“The Nine-Tailed Fox Explains” Write Up by Lauren Sternenberg

Summary:

“The Nine-Tailed Fox Explains” by Jane Pek opens with the narrator, an immortal who has married a man in order to tether herself in the world, saying she has made the wrong choice in doing so. She remarks that her advancing age is the culprit for the lapse of judgement, then goes on to tell that her husband is in love with his best friend, who is in turn in love with a musician. She strikes up a conversation with him about an old friend who played another instrument, the pipa, and speaks until he looks uncomfortable.

They are at a housewarming party for one of his friends where she observes what they seem to think of her–beautiful, maybe shallow. She gives four different versions of what could be the reasons she and her husband married, but confirms none. Instead, she begins to speak about how her immortality makes time seem circular. Human achievement and progress force her to move from China. Then, she begins to talk about her friends in the Shang Era. 

Her growing interest in the pipa player makes it easy to fall out of their goddess’s will for them. They grow closer and she becomes enchanted with her playing and her company, but are punished for being more than their goddess wanted. They are sent to hell, judged, but she does not drink the tea of forgetfulness for reincarnation–though, when she finds the mountains the pipa player sang of, she’s already forgotten her songs.

Then, she tells of how she’d met and tried to help the other incarnations of her pipa player have an easier time in her lives. However, she’s stuck in the past memories of her and expresses a bit of remorse for being unable to try to live as a mortal.

Finally, she remembers how learning English through the bible was a great reminder of how her own situation in being a demon for her goddess was similar to Judas’s. This ties into the job offer her husband’s best friend points out–to teach Mandarin, and to be a bit further from her husband. She makes light of the business students who want to learn, but recalls the couple students who wish to learn to better understand either themselves or those close to them. 

In the last few paragraphs, she is in the art gallery where her husband’s best friend met her musician. She looks at a painting of a woman in an usher’s uniform, set in a lavish New York theater, and is struck by how important it is for her to even feel moved anymore. Then, she is leaving her husband in the night, whispering to him that his best friend won’t stay with the musician and that he’ll never know her like he does. She recognizes that leaving him will leave her more distanced from the world. She pours a vial into his bedside water, and is content in how he will view her as a villain for the short while before he reunites with his love and tells her how he feels. 

The chronic and acute tensions are the nine-tailed fox’s immortality and the musician’s reminding her of the pipa player, respectively. 

—

The technique I tracked was the significance of the pipa and how it’s musician impacted the nine-tailed fox’s character, as well as her view of the world. 

First, with a few highlighted passages, I’d like to point out how omnipresent the memories of pipa are in the narrator’s internal dialogue. It takes only a mention of music to throw this centuries old being from the early 2000s back to the Shang Era, which cannot be achieved with just any memory. In the pipa instrument, she enfolds her dear friend and their connection with one another. Only once the memories are brought up does an omnipotent feeling of aching for the past become fully clear. With,

I couldn’t help myself; I asked if he had ever heard of the pipa…I knew the finest pipa player in China, I said. Her playing could move kings and demons.

This passage is reminiscent of how one speaks about a topic they are thoroughly engrossed in. The impact the pipa clearly has on the narrator is first introduced here, as an instrument, with the musician behind it being the real fascination for the narrator. 

To establish a connection this fervent in such a short time is to give the narrator proper depth as a character. Interest, emotion, and personality are all shown in this passage, all being connected by the pipa, which was drawn into the forefront by the mention of a musician being a loose jumping-off point that could otherwise have been completely ignored.

Next, the continued importance of the pipa player within the narrator’s memory is highlighted by how she views time and human life–one-dimensional and fleeting–now that the pipa player is gone. There was a short while of true interest and urgency within the nine-tailed fox, most clearly conveyed in how she speaks of potentially wasting time with the pipa player when they are not together. Since they are immortal, there is no real danger of wasted time, but the emotion she feels within herself when seeing the pipa player with the emperor or hearing her speak about the mountains she imagines she’s from, is a stark contrast to how boring her earthly experiences are now that the pipa player is gone. And with,

I did what I could—her husband never hit her when he was drunk, unlike with his other wives; foraging in the fields and the forests she always found more than anyone else in her unit—but for the most part I could only watch…I’m the one left chasing a backward glance, a hand pulling away from mine, an unmade promise, across the underside of history,

the longing for the time together that they once had mixed in the tiny bits of aid she could offer show an appreciation for her, and a melancholic longing for time that is as moving as what she once had with the pipa player. 

As for the other questions, I feel developing a narrator through a single object/person is something I will try. The potency of the nine-tailed fox and the pipa, through the pipa player, cannot be second-guessed or missed, and I’d like to echo that kind of certainty within my own pieces. Also, their relationship is incredible. They’re clearly as romantic as they can get with the pipa player being officially the emperor’s, but there’s so much emotion between them and the impact that the pipa player has on the narrator is tangible. 

I learned that using flashbacks when they have clear intent is more effective than flashbacks just for expounding on character backstory–showing the pipa player and the nine-tailed fox interacting with each other with such vigor is a stark contrast to how they seem in the houseparty, which deepens the narrator as a character and wouldn’t be possible with just a simple explanation of why they are the way they are. The connection between the pipa player and the narrator versus the connection between the husband and the narrator do such a great job of showing the feelings of the narrator towards the world without her, and deepening the story’s impact as a whole onto the reader due to the juxtaposition of vibrance between the two times.

—

Craft Discussion Questions:

What does the inclusion of the passage about the friends trying to figure out why she married their friend do for the story? Why do their opinions matter, if they do at all?

Does the husband symbolize anything specific beyond the narrator’s lackluster attempt at reaching to be a mortal?

How would the story’s impact change if it was told chronologically?

What purpose does the point of view being first person serve? Would anything be lost or gained upon changing it?

“Rubberdust” Write Up by Caroline Paden

Summary

In Sarah Thankam Mathews’s short story, “Rubberdust,” a little girl with no friends reads in her classroom during recess as other second-grade teachers gossip with her own. One day, she is caught eavesdropping on this gossip (a third-grade teacher, Mrs. Tareen, is getting divorced), and sent outside to play with the other children, where a young boy sprinkles leaves on her head, whereupon she slaps him and gives him a bloody nose. The little girl’s father signs the subsequent note home, but does not seem bothered by her misbehavior. The next year, in third grade (in the divorcee Mrs. Tareen’s class, to boot), the little girl befriends the boy who bothered her on the playground that day, and we learn he is named Anuj. This year, it is not the little girl, but a poor boy named Karan who stays in the classroom during recess while the other children go outside to play.

Anuj and the little girl grow closer as the year goes on, and the little girl learns that Anuj’s parents are getting divorced (though he nonchalantly claims not to care about this). Their two favorite activities are making “rubberdust,” or eraser shavings, and staring at the sun (the little girl shields her eyes with her hands while Anuj stares directly at the sun). The little girl suggests that she and Anuj play at getting married, but he roundly rejects her.

The pair start sprinkling the rubberdust onto Karan’s head during class as a game. Karan, unlike the little girl, does not protest or even react to their harassment, encouraging her and Anuj even more. Anuj starts sprinkling the rubberdust on Karan’s head even more prodigiously than the little girl, since he has to get up and leave the classroom often due to his failing eyesight and consequent frequent headaches. One day, when Mrs. Tareen is out of the room in a meeting with Anuj’s mother, Karan finally turns around and tearfully confronts his tormentors—that day more insulting than most; the little girl has mixed wooden pencil shavings in with the eraser crumbs. However, Karan’s breaking point could not be more unlike the little girl’s, despite the similarities between their situations: while the little girl spoke up immediately when she was first bothered, then took matters into her own hands and consequently got authority figures involved, Karan endured his abuse for months before simply asking why he had been singled out for this cruel, simple game. Neither the little girl nor Anuj can provide an answer, which mortifies them.

Karan runs out of the classroom crying, and the little girl follows—after dumping all of the remaining rubberdust into the bin, acutely aware of her scandalized classmates whispering around her. She finds Karan sitting outside the bathroom and apologizes profusely, wracked with a strange and all-consuming guilt. Karan, however, does not absolve her: he thinks she is only apologizing to save face, and acquiesces by promising not to tell the teacher. This only makes the little girl feel worse, as now her routes to atonement—genuine forgiveness from Karan or punishment from adults—have been closed off. She continues to wrestle with this guilt for the rest of the school year, first through asking her father to beat her, then through seeking Karan’s forgiveness through constant small gifts. Both efforts go unacknowledged. Meanwhile, Anuj’s eyesight continues to deteriorate until he disappears from school entirely, apparently having left for a special school that can accommodate his needs.

In fourth grade, the little girl begins to find solace (now with neither of the boys as her classmates) in a Gandhi quote on her geography textbook, exhorting her to act only in the best interests of the poorest person she has ever seen. At this point, the narrator, who throughout the story has been making small asides about pronunciation and the little girl’s future, takes full control of the story, as she notes that later the little girl will learn that Gandhi was a deeply flawed and bigoted person. The narration then switches into first-person. The narrator talks about feeling disconnected from their home—they literally cannot find their hometown on Google Maps—and writing a short story, heavily implied to be that of the little girl, that is received hesitantly by her confused writing workshop. The notes the narrator receives—about pronunciation and the “cultural specificity” of the characters’ experiences—seem to be the same aspects of the story that the narrator addresses in parenthetical asides. The writing workshop is excited about viewing a solar eclipse, but the narrator declines an invitation to stare at the sun, suspicious of the glasses that claim to enable people to do so safely.

The narration switches back into third-person for the final paragraph, revealing that in fourth grade, the little girl can start to leave rubberdust behind entirely by writing with her family’s brand-new computer, eliminating the need for rubbers to erase mistakes in the first place.

The chronic tension is the little girl’s social awkwardness making it difficult for her to connect with her peers. The acute tension is that youthful lack of empathy making one of her classmates miserable.

Analysis

After reading this piece, the two techniques I most wanted to imitate were Mathews’s skillful use of subtle repetitions throughout the story and the narratorial asides that addressed the implied reader (although that second one has been a technique I’ve loved to imitate since I started reading chapter books. Still, Mathews uses parentheticals here in a way I haven’t seen before—less snarky, more world-weary).

The more I reread the story, the more I found details that echoed each other scattered throughout the paragraphs, even and especially in places that weren’t necessarily obvious choices for parallelism. For example, there are three references to leaves in “Rubberdust.” Once, as the little girl eavesdrops on gossip about Mrs. Tareen’s divorce:

[The] teachers are all whispering about it, making big-big eyes, saris rustling like dry leaves.

Once, when Anuj starts bothering her with literal dead leaves:

The little boy sneaks up behind her and tries to place a handful of dried leaves on her head.

And finally, when the class starts gossiping, scandalized after Karan finally confronts Anuj and the little girl about their rubberdust-ing of him:

By now the other children around them are staring, whispering like so many rustling leaves.

During my first read-through, I only paid attention to the literal, physical leaves Anuj pelts the little girl with; however, the subtle association that Mathews crafts between dead/rustling leaves and tense social situations through this repetition blew me away when I finally noticed it. The difference between the first and last mention of leaves is notable, too: the little girl starts in Karan’s position, alone at a desk, and outside the scope of the murmured gossiping around her. By the second reference, not only is she so different to Karan, she is antagonistic to him; she is the direct and obvious subject of her peers’ whispering, unable to deny the spotlight she’s turned on herself.

Obviously, I’ve highlighted more than just the references to leaves for the parallels section—there were many spots in the story that echoed others, but I settled on the little girl’s similarities to Karan (through their respective social standings and how they deal with conflict), divorce and marriage, drawing Minnie Mouse, the father’s withholding of punishment, and looking at the sun. None of the connected moments are perfect mirror images—they build on each other, adding layers of meaning and evolving as the characters themselves evolve. Salesses notes that the order of events and details within a story help construct its meaning—for example, the little girl would likely be a very different character if she started drawing Minnie Mouse “with long mustaches and batlike teeth.” Instead, that added distortion helps reflect how profoundly disturbed the little girl is by Karan confronting her and forcing her to face a part of herself that she does not understand or like. By embedding these repeating details throughout the story, Mathews in effect offers the reader checkpoints by which to mark the characters’ progression—how much each detail is tweaked or lent new meaning between each occurrence reflects change without necessarily driving it, all in a very clever way.

The second technique I tracked were the narratorial asides to the implied reader, which I defined for myself as “anytime the narrator explains something directly to the audience.” The asides construct the implied audience through addressing them directly: firstly, the parenthetical notes about the pronunciation of certain English words indicates that the narrator is speaking to an audience that does not share their dialect of English. The audience is narrowed down to American English speakers by the line, “She circles the soccer (we pronounced it football ) field.” The narrator also establishes a level of temporal distance between the story of the little girl and the implied reader; the little girl “grows into” somebody else entirely, someone who reflects on the little girl’s actions and feels ashamed:

(Later, neither the little girl nor the person she grows into will remember who started this, she or Anuj. That uncertainty will beat its own tattoo within her, bang a hidden gong of shame.)

(Years later she will look up the word cower in the dictionary, and the image of a child’s bloodshot eyes, lashes wet with hurt, will surface in her and thrash like a fish.)

This intimate knowledge of the little girl’s future self establishes (at least for me) the idea that the narrator is the grown-up little girl, an inference that is confirmed by the sudden switch to first-person in the latter part of the story, as the narrator drops all pretense of distance to say,

Please listen. I grew up in a place that I cannot return to. When I search for my old home on Google Maps, it says Result Not Found. Shake me, and the past rattles like broken circuitry.

In this section of the story, the part where the narrator discusses her story’s workshop, the reason for the pronunciation notes becomes clear: the little girl’s story is in its second iteration. The narrator is incorporating those workshop notes, as well as windows into her own adult musings, in an effort to express a story she is still trying to figure out how to tell. The culmination of narratorial asides into a full-blown metanarrative was something I hadn’t seen before in a short story—I’d only seen them left as cryptic hints as to the narrator’s true stake in the story, left purposely ambiguous. I was really impressed by Mathews’s ability to take such an ambitious leap in adding an entire plotline (and arguably an entirely new character) while not taking too much away from the dominant narrative. Instead, the first-person section added to the third-person. It made me consider how I employ my narratorial voice in my own stories, and how a technique I normally use without thinking could be expanded on to build a more complex story.

Discussion Questions

1. The little girl’s reaction to getting leaves sprinkled on her head is fairly brief: she tells Anuj to stop, he doesn’t, she smacks him, she sort of gets in trouble but not really. In contrast, the aftermath of Karan’s reaction to getting rubberdust sprinkled on his head stretches across paragraphs. How do you think this disparity in length serves the story?

2. In the first-person section, the narrator mentions that she wants to tell the story of the first friend she ever made going blind, but Anuj’s blindness seems to take a backseat to the dynamic between him, the little girl, and Karan. What do you think Mathews achieves within the story by including this narrative?

3. Even though there are many moments of repetition throughout the story, not all of them are obvious at first glance (see: leaves). Is it worth it to put effort into those smaller, second-read details? Why or why not?

How 2020 Destroyed Alternative Culture by Alex Yero

Today’s alternative kids can be spotted by their expensive Demonia and YRU platforms, their brightly dyed hair, and massive chains. They congregate in the corners of TikTok and Discord, listening to quasi-experimental music and wearing heavy eyeliner. Their style is reminiscent of the late 90s and early 2000s when most of the wearers were young children. At first glance, the style seems intimidating, albeit innocuous. But what if this style has serious implications hidden beneath its edgy surface?

In the summer of 2020, protests against the unjust killing of George Floyd sprung up across the country and all around the world. Online, people made songs, dances, and art pieces to spread awareness and document their own experiences with racial injustice. A trend that showed up constantly on social media was a very specific meme. The formula for this type of meme was a cutesy cartoon character (Hello Kitty, Barbie, Hatsune Miku) and a palatable, but technically ‘political’ statement (‘ACAB,’ ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Defund the Police.’) The appeal is evident: people can express their beliefs while keeping their aesthetic, but these images do more harm than good. By juxtaposing fictional characters (who have no concept of racism or oppression) with real instances that affect people, these pictures trivialize the fear and pain Black people go through. These memes don’t help anyone either. They aren’t aiding the victims of these crimes; they are truly performative. A related instance is the way brands capitalize on these tragedies. This is nothing new (take note of how corporations seem to spread tons of love in June) but something that is different is how these social movements have become trendy. Tote bags with ‘BLM’ stamped on and hoodies with ‘eat the rich’ written on the back are ubiquitous on Depop and in brick and mortar stores. Sometimes, these proceeds don’t even go to the cause they claim to support. Corporations know that people are willing to spend money to show off that they are woke, so they continue to manufacture these items.

Black people were the pioneers of fashion in the early 2000s. Bucket hats, gold chains, brightly colored sunglasses, and trucker hats are trends they popularized. Black women have been wearing nameplate jewelry for years, but they only became ‘cool’ when Carrie showed hers off on ‘Sex In the City.’ On the other side of the world, Japanese youth have been consistently coming out with the most innovative and interesting styles. They spend time cultivating a style set to distance themselves from a heterogeneous and often oppressing culture, and that style is bastardized by unknowing teens in the west. With this cross-cultural exchange, American ideals are placed onto non-American ones. Lolita, a fashion used to separate the wearer from traditional femininity, gets sexualized, and gyaru, a subculture meant to protest against unattainable beauty standards, becomes racist and offensive. People exploring their styles seems harmless, but things become unsettled when people impose their standards onto another culture’s. 

A lot of alternative cultures are based in doing-it-yourself. When most people think of punk, images of shirts held together with safety pins and pants covered in pins and patches come to mind. While this image is somewhat simplistic, it is not untrue. In the late 70s and 80s when alternative cultures were increasing in popularity, there were no specialized stores where goth clothes were sold. And even if there were, most members of the fashion were low-income and couldn’t afford shiny new things. From necessity, they recycled clothes from thrift stores and dumpsters to make them their own. Buying expensive or cheaply made clothes, especially ones that are designed to look worn or distressed, feels counterintuitive to a history of creativity. Not only does excessive consumption go against the core values of the movement, it destroys the environment and perpetuates a system of inhumane labor.

What can be done to fix the issues that are so deeply embedded in alternative cultures? Acknowledging the impact that people of color have on the styles is a good start. Then, highlighting and uplifting them alongside white creators will not undo the damage done, but it will help some. In tandem with the previous point, actually participating in political activism would do more than pretending to. Not everyone can go to protests, which is fine! Donating and using talents are both valid ways of participating politically. Another important, but less drastic, change is shifting away from fast fashion and towards slow consumption, which would be more in line with traditional alternative values. Returning to the DIY-centered styles of punk would be better for ourselves and the environment. 

All Dressed in White: A History of the Modern Wedding Dress by Sydney Mills

A white gown has been a staple in western wedding ceremonies since seemingly forever. However, this particular tradition is actually relatively new in the history of weddings.

From the middle ages to the start of the 19th century, white was an unpopular color for brides to wear, as lighter fabrics dirtied easily and were more expensive to clean. Furthermore, it was impractical for women to purchase a special gown to be worn on only one occasion; therefore, the bride would typically just wear the nicest dress in her wardrobe. These gowns came in a variety of colours, with blue in particular being a popular choice as it was thought to represent innocence and femininity. Wealthy brides would wear dresses with rich fabrics, embroidery with shimmering silver thread, and luxury furs to represent their status.

It was Queen Victoria of England who first popularized the white wedding dress. Her gown, cut in a typical 1830’s shoulderless style, was fashioned out of heavy cream silks with Honiton lace and accents of orange blossoms, a symbol of fertility. She forgo the traditional royal tiara in favor of a wreath of flowers, and her veil, a symbol of innocence and purity, was over four meters long. Her necklace and earrings were made of heavy, authentic turkish diamonds, a gift from the Sultan of Turkey himself. Her brooch was a large sapphire surrounded by a ring of little diamonds, given to her by her fiancé the day before.

Victoria’s wedding was the first celebrity wedding to be heavily photographed. The portrait of her cream ensemble was spread far and wide, inspiring many women to follow suit and wear white on their special day. Over the course of the century to follow, white dresses became a tradition for weddings in the western world. Even during World War II, when fabrics were rationed and materials were scarce, women sewed wedding dresses out of recycled white parachutes.

Nowadays, while not every bride wears a white dress, especially in Eastern cultures, Queen Victoria’s influence on the niche realm of wedding fashion is still seen today.

Fashion in Clueless by Avalon Hogans

Main Topics:

• Society’s fashion influence on Clueless 
• How essential the wardrobe was to the plot (would this movie be relevant without fashion?)
• How clothes can be reflected of theme/tone/mood
• How clothes can be used to show hierarchy and/or categorization
• Clueless’s fashion influence on society 

Clueless was released over 25 years ago, yet still manages to influence popular fashion choices today. How is that so? That a movie about a dumb blonde falling for her ex-step brother is still as popular as ever and considered a cultural reset? The plot definitely didn’t make this film iconic, it was the clothes. Let’s look into the momentous choices this film made wardrobe-wise that saved the movie from drowning along with the script’s irrelevance.

Amy Heckerling, the writer of Clueless says that the wardrobe of Cher and Dionne was a vital aspect of the story. “[It] would be one of the areas of comedy—that the characters would rag on each other’s clothing,” Heckerling told Vanity Fair in a 2015 interview. Heckerling, and her costume designer for Clueless, Mona May, actually visited a high school prior to making the movie to gain a sense of popular styles. Most of the kids were wearing unflattering and baggy flannel outfits that Heckerling felt contradicted Cher’s polished, classy aesthetic. So, Heckerling and May actually decided to stray away from the current trends. Instead, they took inspiration from Caberet’s Liza Menelli’s high knee socks. They were vintage and chic, perfect for Cher and Dionne. As for Dionne’s hats, they found inspiration from rave culture. “You would see a lot of crazy hats at raves—like a top hat or Dr. Seuss hat, and Mona found a way to make them stylish.” Heckerling and May thought of these bold hats to be representative of fun and confidence. May also says that while Cher’s skirt set was tailored, Dionne’s was a mix of thrifted and designer clothes. Heckerling and May mixed a lot of different current and dated trends to perfectly assimilate Cher’s and Dionne’s wardrobe choices.

Besides fashion decisions made by the makers of the movie, clothing held a strong significance inside the story too. Cher and Dionne are portrayed as rich shopaholics who love designer clothes, who nearly live at the mall, and who own high-tech closets. Their love for fashion is to be taken seriously. They have a detailed color palette per season, and they prioritize uniqueness. A lot of important scenes in the movie involved fashion. For example, Tai’s “makeover.” Tai’s original look involves the gross baggy trousers and trashy flannels that Heckerling and May decided to steer clear of when designing for Cher and Dionne. So Cher and Dionne essentially take that average look (at the time) and glamify it much like Heckerling and May did ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQPpD4EN00 ). 

This scene says a lot about the power that clothes hold over the social (and classist) hierarchy of the movie’s universe. Before Tai’s makeover, she was some trashy new girl with only that one skater friend, but now, she’s seen, she’s mysterious, she’s relevant. But the clothes also change her persona. Tai doesn’t doodle as much and she has new interests like boys and partying, because she associates with a new group. Tai can be inferred as a member of her new clique by her new outfits. Every clique in the movie is clothes-coded.

Along with group associations and hierarchy indications, the clothes in Clueless are also telling of the story’s tone. Cher and Dionne’s opening outfits, the plaid skirt/vest ensembles, are our inciting incident clothes. They introduce us to classically chic Cher and bold and classy Dionne. Later in the movie, when Cher realizes she likes Josh, her wardrobe shifts to more pants outfits. These outfits are more mature and more conservative and are quite contrary to her earlier ensembles that were more forward (skirts, fur-trim, dresses, frilly, pink, sheer, etc.). Cher’s outfit for her “date with Christian” is a small, red dress. It’s very flirty, very inviting and suggestive. However, Cher’s outfits when she spends time with Josh (after realizing her feelings for him), are very modest and mellow. This direct difference of outfit choice demonstrates Cher’s character development.

Heckerling uses clothes in Clueless to indicate class, social standing, and character maturity. This attention to detail in the film’s wardrobe is what shapes the story to feel more realistic and worth investing in. Clothes help characterize the main characters, and they have inspired viewers. It wasn’t long before Clueless inspired fashion began to take over the fast-fashion industry. Even today, over 25 years later, unethical brands are still selling Clueless like ensembles. 

Sources: 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/clueless-clothes

https://www.seventeen.com/fashion/g28722009/best-clueless-costumes/

https://www.vogue.com/article/summer-fashion-trends-clueless

2020 Trends And The Rise Of Alternative Culture by Ella Craig

Since the 1950s, the development of counterculture has been on the rise in Western Europe and North America. The release of films such as Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and The Wild One (1953) inspired adolescents to rebel against authority, starting the rejection of tradition and conformity. Rock and roll played a large part in the beginnings of alternative culture, dominating the charts for the most popular music genre during the 1950s. From the 1950s to the 1980s, alternative culture was still known as unusual and socially rejected.

Widely known for being the peak for this movement, the 1990s was an era when alternative culture flourished. Youth culture, counter culture, and underground culture banded together around the same time the media started leaning towards this lifestyle, which resulted in a music scene made up of rock and roll, metal, and grunge. Largely popular musicians of the time included Nirvana, Green Day, Radiohead, and Soundgarden. However, the counterculture movement wasn’t exclusive to just music.

Despite popular belief, alternative fashion has been around for centuries. In general, this way of dressing has been known to show disinterest in adhering to social constructs, opposing against the mass production of clothes, or dissatisfaction with what “normal” is supposed to look like. Fashion trends such as pin-up girls, Victorian fashion, and Japanese street fashion such as harajuku and decora are all examples of counterculture fashion styles. People tended to stay away from alternative fashion because it can be seen as socially undesirable and/or “dangerous.” Subcultures such as 50s greasers or the hippies of the 1960s vary in many aspects, but are both seen as outcasts affiliated with drug use, gangs, or deviant behaviors. Since the 90s, alternative culture has slowly faded off up until recent years, making a comeback through mainstream trends.

With the help of popular social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, a new wave of alternative–better known as “alt”–clothing has emerged. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the topic of what is really alternative and what can be considered “poser,” which has sparked a large issue in the platforms’ communities. These trends began to take shape during the summer of 2020, right after the first quarantine began. The trend featured teenagers in outfits with distinctly tall platform shoes and large winged eyeliners. Around this time, bands such as Current Joys, TV Girl, Eyedress, 100 Gecs, and various hyperpop artists were popular. Like other subcultures who are inspired by the music they listen to, “alt” people could be considered a subculture themselves, as they don’t define the culture as a whole, but are rather expressing themselves in a modernized, grunge-like way.

From this rise in popularity, there has been an upsurge in large businesses marketing new clothing that follows this fashion trend. Corporations such as Amazon, Aliexpress, and Shein have started making dupes of popular clothing items to profit off of, but this is nothing new. However, this sparks controversy regarding the morals of counterculture, with one of the main beliefs being against the mass production of clothes, which sparks the question; “Are people really interested in being alternative, or are they rapidly purchasing items and changing themselves to fit in?”

“Sibling Rivalry” Write Up by Eva Trakhtman

SUMMARY of “Sibling Rivalry” by Michael Byers 

Peter and Julie Burkhart have two children; Matt, who is human, and Melissa, who is a synth (AI robot). The story begins with Peter’s descriptions of Melissa that aim to emphasize the human nature of her existence. The story then morphs seamlessly into a description of Burkhart family life, which allows for an introduction of cookies (which are a new telepathic technology that connects people based on feed settings) through a description of suburban neighbor gossip. Peter and Julie reflect on how suffocating it is to have your life on display and decide to turn off their cookies and live without them. Next the story jumps to Mrs. Hartley (Melissa’s teacher) who meets with Peter and Julie to tell them that their daughter had told a biological boy Dimitri who was making fun of her synth friends, that synths would live while biologicals would die. Peter and Julie are unnerved by this, but they decide to keep their cookies off to maintain their children’s privacy and attempt to parent them old-school style. Peter gets used to life without a cookie and watches his children on the playground after school, while Julie isn’t used to the absence of her family’s feed and checks in on her children at night. Peter gives Melissa a bath and explains to her who Supers are and why they’re in jail after Melissa asks him about them. Afterwards, Julie reveals to Peter that she hadn’t been true to their cookie-free agreement, and that during one of her weak moments she checked on Melissa and realized that her sinusoidal feed means that she’s actually blocking them out. Next the point-of-view changes dramatically from Peter’s to Melissa’s. Melissa wakes up and comments on how she felt intruded upon that night. Then Melissa goes to the school playground where she gathers her club of synth friends and reveals that they had altered the pitons (which are meant to keep out supers) to summon the supers instead. Melissa comments that this is because she and her synth friends will be on this earth for longer, that it isn’t fair that the supers should be jailed by their makers, and that supers should be stood up for, because synths could just as easily be jailed someday. 

Acute tension: Peter and Julie decide to turn off their cookies and parent their children without the feed interference, while Melissa becomes aware of the injustice of super-imprisonment and her perceived superiority of synths and supers over humans.

Chronic tension: The imprisonment of supers and the tension on the planet which led to the one-child law and implementation of synths as children.

What makes the story compelling or interesting to read? 

To me, the most compelling aspect of this story is the slow reveal of Melissa’s character and true intentions. Melissa is the synth child of Peter and Julie, who care for her greatly and are careful to describe her only as a child without making synth/biological distinctions. However, it is hard to ignore that she is a synth, and this information is always in the back of the reader’s (or at least my) mind. Because the story is mainly told from Peter’s point-of-view, any characterization of Melissa comes from Peter. Peter, as a loving father, describes Melissa as he sees her; an intelligent seven-year-old in the process of developing a personal style, very strong and playful, prone to tempers and with a developed sense of fairness. Melissa is also described through the meeting with Mrs. Hartley who says that Melissa is a bright delight but that she also has an overdeveloped sense of fairness. This time the mention of fairness occurs in a more negative context as it involves a confrontation with Dimitri. Fairness is mentioned many times in reference to Melissa’s behavior throughout the story, but it only becomes worrisome and hints at a synth uprising during the final Peter pov mention when Peter and Melissa discuss supers and their imprisonment. Because Melissa is viewed from Peter’s perspective, these fairness-related qualms aren’t seen as warning flags, and only after Julie realizes that Melissa has been blocking their cookie intrusions and the pov changes to that of Melissa’s do we get to see that Melissa is way smarter than she’s been described and that her obsession with fairness has developed to the point of her organizing and leading a “seven-year-old synths love supers” club. It is exactly through this progression of fairness that we get to see Melissa’s true character. Because we had only seen Melissa from Peter’s sugar-coated pov, the synth uprising was more jarring than it would’ve been had Melissa’s pov been introduced earlier. The synth uprising is not surprising in essence, as that is the narrative AI sci-fi usually defaults to, but in the context of such a calm, family-centered narrative it is jarring.

What does the story do that is “surprising,” which, per Matthew Salesses, might reveal our “normative” expectations about a particular craft element/technique, and what it does?  

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the story for me was how the conflict between the two introduced technologies and the subject of old versus new played out. 

The story presents two sci-fi developments, cookies and synths, both of which are consistently described as normal (the word “normal” itself is repeated ten times throughout the story), or are at least viewed through the lens of normalcy and adjustment. Synths are constantly being discussed with the knowledge that they are the “new normal,” while cookies are viewed as a consistent normal (synths are for the current adults as cookies were for their parents). Because the integration of synths with biological families is a relatively new development, there are more reservations about this technology (voiced by Jerry and Emma), even though it is revealed through neighbor discussions that “sixty-four percent” of humans have had sex with Semi synths. Additionally, there is always an unspoken fear of supers in the air, which is why it is so scandalous that Julie has had sex with a super.  The general consensus on cookies and synths is revealed through the format of a neighborly backyard hangout, where sex with supers is revealed as scandalous, and refusal to equip cookies is viewed as an absurd old-fashioned rebellion. In the former case, interaction with technology is unpopular (or at least not yet fully normalized) , while in the latter example refusal to interact with the technology is unpopular.

“Actually”—​Julie flushed—​”he was a Super.“

There was a clamor around the table. Laughter, exclamations. Glances at Peter. He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged, acquired his glass from the table.

vs.

Emma said, volunteering, “Well, to your rescue slightly, about cookies, my mom still complains about hers, like, how do I turn it off? And I’m like, Mom, you’re not supposed to turn it off, that’s the point.“

Julie and Peter’s views on synths and cookies contradict the general consensus on the two technologies, as the Burkharts have a synth daughter, Julie has had (wild) sex with a Super, and Peter and Julie make the decision to go cookie-free after observing how suffocating and intrusive they can be. Neither of these mindsets are new to the Burkharts as their synth daughter is already seven, and they have admitted to not relying much on cookies and modifying them to only go off after a certain emotional or pain threshold. Additionally, while it isn’t immediately specified, the Burkharts turn off their cookies because they want to “experiment” and attempt a less intrusive parenting method that relies on familial trust and intimacy.  

“We think you should be allowed to be yourself, by yourself, when you’re just alone. When you’re with us, you should be with us. We’ll know in the case of an emergency, but that’s it.” 

The irony of this cookie-free, “trust in your kids” (including synth Melissa) parenting method is that it ultimately comes back to bite the Burkharts in the butt. It can be easily argued that had the Burkharts not chosen to go against the technological norm that they would’ve been more wary of their daughter and through cookie monitoring caught onto Melissa’s plans earlier. However, one cannot guarantee that without Julie cheating on the cookie free life-style and looking at her daughter’s wave-like readings with a fresh mind, that she would’ve been able to notice anything was wrong. It is through this complexity that the normative expectations of conflict are broken down and challenged in “Sibling Rivalry.” Salesses states that the normative view of conflict is that it is a “matter of free will,” where conflict comes out of the character and is resolved by the character. However, one cannot expect Julie and Peter, who stated that Melissa is “of and from them,” to be wary of their own daughter; their trust of synths is not a matter of free-will but a matter of unconditional parental love. Conflict, as Salesses described, “presents a worldview, along a spectrum from complete agency to a life dictated completely by circumstance.” While the decision to live a cookie-free life gives Peter and Julie some agency in the result of the story, their trust in synths is backed by society and their own parental love is not a choice but rather a reaction to the circumstances of the world. Additionally, the synth uprising is a phenomenon that is not brought about by the Burkharts, but is rather a growing worldly tension that is not resolved by the end of the story, neither by Peter nor by Melissa, once again knocking down the norm that “conflict is resolved by the character.”

What can you find to imitate or use in your own writing? 

Overall I greatly enjoyed this presentation of sci-fi stories. I was thrown into this world through a very blunt and straightforward macro observation of the one-child-rule and rising popularity of synths, and absolutely loved the casual reveals of this world through a parent’s observation, and banal neighborhood discussions. From this story I would love to take the strong independent voice that is prevalent throughout the story (I truly enjoyed Peter’s voice), as well as the slow reveal of this multilevel world through casual, seemingly unimportant observations. Additionally, I absolutely love the foreshadowing that is sprinkled throughout the story, especially in relation to this idea of fairness, which I at first saw as a simple childhood development of morals (especially because Julie backed it up with a recollection of her own childhood). 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• The question of trust is brought up quite often throughout this story, in relation to trusting that children will come to the parents when they have problems. How is trust portrayed in relation to the two new undeniably disruptive technologies (synths and cookies) in this story, and how does it impact the story’s culmination?
• How does Melissa’s perception of fairness change throughout the story and result in her alteration of the pistons to help out the supers? 
  • Think of her first mention of fairness in relation to baths, her appreciation letter to Mrs. Hartley, fight with Dimitri, etc. 
• It seems to me that Matt is more of a background character in Sibling Rivalry. How does his character serve to impact the story? Is he only used as a foil for Melissa? Does he serve to represent any particular trend in this world?
• From the very first line it is mentioned that synths are the solution or the work-around to the one-child-law. Why were synths a solution to the one-child-law? Was this an effective solution in the long run, even considering the fact that synths won’t rise up?
• Why do you think Dimitri says “If I was going to be a synth, I would just be a Super. Those are the only ones who are worth anything”?
• Do you perceive the neighborhood conversation about synths as reflective of their normalcy or not?

Additional mini rant about the title:

Preparing to read “Sibling Rivalry,” I expected sibling rivalry to be a prominent aspect of the story’s plot. However, there is only one mention of sibling rivalry in the traditional sense  (“Matt—​is—​bothering me!”), and it is quickly brushed over and described by Peter as standard sibling behavior, as the two “loved, hated, relied on each other, took each other for granted. Like normal.” The sibling rivalry described in “Sibling Rivalry” is not of the standard sort, or at least not in our world, because it refers to the rivalry between synths and humans. The inclusion of “sibling” in the title where “rivalry” references the divide between humans and synths is thus reflective of the tone of normalcy that is persistent throughout the story.

Pretty in Pink: An Analysis of the History of the Color Pink and its Portrayal in Media by Pearl Reagler

In 1927, Time Magazine surveyed all the major department stores from the period to ask them what colors they associated with girls clothing. The answers came back entirely mixed. Some of the stores even said they considered blue to be the most feminine color for little girls. For most of history, there has been no association between women and pink in the West. Men wore pink just as frequently as women did. In the 1970s, a film adaptation of the Great Gatsby was released and the public was surprised and a little amused that Sam Waterson wore a pink suit in multiple scenes. However, this choice in wardrobe was entirely normal for the time period that movie was set in (mid 1920s). So what caused pink to go from being gender neutral to entirely girly? The answer can be found in the aftermath of World War II.

After the second world war ended, Dwight Eisenhower, the general who won the war, was elected president. At his inauguration his wife Mamie Eisenhower showed up wearing a decadent, frilly, bedazzled, bright pink dress. Immediately her attire caught the attention of the post war culture. During the war, women had to wear simple, dully colored clothes due to rationing. They also began to work in more masculine areas and entered the workforce in large numbers while their husbands were away. When the war was over, many men and women alike wanted to revert to a more traditional form of femininity. This is what Mamie represented. She was conservative and traditional in spirit, being quoted as saying, “Ike runs the country and I turn the pork chops.” This woman who was the country’s example of traditional female roles had a pink bathroom, pink bed sheets, and a pink closet. By the time the Eisenhowers left the white house, the color pink was permanently associated with traditional femininity.

This association quickly translated to the media. In the 1957 film Funny Face the female editor of a fashion magazine sings a song called Think Pink. She says women need to “banish the black” and “burn the blue” (two colors women would be wearing a lot of during the war). To her, pink means being a woman doing a woman’s duties, taking care of the home and tending to the children, not working in factories like in the 40s. The trend of pink being used in media to represent traditional and submissive women continues for many years. In early Disney movies it’s used to represent princesses Aurora and Ariel, both of whom ultimately adapt more submissive traditionally feminine roles.

However, in more recent media there has been a shift in the way pink is being portrayed. In 2001 the film Legally Blonde was released, and it broadened the scope of what pink can be. At first glance it seems like the color is being used as it always has been. Elle Woods is a girly girl who gets into Harvard Law to try to woo a boy she wants to marry. However, as the story progresses, pink and Elle grow to represent a much wider range of femininity. She’s smart, she’s perseverant, she’s empathetic, she’s funny. When she faces her big case during the climax of the movie, she’s still wearing pink, just like she was at the beginning. Pink, and by extension femininity, are not things to be ashamed of. They aren’t things that need to be sacrificed to be taken seriously outside of traditionally feminine spaces. Elle Woods is still girly, she still falls in love easily and she still wears pink and she’s also independent and intelligent. In more recent media there are other examples of the reclaiming of pink by untraditional women, from Villanelle wearing a pink dress in Killing Eve, to gunslinging Darling in Baby Driver with her fluffy pink jacket, to Arabella’s soft pink hair in I May Destroy You. It’s also worth noting that pink has slowly moved away from something that can only be perceived in combination with whiteness. When it first became associated with ideal femininity in the 50s, that ideal was white. However, as pink has been reclaimed, the definition of what it means to be a desirable and valuable woman has diversified.