn’t to say that audiodramas are all utopic bastions of pitch perfect representation – they’re made by small teams of people who still misstep sometimes, despite their good intentions. Creating a racially diverse narrative in an audiodrama presents an especially unique challenge since it relies completely on auditory components. But, the challenge to reflect a diverse world still needs to be met, and podcast creators are enthusiastically rising to the occasion to explore another frontier.

  • Living By The Words of Black Creators: Hothouse Staff Quotes Their Favorite Lines

    Living By The Words of Black Creators: Hothouse Staff Quotes Their Favorite Lines

    “Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.”

    from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aimé Césaire

    Kylie Warkentin, Editor-in-Chief: Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how easy it is to live a life of apathy. As globalized and dislocated as we are to one another, we’re also inundated with information about everything and everyone at every turn, and sometimes you’ll – I’ll – only recognize a place or a people because I’ve read an article headline describing something terrible. But, as Aimé Césaire thornily reminds us here, we cannot choose apathy in these moments – and apathy is a choice, just as empathy is a choice. Abstraction is easy and sometimes inescapable, but we cannot be spectators and simultaneously claim to be a community.

    But they’ll never have you

    It’s always been bigger than this…

    We love ourselves politically

    It’s rebellious

    from Unmoved (A Black Woman Truth) by Ayoni

    Christie Basson, Managing Editor and Website Co-Editor: In a beautiful statement on releasing this song, Ayoni mentioned that the album cover is a photo of her at three years old, her “last year of innocence.” By the age of four, she would be informed by classmates that they didn’t want to play with her because of her skin colour. In a world where identities are policed (metaphorically and literally), to love oneself politically is the most radical stance you can take. Relearning how to love yourself after losing childhood’s innocence isn’t easy for anyone, but I take heart from these words and remind myself that the world is a better place when we embrace our identities in the face of institutional, societal, and internal pressures to conform. Most importantly, we must learn to love others politically, to make rebellion with our defiance in accepting each other.

    “You are my son, Dantès,” exclaimed the old man. “You are the child of my captivity . . . God has sent you to me to console, at one and the same time, the man who could not be a father, and the prisoner who could not get free.”

    from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

    Stephanie Pickrell, Website Co-Editor: Best known as an immensely popular French author of the 19th century, Alexandre Dumas was also biracial – a fact that was skipped in the introduction to the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo I once borrowed from my high school’s library. This quote is taken from one of my favorite parts, when the hero Edmond Dantès, spending grueling years in prison without end, learns of the treasure that will eventually transform him into the Count of Monte Cristo. The quote reminds me not just of transformation, but of family, acceptance, and the promise of success to those who help others.

    “This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”

    from Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Vanessa Simerskey, Marketing and Design Editor: Especially now, I can’t help but feel so lucky to be alive, to be where I am and to have and be surrounded by the kind of love that fills you up. I especially like that Adichie uses the word “gathered” because it shows that after accumulation of time, experiences and emotions can come together all at once to make you realize that you had a miracle sitting there right in front of you. This quote helps me see how the coincidences that make up my life, that at times make me feel alone or make me feel so mad at the world, might just turn into some beautiful kind of a miracle. 

    “I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change… I’m changing the things I cannot accept.”

    – Dr. Angela Davis

    Megan Snopik, Website Writer and Prose Board: I really like this quote from Angela Davis because it really hits home a message of collectivity and inspiration in a time where activism can seem so daunting. There are so many violences in the world today, and as students it can be very easy to remove yourself from the struggles we read, write and hear about, this quote urges us to consider why we accept these things and structures and instead work to change lived experiences for the better. 

    “Reading is everything, and although you already know some things, you need to read to get those things out of you.”

    – Nas, in an Ask Men Interview

    Abdallah Hussein, Website Writer: Nas is one of my favorite rap artists, and he is known for having several rhyme books. Before and during his career he was a voracious writer – a quality he attributed to reading. Not many rap artists discuss the writing process of their songs, so seeing Nas being upfront about it all and attributing a large part of it to reading makes me admire him even more. Reading’s benefits can now be seen in music, along with all the other mediums of art. 

    “None of the beaten end up how we began. / A poem is a gesture toward home.”

    from “Duplex” in The Tradition by Jericho Brown

    Emma Allen, Poetry Board: In this poem, Brown recalls memories from his childhood: some of them clearly sources of trauma. “Duplex” recounts the harsh beatings Brown received from his father and the sounds of his mother weeping. I chose to include this last stanza of “Duplex” because I find that it speaks to the long-term effects which trauma can enact on an individual, especially if these events occur in the formative years of one’s childhood. Furthermore, I believe Jericho Brown’s sentiment in these last lines is especially important to keep in mind in all of our interactions with others, as often people are the product of circumstances beyond their control.

  • A Feminist With A Room of Her Own Revisits Virginia Woolf

    A Feminist With A Room of Her Own Revisits Virginia Woolf

    by Megan Snopik

    In Virginia Woolf’s famous essay, A Room of One’s Own, she attempts – in preparation of two lectures intended for female college students –  to answer why, as of 1929, there have not been as many great female writers as male. Praised in its second-wave feminist heyday, this essay was crucial to forming a certain “sex consciousness” that Woolf deemed essential for great women authors. Since its publication, however, feminism has evolved in ways that Woolf could never even dream about. Even in her own time, we know Woolf was addressing a crowd of educated, middle class, white women. Intersectionality who? But given how our understandings of sex and gender have changed and evolved through the dogged work of feminists, activists, and academics, the metaphorical “room of one’s own” should have been achieved and the perfect gender equilibrium should have been met… Right? In a re-reading of  A Room of One’s Own, I examine the ways in which her feminist prescriptions have failed and prevailed, and how they apply to the journey of this aspirational female writer (who does, in fact, have a room of her own).

    “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

    In the titular quote for this essay, Woolf’s central focus is the importance of the physical (and metaphorical) spaces in which women write. She argues that writers like Jane Austen and the Brontës never had the chance to realize their full potential as writers since they lacked the space and time to wholly devote themselves to their work and instead had to write in “parlor rooms.” The fact that they wrote their novels in these common spaces meant that they were constantly hiding their manuscripts and disenfranchising their own genius. Additionally, she emphasizes the inequitable conditions women faced when attempting to author novels, particularly in terms of academic communities and financial support. While male authors had institutions to back them, women were writing on their own, often in secret, and would often lack the  support in trying to get their work into the world. 

    Women writers still have significant barriers to overcome, however, many would argue that women have (or should be able to have) greater access to spaces and time for writing than ever before. Because millennials are staying single longer and starting families later, the constant caretaking of children and spouses is in fact delayed. Nonetheless, traditional gender roles are still very much in place today, but instead of women just being relegated to the private sphere to cook, clean, and child-rear, they are expected to work a 9-5 in addition to these roles. These gender roles then continue to factor into additional repercussions like a perpetuating wage gap, as mothers are expected to leave their seat at the conference table for their children’s doctor appointments, sick days, and pregnancy leave. 

    So, while many women have the working-class independence that Woolf praised, the conditions in which they secure their financial security trade off with the leisure time to pursue hobbies and the ability to devote time to writing. Even if they have a room with a lock on it, it’s unlikely that they’re spending hours and hours in it. This oversight isn’t necessarily the fault of Woolf or modern feminists, but a reflection of second  wave feminism’s success at joining the workplace without having the momentum to quite change social structures. This is, of course, something with which we still struggle to this day. Additionally, most of the aforementioned issues with the pay-gap and working women’s status are multiplied for women of color, where non-white employees face even more workplace discrimination and are more likely to be taken advantage of. Woolf’s pre-conditions for “dedicated” writing excludes large groups of women who find themselves writing outside the room. They might not have the time or resources to lock themselves in that room. Instead they write on the bus on the way to work or at the kitchen table while making dinner or in bed while they rock their child to sleep.

    “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”

    In the 1920s, as (white) women got the vote and the push for many women to leave the domestic sphere was increasingly prevalent, Woolf encouraged women to travel, pursue creative endeavors, and gain life experience. She argues that the pursuit of writing, art, business, politics and passions have become wall-toppling forces due to the bounds placed on women. Essentially, Woolf is saying that women need the same space, time, education and resources as men in order to realize their full potential. 

    Today’s women arguably have the resources necessary to enter what would have been the “men’s domain” in Woolf’s time. The freedom that women have to choose professions, spouses, and determine their own life path should reasonably have liberated them from the “bricks and mortar” encaging them. Using myself as an example, I have fulfilled Woolf’s qualification of space, time, education, and resources to write since I was 11. I haven’t seen the world, but I have been to Epcot at Disney World and seen Discovery Channel documentaries, so I think that should be sufficient experience… However, writing has always been a distant phenomenon, separate from something as mundane as my everyday life. Beyond the academic aura surrounding it, writing fiction seems to be too precarious a task to balance between a job, studies, social life, exercise, and, of course, binge-watching random Netflix shows every evening. I may be just lazy or uninspired, but in comparison to Woolf’s expectations of me, I am dramatically unprepared to become the Next Great Female Writer.

    Without universalizing my experience, as we have certainly had great writers before and after Woolf’s time, the general constrictions of modern life seem to continuously provide distraction for those who dare to steps outside the rhythm of daily life no matter their gender, creating the burden that one must be absolutely prodigious to pursue creative mediums seriously. Maybe our bricks and mortar look different from Woolf’s and move into the metaphorical realm, as creativity seems walled up for so many. 

    “But, nevertheless, she had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her ‘the opposing faction’; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb on to the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her.”

    One of the largest critiques of Woolf in modern times is her lack of the aspects of feminism that third wave feminism has struggled so hard to bring to the forefront, like intersectionality and embracing collectivity. This quote is quite emblematic of this as she acts in a rather post-feminist attitude towards men as she celebrates the point at which women feel that men are no longer “the opposing faction”. Many women would disagree with this statement and it is a cornerstone of 21st century feminism to use anger and fear against men to fuel movements. The threat of men is still very real as domestic violence, femicide, transphobia, and other violences still endanger many women. Woolf’s dissuasion of “railing against men” then sounds rather  privileged and complicit in a world still plagued by patriarchy (amongst other things). 

    Anger remains central to many women’s lived experiences and can be seen in feminist movements such as Riot Grrrl and bra burning. Even in Woolf’s time, engaging the anger and emotionality that is part and parcel with the female experience is key to embracing women around oneself and participating in community building. The urge to discipline women for feminism that “ruins peace of mind” and uses fear and hatred is white-washing and tone-policing. The response of rallying against men is totally rational in light of the conditions women are subject to. Claiming feminism’s fight is over for all because the fight has been won for some is a dramatic mischaracterization of what feminism is and who it is for.

    “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

    Putting aside differences in feminist theory throughout time, a distinct teleology can be traced from the feminism of Woolf to where we are now. While Woolf was not perfect, she created rooms and spaces for many women to come together and think differently about their connections to each other and femininity. In her more radical Three Guineas, published in 1938, she recognized the personal growth possible in feminist thought. Adding to feminist discourse, her essays or her novels opened doors for many women, whether we have rooms or not. Perhaps Woolf’s acknowledgement of the room made the essentialization of spaces like the room obsolete entirely. Once women realize and acknowledge the space they rightfully occupy, there is no spatial constraint existent to possibly restrain them.

    For me, re-reading A Room of One’s Own has been as contentious as it has been illuminating to my own journey as a writer. Not only did she make the way easier for women writers succeeding her, but she also gave women a framework to demand respect for their writing and creativity. Above all, it has taught me to value my own writing as a form of feminist action, despite all the assurences of its mediocrity from society. My room, and my space on the page, will never be written off as insignificant because the act of my creative expression is, in and of itself, historic. I too lend my voice to the cacophony of the masterpiece that is the female canon.

  • Stories of Love and Loss from Literary History

    Stories of Love and Loss from Literary History

    This Valentine’s Day, we asked our website writers to contribute the real-life love stories of those who write literature. Whether it’s a tale of happily ever after or heartbreaking rejection, read on to discover some of the romantic adventures of the authors we still read today.

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scotty Villhard

    In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby falls in love with a woman, Daisy, and wishes to marry her. He was in the army when they met, a penniless soldier, while she was a woman of high society. He set off to make enough money that he might be worthy of her hand, eventually entering the world of the wealthy and purchasing a mansion across the lake from hers, where he could watch the green light at the end of her dock every evening.

    The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gastby, entered the army as a poor man. While dispatched, he met a young woman, Zelda Sayre, with whom he fell hopelessly in love. But he was penniless, and she was a woman of high society, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Justice. While they courted each other for a few years, being engaged for a time, he felt himself unworthy of her because he lacked wealth and broke off the engagement while setting off to become a rich man. Only after the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, did he consider himself worthy of Zelda, and they married a week later.

    Virginia Woolf & Vita-Sackville West, Megan Snopik

    Though both married to men, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s incredibly intimate and romantic relationship in the 1920’s changed the scripts of female love and desire for years to come. In a time where (male) homosexuality was illegal in Europe, their love for each other abounded. As both women had troubled relationships with men due to sexual violence, the comfort and community they found in each other apart from male dictated society and literature changed the course of their careers. Woolf’s acclaimed novel, Orlando, is said to have been inspired by their relationship and Sackville-West published her own work at the Woolf’s publishing house, Hoggarth Press. Sackville-West’s son would go on to chronicle their relationship in Portrait of a Marriage (1973). In their now published letters, Vita wrote, “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia…It is incredible how essential to me you have become” showing just how deep their sexual and intellectual relationship ran. They even had nicknames for each other “Potto” (for Virginia) and “Donkey West” (for Vita) with which they would begin their correspondence. 

    Hans Christian Andersen, Stephanie Pickrell

    Known today as the creator of cherished children’s stories such as The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Princess and the Pea, Hans Christian Andersen had a wildly passionate (and unsuccessful) love life. He saw himself as a bit of an ugly duckling, but that did not stop him from becoming impressively infatuated with various men and women throughout his life. Unfortunately for him, the targets of his infatuations were for the most part married, uninterested, or just plain confused by Andersen’s love. Among them were the opera singer Jenny Lind, also known as the “Swedish Nightingale,” the future Duke of Weimar Carl Alexander, and Edvard Collin, the son of Andersen’s artistic benefactor. None of these relationships, as far as we know, were requited (with the possible exception of the Duke of Weimar), but Andersen poured his passion into his stories as well as his love letters. Today, some cite The Little Mermaid as queer allegory, and his story The Nightingale inspired Jenny Lind’s international nickname. Not all of Andersen’s love was in vain, however, for his stories continue to bring joy and love to the world.

    Philip Roth, Abdallah Hussein

    Philip Roth, an acclaimed author, and the actress Claire Bloom were long-standing companions whose relationship seemingly culminated in their 1990 marriage. However, they separated in 1994 and divorced a year later. Was it an amicable divorce? Events years after would suggest otherwise; in 1996, Bloom published a memoir detailing all her marriages and affairs, and it was particularly stirring when she described her relationship with Philip Roth as very flawed and unflattering. Roth fired back in 1998 with a novel whose female protagonist seemed to depict Bloom as a manipulative and promiscuous wife. Leading up to Roth’s death in 2018, it seemed those harsh feelings between the two former lovers never diminished one bit.

    Radclyffe Hall, Skylar Epstein

    Radclyffe Hall was a romance writer who lived from the years 1880 through 1943. She wrote tragically beautiful and beautifully daring romances. Hall’s audacious work drew from her own experiences, as she boldly claimed that she was never once attracted to men—a radical statement for a woman coming of age in the 1900’s. Her most notorious novel, The Well of Loneliness, starred a lesbian woman named Stephen, and was banned from publication in both the United Kingdom and the United States. But although Hall’s career as a writer was tumultuous and stymied by censorship, she didn’t face the perils of 19th century publishing alone. Mabel Batten, Hall’s first love, was the first to  champion Hall’s poetry. After Batten’s husband died in 1910 and the two moved in together, Hall dedicated her fourth poetry anthology to her. Depending on your beliefs in the spiritual, you could say that Batten and Hall had a love that outlived death. After Batten died in 1916, Hall began attending seances with her newest paramour, Una Troubridge. Hall believed that Batten’s gave her and Troubridge advice from beyond the grave. Even though Troubridge was Hall’s lover during her life, Batten was Hall’s companion in death. 

  • Testing The Adaptation: Deciding What Makes One Worth The Watch

    Testing The Adaptation: Deciding What Makes One Worth The Watch

    by Abdallah Hussein

    Books have never been more likely to be adapted into films than they are at present. With the rapid growth and advancement of the film industry, this practice doesn’t seem likely to wind down anytime soon either with recent fan-favorites such as Bridgerton, Little Women, and The Queen’s Gambit dominating our social awareness. The financial success and ever-growing popularity of book-to-film adaptations is only a reflection of the love both readers and viewers have of seeing their favorite stories come to life through the unique projection of a screen. Suddenly, half the labor of consumption is gone and the reader becomes a viewer who no longer has to enjoy stories through their own imaginative power. And while many may gripe and nit-pick over how their favorite novel gets adapted on the big screen, the overall consensus is that book-to-movie adaptations are popular enough to be a sustained industry. However, the financial success of book-to-film adaptations doesn’t place the practice out of reach of all criticism. After all, we can all recall on command at least one notorious example of a failed book-to-film adaptation. Despite how well the idea of adaptation sounds, there’s always two ends to the spectrum of any practice. Just a few weeks ago, I saw movie adaptations for two of my favorite novels, Inherent Vice and American Pastoral. For reasons I couldn’t exactly qualify in that moment, I loved Inherent Vice’s adaptation, and hated American Pastoral’s.

    I know that this experience is not uniquely mine. I am sure many of you have left the movie theater after seeing your favorite novel adapted with either elated or disappointed faces, and no good language to explain why. It’s just not fair to overtly declare an adaptation good or bad without any specific reason, so let’s put Inherent Vice and American Pastoral through a question by question test (you do it too with your adaptations!) on what each respective film did or did not do in relation to its source material.

    Does the Work Embody the Spirit of the Original?

    Inherent Vice: 

    Inherent Vice is a 2014 film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; it is an adaptation from the 2009 novel of the same name by American author, Thomas Pynchon. The novel is set in 1970s California and follows Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, a hippie Private Investigator, whose estranged ex-girlfriend turns up and asks him to investigate a possible plot to kidnap her wealthy real-estate developer boyfriend, Mickey Wolfman. With dozens of characters and several deep storylines, the plot is highly convoluted. P.T. Anderson’s adaptation follows the same main storyline with Doc and his investigation of Mickey Wolfman’s potential kidnapping. The fact that it follows the main plot rather well does not, however, automatically mean it successfully embodies the spirit of the work. Through the process of adaptation, both works – movie and film – can be labeled as a “transmedia text”. They relate a similar story but do well at shining lights on distinctive themes and subject matter within the narrative. For example, all the parts of Inherent Vice (both novel and movie) are highlighted by their association with nostalgia. The difference lies in how nostalgia is used, and the glaringly different result from novel to movie. Pynchon’s Inherent Vice uses nostalgia to highlight political and social changes around the main character, such as the building of new infrastructure and the adoption of cultural and societal trends and changes, while Anderson’s Inherent Vice uses nostalgia to highlight the changes that are personal and meaningful to the main character, such as his longing to rekindle his relationship to his ex-girlfriend, Shasta. In my eyes, the spirit of any work is made up of the themes it encompasses, so if a theme of Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is nostalgia then P.T. Anderson succeeded well at embodying the spirit of the novel in his adaptation. 

    American Pastoral :

    American Pastoral is a 2016 film directed by Ewan McGregor,an adaptation from the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name by American author, Philip Roth. The novel uses the framing device of a 45-year high school reunion, attended by Nathan Zuckerman, a former classmate of the main protagonist, Seymour “Swede” Levov. At this reunion, Zuckerman runs into Seymour’s younger brother, Jerry, who tells him of the tragic downfall of his older brother, who is then revealed to have passed away a few days earlier. Through Jerry, Zuckerman finds out that in 1968 (how many years ago?), the Swede’s daughter, Merry, blew up a post office and killed a bystander in protest of the Vietnam War. Not only did she blow up the post office, but she ‘blew up’ the life of her father, who lived the remainder of his life haunted by trauma and confusion. The remainder of the novel follows Zuckerman’s reconstruction and reimagination of the Swede’s life from before and after the bomb went off, all of it in an attempt to answer the question of why something so bad happened to the one man who did everything right in life. 

    The novel is a huge exploration of the nature of man (the Swede) in society, and with Roth’s ability to dive into the complexities of such a compounded world as that of  post-WWII America; it makes for an at-times confusing novel, though no less brilliant for its complexity. In the movie, many details are changed and sacrificed for the sake of coherence. The ending is the major altered event from book to novel. Spoiler alert to any potential readers of the novel, but I will now delve into its ending. In the novel, the Levovs are having dinner with several guests and in the midst of all their discussion, several strange things begin to happen. A mysterious call comes from Rita Cohen (who may or may not be not a liaison of Merry); the Swede imagines Merry showing up, his father dying from shock, and he himself again being stabbed in the eye with a fork; and finally the last page consists of the guests engaging in hysterical laughter and ends with the line “What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?” Essentially, nothing is answered and nothing is resolved.

    The movie is a different story. In it, this same little dinner party occurs several scenes before the ending, and is remarkably different from the book’s dinner party. Instead, the movie ends with the Swede’s funeral where, after everyone leaves, a disguised Merry comes to see her father’s grave. In a good adaptation, this dissimilar ending should tie back to the intended message of the story – that everything is senseless. In Roth’s ending, we get just that: the manifestations of fantasy and the ultimate unanswered question of whether the Levovs are at fault for their own misery due to the lives they’ve lived. The film’s ending does not highlight the story’s senselessness and personally I can’t make heads or tails of what purpose the ending does serve. Packaging a creator’s message can be done in several ways, and I feel the film lacks that message that is most important in the novel. The film doesn’t capture the spirit of senselessness that permeates the  life and society reverberating through the hundreds of pages of Roth’s American Pastoral.

    Does it get away with changing or leaving out key details of the original story?

    Inherent Vice: 

    In regards to penning the film’s screenplay, director P.T. Anderson said, “The hardest thing is just trying to find how to take 400 great pages and turn it into ideally 110, maybe 120 script pages.” Consequently, many details are changed and even more are left out of the film. A major portion of the novel that is left out is Doc’s trip to Las Vegas, a trip that embroils Doc in an unrelated investigation of a missing person. Moreover, many characters from the novel are left out of the film and the ones that are included usually only had a scene or two compared to their much larger and integral roles in the novel. Perhaps the biggest change is the difference in the endings (again, spoiler alert for novel-goers). The novel at its near-end sees Doc, with his investigation concluded, drive south on the Santa Monica Freeway where he hits a bank of fog, in which he and the other drivers on the road formed a sort of community in that the row of cars barricaded by the fog were connected in a way that seemed comforting to Doc. The novel ends as Doc drives on, ‘waiting for the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead’.

    The film takes a similar approach in that Doc drives off somewhere, but he isn’t alone, or forming a community with drivers – he’s with Shasta. These different endings highlight the focus of each work. The community of drivers in the novel is a respite from Doc’s feelings of loneliness, a result  of the self-invested isolationism that became a characteristic of California in the 1970s. The movie’s ending in which Doc and Shasta rekindle their romance is a similar balm to loneliness, and it fulfills Doc’s permeating longing that makes repeat appearances throughout the movie As for the other things left out from the novel, you’d never be able to fit the novel’s entirety into a film and considering the focus of the film, some aspects such as the Vegas trip were better left out, since they simply don’t integrate with the intended message of the film.

    American Pastoral :

    We already discussed the biggest change (the ending) from novel to film so let’s now look at the biggest aspect of the novel left out of the film. In the beginning of the novel, the Swede’s character is developed intensely. From childhood to adulthood, every one of his triumph’s is documented and he is quite literally deified among his classmates and neighbors. Encompassing 90 pages, this buildup of the Swede is essential to the moment where his sense of identity is ‘blown up’. The idea of it all was to create a character who is the last person you’d expect to go through such an experience.  In the film,there is no reference to these 90 pages of character development. By the time this man’s life is blown to smithers, it doesn’t seem all that unlikely, since the viewer has not been convinced that he is the last person to whom such a thing could happen.  The film capably captures the main plot points of the novel – such as the bombing of the post office and the Swede’s key encounter with Merry after the bombing- but much of what makes the book so coherent and powerful is left out of the film. Especially missed  are the key inner dialogues and deep explorations into concepts of  morality, fatherhood, and society. Those moments are among the highlights of the book, thanks to Roth’s brilliant prose and unbelievable worldview. The adaptation results in a choppy film that doesn’t aid the viewer well in understanding the situation surrounding Swede Levov and his life. 

    Can the work live independently of its source material?

    Inherent Vice: 

    P.T. Anderson’s Inherent Vice can stand alone from its source material because there’s so much ground and material to work with, you can get away with being creative and going in another direction with it. In talking about adapting Pynchon’s novel, Anderson had to say, “You don’t want to fuck with [Pynchon’s] shit if you don’t have to, but I found myself numerous times in that bad place of being reverential, thinking ‘I’ve gotta protect it’. To best respect it is to sometimes dismantle it and tear it apart to make it a movie. We’ve seen books turned into movies that try so hard to be literary. And they’ve failed because [the mediums] are different.” As I mentioned, Pynchon’s novel is highly convoluted so Anderson can get away with ‘tearing it all up’ and leaving parts of it out of the film. Even after deconstructing parts of it, he can maintain the aspects that make it a great adaptation of Pynchon’s novel. Shifting his focus away from the plot, Anderson decided to compliment the essence of the novel, and he labored over displaying amazing cinematography and showcasing incredible performances by actors such as Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin – these qualities coupled with the movie being its own entity are the aspects that make it such a great movie. 

    American Pastoral :

    Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, American Pastoral, was a respectable film but will always live in the shadow of the source material it desires to emulate. In trying to capture the essence of Roth’s story, McGregor only goes so far as to capture the surface of the plot. Moreover, McGregor seems to sacrifice integral scenes and dialogue for the sake of just an ounce more of coherence. Despite my conclusions, I feel that McGregor isn’t wholly at fault here. I believe he is a victim of an unadaptable source material. The story and the message that Roth wants to present to readers simply cannot be told through the screen through a traditional film because so much of what makes American Pastoral great is a result of Roth’s incredible prose and unbelievable story-telling ability. 

    Literary adaptation has been a valuable practice in integrating different art mediums. In your own quests to determine whether adaptations should be celebrated or condemned, just use my three question test! Some books slide easily into the adaptations, like Inherent Vice, while others fail miserably, like McGregor’s American Pastoral. Some novels are better left to their original forms, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on adapting our favorite stories.While for now I stand by my claim that American Pastoral is an unadaptable source material, I welcome and encourage any creative minds to try and adapt it until it is done right! 

  • Of All the Gin Joints: Literary Coincidence And The Wondrous Entanglement

    Of All the Gin Joints: Literary Coincidence And The Wondrous Entanglement

    by Scotty Villhard

    I’m about to spoil Station Eleven, Casablanca, Dracula, and The Importance of Being Earnest for you, so if you don’t want that to happen, go read Station Eleven (and those other ones too, I guess).

    My fascination with literary coincidences began in June of 2020. It had been a while since I had read for pleasure, so I borrowed my friend’s copy of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven with the hope that a little apocalyptic fiction would jumpstart a literary revival in my life. Station Eleven takes place in the post-apocalypse, after a plague (oof) has wiped out most of humanity. The novel follows a travelling band of Shakespearean actors who perform for various townships that have cropped up since the fall of Civilization. The main character, Kirsten, has a copy of a mysterious comic book entitled Dr. Eleven that she takes with her on her travels with the troupe. Through flashbacks, the reader learns that the comic book was given to her by Arthur, a famous actor. He received it from his ex-wife Miranda, who had worked on it as a passion project for years.

    The novel is absolutely bloated with coincidences, as seemingly every character has encountered every other character – or every other character’s brother – at one time or another, across decades and hundreds of miles. But I want to focus on the climactic moment of the novel, when the Prophet, a young cult-leader, has Kirsten at gunpoint. In this moment, the Prophet begins to speak of the Undersea, a place where people wait in fallout bunkers after a nuclear apocalypse. Kirsten recognizes the Undersea as a location in Dr. Eleven and begins to quote the comic. This distracts the Prophet long enough for a dissident cultist to kill him, saving Kirsten.

    How does the Prophet, a man Kirsten had never met until that day, know about Dr. Eleven? Because he’s the child of Miranda and Arthur, of course.

    Station Eleven led me to consider the role of coincidence in fiction — not as it pertains to plot, but as it pertains to theme.

    I love coincidences like this. Although multitudes of writing-help websites love to hate the coincidence as fiction-breaking or just bad writing, for me a good coincidence can tie everything together, bringing new meaning to characters and events that might have been omitted in a more “realistic” situation. Station Eleven led me to consider the role of coincidence in fiction — not as it pertains to plot, but as it pertains to theme. Kirsten and the Prophet’s coincidental relationship reinforces two of the major themes in the novel — the interconnectedness of humanity, and the importance of shared art. In Station Eleven, one of the keys to not dying in the apocalypse is who you know and who likes you. The Shakespeare troupe not only performs, but transmits information over long distances: an invaluable service in a world without internet or post service. Their web of connections saves the troupe on more than one occasion, including this final one, and the importance of interdependence (and refutation of the libertarian individualism so common in apocalyptic fiction) finds a firm foothold in this lucky break. But the most prevalent theme of the book is the importance of common art. As the troupe travels the country performing Shakespeare, Mandel emphasizes the importance of performing and sharing the same art to as many people as possible, reconnecting humanity even more intimately than through mere information. When the Prophet and Kirsten have that moment of connection over Dr. Eleven, they too are sharing art, art that they have both found themselves linked to by coincidence.

    Of course, Station Eleven is not the only piece of media to put such emphasis on a coincidence. The most notable coincidence in film history is summed up by one of the most famous lines in film: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

    Casablanca (1942) has been hailed by many as the greatest film to ever come out of the Hollywood studio system. I don’t know if I would go quite that far, but it’s a damn good movie all the same. The plot kicks off with a single, now-legendary chance encounter: Ilsa Lund, former romantic partner of protagonist Rick, arrives in Rick’s Casablanca nightclub along with her husband, a Czech resistance leader. It’s World War II, and the couple needs to escape to America to continue their revolutionary work against the Axis Powers.

    Sometimes coincidence can be a web of interconnection rather than a single event.

    The remarkable thing about this coincidence is that it’s not really a coincidence at all. Before Ilsa ever arrives, the film establishes that if you want to escape the Axis Powers’ reign of terror in Europe, you need to go through Casablanca. And if you want to get out of Casablanca alive, then chances are you’ll end up in Rick’s nightclub, looking for a smuggler named Ugarte. Ilsa ends up in this gin joint, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, because nearly everyone who flees the Nazis ends up in Rick’s establishment. The film focuses on Rick’s claimed neutrality, as he tries to avoid intervening in the war effort one way or another. Ilsa’s arrival, coincidence or no, is remarkable because of how unremarkable it is. Made during World War II, Ilsa represents every refugee of the Axis Powers, and Rick represents every American isolationist who opposes involvement in the war. In the face of evil, neutrality helps only the villains. But that revelation can only come about as the result of this coincidence, of Ilsa happening to walk into Rick’s nightclub just as every other refugee has before her.

    Sometimes coincidence can be a web of interconnection rather than a single event. In Bram Stoker’s seminal vampire novel Dracula, many of the protagonists, who all know each other before the events of the novel, just happen to run into Dracula’s forces of darkness independent of one another. For starters:

    While Jonathan Harker, a newly-qualified solicitor, is summoned to Dracula’s castle for a land deal in England, his fiancée’s best friend Lucy Westenra is preyed upon by Dracula himself. At the same time, one of Lucy’s suitors, Dr. John Seward has in his care one Renfield, who happens to be Dracula’s familiar. Learning about the vampire’s involvement in Lucy’s plight, Seward then contacts Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, famed vampire hunter, who also happens to be Seward’s old teacher.

    It only seems like coincidence because we can’t see the whole scheme.

    This summation only scratches the surface of Dracula’s dark influence on the lives of this one particular circle of socialites, raising the question: why? Why, in all of England, are these few connected gentlepersons the ones to whom Dracula brings terror and destruction?

    Apart from economy of story, the answer is simple: evil is everywhere, and infiltrates everything. Theme, rather than causality, has saturated the Harkers’ social world with Dracula and his agents. The count has a presence in the lives of each of these co-protagonists because he, as the manifestation of evil, has a presence in the lives of everyone. It is only by exposing such evil to the light that we realize how it reaches us all. It only seems like coincidence because we can’t see the whole scheme. If Dracula happens to be here, and there, and there once more, then where isn’t he hiding?

    The last stop on our coincidence tour is not quite as famous as Casablanca’s but still well-known. Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest has earned its place in dramaturgical canon through its pithy societal commentary and farcical dialogue, and remains one of the greatest English comedies. It also hinges on a massive coincidence.

    A young, unlettered man named Jack has been wooing a young woman, Gwendolyn, by pretending to be a man named Ernest; unfortunately for Jack, Gwendolyn believes she can only fall in love with a man named Ernest. Jack, who was found in a handbag as a baby, has to contend both with Gwendolyn’s classist mother as well as his friend Algernon, Gwendolyn’s cousin, who also pretends to be Ernest in an attempt to woo Jack’s attractive ward, Cecily. Long story short, it turns out that Cecily’s governess was also infant Jack’s nursemaid, and accidentally left him in a handbag in a train station. Not only is Jack actually Algernon’s older brother, and of nobility, but his real name would have been Ernest all along. A charming coincidence to wrap up a convoluted and comical little play.

    Humans love to pattern-match, making connections that may not really be there. The world is both very big and very small: very big, because so many things can happen, and very small, because so few of those things will actually happen. So when they do, and when we recognize them, they catch our eye and we grant them special meaning.

    Except, the coincidence is the entire point of the play. As Jack, a man born into the lower classes, attempts to woo the higher-class Gwendolyn, he is held back by his name and his birth. Jack has made a life for himself of success and wealth, but in the face of England’s class hierarchy of the late 19th century, nothing he did after he was born matters. Despite all his efforts, both legitimate and deceitful, he only wins the hand of Gwendolyn when it turns out that he was really a nobleman by the name of Ernest all along. Wilde uses the impossible happenstance of Jack’s identity to highlight the reality of class division and stagnation in English society. As it turns out, it is much more important to be Ernest than earnest.

    Coincidence is everywhere, but it need not be avoided. After all, it abounds in our everyday lives. Humans love to pattern-match, making connections that may not really be there. The world is both very big and very small: very big, because so many things can happen, and very small, because so few of those things will actually happen. So when they do, and when we recognize them, they catch our eye and we grant them special meaning. In the same way, authors imbue their coincidences with meaning. It is a small gesture, but a human one, and it just so happens that sometimes all we need is a gesture in the right direction.

  • Holiday Cheer From Hothouse Writers

    Holiday Cheer From Hothouse Writers

    We asked our website staff to contribute writing inspired by the holiday season and the things they celebrate this time of year. Using different forms of art, music, and literature as inspiration, they have created short works of fiction to spark your holiday imagination. From our staff to you, happy holidays!

    Christie Basson:

    Albert Chevallier Tayler - The Christmas Tree | Christmas ...
    The Christmas Tree by Albert Chevallier Tayler, 1911

    Here. This one has your name on it. There you go.

    Oh, this is wonderful, thank you all.
    This is just what I wanted! How did you know?


    Who has empty hands? Here, Mother. This one is for you.


    There’s too much paper here, I’ve lost my new gloves in this mess.
    There, this one is for you. Oh, and this one too. Take them both, why don’t you.

    Oh, no! I didn’t see you open that one, I so wanted to see your reaction.
    Hey, careful, I want to save that paper.
    Here, I think this is for you. There’s no tag, but-


    Everyone, lean in! One, two three!
    Ow, my hair, you’re squeezing me half to death.

    Is Grandma in? Can you see her in the photo?


    Are we about done here? There can’t possibly be anything left unopened.
    Why don’t you kids start putting all of this in that bag? We’ll start on breakfast.

    Stephanie Pickrell:

    “Meanwhile,” said Mr Tumnus, “it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”

    The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

    Every Christmas Eve, my mother reminds me how grateful I should be that I don’t have to eat fish. Other Catholic countries get around the no-meat-before-the-holy-day rule with sumptuous shrimp or lobster dinners, but in Poland, the obligated dinner is . . . carp. To be clear, I’ve never tried carp, but I’ve heard plenty of unkind descriptions from my mother. Apparently, my Babcia always did her best, but there’s little for the artist to do when the material is less-than-stellar and anything spicier than black pepper is simply unheard of.

    According to legend, the tradition only halted when my Canadian uncle-to-be came to stay one Christmas, and my relatives seized hold of the opportunity to suggest to Babcia that perhaps for this year, carp shouldn’t be the main dish. Solely in the interest of preserving my aunt and uncle’s engagement, you understand. Wouldn’t want to scare him off.

    That was several years ago, and as far as I’ve heard, they haven’t had carp since. Moral of the story? Nearly land-locked countries shouldn’t be Catholic. 

    Scotty Villhard:

    Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town from Rankin/Bass

    It’s okay to lose your body
    Around the holidays
    Just, forget where you left it
    Knowing it’ll turn up later
    Probably unwanted but still important
    And while it’s gone
    That little bit of distance
    Is beautiful
    The space between
    What is there and what is good
    Is beautiful
    The cracks In the pavement you slip through
    Falling deep below the earth like unwanted snow
    Are beautiful
    And you see a distance
    While you watch
    Something unimportant but wanted
    That turned up on an old VHS tape
    Forgetting that they are less alive than you are
    Remembering that, around the holidays,
    It’s okay to lose your body.

    Megan Snopik:

    Once when I was younger,
    How old, I’m not quite sure,
    Simply younger than today,
    My family flew to New York
    In November’s last autumn hours.

    I blame it on my age –
    Old enough to not wait
    Up for Santa, but young
    enough to shake wrapped gifts –
    But it felt like Christmas
    Long before December came.

    Eagerness and spirit
    Mingled in frigid air
    As I stepped off the plane
    And into a city larger
    Still than any imagined
    In the longing, distant gazes
    Of a young suburban dreamer.

    That whole week long,
    Despite the sound of carols
    Drifting from weary storefront speakers,
    An old tune, with brass choirs
    Singing loud a swinging beat,
    Stayed relentlessly stuck in my ear
    Proclaiming in boastful assurance
    The promise of the town given in chorus:

    “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,
    It’s up to you, New York, New York”

    And still, I remember
    Fondly that winter spent
    In the town that never sleeps,
    Where massive trees make news,
    And department stores have parades.
    I wonder now where those days have gone.
    I miss my eager hopes and high spirits,
    When I wandered through decorated streets
    Believing “New York, New York” could be a kind of carol too.

    Abdallah Hussein:

    Coming out of Mezes Hall, having just finished my last final of my first semester of college, I pulled out my airpods and quickly pressed shuffle on the first playlist I saw. The song was called “Girlfriend In A Coma” by The Smiths, I liked the band, but had never heard of the song before. I mindlessly continued my walk to the bus stop on Guadalupe St. with a cold and piercing wind blowing, hoping to scar my face. The song continued to rumble on in my ears and I honed in on that very fact hoping to distract myself from the brutal cold. The song had a very happy, comforting and triumphant sound, reminiscent of the holiday spirit – everyone glad to be around one another and in a collective spirit of elation. I never really focused on the lyrics, despite how sad and contrasting they were to the actual sound of the music. I finally made it to the bus stop and took a seat at the cold bench when the song hit the chorus – a solo of jingle bells and sharp violin strokes. At that moment, I lifted my chin from my chest and looked up into the sky with the still brutally cold wind blowing at my face, proud to have finished my first semester of college and looking forward to going home and sleeping the entire Winter break.

    Skylar Epstein :

    Lucy Van Pelt : Here he comes! Attention, everyone, here’s our director.

    [Charlie Brown enters, while everyone applauds] 

    My dad considers himself the director of our family christmas, and as such he takes the Christmas decorations in our yard very seriously. Since the early 2000’s we’ve had the cast of Peanuts cheerily painted on plywood cutouts. For years, my dad would set up all of these cutouts in a neat ring around the great tree, and our yard was the picture of a Charles Schulz christmas – until my brother and I realized that one of the trees in our yard had a fork in it that was perfectly sized to fit the Marcie cutout.

    Charlie Brown: It’s not about what’s under the tree…

    Maybe so, we said to ourselves…maybe it’s all about what’s on top of it.My dad initially rebelled, talking about how really, Marcie would be lonely up there, and how really, she wouldn’t understand what we were doing and neither would our neighbors. 

    Lucy Van Pelt : Listen, all of you! You’ve got to take direction! You’ve got to have discipline! You’ve got to have respect for your director! 

    But my siblings and I (in all of our elementary school ingenuity) had reimagined the christmas spirit as the spirit of creativity, and we campaigned and cajoled until Marcie was (hilariously) treed. Now, my dad silently puts the Patty cutout in the tree every year even though my siblings and I, who were the main instigators, don’t live at home anymore. 

    Charlie Brown : Good grief.

    Pramika Kadari:

    Her hair splayed across the wooden planks, she shut her eyes, soaking in the golden sunlight. Orange, lavender, and a slew of other colors painted the sky. With every breath, the freshest air her lungs had ever tasted filled her body. 

    She was visiting her cousins in Florida for the holidays, for the first time in her life. They were blessed with a giant pond in their backyard and their own personal boat dock. As soon as she stepped onto it, an unexplainable peace washed over her. As if just the sight and smell of all the surrounding water was enough to cleanse everything wicked from her soul. 

    For the next two weeks, the majority of her days were spent out on that dock. Writing, listening to music about beauty and love and everything good about the world. No holiday trip had ever compared to that, and she doubted that one ever would. 

  • Love, Desire, and Other Things That Rot

    Love, Desire, and Other Things That Rot

    Written by Kylie Warkentin

    There are few things as universal to the human experience as the pleasure of sharing a meal with a loved one. The kinetic affair of its creation, the care in overseeing its bake time, the pleasure in seeing it mix, sizzle, rise—and then tumble down into the sweet mouth of someone we love. 

    But I think there’s more to food and its relationship to our bonds with one another than just this.

    We sit down at meals and laugh over the day’s misfortunes, and we sit in silence at a dinner table and cut into the lukewarm tilapia lying nakedly on a plate. We tear salad leaves with dull knives and forks to hide wet teeth, and we sit and rest and belch after dinner, feeling the unsavory bits mix and mingle as they digest. The use of food to mediate our relationships with one another spans the spectrum of sugar and spice, sweet and savory. Meat. Tofu. Pomegranates. Cake. What simmers between us when we bite, chew, swallow? Who’s eating who?

    I. Love is an Act of Creation

    When we think of love, it’s the overwhelming sort that tends to nosedive into our brains first. Passionate, thrumming, all-encompassing—we feel that love keenly. But I’ll bet the first thought of food conjures up the comforting variety before any other. Soft, warm—it’s something we reach across and towards at a table surrounded by close friends and loved ones. This food is inviting, bridging the quick smiles and ungraceful snorts with a love that creates for others. 

    “I love you, I want us both to eat well.” 

    Christopher Citro, “Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks” 

    Behind the scenes photo of Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting on the set of Romeo and Juliet, dir. Franco Zeffirelli (1968).

    I think most Canadians would not generally describe Belleville, Ontario as a warm or inviting place—in fact, all love to Bellevillians, but every single Canadian to whom I’ve mentioned where my family is from has replied with some form of, “Oh, God—really?” But my father alleges that Belleville has a shop that sells simply the best butter tarts. Butter tarts are, to steal a delightful phrase from Wikipedia, a “highly regarded[,] quintessential” Canadian sweet pastry, filled with corn syrup, brown sugar, and the titular butter. One evening, as I was trying to illegally stream Barbie in Swan Lake, my dad insisted that I try and replicate those butter tarts. He told me (in so many words) that he and his group chat of Canadian college bodies were passive aggressively engaged in a superiority contest regarding whose family member(s) could bake the best butter tarts. I was my dad’s chosen champion. After extracting a promise for silence—quid pro quo, etc.—I agreed. I was provided no recipe, and so was thrilled to discover in the subsequent research that Canadians take butter tart recipes personally—as the numerous heated discussions over the best ratio of corn syrup to brown sugar or inclusion of raisins in recipe comments sections demonstrated. Humbled (but not cowed!), I went to work. I patiently broke up cold butter into flour and sugar, strenuously attempted to roll out the pastry dough to an acceptable thickness, and gravely consulted with my dad on the addition of raisins. It was irritating, loaded work. But they were delicious, and I won the not-contest—even though someone’s large thumbs made the submission photos irritatingly blurred.

    Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, dir. by Park Chan-wook (2005)

    You’re alone, married, and alone. Suffocatingly beautiful dresses suffocating in their beauty, lonely nights spent listening to the same phone calls delivered to you every night – No, darling, extra work in the office, I’m afraid. Don’t wait up. Go to bed. I’ll be back late. Your exasperated sighs fill the apartment like a balloon, lifting you up, up, up away from the rock that’s weighing down your finger, your hand, your body. You’re not dumb, I’m afraid, and neither is your neighbor. Your commonality is your unfaithful spouses—who are, in fact, cheating on you both with each other. Terrible, terrible, irony so terrible it carves its hole in your stomach and has you reciting lines. But your new friend—

    In The Mood For Love, dir. by Wong Kar-Wai (2000)

     “When you cook for someone, this is a deliberate act of nurturing. This very simple thing is the currency of genuine intimacy.”

     Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight (2016)

    II. I Love You So Much I Want To Eat You

    Have you ever seen something so cute you have the strongest desire to snatch it up and hug it so close to your chest that it bursts into tiny pieces dancing merrily around your o-shaped mouth? I think I first saw an old lady lean over a young child and exclaim, “You’re so cute! I could just gobble you up!” in a children’s cartoon. Gobble you up!, cackles the witch in the dark corner of my room, one palm unfurled and offering gingerbread. I used to think it was grotesque, but we call it love all the same. Who’s that on the plate here?

    I Don’t Want to Eat My Soup, plate six from Day and Dream, by Max Beckmann (1946) 

    “Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters, sometimes very hastily, but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother, and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” 

    Maurice Sendak in an interview with Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air”    

    Little plum,

    Said the mother to her son,

    I want to bite,

    I want to chew,

    I will eat you up.

    “Hansel and Gretel,” by Anne Sexton (1971)

    Often in fairy tales, the solution to a woman’s fertility problems is presented in the form of a choice. And by a witch. Do eat this but don’t eat this, and a son will grow big and strong in your belly. If you do eat this thing that you should not eat, a son will grow big and strong in your belly, but the word might apply more loosely. Son. Grow. Strong. Belly. Chew, chew, choose wisely—hah! This desire that is felt so keenly by the woman is “transformative and transgressive.” Often in this story, the woman devours both onion skins, hungrily watches her stomach grow, and births a monster instead of a little boy. Sometimes, we love and desire a love so much it grows. And grows monstrous.       

    “Chapter XXXVIII. How Gargantua did eat up six pilgrims in a salad.” in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, illustrated by Gustave Doré (1854)

    It sounds like a riddle, right? What’s the one thing that grows and grows the more you satiate it? The sphinx used to perch on her wall and throw down a riddle or two to see who’s smart and sees and who’s a snack and cannot. I love you so much I want to eat you. 

    Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as a thing so enmeshed with the fecund world around it that it grows and “outgrows itself, transgressing its own limits.” Think of the top of a pomegranate, puckered, its leafy skin reaching up and outward—here, the outside meets the inside and they both delight in sucking each other in. But now think of a body: your mouth open, gasping, spitting, shouting. Your stomach, growing full, fuller, so full you’re losing sight of the boundaries between the world and your belly. Carnival: you are carnal, you are celebrating your community and its corporeal chaos. You finish picking some meat from your teeth with the fish bone and pat your stomach and belch and reach for more.

    Still Life: Fish, by William Merritt Chase (1908)

    “Did he find that one last tender

    place to

    sink his teeth in?”

    “If you love me, Henry, you don’t love

    me  

    in a way I understand.“

    “Wishbone,” by Richard Siken (2014)

    III. Digestive Processes

    Often, a wonderful, lush meal is concluded not with a delectable dessert, light and airy on the tongue, but a rumble and a sharp twist in the stomach. The digestive processes always seem to get you and yours in the end. The carrot you snapped and smashed with your molars meets the slab of meat on your plate that started to bleed past its edges at first bite. You are eating dinner. You are with another. You chew something over to understand it, you devour a book that resonates—plink plink plink—within you. We are creatures who love and consume, but we are more importantly creatures who digest. 

    “When I fed the pigs and two of them got to scrapping over an old soft onion, I thought: that’s love. Love is eating. Love is a snarling pig snout and long tusks. Love is the colour of blood. Love is what grown folk do to each other because the law frowns on killing.” 

    Six Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente

    Kitchen Scene, Peter Wtewael (1620s)

    Anne Carson in Eros the Bittersweet: “Desire is not simple. In Greek the act of love is a mingling (mignumi) and desire melts the limbs (lusimelēs, cf. Sappho fr. 130 above). Boundaries of body, categories of thought, are confounded…All our desires are contradictory, like the desire for food. I want the person I love to love me. If he is, however, totally devoted to me he does not exist any longer and I cease to love him. And as long as he is not totally devoted to me he does not love me enough. Hunger and repletion. (1977, 364)”

    “Dolce.” Hannibal, NBC (2015)

    Hegel, describing romantic art in Aesthetics : “[Romantic art] emerges from itself into a relation with something else which, however, is its own, and in which it finds itself again and remains communing and in unity with itself…Therefore the romantic Ideal expresses a relation to another spiritual being which is so bound up with depth of feeling that only in this other does the soul achieve this intimacy with itself. This life in self in another is, as feeling, the spiritual depth of love.” Jacques Derrida said of his work on Hegel that “the very notion of comprehending [is] as a kind of incorporation…understanding is still an assimilation.” I have seen in the Oedipal sense, I have loved in an abundance of senses, and I have eaten. I understand you – I love you—

    DIGESTION by Frederic Belaubre

    I used to confuse whether or not your fist is the size of your heart or your stomach. I’d hold my palm out, clench it, press my jagged fingernails into the bed of my palm until I could visualize the red of my insides. We try to understand the carnal via the cerebral and lose the boundaries between ourselves in all the resulting twisting and turning. You are eating dinner. You are with another. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost the mediator and gone straight for the jugular. 

    “We are all mixed up in an eating of flesh—real or symbolic.” 

    Jacques Derrida

  • Don’t Judge a Book by Its Intended Audience

    Don’t Judge a Book by Its Intended Audience

    Written by Pramika Kadari

    As an English major, I’m nervous to admit that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay is one of my favorite books in the world because it’s labeled as a young adult book. In the world of readers, many look down on YA books as being childish, trashy entertainment, or simply not intellectually stimulating. Instead, they praise the classics. The snobbishness is most common among English majors who spend most of their time analyzing the patterns of iambic pentameter in Hamlet, learning to read Middle English, or discussing the motivations of authors writing centuries ago. Of course, yes, The Hunger Games is a page-turner, and an easier read than older or more dense works. But why in the world should that mean it is not as intellectually stimulating? I don’t believe books need to be difficult to be important. 

    The first thing to note is that “young adult” is not even a genre—it is a marketing category. While many YA books have similar characteristics—a young protagonist, coming-of-age themes and feelings, and a writing style that doesn’t require you to read everything twice—it’s the publishers who decide whether to market a certain book as YA or not, based on what age group they think will buy the book. And the publishers can be wrong. With this in mind, it makes even less sense to look down on the whole category. Why judge The Hunger Games for being YA if the label only determines the target audience—not its impact?

    But now, I’ve accepted pink as one of my favorite colors, and I’m completely fine with admitting I like a wide range of movies, even ones more “sophisticated” people might consider stupid. 

    The series—especially the last book—is full of questions about sacrifice, war, love, justice, and more. And it’s not the only one. The last few books of Harry Potter are rich with moral dilemmas and nuances about humanity. Several stand-alone YA novels such as I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson and It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini helped shift my perspective on life. The latter, which follows a clinically depressed teenager during his stay at a psychiatric hospital, helped me through my own struggles during my freshman year of high school. Despite its seemingly bleak premise, the novel itself is actually quite uplifting and inspiring. Its final words are “So live now for real, Craig. Live. Live. Live. Live. Live.” In high school, those were words I needed to hear. 

    Another factor contributing to YA’s status as the scum of the literary world is gender. A majority of popular YA series today are written by female authors or feature female protagonists; for example, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments, Six of Crows, and Throne of Glass, just to name a few. Because overall the category seems to be more targeted at teenage girls than boys, some people might experience an indoctrinated twinge of derision. Even outside of literature, society in general has a tendency to look down on things that teenagers like—especially teenage girls. We need only look to artists and bands with largely young female fan bases—such as Taylor Swift and One Direction – who often get hate for little to no reason, to see this reflected in our society. Because of this, many young girls feel ashamed to be girls. I was one of them; when I was little, I was adamant about pretending like I hated pink, romantic comedies, and anything else stereotypically “girly.” Instead, I declared my favorite color was blue and I only liked action-based movies. But now, I’ve accepted pink as one of my favorite colors, and I’m completely fine with admitting I like a wide range of movies, even ones more “sophisticated” people might consider stupid. 

    In school, teenagers are often forced with great ceremony to read The Classics, a title justified mostly by time.  But what would be wrong with reading modern adaptations or retellings, if they offer the same themes and lessons?

    In no way do I believe Shakespeare’s works are more intellectual or thought-provoking than The Hunger Games. In my opinion, many readers put classic writers such as Shakespeare on a pedestal for a few reasons. First of all, they were novel for their time—when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, it hadn’t yet become the cliché that it is today. However, I refuse to believe the thirteen-year-old star-crossed lovers are more meaningful just because they’ve existed longer in the literary canon. Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is one of the most realistic yet inspiring characters I’ve ever read. Throughout the second novel in the series, Catching Fire, two sides of her are constantly battling between whether to run away or stay and encourage the rebellion. Her choices provided me with more food for thought than Juliet’s ever did. Of course, it’s not like every great literary classic is worse than any YA novel, but I am tired of people assuming that a YA label automatically consigns a book to the bottom of the heap.

    In high school, I had to read parts of The Iliad for English class. And yes, I know Homer is the most important poet of the Greek world, but wow that book was boring. However, when I read the YA novel Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller last summer—a retelling of The Iliad with a more contemporary writing style—it instantly became one of my favorite books. The Iliad was written 2,400 years ago, translated from ancient Greek, and written in verse. These cultural, temporal, and linguistic barriers make it more difficult to enjoy for the modern reader. That does not mean it’s a fact that Song of Achilles outshines The Iliad—and of course, the latter has merits that the former doesn’t—but I believe the two should receive similar levels of respect. If a modern reader can find more worth in the modern adaptation because it is easier to digest and strikes more emotional chords for her, what is the harm in reading that one instead? In school, teenagers are often forced, with great ceremony, to read The Classics, a title justified mostly by time.  But what would be wrong with reading modern adaptations or retellings, if they offer the same themes and lessons? At one point, most of the classics that teenagers read in school were “contemporary” works targeted at the masses. However, now they are considered more valuable than our current contemporary works, which does not make much sense to me.  This is another reason why I believe, at least to an extent, people place classics on a pedestal they don’t always deserve. 

    For me, it was a YA book, not a so-called Classic, that impacted my life more than any other: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I read it in sixth grade, and it’s been my favorite book ever since; the only one that’s matched it is the aforementioned Song of Achilles, which I read a few months ago. Ender’s Game, however, is the book that made me want to write my own book. Set in the future, the military science fiction novel follows a group of brilliant children who are being trained into ruthless soldiers. I knew creating something even half as poignant as Ender’s Game would be the most gratifying experience of my life. Of course, I’d written stories before I read the novel, but that book is what pushed me to complete my first full-length manuscript – titled Grayscale – in 8th grade, because it made me realize how truly beautiful literature could be. While Grayscale was objectively terrible, and I’m glad I never tried to self-publish it, finishing it was also one of the biggest milestones of my life. Since writing Grayscale, I have completed manuscripts of two more books – including the one I am working on right now. That project, titled Nearly Human, is currently in its second draft. Because I am more passionate about this project than anything I’ve ever written before, I am seriously considering pursuing publishing it —only because of that initial push from reading Ender’s Game years ago. 

    YA is full of stories about people who would do anything for the people they love, and that’s a beautiful thing.

    While YA novels come in all shapes and sizes, my favorite familiar current running through each of them is how raw the emotions are in character relationships – all types of relationships, including romantic, platonic, and familial. Whether it is Katniss’s sisterly protection of Prim in The Hunger Games, or Ari’s friendship and romance with Dante in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of The Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, I’ve never felt more deeply impacted by character relationships than I have by those in YA. Because the characters are young, their emotions are more wild and uninhibited. They’re unburdened by the hesitations, and doubts that most adults have, which adds a searing and fiery element to their love. Often, that fire is irrational, but it’s still a wonder to read about. YA is full of stories about people who would do anything for the people they love, and that’s a beautiful thing. That’s what makes me reread certain emotional quotes and moments from these books over and over, a million times, as my heart pounds and races along with the characters’ hearts. In my experience, while classics can have that same rush of passion, it’s much harder to find.

    In the end, I am not saying classics are garbage, or that YA novels are always better. In fact, some of my favorite books are classics, such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. However, I do believe that YA books as a whole deserve the same respect as other works of literature. The label is just that—a label—and that shouldn’t put a smear on the wonders inside. 

  • Like, Read, and Subscribe, Please! : The Promise of Transmedia Storytelling

    Like, Read, and Subscribe, Please! : The Promise of Transmedia Storytelling

    Written by Skylar Epstein

    The year is 2012 and Joss Whedon’s Avengers just came out. You, as an avid comic reader, go into the theater wielding comparisons to the comics, ready and willing to fill in the backstory of each character for your less informed friends. Then it’s 2013, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, a spin-off series about your favourite character Phil Coulson and his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D agents, is produced by ABC. You sit at the ready once a week to check your knowledge of the comics against this new continuation of the MCU. Three years later, season four comes out and Robbie Reyes, (who first appeared as the Ghost Rider in All New Ghost Rider in 2014) makes an appearance as a major character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. You meet him again and love him, so of course you run to Bookpeople and buy all available issues of All New Ghost Rider. You tape the ticket stubs of Avengers Endgame to the corkboard in your dorm, put away the Ghost Rider comics, and press play on the new episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

    Simply by being a fanatic of the MCU, you have participated in transmedia storytelling for close to seven years. 

    If the term “transmedia storytelling” sounds futuristic, niche, or something way too complicated for casual reading, let me put those thoughts to rest. You’ve probably seen and participated in transmedia storytelling before without knowing exactly what you were interacting with. The strategy of transmedia storytelling is pretty straightforward, in fact. It is simply the process of using more than one platform to tell a single narrative story. In the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s the use of transmedia storytelling that actually extends the universe out from just the movies. Marvel movies can, of course, be enjoyed as stand-alones, but if you read the comics and watch the spin off series, you’ll probably be more immersed than a movie isolationist fan just by having more knowledge about the canon. The conglomerate monster of the Marvel universe aside, what transmedia storytelling boils down to is a strategy of extending your story beyond its original format. The key aspect of transmedia storytelling is that each platform, or different extension of the story, “adds a new piece of information which forces us to revise our understanding of the fiction as a whole,” writes Henry Jenkins. The concept itself is simple, but transmedia storytelling in practice is a lot harder to pull off than the definition implies. 

    This probably isn’t the first time you have encountered transmedia storytelling. Our culture is made for the transmedia mode of storytelling, and it’s been going on for a long time without many of us having a name for it. At first glance, listen, or read, you might not be aware that a certain narrative is using transmedia storytelling. The history of transmedia storytelling is vast and varied, but some notable examples have emerged within the last ten years. Take Marisha Pessl’s novel, Night Film (2013). Night Film, a story about a shadowy murder mystery, has been critically praised for how the “maniacally clever” fiction is uncannily realistic—to the point where the fiction of the novel is almost indistinguishable from the real world. Pessl accomplishes this  by composing materials that “evidence” her characters’ existences in our world, like Vulture articles, recorded therapy sessions, posters of movies directed by the elusive (but fictional) Stanislav Cordova, audio from the Oscar awards, and even a personal diary that are meant to be considered alongside the novel’s text. The undeniably immersive multimedia experience of Night Film challenges its readers to define it. Is this a novel? A podcast? Or is it something entirely different? Much like the plot of the novel, the answer to this question remains a mystery.

    Moving forward to 2018, another prime example of transmedia storytelling arose when Janelle Monae released her third album, titled Dirty Computer. This album shares a narrative with a short film of the same name, which Monae directed and starred in. The songs of the album and their accompanying music videos elaborate on the story told in the short film, culminating in an out-of-this-world multimedia narrative experience that explores classic science fiction tropes like individualism under systematic oppression, futurism, and of course, “dirty” computers as nonconformist androids. For the exceptionally geeky reader, the relationship between the Doctor Who (2005 – Present) and Torchwood (2006 – 2011) series may be another good example of multimedia stories, because Torchwood, although it is a successful and popular series in its own right, originated as a spin-off series and expands the Doctor Who universe with every episode.

    When transmedia storytelling is done well, it provides an intensely immersive experience that can transform a reader from just an observer to an active participant in the world of the narrative.

    When you set off to create a transmedia story, you have to commit to the juggling act of logically coordinating different platforms into your fiction. Aside from creating your characters, world, and plot, you have the labor of love that is creating additional content to send out over multiple platforms. Of course, you have to make sure the extra content is consistent with your original story and that the platforms are engaging—all while ensuring that the original story is accessible to single platform readers. Transmedia storytelling can be very daunting for independent creators who don’t have a large corporation handling their social media.

    For all of us armchair literary critics trying to do the math here, the question is this: if a story can be told in its entirety without the use of multiple platforms, why go through the effort of transmedia storytelling? The calculus of effort and reward that goes into deciding how to tell a story is different for every author—far be it from us to make generalizations about the minds of creative geniuses. As a reader, however, I can understand why the strategy of transmedia storytelling has proven to be so successful. When transmedia storytelling is done well, it provides an intensely immersive experience that can transform a reader from just an observer to an active participant in the world of the narrative. In the past, transmedia storytelling happened primarily through adaptations for television and spin-off books. Now, transmedia storytelling has gone digital. With how many avenues for media consumption are available to us today, it’s easier than ever for a story to expand beyond the page. There are many ways you can tell a transmedia story, but let’s zoom in on a method that is near and dear to every college student’s hearts: social media. 

    Let’s go back to 2013. This time, we’ll need to shift our focus away from the Marvel Universe and onto Tumblr. In the fall of 2013, Ngozi Ukazu, who was a recent Yale graduate at the time, launched Check Please! on Tumblr as a free-to-read episodic webcomic. Ukazu describes Check, Please! as “a story about hockey and friendship and bros and trying to find yourself during the best 4 years of your life.” If you’ll excuse a baseball metaphor about a hockey webcomic, Check, Please! hit a home run. People resonated with it right from its inception. The depth and relatability of the themes introduced, the antics of the characters, and the adorable art just made Check, Please! easy to love. This remarkable fan response was reflected in the comic’s revolutionary kickstarter success, as Ukazu was able to raise $74,000 in total to  produce a printed version of the first book only two years after she first published it on Tumblr. In addition to telling a great story – lauded especially for its LGBTQI+ representation – Ukazu was very successful in presenting said story. As a genius navigator of the webcomic medium, much of her wild success rested on her early commitment to multiplatform storytelling. 

    Ukazu’s platform of choice is Twitter. In 2014 she created an account completely from the point of view of Eric Bittle, the main character of Check, Please!. From the location tag of Samwell, Massachusetts to the bio, the only indication that the person behind the profile didn’t actually exist was the fact that all of the photos posted were illustrated images. Logistically, running this Twitter involved making it private and public so that the tweets would coordinate with the comic’s update schedule. Tweet too soon, and she’d spoil her plot. Tweet too late after the relevant comic is released, and her readers would have forgotten the context of the tweet. Through coordinating the comic episode updates and the tweeting schedule, the account remained consistent with the comic and did not disrupt Ukazu’s narrative pace. And, luckily for new fans, those older tweets remain preserved through the magic of the internet.

    The characters in Check, Please! don’t just vanish when they’re not “on screen” – they interact with each other and experience plotlines beyond the illustrations.

    Like a puck being jettisoned into the rink after the first face-off, this Twitter jumps straight out of the pages of Ukazu’s comic. Even the @omgcheckplease handle is integrated into the fiction of the Check, Please! narrative, since Bittle uses the same handle for his fictional YouTube vlogging account in the webcomic. At times, the tweets filled in moments that weren’t illustrated in the comic. Here, is a prime example. A moment thus referenced briefly in the comic:

    Was elaborated on in a month-long twitter thread that included tweets like these:

    https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease/status/504693550395969536
    https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease/status/504695116326768640

    Other times, the Twitter account can show alternate perspectives for moments that were illustrated in the comic. For instance, during a scene where the comic illustrations focused on an emotional conflict between two characters, Eric, who wasn’t present during that scene, tweets away about keg stands and party shenanigans. While this particular example shows how this can be a humorous device, it is especially useful for worldbuilding and character development. The tweets grant a sense of permanence to the events occurring in the comics and allow readers to feel a very real sense of time passing outside of the comic. The characters in Check, Please! don’t just vanish when they’re not “on screen” – they interact with each other and experience plotlines beyond the illustrations. In this way, the dual perspectives of the comic and the Twitter account tell a more complete story that builds a world that feels more real than the comic could ever tell in isolation. 

    The secret to Ukazu’s success is both the total immersion in and conviction of her imagined world and the inclusion of the reader as both an observer and participant in the story. In addition to letting the readers into her story through the interactive Twitter account, she also invites them into her storytelling process. Ukazu brings in a refreshing transparency to transmedia storytelling, and she actually walks her readers through her praxis herself during a Q&A. To a fan’s query about the importance of following the tweets, she posts:

    “Hey, dude, I’m doing multi-platform storytelling! You can read the entire comic without looking at the Twitter. You can also read the whole comic without looking at an Ask-a-Wellie or a blog post too. But–Okay. Maybe I should officially revise my stance: if you want that full Check, Please! experience, you totally should read the Twitter! You’ll get a clearer picture of the whole narrative I’m trying to tell and hey, you might just have some fun. But, yo, I’m not the boss. I’m merely a comic artist offering a multi-tiered user experience.”

    Here, she throws back the curtain and reveals her playbook. The content she mentions (like the Ask-a-Wellie mini strips, which explain the rules and slang of hockey) both explains the narrative and expands on it. It’s all very meta, as her fourth-wall breaking goalie, Johnson, would say. 

    The key phrase here is “a multi-tiered user experience.” Through Twitter, Ukazu invites the reader to both experience and participate in the narrative. Bittle’s twitter is pretty realistic. He tweets about things that college students normally tweet about (thinking about your classes, Beyonce’s best album and why it’s Lemonade, dunking on your friends, etc). 

    https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease/status/506262981642973184
    https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease/status/688563418824097792
    https://twitter.com/omgcheckplease/status/1170392222480687104

    He uses hashtags, posts funny candids of his friends, and changes his profile pictures just like we do in real life. If you didn’t read the comic, the account could act as its own separate piece of fiction because of how comprehensive the personality presence is. Bittle even interacts with fans, responding to their questions and comments about his fictional school without missing a beat. Usually, this would interrupt suspension of belief because people generally don’t converse with strangers on Twitter on the daily, but these types of interactions make sense in the context of the Check, Please! comic because Bittle is a YouTuber who commonly interacts with internet fans he does not know personally.

    The interactivity of the fictional Twitter profile softens the degrees of separation that usually exist between readers, characters, and authors. As soon as you click ‘follow’ you become part of the narrative, since the fictional audience in Check, Please! and your personal twitter account become one and the same. Now, when Bittle addresses his fans and followers in the Check, Please! comic, he’s talking about you instead of some abstract nonexistent audience. Moments where he confides in his fans (like when he sobs in a vlog about falling for the wrong guy) are more intimate for the readers, as they can express sympathy or joy to Bittle without having to break the fiction by going to the webcomic site to leave a comment. This helps Ukazu too – the participatory relationship Twitter grants the readers is also a useful tool for authors to gauge the audience’s emotional response to their stories.

    The trajectory of transmedia storytelling is exhilarating, because it shows how creators are adapting their storytelling methods to a digital world.


    Check, Please! is by no means the only example of transmedia storytelling, but it has stood out as incredibly innovative and engaging. Check, Please! was one of the first webcomics to show how transmedia storytelling can be used by all creators (no matter their budget) to make more engaging stories. Considering how quickly we are changing the ways we interact with media and each other over the internet I suspect we might see a lot more of transmedia storytelling over the next few years. The ways in which we consume media is becoming more and more fractured. We bounce between different streaming services and different mediums with ease. With all of the options available to us now, it’s pretty uncommon to find all of the creative content we enjoy on a single website or platform. It’s easier than ever for creators to utilize transmedia storytelling.

    Although the Marvel Cinematic Universe was certainly a notorious feat of transmedia storytelling, you don’t have to be a media conglomerate or a billion dollar studio to incorporate transmedia storytelling in your own creative practices. It’s easier than ever for individuals to publish content online. Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are all free—and as Check Please! proved, are nearly untapped wells of creative potential. It’s even free to host a podcast on iTunes if you choose to go the route of Pessl’s Night Film. Even including hyperlinks has potential for immersive storytelling, because you can send your reader on a digital journey. If Tolkein had access to Twitter, who’s to say that The Hobbit wouldn’t have been chronicled through Bilbo’s live-tweets. Since the content on social media platforms is so shareable, using digital platforms for transmedia storytelling has a lot of benefits for small creators aiming to expand their audience. Transmedia storytelling is here to stay, and so are the innovations it brings to storytelling practices. The trajectory of transmedia storytelling is exhilarating, because it shows how creators are adapting their storytelling methods to a digital world. In my opinion, this is something for both creators and consumers to be excited about.