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There must be lines -
geographical, mathematical, contested borders,
maps redrawn, bodies quartered;
populate open wounds and call it heaven.

All the snow shall be red. I will draw you a line with footprints.
A line across the gate of heaven, and I am waiting on this side
For questions to stop blowing
Through our collective mind.

S: Help me. I can’t concentrate.

M: Again, this really isn’t my field.

S: No, this is. Wouldn’t you feel this too? How did you see Karkolla after you left?

M: …not like this.

S: were you never as conflicted as I was? I can’t see how you weren’t.

M: I was, but…I couldn’t go back and that was that.

S: You can be so practical.

M: Well, that’s where I’m different from you. I don’t give myself over to hysterics, emotional extremes, and melodrama.

S: I can’t help it. If it makes me feel this way then it does. Please understand that.

M: No, I understand it. I’m just making a non-judgemental distinction between you and me.

S: all right, I’m calm now.

M: …that took a while.

S: I know what you’re going to say – and I’m not even letting YOU into this conversation – but yeah, I suppose if you can’t sweat in humid weather, crying is an option. Though there’s still a sore tangle in my chest somewhere.

K: I don’t even

S: I said I’m not letting you into this conversation! Get out!
So, yeah. What is all of this? Can you answer from this perspective?

M:…what exactly are the questions?

S: um…
1) Does the work itself trivialize atrocities?
2) Does the fan works trivialize atrocities?
3) Are the work itself and the fanworks part of a larger whole or must we talk about them separately?
4) If answering “yes” to 1 and/or 2, how much impact does fantasy have on real life? Does the collective fandom fantasizing make them not care about “what actually happened”? Does it make them (us) hypocrites or does it mean the human mind can take multiple perspectives? Another way of saying this is – are we cultural dupes?
5) Where do I draw the line personally?

K: evidently, line is pretty far down.

S: I didn’t ask you…

K: Why? Are you afraid of a liberal opinion?

M: “liberal”? Please.

S: Just ignore him.

M: I can make you think about the questions, but you really have to ask W and GX.

S: all right, talk to me about Karkolla then. Then I’ll ask them.

M: I already told you. It was pretty simple in my mind.

S: work with me here…

M: All right…well…I couldn’t go back, but it was a construct in my mind more than what was in actuality. You didn’t write the chapter yet, but I know that’s what you/I was thinking. And then…I don’t know…I felt like I didn’t deserve to go back. And maybe thinking they won’t accept me back was the excuse to cover feelings of inadequacy. I don’t know. But it’s not the same as…this. I wasn’t feeling embattled over the entire history of the place. As you said, I’m practical. I don’t think in those terms.

S: I guess…well…I guess I’ll let you go.
Um, I guess we haven’t really talking in this way before. And hello.

W: …no, we did not.

GX: Well. Once.

S: Oh, right. I remember. You know, this is so weird. I’m talking to a mental construct about a mental construct. Am I also a mental construct?

GX: I don’t think so.

M: I suggest you make use of their presence and stop asking them existential questions that you’re supposed to be asking me.

S: Ok…ok…so, the 5 questions above.

W:
1) Yes.
2) Yes.
3) You can do either. In fact, given your academic trajectory, you have to do both.
4) Fantasy certainly has a great deal to do with real life. If not, then your whole thesis is moot (S: Crap…). However, even you know that you can never expect force moving in one direction to pass on its energy unidirectionally. An analogy of this situation is the start of a game of billiards. If the author is the player, the ball he hits is his work, and the triangular collective of balls is the audience. Certainly he knows that the balls will scatter, but he cannot predict where they will go.
People are not cultural dupes.

S: But – the screenshot of all those…all those…..

W: Well, you have to ask whether those people were MADE like that by the work, or were they already like that to begin with.

S: That doesn’t change anything – even if you argue that the work doesn’t have any effect on them, the author and the fandom operators probably know that this sort of thing will happen. That there are crude and crass people out there who will take advantage of this arena and express negative behaviour.

W: Yes, that’s true. It’s like Stephanie said about videogames though. And there’s one thing in 4) that you haven’t asked.

S: True to your function, I guess. What haven’t I asked?

W: In the case of Zhao Wei and the Japanese flag – there’s something symbolic involved. The flag symbolizes imperial Japan. And so people who see her wearing it assumed that she endorses Japanese imperialism, or at least that she doesn’t mind it. The question you haven’t asked is whether it’s possible to draw such a straight line between a symbol and what it stands for.

GX: How could it not stand for…? If people perceive it standing in for Japanese imperialism, then for all intents and purposes it does. The act of seeing it as such makes it so.

S: Hold on:
>smz\\mks (#92000A, ctrl+alt+M)> says:
*thinks about this*
hmm have you heard about the incident a long time ago when the Zhao Wei actress wore a dress with the Japanese flag on it and upset a lot of people?
^*inNo^* says:
yes
that was dumb xD
>smz\\mks (#92000A, ctrl+alt+M)> says:
lol, of which party
^*inNo^* says:
both
hahaha
this is one of those things it requires 2 dumb parties for it to happen
>smz\\mks (#92000A, ctrl+alt+M)> says:
LOL
omg stephanie I love you
^*inNo^* says:
don’t u think so? o.O

W: Well, there you have it then. Two dumb parties. One didn’t register the symbolic at all and the other gave it too much weight.

S: I suppose.

W: And that brings in the “cultural dupes” argument. Some people are cultural dupes, but some people aren’t. Should the work have not gone into production, to protect the cultural dupes?

S: But that implies it’s done some good to outweigh what it makes the cultural dupes do.

W: Well, let’s consider that side later. Firstly, what sort of harm do you think the worst cultural dupe could do in this situation?

S: Well, suppose a fanfiction is actually written about the Rape of Nanking. And people enjoy it. What if that makes people…not care? I guess I’m asking whether people can separate these things in their minds. And whether you SHOULD separate these things.

W: Just like you should separate the fanwork and the actual work. Should you?

S: I’m asking you.

W: What do you think?

S: Um…I think that it’s both tied together and separate. Like the billiards example – it’s one motion to hit all the balls with the white one, but at the same time the white ball is separate from the other balls. So…it’s implied in the main work that these are directions fandom would go, but fandom needs to actualize it.

W: Right. So the work itself shouldn’t be banned?

S: Are you referring the South Korea incident? I think it should be published, and the citizens can choose to get pissed. But it should still get circulated. And you can certainly choose to hate one part of a work but not the rest of it.

W: Just you like problem with Orson Scott Card.

S: Right. I don’t agree with a lot of the things he writes, but I can’t ban them categorically. I mean, not showing Snow White because Hitler liked it…that’s the place it leads to if you’re going to be like that.

W: Then let me ask about the atrocities requested by the fandom.

S: Well, personally….I think that if I ever bring myself to read something like that, I am rational enough to separate the symbol from the actual, and the parts I enjoy from the parts I didn’t enjoy. But I’m worried that not everyone could.

W: I guess you answered 5).

S: Not quite…but getting there.

W: I think we can safely give people more credit.

S: yeah…?

W: Come, what has cultural studies taught you?

S: Well, that’s the point. This whole thing is throwing what I learned in cultural studies into doubt. To a certain extent I think people CAN separate the different concepts. The website I was just looking at case in point. In fact I think it’s almost impossible for people to see both of them together. I think maybe a failure of human intellect saves this whole business. When we look at that picture, we just see people. I mean, pornography is erotic because it features people. No one gets off on thinking about nations, really.

W: And that’s precisely where the good balances out the bad. Because at it’s best, it could make you actually care about nations in ways you never cared about them before. You were talking about a failure of human intellect – that’s another failure of human intellect, that people cannot get too abstract. Did a writer not once say that no one fights for abstract concepts like nationalism in the end? In war people fight because they remember their families. As you said, if everything related to a nation is distilled into one human being, that makes it so much easier to relate to. And it’s certainly done that to you.

S: I guess. And looking at the page I was just looking at…yeah, fans do great things, don’t they. All those deaths actualized in one scene with only two people. That really made me…yeah. But I’m still not prepared to look at anything too much related to WWII.

W: I’ll let GX take over.

S: Thanks…we need to talk about these things more.
Well, this is more relevant to you. Since this all took place when you were alive.

GX: Not WWII.

S: No, but the 8 nation alliance and…yeah. How do you feel about all of this?

GX: I’m the part of you that can’t bring yourself to look at certain fan sites. Even if I know that you, personally, can separate the two.

S: As I said, isn’t it strange? I always took you as the personification of everything that happened. And along comes another version.

GX: And which one are you going to keep?

S: Well, I made you up, so I guess I’ll keep you. I don’t quite feel right talking to someone else’s construct. And I don’t quite agree with that construct… though…I’ve looked for one for so long. And…in a way it vindicates me. Even if it’s a playground for rabid fangirling.

GX: The fangirling sort of amuses me.

S: Well, yeah, it would. But fangirling over…not so much. Actually, I wanted to ask specifically you – what do you think a nation means?

GX: What do you think?

S: Why are both of you asking me rhetorical questions?

GX: All right, to make this easier for you, maybe you should start with the work itself, and within the work itself, what a nation is NOT.

S:…Um. I guess obviously a nation isn’t the land, since they’re people. But they’re not the people of the nation either because they can co-exist. But in a way they are the land, since certain parts of their physical being corresponding to certain places. And a nation isn’t its soccer team, despite links to that effect…..Well, that led nowhere.

GX: On the contrary. You have established that the best link you an draw between a nation and its identity is the land.

S: But that raises another question. Because those “places” that are specified aren’t like…naturally occuring places. No one said someone’s blood vessel is a river or anything. The places are generally human-made things, like cities.

GX: Well, actually, certain places are islands.

S: Right, I forgot.

GX: No, still. It means that another link is that a nation is land plus the human cultural production upon the land.

S: That makes sense with the “resorts all over the world” part. And oh, a nation isn’t its leader either, because they can talk to each other…sorry.

GX: That isn’t something anyone should apologize for. I know I was never the nation.

S: But I’ve been thinking about this – nations change so much, depending on the rulers, the relations with other countries, and even how land shifts. How can they be characters? That implies that there’s some stable core across time.

M: Does it?

S:….never mind. Maybe not.

M: People don’t really have any “core” either. Of course, you can say people do, but then so do nations.

GX: Consider this, though. If a nation is not its people, and it is not their leaders either, then why are you afraid to look at certain pages?

S:…I don’t get the question.

W: Basically, we have three constructs here. There’s the nation in real life, what the real life nation means, and the characterization of the nation as a person, which embody some of what a real life nation means. Or rather, maybe the last needs to be a subset of multiple characterizations. What he is pointing out in that question is that your not looking at certain pages is predicated on the assumption that the personification at hand incorporates certain ideas of nation and not others, when in fact the assumption you are relying on might be wrong.

S: I guess a nation could be all of those things we went through. In its entirety. I guess that’s like the Endless in the Sandman right?

M: Perhaps. So they’re human constructs of concepts which have no definable boundaries.

W: To throw in another analogy, the relationship of the personification and the nation is like the relationship of the handles on a pair of scissors to its blade.

S: …I thought that up through you and I don’t even understand what that means.

M: Ah, they are intimately tied together yet are not the same thing. What one side does the other side also much immediately do. It’s an exact correspondence.

S: Isn’t it simpler to say that it’s like an object and its reflection?

W: But that metaphor is so hackneyed.

GX: And it implies that one is more real than the other.

S: Well, isn’t it? A nation is more real than its construct.

GX: What is a nation without its construct?

S: I know I know, but I mean, even if no one reflected on what a nation is, the nation still exists in its land, its culture, people, etc. Those exist apart from anyone’s conception of the nation. So one is more “real” than the other.

M: But can you really call those things aspects of a nation, if no one thinks they are?

W: If a tree falls in a forest…

S: Don’t go there, please. I thought you don’t like hackneyed comparisons. And when did this get so Lacanian?

W: Well, it’s true. A person’s idea of herself as a bounded individual depends upon looking in the mirror and using it to conceive an identity. So I guess maybe the mirror comparison wasn’t so hackneyed.

S: That doesn’t really solve the issue. I understand what you mean – if I assume that a country is only its land, then there’s nothing to feel bad about, because what can one mass of land do to another mass of land? But then there wouldn’t be these stories in the first place. Because I assume, and I presume that the author and fans also presume, that nations are to certain extent their governments, I am afraid of…international policy actualized as human interaction. Or people doing things to people.

GX: But have you considered whether in this particular personification of nation, instead of a nation being all of those things, they are none of those things? That they are just other people – very much unlike other people, but humans nonetheless – who have thoughts, emotions, and sensations which do not depend on what is happening to the nation?

S: That can’t be. Because otherwise why would they be the personification of a specific nation? If they are individuals then there is no link.

M: Isn’t it possible to have a link – say between the “core” of a nation and the “core” of its personification – but other things shift back and forth?

S: Like the country not wanting an alliance with another country even though the ruler does?

GX: Yes. And even needing to be held back so that the ruler could establish the alliance. What I am saying is – you are afraid of creations where there is great violence done by one country to another, and because you assume a link between the personification and the government, you think you will see the violence done willingly. What the violence is not willing? Remember the tears in his eyes.

S: Wow, then there won’t be a problem.

GX: Exactly.

S: No, there’s still a problem. I understand that not all fan works would make the link I made, but some of those requests clearly stated willing violence for the purpose of audience enjoyment.

K: No one’s making you read them.

GX: That is actually the elegant solution. Do not categorically refuse to study all permutations. Understand that there is no single link between a nation and its personification, and understand that different people will make different links. And if you come across something that troubles you, you must separate the two. If you are afraid of “cultural dupes” then start by not being one yourself. For everything you access you must look at what is behind the symbol and understand it, and look at it with a critical mind.

S: All right, I think I can do that.

GX: And you must do something that makes the symbol true to the actuality.

S: …what do you mean?

GX: The second part of mitigating cultural dupes is to balance out the atrocious requests by contributing genuine reflective material. Such as the one you were looking at today. Find something in history that you can work with and create something that will have the same effect on other people. Those are your tasks.

S: I accept. Thanks. Does this mean I have to do another lit review type of thing?

W: This being fandom and not an article, we won’t hold you to that.

S: Ha, thanks.

GX: And I can’t answer 5) either. You’d have to go back to M and K for that.

S: All right. Thank you so much. I suppose you continue looking after your own even after more than a century. Even if I’m no longer a citizen.

GX: This intrigues me.

M: So, was that productive?

S: Yeah, it was. But. 5). And yeah, both of you.

K: You’re only using me when you want to use me.

S: This is your hell/purgatory remember? Suck it up.

K: Well, if it were me, there’d be no line to draw.

S: Yeah, that sounds like you.

K: What? Didn’t you arrive at the conclusion that you could separate the two whatevers? So what’s the problem?

M: That’s a theoretical conclusion.

S: I still won’t feel right…

K: Well, you already did. So don’t act high and mighty because that WOULD make you a hypocrite.

S: I want to stop.

K: It’s circular logic. Wanting to stop is because you still think there’s something wrong with this. And you’re using that as justification to stop.

M: No, that won’t do. You can access everything out there but you must see something else behind it. Given the tasks you accepted, you have to.

K: Oh, comon…

S: Well, given the lack of a link between a nation and its personification, can’t I just be flexible and…?

M: No, you can’t.

S: I don’t know how else to express what I’m feeling. Look, I talked to the 4 of you today. I really really do not want to drag in two other constructs and interrogate them like this. As I said, they’re not my constructs.

M: If you’ve agreed that fan works are separate from the main work, and that each fan work is a permutation, why can’t they be your own permutations?

K: And didn’t we start off as being actual people in your life? Why don’t you feel guilty about –

S: Because you have no relation to the original person. But whatever construct I come up with definitely has links to the original personification, and also to the nation in its actuality. I don’t know what else to do, but I also don’t want to do a disservice to the nation or its initial personification.

K: I don’t think the author behind the initial personification minds. Think of everything out there already. Some of them are quite out there.

M: Granted, but there’s still the nation.

K: You can’t even come up with what a nation is. So how can you come up with what you’re hurting, if you’re hurting anything at all?

S: All I explored was what a nation was within the work. But in real life nation is its land, people, government, culture, history, etc, everything together. I’m not saying a personification will get offended because there is no personification. But taking all of that, the people, government, culture, history, and using it as….as…

M: If you’re too weak to get out of it, then you have to separate the two.

S: That’s another thing I can’t do. Well, for certain personifications, all I see is the character, and I don’t really think about the nation at all. But for some personifications, especially fleshed-out fan constructs, I can’t make that distinction. I’ve transcended the line of human intellectual failure and see them as characters AND nations. And grass really isn’t all that green.

K: Really, though, if I may – and this is what YOU were thinking –

S: No, don’t drag that
|R: I am a great nation, and far away, and you can’t hurt me.|

K: To think your own stupid imagination could actually hurt a nation – that’s sort of laughable.

M: Actually, that’s true. No, this doesn’t mean that I’m agreeing with you on other points. I don’t like it, but if you can’t…then…you can’t let it impact you when you are dealing with actual nations.

S: It won’t. It only makes me more emotional about them. And it makes me love them a lot more. Oh god, I feel terrible. I just want to curl up between the two of them and sleep for several years.

K: I thought it was us you wanted to curl up with.

S: Sorry, lately I haven’t even kept you two in mind much. But I’ll definitely come back to you, in the end. Because you are too personal to be forgotten.

M: As long as I have your assurance…

S: I don’t like it either. I’ll try not to. Well, maybe the emotions will wash over any situations where I’ll need to stop thinking about them. But it’s a good point – I’m really not hurting anyone by this…

K: No, you’re not.

M: Unless somewhere down the line you start believing an actual person as a personification of a nation.

S: I doubt that would happen. Well, I feel like perhaps Jewish people can be personifications of their culture, because they hold it so close. But that is precisely because they lacked a nation for so long.

M: Just…don’t…

S: No, I don’t think so. I have to overcome failures of human intellect.

W: The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.

S: Yeah. Sorry.

M: That seems to be the crux of every problem.

S: That’s true.

K: Assuming there’s a difference between the two… If you’re talking about scissors, why not the mind being one end and the body being the other end?

M: ….

S: I don’t really know how to respond to that. That’s…really deep actually. Though we forgot one thing. The axis. The point at which the two ends meet.

M: That’s the point of overcoming the failure of human intellect, when it’s both sides.

S: But then I don’t want to be there all the time, right?

M: Right. Sometimes you need to see them as just fictional characters. You have to choose when you will be where.

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