#complex women and mental illness was just beyond their capabilities

[andreal831]

What do you think the Mikaelsons would be like if the Aurora fallout didn't happen?

TW: Mental Health/Mental Illness, bipolar disorder

I'm assuming you mean the Aurora fallout when she was human and not when she took the serum. I personally don't think it would be the fairytale a lot of Klaurora shippers want it to be. Don't get me wrong, I like Aurora's character and she did not deserve being compelled to be Rebekah for a hundred years and I also think she is one of Klaus' better ships. I also think we need more (and better than TVDU gives us) representation of mental illness in media. But I personally think people romanticize their relationship a lot. I do think Aurora is Klaus' first love and he loved her deeply, as she did him. But they were both in very bad mental places when they were together. This was only exacerbated by the vampirism. They likely would have led each other down a dark path rather than help each other out of it.

When Aurora is first turned, the vampirism makes her slightly out of control, which is not good considering the Mikaelsons had not mastered their control yet. This meant that shortly after she turns, Mikael tracks them down because of the carnage they were causing. If Elijah hadn't compelled Aurora, she would have run with them. She likely also would have wedged herself between Klaus and his siblings. This is especially true because Elijah would have likely still remembered that Klaus killed their mother and lied to them about it all of that time. The memory was behind the red door because of what Elijah did to Aurora, not because of what he discovered.

This would have created a huge rift between Finn and Klaus, likely causing Finn to do what he claimed to want to do and leave his siblings behind, potentially even seeking Mikael out to help avenge his mother. With Finn leaving, Kol would also part ways shortly after. We know this happens anyway as Kol is already on his own when the Mikaelsons encounter the Hunters.

Tristan would also have sent an army after the Mikaelsons to retrieve his sister, likely with the help of Lucien as I think he partly always believed Klaus manipulated Aurora. I personally was never a fan of how Lucien interacted with Aurora. He always acted like she was unable to think for herself so it would be easy for him to believe Klaus had manipulated Aurora and not that she rejected him. It also would give him an excuse to go after the Mikaelsons and make Klaus pay for "stealing" Aurora.

It would have been Mikael and whatever army he mustered up and Tristan/Lucien and their army chasing after the trio and Aurora. I think it would be a fascinating story and if anyone wants to write it, I would definitely read it. However, it wouldn't be positive for either Klaus or Aurora's mental health. We are told Aurora battles bipolar disorder. This mental illness, unfortunately, for the vast majority of the time cannot be handled effectively without medication. Bipolar disorder was not even diagnosed until the 1800s and it wasn't effectively treated until the mid-1900s. Because vampirism already exaggerates emotions, Aurora's battle with bipolar disorder was extreme. The symptoms of bipolar disorder are also exacerbated by stressful life events, like being on the run from your brother and your homicidal father-in-law.

Stans, and even Klaus himself, changed their tune after finding out about Klaus' first heartbreak and, instead of blaming his parents, shifted blame to Elijah for why Klaus behaves the way he does. But we have to realize that Klaus is Klaus. Vampirism and his werewolf side only heighten who he is. We see Klaus as a human get in angry, heated fights, he is still fairly self-centered (kissing Tatia without even considering her feelings), he kills his mother for lying to him before his heartbreak, he goes on a killing spree before this heartbreak. He wasn't some innocent, good-tempered person before all of the heartbreak and betrayal. He was also in a fragile mental state and it would have been easy for Aurora to convince him to leave Rebekah and Elijah behind. Klaus was clearly suffering some level of depression and likely PTSD from his childhood trauma. Aurora already thought Elijah was too obsessed with family and didn't have a positive association with family in general. To me, she would have wanted her and Klaus to be a family on their own. She even seemed to cast Rebekah aside as her friend when Klaus showed her romantic interest. She was so quick to tell Elijah she knew something about Klaus that even he didn't know. Whether intentionally or not, she would have caused a separation between the siblings. I personally think this would have been for the best for Elijah and Rebekah. They could have gone off and lived a happy life, finding love.

But Klaus and Aurora likely would have gone down a dark path. We already see them begin to right after she is turned. She, like Klaus, reveled in the gore of vampirism early on. Without Elijah or Rebekah there to even him out, Klaus may have gone off the deep end, making it easy for Mikael to find him. If Mikael had an army, it likely would not have ended well for Aurora and Klaus.

I've seen two people who were struggling with their mental illness try to make it work in real life and it unfortunately usually does not work. When you are struggling, you need someone who can support you, but if your partner is also struggling, that is too much pressure. They created a beautiful relationship in the comfort and safety of the castle but they would have struggled to support each other once life got hard on their own.

It is really sad because so many people in history suffered unnecessarily because of mental illnesses before treatments or understanding was available. Aurora's conversation with Cami gives us just a small insight on what people in her position were often forced to undergo in an attempt to "fix" them. If Aurora and Klaus had met in modern setting where treatment was available for both of them, I think they would have a beautiful relationship. It just was unfortunately the right person, wrong time.

Thanks for the ask! This was really interesting to think about. Sorry, it took so long to respond, but I wanted to make sure I really thought this one through. I try to be delicate any time I discuss mental illness.

As always, if you disagree or have a different perspective, feel free to share. All I ask, is that you keep it respectful, especially when discussing mental health.

**EDITED: To correct the improper use of BPD for bipolar disorder.***

#aurora and the mikaelsons would have been interesting #but i also don't trust the writers to have handled it correctly #complex women and mental illness was just beyond their capabilities #aurora de martel #klaus mikaelson #klaurora #tvdu #the originals #the vampire diaries #tvd #the mikaelsons #elijah mikealson #anon ask #fandom asks #tvd anon ask #tvd ask #anon #anonymous #tvdu metas #metas

[sailormoonandme]

My thoughts regarding the Usagi/Mamoru age gap

I am writing this in response to this thread.

To be clear as crystal here, this is just my take on the situation.

With all that said, for the sake of argument let's say we are in total agreement that in real life a 14 year old middle schooler and a 17 year old college student shouldn't be dating.*

But that is the key phrase here: 'Real life'.

The thing is...there is no end of fairy tales or media aimed at children that at best start to fall apart or at worst become extremely creepy when you apply a realistic lens to it.

That is the joke about the majority of Disney's canon in fact. For instance, Aladdin was 18 whilst Jasmine was 16. I'm British and over here 16 is the legal age of consent for sex but even so I'm at least iffy on a 16 year old dating an 18 year old. And to trade off some of the comments elsewhere in the above linked thread, you could absolutely argue there was a 'mental gap' between Al and Jas given how she was a sheltered and somewhat naive princess who'd never left the palace and he was a streetwise older guy who'd obviously flirted and charmed his way out of trouble before.

But let's consider a different Disney classic, perhaps their most famous movie, the Lion King.

The Lion King is a beloved and rightly iconic movie but if you take it at face value and realistically (albeit ignoring the fact that animals can talk, sing and are capable of human emotions and cultural references) it's guilty of:

Promoting incest because Simba and Nala would have at best been first cousins (Nala being Scar's daughter) at worst brother and sister. Because that is how lions work. Male lions murder the cubs of other males with the possible exceptions of their brother's cubs where they co-rule a pride. Even with the best case scenario, deleted scenes had Scar try to make Nala his queen and those scenes were reinserted for the hit Broadway musical. So either a brother and sister hook up or two first cousins hook up and a Dad tried to have sex with his daughter.

Promoting racial/class segregation: The Hyenas are from the 'dark shadowy' place and are given traits you can easily interpret as associated with black, Hispanic, Latinex or mentally disabled people. They are also framed with Nazi imagery and it is Scar's decision to let them roam freely that causes famine. Simba beats them, they are forced back to 'where they came from' and all is well.

Promoting authoritarian absolute monarchies. That's the whole movie's plot. Simba must embrace his destiny as the 'rightful ruler' of the pridelands whereby all other animals bow down to him. It's not even like the lions are the ruling class and they are at least democratic amongst themselves, it's literally this ONE specific bloodline that is not only in charge but is SUPPOSED to be in charge. Even if the wrong person from that bloodline is in charge the entire land suffers until the 'right' person takes the throne. That's a pretty terrible and pretty anti-democratic message isn't it, and that's coming from someone who lives in a country WITH a monarchy.

And, I admit this one is a serious stretch, but you could even argue that it's saying two men raising a child is a detriment to said child. Because Timon and Pumba raise Simba into an adult and the movie is very clear that he's grown up wrong, he is not the person he should be because he's embraced Timon and Pumba's upbringing.

So you see...the Lion King is mega terrible.

Except it isn't.

Because we all have the cognitive ability and understanding to grasp that you are not SUPPOSED to take it that realistically nor at face value. Even as children we grasped that, hence the generation that grew up with the Lion King (by and large) obviously don't think incest is okay, don't oppose same sex couples raising children, don't think segregation is a good idea and clearly do not think monarchies are the bee's knees.

Maybe as kids people couldn't put it into words, but material like this essentially exists in this realm of symbolism, psychological shorthand if you will.

In fact all fairy tales do that.

And Sailor Moon IS a fairy tale, or at the very least it borrows a whole lot from fairy tales.

In addition to being a fairy tale though Sailor Moon is a wish fulfillment fantasy story intended for a female audience (or at least a predominantly female audience).

Now of course what one woman's wish fulfillment fantasy might be may not be another's and I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to argue that Sailor Moon even clicks with the wish fulfillment fantasies of MOST female audience members. But I think it's fair to say from the cultural impact it has had, and how it's fanbase is clearly mostly made up of women, that the wish fulfillment fantasy it offers clicks with a sizeable enough number of women.

The reverse is true of something intended as a male wish fulfillment fantasy. James Bond was obviously intended as a male wish fulfillment fantasy, and it's success speaks to how it clearly clicked with a sizable enough number of people. And I don't think I'm being overly presumptuous here when i say MOST of those people were male.**

Both SM and 007 are wish fulfillment power fantasies but they are also romantic/sexual fantasies too.***

I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that for a sizable number (but not necessarily the majority) of women, including the tween/teen girls SM was aimed at, having an OLDER lover is a romantic wish fulfillment fantasy. On the flipside I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that for a sizable number of men and boys having an endless string of casual and completely consequence free sexual encounters with (traditionally speaking) gorgeous women who find you incredibly attractive is a sexual wish fulfillment fantasy.

And the thing is BOTH those things can become bad when you apply a realistic lens to either of them.

James Bond's sex life realistically would involve at least a few sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies (one of which occurs in the novels) and at least a few callously broken hearts. Even when you look at it strictly from Bond's POV that life only seems glamorous at first glance. Perhaps it is a fun fantasy, but only when it remains in the realm of fantasy. Because in real life that kind of life if lived long term is ultimately incredibly empty and unfulfilling. Even James Bond media has acknowledged this because there have been occasions in the novels and films where he has at least attempted to settle down with a stable partner. Many Bond fans (understandably) decry this as undermining part of the appeal of the character hence Bond inevitably defaults back to being single because that is a baked in part of the wish fulfillment fantasy the character offers.

Let's consider some other ways the Sailor Moon anime offers a wish fulfillment fantasy, namely the future of Crystal Tokyo.

At first glance it seems wonderfully utopic right. It is a beautiful crystalline world where everyone lives in peace and harmony, hunger disease and even aging having been functionally eliminated.

Well, that isn’t the case if you apply a realistic lens to it.

It's an absolute monarchy wherein everyone is functionally immortal and children don't reach maturity even after 900 years. Chibi-Usa clearly chafes at this reality so how do you imagine other children (who aren't royalty) might feel? How might their parents feel having to raise their children and be responsible for them for centuries as opposed to around twentysomething years? What if you became immortal in your 80s, you might be a very healthy 80 year old but you aren't in the prime of your life and you are stuck that way for what is essentially forever. Not to mention what if you don't like or do not agree with Neo-Queen Serenity's policies? What if they are actively detrimental to you, your family, your livelihood, etc? You can't vote her out of power and you can't even hope for things to change because everyone is healthy, provided for and lives forever. The chances of someone else coming to power are at best very, very, very slim.

Then you have the fact that it’s surely a society that would’ve stagnated because everyone is provided for. That’s the whole point of a utopia. It is perfection. But what if you are someone who defined your live by striving for improvement? What if you were a doctor and now found yourself redundant. Sure, you might acknowledge that’s for the greater good but you are still yourself left completely without purpose in this world.

And that’s not even considering the inevitable monotony of existing for hundreds of years. Modern medicine and science has allowed human beings to extend their life spans FAR beyond how long we’d live if we were still just cave people. As biological organisms are concerned we never evolved to live for 80-90 years. Even if your body isn’t breaking down across the centuries the human mind would never realistically be able to cope with centuries worth of memories and life experiences. Mental illnesses and conditions would be rife. If nothing else living in that world would sooner or later become utterly BORING!

Hate to say it and obviously it doesn’t justify their methods, but the Black Moon Clan kind of have some valid points against the world of Crystal Tokyo. At least they do when you break things down REALISTICALLY.

And that’s my thesis here. Sailor Moon isn’t supposed to be dissected realistically, at least not to THAT degree. It is a wish fulfilment fairy tale fantasy and demands a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and understanding of what the fantasy is offering.

And for the record I can 100% assure that no teenager in real life has, or could, ever get into a harmful relationship with someone older than them BECAUSE they watched Usagi and Mamoru’s relationship in the anime.

The human mind is a very complex and very powerful thing. At a younger age it’s impressionable and can therefore be influenced. But it’s not so susceptible that the romantic relationships in a cartoon about schoolgirl super heroes is going to influence a viewer into making any major life decisions that OTHER factors weren’t also influencing them to do.

In other words if a real life 14 year old girl began dating a 17 year old college guy it would’ve happened regardless of whether they watched Sailor Moon as a child or not.

Indeed, one of my frustrations with the podcast Sailor Business is how many guests on the show cite how they liked Usagi and Mamoru as children but now think their relationship is bad and creepy. I disagree with them for the reasons I cited above, but the fact that those panellists nigh universally give that same narrative proves how nobody was ever going to be prompted to do anything potentially harmful to themselves in real life by the show.

*Personally speaking that is certainly my own off the cuff attitude.

**Not to dismiss the fans who aren't, same goes for the non-female SM fans.

***Although I think you could argue SM is more on the romance side of things and 007 on the sexual side of things.

#My Essays #bishojo senshi sailor moon #pretty soldier sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #sailor moon #tuxedo mask #mamoru chiba #chiba mamoru #usagi tsukino #tsukino usagi #James Bond #007 #Lion King #The Lion King #Disney #Crystal Tokyo

[foxtailapp]

All About Mental Health in BDSM Dating

This post is originally from Pleasure Uncensored by Foxtail. It can be found here.

BDSM dating can have an effect on a person's mental health. To understand, you must first understand what BDSM is.

  What is BDSM Dating?

  BDSM dating refers to dating in a subculture based on various rules and restrictions related to the interactions between people to meet sexual needs. BDSM stands for bondage, sadism, masochism, domination, and submission.

  These concepts comprise three relationship pairs: BD - bondage and discipline, DS - Dominant- submissive, and SM - sadomasochism.

  In general terms, BDs are time-limited sessions with a variety of practices and strict delineation of roles. Fixation, sensory deprivation, role-playing - all this refers to the BD. But, as a rule, this type of relationship with role-playing games and educational programs doesn't go beyond the bedroom.

  DS assumes a prolonged transfer of power over all or (more often) some areas of life. Example: The big boss of the house is subordinate to his wife in everything, including the need to wear thongs with flowers and go to the gym. Submission and domination can be both in the bedroom and extended a lifetime.

  SM is a painful stimulus to get pleasure. The sadist likes to torture, and the masochist enjoys to suffer.

  The main thing to understand is the fundamental principles of BDSM; without rules, it can turn from an exciting game into ordinary violence.

  A basic rule of BDSM is SSC which means Safe, Sane, and Consensual.

  How do you interpret SSC in BDSM?

    Safe = SECURITY.

  All parties involved will make every effort to preserve their physical and mental health.

  Sometimes it is complicated to avoid injuries: ropes pinch nerves, and blood vessels, games with breathing are fraught with suffocation, illiterate flogging leads to skin damage and internal organs. Thus, the main thing that a sane sadist starts with is the study of anatomy and safety.

  Sane = MIND.

  Life is not limited to games, and the participants in the process are adequate. This means you must have responsibility for what is happening, even if you are in a lower role. For example, the principle of safety in SM is impracticable without a sober assessment of one's own capabilities, regular monitoring of health status, and informing a partner about all potential problems.

  Consensual = VOLUNTARY

  Everything that happens, even the most painful and disgusting, happens according to an active and unequivocally expressed desire. This is one of the reasons why session scripts and practices are discussed in detail in advance. Otherwise, there can always be reticence, and game violence will turn into reality.

  Who likes BDSM?

    When psychologists began to study natural BDSM dating communities, a lot of exciting things turned out. People who practice BDSM are psychologically healthier than those around them. Typically they are more extroverted, more open to new experiences, less neurotic, and less prone to a range of mental disorders, for example, from depression to anxiety, paranoia, and (surprise!) pathological sadism.

  According to various estimates, 20% of the world's population is inclined to BDSM. These people use bondage, masks, and blindfolds. Unlike paraphilias like fetishism, BDSM attracts both women and men equally. Participation in BDSM, as a rule, does not cover the experience of childhood trauma and violence.

  BDSM practices do not interfere, and in some cases, even help establish close and trusting relationships between partners.

  Most people view BDSM as reckless, dangerous, and unhealthy, a phenomenon whose representatives are allegedly mentally ill people. However, this is actually not the case: BDSM is just a sexual preference that can benefit health.

      BDSM Dating and Mental Health

  Recent research on BDSM and its effects on the body has shown excellent results. Scientists find no evidence of harm caused by the psychosocial subculture of BDSM, but they are finding that it does have health benefits.

    Funny games of dominance and submission

  How do BDSM practices affect the psyche?

  In addition, researchers note that such practices can have a stimulating effect on self-awareness. For example, they connect the practice and mindfulness meditation, known to have beneficial effects on mental and physical health and reduce anxiety.

  Apparently, pain during BDSM practices helps focus attention on the sensations we are experiencing and immerses us in a meditative state and thereby helps to relieve tension.

  Studies of people practicing light BDSM practices did not reveal they have serious psychological problems. Moreover, in comparison with the control group, many respondents noted a higher level of subjective satisfaction with life. True, we are talking primarily about those who choose the dominant role or switch (they switch between dominant and submissive).

  Those in the submissive (i.e., subordinate) position reported less life satisfaction compared to dominant people. This is another reason to always pay attention to the psychological state of the participants in the process - and if the practices are not enjoyable, they should definitely be abandoned.

  Games of submission and domination require a certain level of intimacy. The willingness to trust a partner and allow himher to hurt himselfherself a little (with the ability to stop at the first signal), as expected, increases the level of trust in a stable pair.

  A slight fear develops into more excitement and interest in a partner.

  How can BDSM help?

  Fans of complex games claim that some perversions help eliminate anxiety, momentary worries, an endless stream of thoughts from which the head is spinning.

  Playing BDSM games involves the person in specific spaces that affect the person's state of consciousness.

  What is sometimes called the "topspace" is a beautiful place characterized by focused attention, optimal performance, and loss of self-awareness. Try it yourself, see how much you will be focused on your partner and what is happening at the peak of arousal.

  According to lovers of kinky sex, the whole room seems to disappear during their pleasures, leaving only the bed. Nevertheless, it is a poignant pleasure.

  There is also an alternate state that most people know about as "subspace." It is a light sense of submission. This condition is characterized by a decrease in pain, tension, and a return to complete peace and serenity.

  If you have had problems with your nervous system, BDSM dating can be a pleasant way to relieve symptoms.

  Another life hack: if a person suffers from heightened emotionality, spanking can be used for therapeutic purposes. How does it work? Impact pain creates the conditions for emotional release, for example, tears. This can be an effective but temporary solution.

  Should you try BDSM? It Depends.

  It would be best if you were more honest with yourself. Leave the imposed moral principles, and try for a moment to imagine yourself in the role of master or subordinate. Undoubtedly, many have experienced a slight excitement from just the thought of this, which is not surprising.

  A person does not have sex for procreation but for pleasure, so why not get the most of it? Role-playing games, toys from a sex shop, submission, and domination - all this variety in bed will help you get new sensations previously unknown. So when should you try BDSM?

  Long-term marriage in which people no longer feel the need to make love. This phenomenon is widespread everywhere, and it's just that people have become boring to each other.

    Lack of sex leads to moral and physical dissatisfaction, quarrels begin, and just everyday life becomes monotonous. To get a taste of life again, try BDSM.

  Dissatisfaction with regular sex. Many people complain that they are not satisfied with the sex. So, it's time not just to change the position but sexual intercourse as a whole.

  As we have already found out, BDSM allows you to get more aroused and get more pleasure from sex than an ordinary act.

  Stress and depression will go away if you use BDSM. Partners will be able to throw out negative energy during dominance and submission. By the way, the role doesn't matter - dominants and submissives alike get rid of negativity, and gain pleasure.

  So, what does BDSM mean?

  This is a standard sexual practice used by many couples (polls have confirmed). So, nearly all people cannot have mental disorders (right?), which means that it is simply stupid to classify BDSM as a perversion. You have to ignore public opinion and give your desires to the fullest.

  I recommend that you try this practice for a variety of relationships and mental relaxation. First, however, it is worth remembering a vital rule, BDSM is based on the voluntary consent of all parties involved.

  To prepare for such an experience, resolve to participate and not be influenced by a partner.

[rwby-redux]

Preface

RWBY is the breakthrough anime web series created by the late Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth. Originally teased on November 5th, 2012, and officially debuted July 18th, 2013, the series follows the journeys of four young women enrolled in an academy that trains monster-slaying warriors known as Huntsmen. Set in the fictional world of Remnant, the story initially focuses on the surface-level plot of fighting against humanity’s ancient adversary, the ever-present Creatures of Grimm; over time, it becomes apparent that things aren’t what they seem, as the cast slowly begins to connect a string of heists committed by a criminal syndicate with the violent acts of a terrorist cell. The series is aired weekly on Rooster Teeth’s website, with its main arcs spanning 12 – 16 episodes per volume. In the years following the show’s initial release, RWBY has spawned numerous merchandise and related media, including two spin-off shows, multiple side-stories published as mangas, two standalone books, three mobile games, a behind-the-scenes artbook, and OSTs for every volume to date.

As of Volume 7 there are 98 episodes in total with a collective runtime of 18:52:00, or approximately 1,132 minutes, with more episodes and side content underway.

At best, they’re visually interesting; at worst, they’re disappointing.

Let me take a second to backtrack before the lynch mob starts to sharpen its pitchforks. The series deserves much of the praise that it’s gotten. RWBY was the first American-produced anime to be released in Japan (and if you’re a fan of anime, you know how insane those words sound). The 3D models and animation from Volume 4 onward are breathtakingly stunning, and even before the show made the leap from Poser to Maya, the fight sequences managed to be equally creative and entertaining. The show was nominated for and received multiple Streamy Awards, and was awarded Best Animated Series by the International Academy of Web Television. The Volume 1 soundtrack reached number one on iTunes, beating out the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Such is RWBY’s (and Rooster Teeth’s) reputation that it managed to attract the attention of, and later bring on, industry veterans and vocal legends such as Jen Taylor, Josh Grelle, and Aaron Dismuke.

That’s to say nothing of the fandom this franchise has amassed, of kids, teenagers, and young adults alike. RWBY has generated dozens of forums dedicated to fanfiction, fanart, and roleplaying. Thousands of people the world over have bonded over this show, fans from all walks of life. They’re passionate about this series. The fact that I’m writing this post is a testimony of that. If I didn’t care about RWBY, I wouldn’t be sitting on my couch at 3 AM, hunched over my laptop in my pajamas.

If RWBY is so good (or occasionally threatens to become good), you might be wondering, why, then, does this blog exist?

Well, because…when you stop and look at it critically, it actually kind of sucks.

Despite initially being written by a three-man team, the series is full of inconsistencies and an underdeveloped cast. The characters, especially from Volumes 1 — 3, are full of one-dimensional stereotypes whose contributions to the story amount to a three-word summary: “The School Bully,” “The Wacky Professors,” “The Racist Cop,” “The Cutthroat Bitch,” “The Anime Waifu,” “The Audience Surrogate,” “Discount Elle Woods,” and so on. Fundamental elements of the story, like Aura, Semblance, and Dust, are either poorly-explained or not explained at all, and the limitations of those core concepts can change at a moment’s notice to suit the needs of the plot. The primary antagonist of the first three volumes is universally hated by the fandom for having no discernible motivations beyond being “ambitious and power-hungry,” and having a personality that consists exclusively of irritating smug. The show-writers, despite repeatedly promising queer representation, have failed to make even one of their ten central protagonists queer. This isn’t touching upon the fact that the first openly-gay character on the show was an antagonist, or that the next two were side-characters who were relevant to the plot for all of seven episodes, before vanishing from the story entirely. The two leads that are currently being hyped as our first queer main-cast members have only been repeatedly teased, with said characters never once uttering the words, “I’m bi,” “I date women,” “I’m not straight”—nothing but narrative subtext and playful winks from the VAs whenever a fan asks if they’re queer. Subplots end up having no pay-off or get entirely forgotten mid-volume. The story is so protagonist-biased that the heroes are frequently able to get away with being hypocritical, or committing criminal acts because “it was the right thing to do,” with their POV framed as an infallible “fuck you, got mine” verbal gut-punch to the audience (while other characters in the show, who often make the exact same calls as the heroes, are ridiculed by the show and the fandom). Whenever the story isn’t spray-painting stolen cars and selling them to their original owners, it manages to clumsily handle allegories for real-world issues such as systemic racism, mental illness, abuse dynamics/victim survivorship, and gray morality. The worldbuilding is absent from the main show and has to be supplemented through RWBY’s spin-off series World of Remnant. The story’s setting feels flat and lifeless at times because the “cultures” of this world are never established.

The list goes on and on.

So if this show has so many flaws, why are we still having this conversation?

Because I’m captivated by the untapped potential of this world. When you brush away all of the detritus, you can see the wealth of raw material buried beneath. This is a world where the gods have forsaken their creations, with one having even deliberately created the monsters that hunt humanity. The two characters who are central to the history of this world are tragic figures, one cursed with immortality as a punishment for demanding that the gods revise the first draft, and do away with needless death; and the other, cursed to ceaselessly reincarnate into the minds and bodies of like-minded souls, waging a war of attrition against a person warped beyond recognition by the capricious spite of the gods. This is a world of forgotten magic, of shifting allegiances, of characters embarking on personal journeys and unearthing deadly secrets. It’s a story of people from all walks of life learning to cooperate and work together, forging friendships and alliances in order to face the challenges that lie ahead.

It could easily have the bones of an epic fantasy series as long as it remembers to drink its milk.

RWBY’s issues aren’t insurmountable. Most of them are the byproduct of the series’ blind adherence to “rule of cool,” the motto that practically codified the beginning of the show. From Volume 4 onward, the series took a radical shift in tone that tried to be “more mature,” and only succeeded in making the earlier episodes absurd in hindsight. Why, in Volume 6, are the characters concerned about civilian endangerment, when in Volume 2 they happily pursued a giant mech in a highway car-chase scene that would’ve caused untold collateral damage and civilian death? This change in storytelling created a thematic disparity that reoccurs time and time again, retroactively emphasizing just how inconsistent the worldbuilding and storytelling are.

It tried to be Avatar: The Last Airbender, and what we’re left with instead is Game of Thrones Season 8.

Now, I’m not using this blog as a platform to damn Monty Oum (or claim to be a better creator than him). But it’s important to address the flaws in his story, and to acknowledge that his passing doesn’t make RWBY somehow sacrosanct or immune to constructive criticism. RWBY has flaws, ranging from nitpicky to potentially capable of causing real-world harm (in the case of the aforementioned queerbaiting and racism analogies). I’m a firm believer that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum; art is informed by our beliefs just as much as art informs our beliefs. We can still respect and admire the potential RWBY has to offer, while being mindful of where it needs to improve.

That’s where this blog comes in.

At the end of the day, the RWBY Redux exists as a thought experiment. I’m writing it chiefly to entertain worldbuilding ideas and headcanons I’ve spent years musing on. I’m not asking readers to agree with any of my numerous stances, nor am I going to shy away from other fans’ criticism as I hammer this project out. With a little TLC, perhaps I’ll manage to create something that manages to be more complex than its source material. And if you choose to follow along with my endeavors, hopefully you’ll find this project equal parts engaging and entertaining.

Wish me luck.

#preface #deconstruction #writing

[echodrops]

BNHA, some thoughts on Toga after reading both your recent metas, the representation and female characters ones. Toga getting reduced to fetish fuel by fandom is pretty irritating. It really shortchanges her character, she's interesting. Despite all the murder, she's not written as a true psychopath/sociopath - her emotions are written as genuine, her empathy is written as being real. Her most depraved and her most empathetic moments both occur in the same arc, too (Overhaul's Hideout).

I actually think we can make a pretty good case for Toga being the best written female character in all of Boku no Hero Academia.

There are two other contenders–Inko and Nana–who could probably easily take the spot if not for their extenuating circumstances: Inko simply isn’t in the story enough to be a consistent source of emotional engagement, and we haven’t seen enough of Nana yet to get a real sense of the depth of her character. If Nana gets to be part of an extended series of flashbacks or becomes a vestige that Izuku can talk to, we might get enough of her to bump her to the top.

But right now, I can make a pretty convincing case for Toga.

1) She is the only female character whose actions are absolutely central to the main plot/conflict as it is unfolding right now. In the last 100 chapters, the only female to single-handedly accomplish anything for her side of the conflict has been Toga. You could not remove Toga from the plot and replace her with any of the male characters around her because her quirk and involvement in the story line are actively integrated in a way that none of the other female characters’ are (again, barring Nana). Mina? Jirou? Kendou? Uraraka? Tsuyu? Even Momo? In the last half of the manga’s plot, none of the class 1-A or 1-B girls have played any major part in the series’ overall conflict, had any stand-out moments of emotional depth that wasn’t narrated for them by a male character, or even been allowed to meaningfully contribute to the battles except during training against classmates, the outcomes of which have no lasting impact on the main heroes vs. villains conflict.

That’s because Toga doesn’t suffer from the one thing holding back all the heroines and heroines-in-training: good girls aren’t violent. Good girls are lovable, attractive, and supportive. They’re not ambitious or obsessive about strength and overcoming their rivals like boys are. Good girls behave well. And unfortunately, Horikoshi is pretty progressive in some ways and really, really unprogressive in others. His definition of “good girls” and the ways good girls act seems to be pretty rooted in conservative Japanese standards, which traditionally have undervalued women. (This is not to say that everyone in Japan discriminates against women, far from it; in general, however, societal standards for women in Japan have lagged behind other major developed nations.)

Uraraka and the other girls in 1-A and 1-B can and will become heroes, surely. They can even prove themselves to be very strong and skilled individuals. But they will only rarely–if ever–be allowed to outshine their male compatriots in terms of strength, aggression, impact on the main plot, and even emotional depth. The tension and depth of this story has, so far, been given almost entirely to male characters–Deku, Iida, Bakugou, Todoroki, Shigaraki, Kirishima, even Shinsou… Readers get more glimpses into the mindsets, emotional struggles, and backstories of these characters than any of the girls. Bakugou can literally cry and scream on screen from how angry he is that he doesn’t measure up to his classmates; but Momo, who feels similarly, will demurely have her confidence issues discussed by Todoroki and Aizawa for her.

Toga, however, doesn’t get hit by this stuff quite as bad because she isn’t a “good girl.” Toga can be violent. Toga can be out on the frontlines throwing down directly with the male heroes and can come out on top because she’s a villain and sometimes the villains have to win for the story to be exciting. Toga got away with threatening Shigaraki.Whether Tomura is just telling lies to keep her on his side or not, Toga is canonically referred to as one of the League’s “linchpins.” She’s tangled with the heroes two more times than Dabi, Mr. Compress, Magne, or Spinner, and once more than Twice, making her literally the League’s most active member. Because of her role as a villain, Toga is free from the limitations that prevent the heroines from making any lasting impacts on the plot.

2) Toga’s personal motivations/mindset have direct impacts on the plot. Sure, being a “love obsessed” girl who develops crushes at the drop of the hat isn’t exactly the most fantastic basis for a female character ever–it’s cripplingly stereotypical and a gross excuse to draw faces bordering on ahegao, actually–but at least Toga’s crushes are plot relevant. Her “love” for Izuku and collecting his blood led to her utilizing that blood in combat to directly change the course of what is probably the series’ most important and dramatic battle to date. Unlike Uraraka, whose crush is essentially mandatory due to her role as the love interest and really has no bearing on the major plot, Toga’s “love” for Izuku shapes not only her actions but also the actions of others because she is a mover-and-shaker in the main conflict, unlike other female characters.

Toga’s crush on Stain was what drove her to join the League, despite the fact that Stain is no longer part of it in any way–and she’s remained loyal to the League. Her crush motivated her to take direct action and change the course of her life. Unlike other crush plot lines given to female characters, which are often used only in two contexts: 1) Oh no, I can’t let these feelings affect my friendship with [shounen protagonist]! 2) Ha ha, look how adorable I am trying to hide my crush from everyone!, Toga’s crushes are driving factors in her story and the plot overall.

3) Toga has demonstrated more meaningful emotional depth than half the female students. You’re right–reducing Toga to fanservice badly degrades a character who’s actually been painted with more depth than virtually any other female character (except Inko) in the series so far. In her response to Magne’s death, her comments that she wants to continue enjoying life with the League, her willingness to threaten Shigaraki for making choices for her, and her delicate treatment of Twice, Toga’s feelings–even those beyond her love and friendship obsession–are portrayed seriously and with a degree of attention and agency that few other females in this series get. Toga is loyal, intelligent, dedicated to pursuing her personal goals, empathetic, brave, and strong-willed, and most importantly–these aren’t informed traits. We don’t hear about how smart she is or how nice or how brave she is from other people–we see it in direct action throughout the course of the story. You don’t hold a knife to Shigaraki Tomura’s neck without being both staggeringly courageous and dead-set in your beliefs–Toga has a backbone of steel and a good head on her shoulders. She’s in far more control of herself than anyone is giving her credit for; she knows exactly what she wants and she’s going for that without hesitating. Her response to Twice after Magne’s death not only demonstrates a clear understanding of other people’s feelings, but also signals to the readers how far the League has come in supporting and valuing each other, an important turning point for readers, making her feelings and dialogue more meaningful than many of the other female characters’.

4) Toga’s obsession with identity–and its ties to her quirk–implies a significantly more interesting backstory than most other girls in the series. In a way that doesn’t happen for many other characters outside the villains, Toga’s quirk is directly tied her to mindset and behavior. She is obsessed with seizing the identities of the people she “loves” to actively become those people. It should be obvious that this obsession is a direct off-shoot of her powers. Imagine what life would be like for a child who could literally change identities any time she became dissatisfied with herself. Forming a personal identity is a complex process for human beings (google Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages for a more in-depth look), and it is also a process fraught with peril. Children and young adults who fail to develop healthy, complete self-identities struggle in a variety of ways, not the least of which is mental illness. How would a tiny young girl who was capable of completely altering her physical appearance and attitude, enough so to be easily mistaken for others, define her own personal identity? This is literally a nightmare scenario, ripe for the development of psychological issues. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out the start of Toga’s descent into madness was realizing that, by hurting others, she could become someone better, more popular, with more friends–someone happy. It makes perfect sense that Toga is the way she is now, with the quirk she has. Toga’s desperate love–her desperate desire to be someone else–is almost inevitably going to be tied to a shattered sense of self. This is why the issue of “villain quirks” is so interesting–did Toga ever have a chance to be “normal,” with a quirk that would have devastated the psyche of a growing child?

I don’t know when or if we’ll ever see Toga’s backstory, but just the hints we’ve been given are already enough to make it richer and more interesting to think about that almost any of the other female characters in the series.

Toga is great, and seeing what she gets reduces to by the fans (hell, and her own creator sometimes) seriously bums me out.

#toga himiko #toga #boku no hero academia #league of villains #bnha meta #himiko toga is best girl #fight me

[womenandfilm5]

Explorations Report – Wonder Woman (2017, Patty Jenkins) . Wonder Woman (2017) is an adaptation of the titular character, a superhero created in 1941 by writer William Moulton Marston and artist H. G. Peter. Before delving into the film itself, it can be helpful to examine the property and its history; like many of her fictional contemporaries who have since seen modern film adaptations, the character of Wonder Woman has been featured in comics stories for nearly 80 years. As previously stated, Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist known for his invention of the polygraph—or lie detector. Marston “believed women should rule the world” (Lepore, 1). Marston had a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth Holloway and their mutual partner Olive Byrne. In his writings, particularly with Wonder Woman, Marston explored themes of bondage, while also incorporating aspects of his personal life. As Lepore writes, “Picturing and talking about women as chained and enslaved was ubiquitous in female literature, a carryover from the nineteenth-century alliance between the suffrage and abolition movements (Lepore, 101). By creating the character, Marston hoped to provide a female answer to the popular Superman, who would represent an idealized woman just as Superman represented an idealized man—a character whose power and strength came not from her dominance, but from her liberation. . As told in the Labours of Heracles/Hercules, the demigod hero travelled to Themyscira (located in present-day Turkey) and met with Hippolyta, the queen of female warriors called the Amazons. In short, Heracles stole Hippolyta’s girdle and supposedly killed the queen. Marston draws from this story in Wonder Woman’s origin (as well as the story of Pygmalion, an artist who fell in love with his sculpture); following her battle with Heracles, a living Hippolyta (or “Hippolyte”, as Marston wrote) led the Amazons away from “Man’s World” to live in peace. On Paradise Island, the Amazons established a civilization which developed alongside that of the outside world. Like Superman’s Krypton, the culture of Paradise Island was presented as an idyllic one. In the film, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) asks if the Amazons have guns; in the comics, Amazons did have firearms, but they treated them as mere toys. The women of Paradise Island could use their bracelets (a tradition to remind them of the dangers of subservience to man) to deflect bullets, in a game they aptly called “Bullets and Bracelets”. The Amazons created an invisible aircraft which could outpace any in Man’s World, had a Purple Ray which could heal all wounds, and rode on kangaroos. While many of these elements can seem strange, they all serve to highlight that the culture of the Amazons is a positive alternative to that of Man’s World; a world that could be better. There is no war and no suffering on Paradise Island. Enter Diana, an infant sculpted by Hippolyta from clay and given life by the gods (later writers have played with the character’s origin, likely inspiring that featured in the film). “[Wonder Woman’s] gods were female, and so were her curses. ‘Great Hera!’ she cried. ‘Suffering Sappho’ she swore. She was meant to be the strongest, smartest, bravest woman the world had ever seen” (Lepore, xi). When an American pilot crashed on Paradise Island, becoming the first man to set foot on the land, Diana competed with her fellow Amazons to bring Trevor back and show the ways of her people to the world of men. She took on the name Wonder Woman and the rest is history. . Wonder Woman (2017) opens with narration by Diana (Gal Gadot). “I used to want to save the world,” she says, “This beautiful, magical place. I knew so little then.” What was refreshing about the film was that even though its protagonist grows and becomes more aware of the world, she never becomes cynical. Despite the obstacles she faces, Diana never really gives in to the idea that humanity is malicious and doomed. While the film adapts out some of the most fantastical elements (the kangaroos would have been nice to see), the core concept of the character remains true—she’s brave and capable, and it’s her compassion which empowers her. As the film eventually reveals, Diana herself is a weapon created by Zeus to kill any disobedient gods. But the Amazons, despite retaining their warrior traditions, take care not to treat Diana as any less other woman—or any other person in general. Even if a living weapon is what she is, it isn’t who she is—and ultimately, who you are is what matters, not what you are. The film places the choice of the individual, and their identity, as more important than their given attributes. Characters discuss that their race and ethnicity, or their trauma from conflict, gives them a disadvantage in a culture where they are treated as the most important part of a person. Diana makes a choice to do her best and fight for what she believes is right, even if it runs against what the culture around her values. In a meeting of military leaders, Diana berates them (all older white men) for carelessly abandoning the lives of soldiers. “They will all die,” she says. “That’s what soldiers do,” a general matter-of-factly replies. Moving the setting of the film from World War II to World War I helps to balance the anti-war themes of the film, as they’re easier for a general audience to accept when the antagonists aren’t literal Nazis.  . The film isn’t exactly perfect. One issue is that of the action sequences, particularly the one in which the Amazons battle an invading German force on the beach. In some ways, the action resembles that of 300 (2007)—the characters engage in very brutal, hyper-masculine fights which can make the characters seem like strong females in a physical sense, but not an emotional one. Wonder Woman herself avoids this, as the film is heavily centered on her own inner conflict and mentality, but her fellow Amazons fall short in some respects. While the film does give non-white actors like Saïd Taghmaoui and Eugene Brave Rock decent screen time and character growth, all of the major players are white. Even on the enlightened island of the Amazons, the few women of color present have few lines and little impact on the narrative. There doesn’t seem to be any ill intent meant by the film, but it’s something that could have been adjusted. . On the surface, Wonder Woman (2017) is another superhero blockbuster. There is action, clear heroes, clear villains, and it follows a fairly standard storyline. What the film excels that are the development of characters and the deconstructive elements within the story. The titular character is a physically capable woman, with enough emotional and psychological strength to deserve being called a “strong female character.” Her growth is largely of her own desire, with the supporting characters only offering support for her eventual decision. She isn’t a woman who is broken down by events in the film; while things happen outside of her control, her core beliefs are strengthened in the end when she continues to keep pursuing her goal. Her initial belief was that Ares, the God of War, was manipulating mankind into destroying themselves; and when discovering that war is far more complex than a single cause, Wonder Woman only resolves to continue fighting for peace (which is a contradiction that only further complicates her character), by committing fully to her mission. That anti-war sentiment, along with the other themes of identity and choice, allow the film to grow beyond the familiar sights and beats of the genre. While it would have been interesting to see the film tackle some of the character’s even more complex or controversial themes (the non-heteronormative, submissive/dominant, and bondage elements in particular), it admittedly would get in the way of the somewhat more universal topics the film stacks up. There’s always the sequel. – KR

[health4homlesspdx]

Interview:

Caryn Berley, MSW

What does/did your position entail?

I was a housing case manager. I worked with adults experiencing homelessness through inreach rather than outreach, so we worked with people that already had some relationship with one of our shelters/organizations. These adults would find out about us, connect with our team, and our team would try to help with anything that was a barrier with housing. These barriers could be food insecurity, housing waitlists, housing applications, reasonable accommodation requests for things like disabilities. For example, I helped pay off someone’s debt that were from fines and money owed from domestic violence charges. I would do an assessment to understand their barriers and needs, often they were on fixed income so they were looking for subsidised housing.

What work does your organization do specifically? 

My organization, Join, was on a grant that was through the joint offices of homeless services. We work to provide support and resources for people experiencing homelessness. Join has a day space, provides showers and laundry and has case management. Specifically working with non parenting women often.

What barriers have you noticed on a small scale and large scale to access housing and health services?

Fixed income is a big issue with housing prices, even subsidised housing will take ⅓ of income. And a lot of people had a fixed income of like 700 a month, and if you take ⅓ of that, it's a lot. There are really limited resources for subsidised housing at all. Often, people had disability type barriers which kept them from increasing their income. Also, there was some bias against people without a housing history, so the longer you’ve been houseless the harder it was. As a cultural barrier, there was a culture of letting people stay with you, once you were no longer homeless. So, often people would want to have others stay at their house which was against their lease, they would get kicked out.

Trauma was a big thing. There is so much past and ongoing trauma, so there are a lot of things being overlooked like health issues, mental health issues, and substance abuse. Substance abuse is used to cope with homelessness but shelters often have strict rules against substance abuse. So, this leads to them either secretly breaking rules or going back to homelessness.

There's a place called Dignity Village I worked with, everyone lives in tiny homes and pays $35 a month. It’s self governed but a representative from JOIN would observe and advise the community. They have a desire for autonomy like everyone but they are being told very specific rules. They are being kicked out or something for breaking them, then they get cynical about the system but have no social capital. I saw a lot of women come back and be supportive once they got out, explaining that they (the organization) were trying to help and you can listen to them. 

My program was really cool about assessing their goals rather than imposing rules as much. I didn't even have to enforce sobriety unless it was part of their goals or plan or a shelter they were trying to go to.

Can you describe a situation you witnessed/experienced involving someone with both mental illness and housing insecurity?

A couple shared that when they were using they had much harder time working toward their goals, once they stopped using, they had more options. I worked based on the Housing First Model, which means if they can get housing they will be more stable and follow through with the service. The idea is that stable housing is most important, and more important than sobriety or other things, as a step to move forward.

Another couple, who had been staying in a shelter, had a service dog that really helped with their mental health but it was a pitbull that caused problems for others. So, trying to manage their mental health with the service animal but also trying to have a place to stay in the shelter was difficult. They had a lot of negative experiences in the shelter so it took a lot of resilience to keep trying. They had a lot of trauma and were aware of it but even making appointments with them was difficult. These types of programs put a lot of pressure on the appointment but mental health emergencies come up and prevent them from attending.  So, it makes them reluctant to even engage with these organizations.

Once, I worked with a parent and their adult child, who had schizophrenia. The son had a housing voucher through Home Forward and the parent wanted to be on the voucher as the caregiver, but parent and caregiver are differently recognized. His parent had a charge that prevented them from housing, though they were charged 20 years ago. I would write letters explaining how long ago the charge was and why they were capable of maintaining this lease now. So, I found a private landlord and the lease didn't say anything that would restrict them from obtaining this housing. The landlord even said no and I argued it because nothing was stated in the lease.We needed the son and parent to be in person to sign but the son didn't have a phone and we had no way to find him. Finally, I found him and put them both in a motel for the night, paid for it, and brought them the next morning. That day he was relatively coherent but more often he looked less presentable and like he was experiencing reality in a different way. There was a lot of prejudice, like “why would I trust you to live on my property.” But the whole thing is this required tons of overtime work, it wasn’t easy. I’m pretty sure the landlord kicked them out shortly after.

What do you hope to achieve individually and collaboratively within your organization?

Big picture- I want more awareness about how the situation isn't usually how it appears and there is so much more going on beyond what we see. Especially compared to media portrayal or what you might see downtown, that isn't the whole picture. One person I met with was really excited about moving forward, they expressed interest in taking Rent Well classes and if you complete those, you have a portfolio of references, history, credit checks, and things to help you get housing. They were working part time and were really motivated, but then they never showed up to the classes and never communicated anything. So, for myself, I wanted to be compassionate toward everyone I was working with and have them feel trust, support, and feel deserving of support. 

What advice would you have to Portlanders not experiencing homelessness on how they should get involved, what stigmas are present, etc? My biggest advice is to acknowledge the complexity, I think it's easy or comfortable to categorize things in one way. I'll hear that people are choosing to be homeless or people say “I can't even afford a place so why should someone not even working get one.” Trying to understand there is a culture barrier, even if you seem to present in some similar ways. People are in different situations. Hearing these peoples stories, I realize no one is that far away from experiencing houselessness...a lot of people lived a middle class life and then things happened. It's easy to dismiss but it's more powerful to challenge our own assumptions instead.

For getting involved, I dont think it's for everyone. This particular issue can do harm if you bring certain attitudes in. So if you can't help in that way, put financial help in. Join is grassroots and radical so that's a great place. Challenge the conversations around the issue- why are we putting the housing crisis on those people when this is a systemic issue and there aren’t enough resources or resources are not given to everyone. If you really want to know, go to a shelter to see what it's like.  People say, “you don't have to sleep outside, you can go to a shelter,” but shelters are often full and often not safe spaces, like for mental illness. Think about how hard it is to have roommates, now imagine having 50 roommates while you are going through so much trauma and everyone else is experiencing trauma. Imagine your life without ever having time alone, imagine a life without a place to decompress. So, just realizing that everyone is doing the best they can with what they are given and a lot of people are given a shit hand.

[richardjamesbenbow]

Art and Ideas blog post part 1

My intention within the makeup of this piece of writing is to deal on the face of it with three seemingly basic philosophical questions or ideas. Firstly, what is art? A broad and to all intents and purposes an unanswerable question; but none the less one that I feel can be tackled in a thought provoking way. I intend to talk about the ideas, philosophies and cultures which art has developed within historically and prove beyond doubt that artists do not operate within a cultural vacuum but indeed are sponges that soak up contemporary information, ideas and philosophies from their given society. 

Art can be many different things to many different people. Art is an object, it can be a drawing, a painting, a sculpture and arguably many other things. What art cannot be is an object alone. It needs an underpinning story or theme, it has to say something in order to give it value. Art is usually found in houses, offices and especially galleries were the object has been validated as a piece of art by the artist themselves, their contemporaries, art dealers, gallery owners and curators. 

So how do these people know what art is? Do they have special abilities that us mere mortal do not, alas no! These people have simply spent years and often many decades studying, validating and giving credence to the artist, ratifying their product. Yes, art is a product. It is produced or at least made using craft, skill and artistry. These curators and gallerists are often artists themselves; therefore they know what is required and the time, commitment, effort and intellectual ability to create art. 

The problem that exists in defining art is that the word ‘art’ is loosely banded about and used in many contexts. For example – The art of cooking – Indeed Gordon Ramsey will probably tell you, ‘my fucking plate of food is fucking art!’ Ill at ease of disappointing Gordon, I am afraid food is not art. The chef may share some of the skill sets of an artist – attention to detail,  dedication, long working hours. However his lasagne does not tell a life changing story of the twenty first century.  

Art can be beautiful, it can be expressive; It can be wholely representative or hyper-real; however it can also be none of these things. In his book ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’ James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) – American born, British-based artist went on to say  “The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer.”

It has been said that art is a relatively knew phenomenon and is still only in it’s infancy. With all the technological advances it has made it possible for artists to endeavour on new art practices that previously were not even dreamed of especially relating to computer, video, sound and digital art. 

We can look far back to when early man produced paintings on walls within the caves in which they dwelled. Was this not art; an anthropological study of time and place, did they not have something to say culturally or was it purely a record of how many bison they had killed during a specific time. 

Throughout history great cultures have sprang up such as the Greek and Roman societies with their complex rules, sophisticated buildings and social hierarchy.  Within these cultures great monuments and artefacts were created. However what makes this different to the great works of today is that the creators, rather than artists were artisans who were commissioned by their superiors to commence on projects that were wholely designed by those with the ideas rather than the artist or in this case artisan themselves. 

It Was much later that artists themselves gained notoriety and value within society as the artwork was almost always seen as having greater value than the artist themselves.

This has changed considerably if you look at modern day artists such as Damien Hurst or Grayson Perry who, still relatively young are capable of creating many artworks of financial and cultural value within their lifetime. Their life insurance premiums must be high! 

 In the world in which we live today and especially in western society and the likes of Britain what is the modern day role of the artist? Louise Bourgeois - a French/ American artist whom died in just 2010 states “ an artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.”

My believe is that in this interconnected society with all it’s platforms for communication it is impossible to not be influenced by what is happening in the cultural/ political climate. Issues such as Brexit, Donald Trump’s Presidency, Equal rights for women and those of different ethnic cultures, LGBT rights, war, terrorism, the big mental health crisis. All these are contemporary issues are being tackled by artists today. 

A contemporary artist does not work in isolation, they are often multi-facetted, highly skilled intellectuals whom have the power to change the world and create shifts within culture; often highlighting political issues, giving credence to causes and holding the rich and powerful decision makers in our country to account. These are the big ideas in art today. Paul Gaugain, a nineteenth century French painter associated with the Impressionist period once said, “I shut my eyes in order to see.” It is only by meditating on our future and thinking about the big ideas, closing our eyes and using our imaginations that we can harness what is needed as artists, to do what is needed for wider society in this era. 

To sum things up. I would like to look at the key debates again. What is art – A transient practice that is ever shifting, gathering momentum to change the culture we live in. Simply a force for good. The big ideas of today, in the culture that we live in must be discussed by the artist in collaboration with others, because it is often through cooperation and working together that a significant cultural shift could occur for the common good.

#artideas

[harrisonkitteridge-blog]

Sherlock Season 4 – TL;DR: The Fanfiction is Better

SPOILERS AND PALATE-CLEANSING FIC RECS FOLLOW

Season 4 of Sherlock was always going to be a tough sell for me, because the moment they revealed “she’s a secret assassin!” I stopped buying the Mary Watson character. It’s what film critic, Mark Kermode, calls the “Meg Ryan is a helicopter pilot/Keanu Reeves is an architect” problem. Amanda Abbington was just not believable to me as a spec ops assassin, and she wasn’t equipped to perform the action convincingly. And all that was before the problems with the story were even revealed. After Mary shot Sherlock, every time she turned up on the screen, my stomach clenched, because, as presented, she was capable of anything – demonstrating profoundly antisocial tendencies: lying, manipulation, self-serving extreme violence, and disregard for human life. Her total rehabilitation was simply not plausible to me and probably wouldn’t have been even if its foundation hadn’t been the unbelievably ludicrous, glib assertion: “That was surgery.” (Not how guns and bullets work!) Watching her subsequent chumminess with Sherlock, whom she shot in the chest and killed (he flatlined), made me feel like I was being gaslighted. In my mind, it wasn’t good enough for her to say, “I only hurt Sherlock because I love John so much I can’t lose him!” Go down to any battered women’s shelter and you’ll hear similar stories of abusers’ rationalisations for beating up the person their property dared to smile at in the grocery store parking lot. Watching Mary joke and laugh with the people she’d victimised so horribly while continuing to marginalise John made much of The Six Thatchers almost unwatchable for me.

I understand that the undercurrent of intimate partner abuse in the Watson family was wholly unintentional, and it reminds me of the criticisms of 50 Shades of Gray. In both cases, two-dimensional characters (“Action Barbie” and “Sexy Troubled Billionaire”) there solely to serve the plot – not function as decision-making protagonists in their own lives – were the problem. (Yes, I just compared Sherlock to 50 Shades of Gray. At least 50 Shades of Gray had the excuse of a novice writer wrangling with the knottiness of a BDSM relationship as an excuse. Moftiss should know better.) Nevertheless, as much as I disliked the Mary Watson character, as much side eye as I gave her and John’s frankly dubious “love story”, I was appalled by Moftiss icing her so Sherlock could figure out he needs to check his ego. She was just there to sacrifice herself for Sherlock after his douchery got a bullet fired at him and to give John something to shake and sob about. The entire storyline of their “strong female character” was essentially a morality play aimed at teaching Sherlock about the dangers of hubris and a fulcrum to lever up the man-tear quotient. Then they turned their BAMF assassin into the benevolent spirit providing emotional instruction via DVD from beyond the veil. *vomiting emoji*

The Lying Detective at least provided relief from all the incoherent punching and shooting and rappelling of The Six Thatchers, even if it brought with it the lazy construct of the hallucinated spouse as an expression of grief (for real, though, the handling of the Mary Watson character and storyline is a masterclass in what not to do – so incredibly misjudged). One of the major issues I have with Moftiss’s writing is their careless, insensitive handling of serious mental health issues. Using auditory and visual hallucinations as shortcuts to say “I’m devastated by the loss of my wife” really rubbed me the wrong way. John wasn’t just talking to Mary in his head or forgetting she was dead, which happens to many people who lose a loved one suddenly. He was seeing her, hearing her – he couldn’t separate her spectre from reality. Those are not manifestations of grief; they are signs of profound psychological disturbance and distress that require urgent medical intervention, maybe even hospitalisation. They could have tied John’s extreme symptoms to sleep-deprivation from having to deal with Rosie at all hours of the night. The sleep-deprivation could have been exacerbated by insomnia brought on by feelings of guilt. But, no. They did it because real grief, presented the way a well-adjusted, middle-aged adult would experience it just wasn’t sexy enough. 

I never found the “high-functioning sociopath” line funny, but thought they might take it to an interesting place. What is sociopathy? How does it manifest itself? How would it manifest itself in Sherlock Holmes? Why does Sherlock label himself this way? Was he misdiagnosed (he’s obviously not a sociopath)? Was he self-diagnosed? I don’t think Moftiss ever genuinely considered how having a personality disorder would affect a character’s behaviour outside of giving him funny quirks and making him a bit rude. “High-functioning sociopath” was just there as a clapback to Anderson then as something gangster to say before Sherlock shot Magnusson in the face. They never thought it all the way through. By way of comparison, Arthur Conan Doyle described Sherlock Holmes as a law unto himself, as the final arbiter. He was also called “masterful” – able to impose his will on others. When he chose, he had “an ingratiating quality” and could easily earn people’s trust. He was also an accomplished actor and master of disguise, who was able to fool even his dear Watson. There is a grandiose, manipulative psychology at work there that is knitted together with a deep sense of fair play and commitment to justice. While sometimes churlish and short-tempered, he could be profoundly empathetic. He also had nervous breakdowns, what we call major depressive episodes today, and used hard drugs to self-medicate. Sherlock Holmes’s psychology is full of fascinating contradictions. Everything Moftiss needed was in the original text, but they never got beneath the surface. So, while they’ve hit on some of these traits, they’ve never been fully integrated into a complete character because I just don’t think they’ve made the effort to understand mental illness and related drug abuse. There’s actually an interview of Steven Moffat describing Sherlock as “clinically insane”. The fundamental misunderstanding of what that means is why The Final Problem ultimately failed.

The appearance of the evil, secret sister telegraphed that we were heading into telenovela territory, and I wasn’t surprised by the contrivance of the Maze of Moral Abyss, all those macabre labours for Sherlock, John and Mycroft to perform – a steroidal re-hash of The Great Game. It was like something out of a 90s action film – The Rock meets Die Hard With a Vengeance, and I watched it as such. I half expected Bruce Willis or some other 90s throwback to come bounding in, armed to the teeth, start flinging grenades and just command them to shoot their way out. Even so, The Final Problem was the best of the three episodes this season – at least them spending nearly the entire episode at Sherrinford meant that it was cohesive tonally. I still don’t quite know what to make of them choosing to ground the entire plot – all those games, all those deaths – in Eurus’s cry for help. It is possible to humanise a psychopath within the constraints of their diagnosis. They have inner lives that aren’t limited to the monstrous, but they’re not like us – the emo play is always a loser – you can only out-manipulate them. They have an internally consistent view of the world, and once you understand the rules they follow, you can predict their behaviour and outflank them (it’s the basis of criminal profiling), but you have to empathise with them. Do you see how understanding all that not only helps with characterisation but buttresses the plotting and would have avoided the anti-climax of the ending? Answering the question: “What does Eurus really want?” then having Sherlock, John and Mycroft connive a way to give it to her would have been much more interesting.

The obvious pop cultural point of connection with The Final Problem is The Silence of the Lambs. We all were drawn to Hannibal Lecter – we couldn’t help liking him and felt conflicted about it. At the end of the film when Clarice says she knows he won’t come after her because he would consider it “rude” – now that’s interesting. What is Eurus’s “That would be rude”? My inability to answer that question gets to the heart of my problem with Sherlock – I don’t feel like I understand any of the characters or what is motivating them. Superimposing the tropes of storytelling onto the episodes and trying to read between the lines is the only way to make sense of them. They’ve been building to this Eurus confrontation for literally half a decade, and it still fell flat. They gave her whole backstory, and I still don’t understand her. By way of comparison, The Silence of the Lambs is 2 hours and 18 minutes long, and Anthony Hopkins appears on screen for only fifteen minutes, yet we all understood exactly who Hannibal Lecter was, what he was capable of, what he wanted and why. I’ll grant that The Silence of the Lambs is an unfairly high bar, but it provided a clear blueprint for the complex, charismatic, psychopathic serial killer pulling the strings. At the end of The Final Problem, Moftiss asks us to believe that the answer to Eurus’s “problem” was the love of her family. She obviously coveted Sherlock’s attention enough to murder poor Victor Trevor and set her elaborate stage, but anyone who understands even the basic contours of her psychology knows her shaking and crying in a burnt out house and needing a hug from her brother isn’t how that story ends.

I seriously wonder how much better Sherlock would have turned out if at some point in the last 5 years Moftiss had just googled Cluster B Personality Disorders and spent a few days boning up. They wouldn’t have made such a hash of Mary, and Eurus wouldn’t have been “Female Moriarty Who Lost Her Bottle in the End” – utterly anticlimactic. Or did they do the research, but they just couldn’t give a woman the minerals to be a proper villain?

To be clear: I wouldn’t have many of the complaints I’ve laid out if I hadn’t constantly been told Sherlock is the cleverest show on television. It’s not. It never was. The plotting of the first two seasons got it pretty close to being included in that conversation, but it’s no The Sopranos, no The Wire, no Mad Men. At this point, I’d say any workmanlike police procedural has it beat, hands down. Remember all those arguments about which was the better show, Elementary or Sherlock? Well, Elementary won. And that unsexy police procedural structure is why. The show has an identity, a solid foundation – it’s consistent. Moftiss can’t seem to decide what Sherlock is about, and that’s why so much of Season 4 felt like lurching in and out of a Jason Statham film, a Masterpiece Theatre offering and a Lifetime movie. At least The Final Problem managed to break that pattern. It was essentially the Sherlock Holmes origin story, and it took us back to the ancestral home, back to the first tragedy. Even just visually, we were clearly in Skyfall, which shows that Ralph Jones picked up exactly what Moftiss were putting down when he called them out on the “James Bonding” of Sherlock. (The literary beef that ensued was entertaining, and Jones bodied Gatiss with “The Second Letter” – the cipher in the cipher was the mortal wound.)

The argument about the Bonding of the franchise was really about a lack of depth – the flash of fight sequences over the substance of watching a precise but troubled mind at work – and Jones clearly made a valid point. Gatiss shooting back that Sherlock being a BAMF is canon didn’t address the heart of the criticism. I think the Daniel Craig Bond films are much better than anything on offer in post-Season 2 Sherlock. Even with all the camp, sneering baddies and always slightly ridiculous plots, they never got anywhere near anything as radioactively, intergalactically idiotic as “That was surgery.” In a Bond film, when someone is shot in the chest at close range, it’s TO SHOOT THEM IN THE CHEST SO THEY STOP EXISTING. If they manage to survive, it’s a bit of a turn-up. Guns and bullets don’t magically become surgical implements. Yet Sherlock used this physics-defying rebuke of basic human anatomy to convince intelligent, educated people to go along with the rehabilitation of Mary Watson (why they chose to make her silly storyline so important is baffling). They then doubled down on that narrative in The Six Thatchers, piling on a barrage of action that was essentially extraneous to the story. All to get us to the moment in the aquarium where Mary dives in front of a bullet to save Sherlock, who for some unfathomable reason decided to talk over any attempts to pacify Norbury and all but commanded her to shoot him. Then Mary was kind of a ghost but not really. Then they introduced a long-lost evil sister and an island prison. Do all that if you want; just don’t insult my intelligence by smugly telling me it’s clever then hide behind Arthur Conan Doyle’s skirts when you get called out on it. If from the beginning Moftiss had just owned up to having wanted to write a glossy, slightly absurd, mainstream actioner with soliloquizing villains, I would have gladly gone along with it. But I’ve continuously been told I’m watching The Usual Suspects or some other complex thriller with a sense of humour when it’s clear I’m watching Bad Boys 2 with British accents. Again: that’s fine in the name of pure entertainment; just know that insisting it’s clever feels like a straight-up troll. At some point all the cognitive dissonance had to become too much to bear.

So what’s the result of all this?

The fanfiction is better.

Even relatively inexperienced fanfic writers with a limited set of tools at least attempted to flesh out the characters and give them backstories and lives, fully formed personalities. It didn’t always work, but the effort was appreciated. The superstars of the genre used the hiatus to write stories that surpassed anything Moftiss gave us in Season 4, particularly in terms of character development. When characters’ motivations drive the plot, the story is not only more cohesive narratively, it’s more engaging and lasting because all the shocks and gasps are earned and move beyond cheap manipulation for the sake of entertainment. At the heart of the narrative success of the top-tier fanfiction is empathy. The writers got inside the characters’ heads and asked, “Who are these people? Where are they from? What experiences shaped them? What do they want? What are they afraid of? Whom do they love?” Moftiss seemed to reverse engineer everyone’s behaviour and emotional reactions by working backwards from the plot – everyone is just there to be manipulated, to be made to speak or act because the plot demands it, so those questions can’t really be answered. That labyrinth Eurus runs Sherlock, John and Mycroft through is a microcosm of the entire franchise. If I didn’t read fanfiction, maybe I could have gone along for the ride with Moftiss, but I knew there were fully realised characters out there whose hurt wasn’t manufactured, whose choices mattered beyond setting up a gag or a plot twist, who were protagonists in their own lives no matter how small their roles were.

Not even Sherlock escapes this poor treatment.

Here’s what exactly none of the plot-driven, post-Season 3 Sherlock fanfiction I’ve read failed to consider: Sherlock dealing with the fallout of having been captured and tortured in Serbia then being shot by Mary. Do you know why they all went there? Because being the victim of that kind of brutal violence tends to affect people psychologically, and those effects ripple into the lives of their friends and family. But in Moftiss Land, Sherlock being chained and beaten at the opening of the third season was just there so we could watch Mycroft crack wise while wearing a fur hat. Mary shooting him was meant to “Red Wedding” us, nothing more. There were no lingering physical or psychological effects from Sherlock having been tortured. It’s never come up again, not even as an aside. Really think about that and what it means about the quality of the writing, about the depth of the characterisation, about the empathy being deployed towards the eponymous hero. Sherlock is obviously the character Moftiss hold in the highest esteem, but Season 3 proved Sherlock is just a prop to them – their most beloved prop but still just a thing, a toy. The only real narrative through lines in Sherlock are the twists, and they’re the only elements that aren’t played right on the surface. Everything else is meant to be taken at face value. There is no subtlety, no subtext. There are Easter eggs and other markers laid down mostly for plot payoffs – a puzzle to solve – but no emotional depth, no narrative consistency. Sherlock is and always has been elementary – there were just too few episodes for most of us to suss it out sooner.

A few people saw through all the flash of Sherlock from the very beginning, and I tip my hat to them for being far more perceptive than I. (If they’re running around being insufferable and shouting, “I told you so!” they’ve more than earned the right.) The first two seasons were a fresh, shiny new take on the somewhat musty image of the great detective, and we all got to watch Benedict Cumberbatch take command and come into his own. But the real reason those early episodes were of such a higher quality was the low budgets: they handcuffed Moftiss. They couldn’t get all the helicopters, Aston Martins and rappelling super soldiers on their juvenile wish list, so the plot twists actually had to be interesting not just turned up to eleven. We all mistakenly assumed that character development that would match the level of the plotting would come later. What those early critics of Sherlock understood (and what has come to pass) was that the reverse would happen: the plotting would sink to meet the level of the poor characterisation. What most of us took for slight faux pas we could overlook, they realised were portents of the slide in quality we’ve all witnessed. They knew Moftiss weren’t to be trusted to dock the ship, and they were absolutely right. Once Moftiss were truly given free rein, the true heart of Sherlock was revealed, and it’s just confused but lacks the self-awareness to realise or do anything about it.

Being “the smart kids” is part of the hardcore Sherlock fandom’s identity, and I don’t see many of them being able to admit that Moftiss bamboozled them. (We all got took, guys.) The capricious characterisation, careening plot and disjointed editing have thus far been interpreted as intentional, as Moftiss hiding the ball, as further evidence of their diabolical cleverness – all the incoherence taken as a collection of hidden clues to be thoroughly investigated. Even though Season 3 made it clear the story was spinning out of control and Season 4 has seen it hurl itself off a cliff (but only just miss smashing its head on the rocks), much of the earnest analysis will likely continue. Many of the casuals are in it for the slick deductions and probably embraced all the high-octane thrills. (There will be an inevitable backlash, though – you can’t fool all the people all the time.) The excellent ratings of Season 4 mean the bean counters will want a Season 5, or at the very least more Christmas Specials. Enough of the audience is probably still on board to justify it financially. I can only hope Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have enough sense to withhold their participation. The Final Problem wasn’t the unmitigated disaster I was expecting, but everything from Season 3 onwards has made it clear the show can’t live up to its early potential and that the problems with the storytelling are baked in. So, it’s best this latest Sherlock Holmes incarnation just come to a close before it becomes a career-devouring black hole.

Thank goodness the fanfiction provides someplace the characters can live on.

  Fics to Cleanse the Palate

TRUTH MAY VARY by @amalnahurriyeh

Seven years after Sherlock's death, John's life is normal.

And then it isn't.

I don’t usually rec incomplete work, but this is close enough to being done to be satisfying. If Season 3 onward had shown even a fraction of the emotional maturity of this story, we would be in a very different place.

Read on AO3.

 STRAIGHT BOY PAIN by @glenmoresparks

Sherlock is in pain. Billy Kinkaid, the Camden garrotter and best man Sherlock knows, diagnoses it. Ademar Silver, a male prostitute in south London, attempts to treat it. Lestrade, kindly Detective Inspector of New Scotland Yard, doesn’t notice it. Eventually, John Watson, healer and registered medical doctor, cures it.

And a beautician called Penny paints Sherlock’s toenails.

Read on AO3.

 FAN MAIL by @scullyseviltwin

“WatsonChick143 has been rather maniacal in her commenting as of late... she’s left comments on everything you’ve posted John, something so obvious can’t have escaped even your attention."

A fan of John’s blog graduates into stalking.

Read on AO3.

 THE YELLOW POPPIES by @silentauroriamthereal

Sherlock is threatened and assaulted in the hospital immediately after having been shot in the heart, first by Mary, then by Magnussen. As he recovers at Baker Street with John and plans the attack on Appledore with Mycroft, he fights to work through the trauma caused by these two visits. Set during His Last Vow.

Read on AO3.

And in an act of shameless self-promotion:

BEFORE HOLMES MET WATSON by Meeeeeeeeeeeeee!

What does it mean to be a detective with no cases to solve? Sherlock Holmes tries not to ponder this question as he distracts himself from his professional failings with bare-knuckle boxing at an underground fight club and vials of cocaine and morphine. John Watson spends his days in an operating theatre on an Army base in Afghanistan, doing his best to patch up the wounded and failing more often than he'd like. The dark, violent worlds in which both men choose to live complicate their romantic lives and cause them terrible suffering but set them on paths that are destined to cross.

Read on Wattpad or Tablo OR download the Ebook on my website.

I’m always looking for recs, so PLEASE ADD A FIC YOU THINK ISN’T GETTING ENOUGH LOVE.

#sherlock #s4 #the final problem

[sherristockman]

A CRISPR Future New Form of Eugenics? Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Gene editing was once a very imprecise and expensive process, but today, thanks to the development of CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat, scientists can go into your DNA and essentially cut and paste it at specified places. Progress is being made in tackling genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and certain forms of blindness and muscular dystrophy. A CRISPR clinical trial in people with cancer is already underway in China, and the technology has been used to edit human embryos made from sperm from men carrying inherited disease mutations. The researchers successfully altered the DNA in a way that would eliminate or correct the genes causing the inherited disease.1 If the embryos were implanted into a womb and allowed to grow, the process, which is known as germline engineering, would result in the first genetically modified children — and any engineered changes would be passed on to their own children. The technology is moving so fast that innovations like this are occurring before their full implications are known or fully understood. “Some critics say germline experiments could open the floodgates to a brave new world of ‘designer babies’ engineered with genetic enhancements,” Technology Review reported, bringing up questions of ethics and eugenics.2 Does the Elimination of Down Syndrome in Iceland Point to a Dark Future for CRISPR? It’s recently been reported that, in Iceland, Down syndrome births are becoming increasingly rare, with just one or two children born with the condition each year. In essence, Down syndrome is disappearing, but not by nature or happenstance. In Iceland, up to 85 percent of pregnant women receive prenatal screening tests to detect chromosome abnormalities, including Down syndrome. Close to 100 percent of women who receive a positive result end up terminating their pregnancy, CBS News reported.3 Other countries also have high termination rates for fetuses with Down syndrome: 67 percent in the U.S.; 77 percent in France; and 98 percent in Denmark, for instance. As for why so many women terminate their Down syndrome pregnancies in Iceland, geneticist Kari Stefansson told CBS News, "It reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling. And I don't think that heavy-handed genetic counseling is desirable … You're having impact on decisions that are not medical, in a way."4 Writing in The Nation, journalist and historian — and father to a young son with Down syndrome — David Perry noted that “we’re failing our test run for the age of CRISPR.”5 He points out that today children with Down syndrome can lead long, happy and productive lives, but many expectant parents aren’t informed of this reality. Prenatal testing companies market heavily to physicians but provide little information on the conditions being tested for. As a result, some parents are receiving wrong information about their would-be child’s prognosis. Perry writes:6 “What does all this have to do with CRISPR? Right now, we’re still in a liminal state when it comes to predicting genetic outcomes for fetuses. Our tools, from amniocentesis (developed in the 1950s and ’60s) to contemporary screenings that locate fetal blood cells in the mother’s bloodstream, are reactive and postconception. Soon, they’ll shift to preconception and proactive. What will the tens of thousands of clinicians tell would-be parents as they get flooded with messaging from companies eager to sell their high-tech CRISPR product lines?” As it stands, access to information, or lack thereof, may result in physicians providing outdated or biased genetic counseling to patients. As CRISPR moves ahead, access to accurate and neutral data will be essential. Difficult questions — such as, “When does abortion become eugenics?” as posed by The Atlantic7 — must be asked, and answered. The time has come when parents can choose to abort a fetus based on a disability, but soon this may extend into sex, race or even, one day, sexual orientation. Even now, Miami-based radiologist Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie pointed out that “eugenics and equality can’t mix,” explaining in U.S. News & World Report, “When we do everything in our power to detect the existence of a baby with a special need with the sole purpose of terminating him or her, we create a discriminatory culture, where only perfect humans may apply for entrance. This is a powerful obstacle against equality and acceptance of the disabled, which a just society must set as its first goal.”8 Perry also notes that access to unbiased, up-to-date information is crucial in an age of genetic testing and CRISPR:9 “Preventing this potentially dystopian future where altered genes separate the haves from the have-nots starts by shifting discourse. A pro-information approach demands that everyone involved in genetic counseling have access to the best data and presents it in a value-neutral way. We must build systems now that grow as our tools evolve. If we do not, genetic diversity will gradually become code for poverty, and new stigmas will run all the way to the DNA.” Many Countries Have Already Banned Genetic Engineering of Human Embryos, Germ-Line Modification Whether or not the creation of “designer babies” with a certain eye color or increased intelligence is inevitable remains to be seen, but some regions are not willing to take a wait-and-see approach. About 40 countries have already banned the genetic engineering of human embryos and 15 of 22 European countries prohibit germ line modification.10 Time reported:11 “Using CRISPR on humans is still hugely controversial, in part because it’s so easy. The fact that it allows scientists to efficiently edit any gene — for some cancers, but also potentially for a predisposition for red hair, for being overweight, for being good at math — worries ethicists because of what could happen if it gets into the wrong hands. … As CRISPR goes mainstream in medicine and agriculture, profound moral and ethical questions will arise. Few would argue against using CRISPR to treat terminal cancer patients, but what about treating chronic diseases? Or disabilities? If sickle-cell anemia can be corrected with CRISPR, should obesity, which drives so many life-threatening illnesses? Who decides where that line ought to be drawn?” Correcting embryonic DNA to eliminate genetic defects associated with inheritable diseases currently has the greatest support, but some scientists argue that using germ-line gene editing to eliminate genetic disease is unnecessary, since the technology to test and choose embryos free of genetic disease already exists and is regularly used in IVF clinics. The alteration of genes to protect a person against future disease or diseases is another area of ongoing research, while genetic enhancement, in which genes are installed or modified to change a person's appearance, or physical or mental potential is most controversial. A top U.S. intelligence official even added gene-editing to a list of potential weapons of mass destruction that pose a threat to national safety.12 As complex and futuristic as it seems, gene editing is inexpensive and easy to do. Killer mosquitoes, agricultural plagues and DNA-targeting viruses have all been suggested as potential bioweapons should CRISPR or other gene-editing tools fall into the wrong hands.13 Gene editing has become so mainstream there are classes on the topic available at community colleges and DIY kits you can order online. Even middle school students may learn the basics of gene editing in science class, with some comparing the new technology to computer coding a few decades ago. CRISPR May Cause Unexpected Mutations Gene-editing technology has gotten much more precise over the years, particularly with the invention of CRISPR-Cas9.14 By modifying an enzyme called Cas9, the gene-editing capabilities are significantly improved, in some cases reducing the error rate to "undetectable levels." It’s not perfect, however, and may accidently hit other parts of the genome. A recent study searched for unintended mutations, based on a separate study that used CRISPR-Cas9 to restore sight in blind mice by correcting a genetic mutation. The researchers sequenced the entire genome of the CRISPR-edited mice to search for mutations. In addition to the intended genetic edit, they found more than 100 additional deletions and insertions along with more than 1,500 single-nucleotide mutations. Study co-author Dr. Stephen Tsang, of Columbia University Medical Center, told Scienmag:15 “We feel it’s critical that the scientific community consider the potential hazards of all off-target mutations caused by CRISPR, including single nucleotide mutations and mutations in non-coding regions of the genome … Researchers who aren’t using whole genome sequencing to find off-target effects may be missing potentially important mutations. Even a single nucleotide change can have a huge impact.” It’s too soon to say whether the mutations are a cause for alarm. However, in the recent study in which researchers used CRISPR to edit human embryos, altering the DNA to prevent inherited disease, they claim to have developed a better technique that avoids off-target effects, as well as mosaicism, in which the DNA changes are taken up by some of the embryo’s cells instead of all of them.16 Meanwhile, a February 2017 report issued by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences (NAS) basically set the stage for allowing research on germline modification and CRISPR, but only for the purpose of eliminating serious diseases — not for “enhancing traits or abilities beyond ordinary health.” The latter would raise concerns “about whether the benefits can outweigh the risks, and about fairness if available only to some people,” NAS noted.17 According to Technology Review, however, “Despite such barriers, the creation of a gene-edited person could be attempted at any moment, including by IVF clinics operating facilities in countries where there are no such legal restrictions.”18 With the technology becoming increasingly accessible to anyone with an interest, it’s probably going to be a matter of when, not if, this boundary is crossed, with unknown consequences. While gene-editing technology has the potential to be great, it could also be easily, and seriously, misused and abused.

#VitalityPath

[ladylaurette]

30 goals all women should achieve by age 30 by Love, Haley

30 goals all women should achieve by age 30As you can probably tell from my photograph, I am not quite thirty. In fact, so long as I'm being honest, I am not even a legal adult just yet (I turn 18 in July). I am, however, old enough to know what kind of woman I'd like to be by the prime age of thirty: self-assured, capable, and successful. My hopeful guess is that many other girls my age, and even most twenty-something women, want the same things as me. What follows is a list of basic goals I'm striving to achieve by age 30 - ones I think you should strive for, too. 1. Pay off your student loans. This is probably wishful thinking on my part, but unless you've been in graduate, medical, or law school, or recently gone back for a new degree, thirty seems late to be making those last few payments. Pay your loans off as early as possible so you can avoid nasty interest rates and evade debt later. 2. Think long and hard about marriage - but ignore others' expectations. By thirty, most single women are probably feeling the pressure from family, friends, and society: "When are you going to get married?" "When will I have grandchildren?" But before she answers anyone else's questions, you should know the answer yourself: Do you really want to get married? It might be my inner child of divorced parents talking, but marriage definitely isn't for everyone. Likewise, you are no less "feminist" or "progressive" for wanting a traditional family. There's no better time than your twenties to decide if marriage just isn't your thing, or if you're looking to put a ring on it. 3. Refer to your vagina by name. In other words, boycott the words "down there." At thirty, you are a grown-ass woman. Shyly pointing to your pelvis won't help the doctor figure out what your problem is. Just spit it out already: IT'S A VAGINA! 4. Know what you can and can't wear to work. Here's what I learned while conducting research for my interview in the Governor's Office: corporate careers, like law, government, and finance, generally require suits or pencil skirts with low hemlines and muted colors, while "business casual" allows for cardigans instead of blazers, bare legs (but still no hems above the knee), and brighter colors. Also, as a general rule, never wear anything so short, small, or sparkly your grandma wouldn't approve of it. 5. Understand your skin type. Last summer, when I got my first facial from Ulta, I basically learned that everything I'd thought about my skin was wrong. To which I basically said "Ok, cool." No woman should have to learn that lesson beyond the age of thirty. If you're rounding the bend and still can't manage your skin woes, have your skin mapped by a dermatologist or cosmetologist. Skin mapping gives you a visual of where your skin is oily and dry, and even helps you target the source of your breakouts (mine are hormonal, in case you were wondering). 6. Quit dieting. When I first learned about intuitive eating, I was a 16-year-old girl struggling to overcome a severely damaged relationship with food and some borderline anorexic habits. In case you haven't heard of it, intuitive eating is - quite simply - eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full. Deciding to combat the cycle of yo-yo dieting - i.e. lose weight, gain it back, rinse, repeat - and to instead trust my body's natural instincts was quite possibly the most important decision I ever made. Yes, I still eat way too much Annie's mac 'n' cheese, and I definitely still binge on ice cream when I'm PMSing (sometimes I even feel guilty about it), but now that no food is "off-limits" to me, I've also learned what it feels like to crave healthy foods like veggie sticks and oatmeal....weird, right? 7. Practice self-care. It's a lesson all women need to learn: taking care of yourself isn't selfish. It makes you a more complete person, because you are able to address your most basically needs that might not be met. For example, are you sleeping enough? Are you drinking enough water? Are you eating three meals a day? Start with these basics before moving on to more complex needs, such as feeling safe, comfortable, important, and loved. 8. See a therapist. I have a friend who - much like Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow - swears that everyone should try therapy, and I have to agree. You don't need to be mentally ill to benefit from therapy. While I haven't been to therapy since childhood, I fully plan on going again before I get married, because I know there are issues related to my parents' divorce that I need to work through before I can have a truly healthy relationship. You don't have to like it once you try it, but you do have to realize that some problems are simply too big for you to solve on your own - and if therapy's too expensive for you, know that there are plenty of free mental health resources that anyone can take advantage of. 9. Learn how and when to say no - and then actually do it. "No" is in every woman's vocabulary - for example, when my conservative friend asks if I'll be voting Republican in the next election. But how often do we say no to our friends, who want to go out drinking for the third time this week when all we want to do is watch Netflix in pajamas? Or to our bosses, who want us to finish four critical projects by the end of next week and still have the nerve to ask if we'd be willing to take on a fifth? We women feel responsible for taking care of everything and everyone; it's our natural, biological instinct to put on everyone else's oxygen mask before tending to our own. But know this: it is not your job to protect everyone else's feelings from being hurt. Once you turn thirty, it's about time you put on your own damn mask first - before it really does become a life or death situation. 10. Find a cause you care about. By thirty, you've finally pushed past the grueling years of school-stipulated community service in high school and college. Thus, in adulthood, volunteering is more rewarding than ever because it is, finally, 100% voluntary. So, take it upon yourself to explore the causes you're passionate about. Once you've found that cause - whether it's lobbying for cruelty-free cosmetics or building houses with Habitat for Humanity - stick with it for a lifetime of fulfillment. 11. Start speaking candidly about sex. The most perfect time to start being honest about your wants and needs during sex is the first time you have it. Nevertheless, being straightforward is difficult for most normal, caring human beings (and if it's not hard for you, then kudos for being more badass but no less loving than the rest of us). After all, you don't want to be needy. You don't want your complaints to interfere with your partner's pleasure. You don't want to "kill the mood" - although suffering through discomfort and even pain just to save a little awkwardness pretty much does the trick in that category. But trust me, sex is better for everyone involved when both people are honest about their feelings. Don't just speak up - don't be afraid to ask your partner how he or she or xe is doing, too. 12. Save for retirement. You are given a 401K for a reason. It's your responsibility to use it. And, in case you were wondering - which I know I have been, considering I'm only 17 - your 401K is a workplace savings plan that allows you to invest part of your paycheck for retirement, without subjecting it to taxes. Also important to know: the recommended savings rate is about 10% of your income, meaning anything above that is stellar. (Another finance lesson I learned today: the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized loans. Who knew, right?!) 13. Take a multivitamin.... Which reminds me, I haven't taken mine yet today. BRB. 14. Accept all compliments without qualifying them. Stop saying "Thanks, but..." whenever someone tells you how pretty or smart you are. You're a gorgeous, badass genius. Please recognize yourself as such. 15. Say "I love you" as often as possible. Simply put, you never know when it might be the last time. Call your parents to say it, and especially your grandparents, if you're lucky enough to have them. 16. Wear less makeup, less often. #iwokeuplikethis shouldn't be specially reserved for celebrities who have paid for thousands of dollars in plastic surgery and skin-care treatments. All women should feel comfortable enough in their own skin not only to post a makeup-free selfie, but also to walk around unencumbered by greasy foundation and clumps of mascara hanging in their eyes in their day-to-day lives. If applying professional-quality makeup every day is your jam, you do you. But don't let society's unreasonable standards make you feel obliged to cake on the blush when you're really not feeling it. 17. Go to the doctor. And the dentist. And the gynecologist. Especially the gyn. The fact that your mom stopped making appointments for you is no excuse to stop going. In general, women need a check-up and a full pelvic exam (that includes a Pap smear) every year, and a dentist appointment every six months. And, on that note, my first visit to the gynecologist is about six years overdue.... 18. Accept your clothing size. Accept that it does not define you, ever. So the size five jeans didn't fit, after all...a word of advice in this situation: "fat" is just a meaningless adjective, not a feeling. Don't try and force them to fit - or worse, starve yourself to squeeze into them. Your size is merely a number that has nothing to do with your self-worth, so don't belittle yourself for going up a size (or over-pride yourself on going down). Your booty will look much better in some comfy size sevens, anyways. 19. Find a workout that doesn't suck. Admittedly, the level of a workout's suckiness is relative. Personally, I hate running, but some people swear it is the be-all end-all and that you haven't truly lived until you've run your first marathon. (Me, on the other hand? I'm more of a "lift weights and kick shit" kind of girl.) However, the important thing isn't how you work out. All that matters is that you do. So, in the wise words of Nike, just do it.   20. Have a will. Where there's a will, there's a way...to provide for your death. Not the most optimistic sentiment, but still important, and still completely necessary - especially if you have already started a family by then. 21. Know how to defend yourself. In my opinion, self-defense classes, along with rape prevention classes, should be mandatory parts of college orientation for both genders. Many colleges do offer the opportunity to take classes like this, and I fully encourage women in particular to take advantage of them. I know I will. But in case you missed your shot in college, know that it is never too late to learn how to defend yourself. At the very least, applying to carry pepper spray - that's right, there's an application now (or in the state of Massachusetts there is) - will offer some extra protection. 22. Vote. Too many elections are swayed not by those who actually vote, but by the vast number of Americans who don't. I've said it once and I'll say it again: you are a grown-ass woman. You can handle watching a debate or two and checking off a box at the polls. Just long as it's not next to the word Trump. 23. Travel alone. Learning to live alone is one of those valuable life lessons learned in college that most adults wouldn't trade for anything. Even more rewarding - or so I hear - is the experience of traveling by oneself. Planning, budgeting, and executing a trip all on your own is a lot of hard work - but it's an important step toward becoming a self-sufficient adult in an unforgiving world. (And, as a sardonic side note, traveling alone as a woman may also be the perfect chance to test out some of your new self-defense skills.) 24. Own a planner - and actually use it. My planner rules my life. The days I forget it at home are days that most people should probably avoid me. While not everyone needs to be as obsessed with their planner as I am, I think every woman would benefit from getting in the habit of writing down assignments (whether at work or school), important appointments, birthdays, etc....especially if it's in a cute Lilly Pulitzer or Kate Spade agenda. 25. Pay attention to the news. Daily. Unless you need to avoid triggering material due to a mental illness like depression, it is absolutely essential to know what's going on in the world at all times. Political affairs can change in the blink of an eye, and you don't want to be the only one at work who doesn't know about the big financial crisis overseas or the latest terrorist attack. I subscribe to theSkimm to get my news in one convenient daily dose. It's delivered straight to my inbox five days a week, it's easy reading, and - best of all - it's completely free. 26. Follow up when networking. I met an amazing professional from the State Street Corporation in Boston at a Girl Scout event this November - and what did I forget to do? The most crucial step of networking of course: I forgot to follow up! (Of course, the irony of the whole situation is that one of the topics of the company's presentation was networking. But that's a story for another time.) By the time I finally got around to building a LinkedIn profile, it seemed awkward for me to try to get in touch. So I still haven't. And now I've learned my lesson. Hopefully you, too, will learn yours before age thirty. 27. Identify your priorities - and edit your life accordingly. "Edit your life" seems like such an obnoxious Hollywood phrase, so I'll explain in layman's terms: if you are twenty-two years old and still taking the piano lessons your parents made you start when you were five, even though you really hate them, my only question to you is: why? 28. Try journaling. I've kept a journal since I was eight years old, and not only has it helped me preserve my memories, but it has also trained me to better write and communicate, and to express my emotions in a safe, constructive way. Knowing that I can reach for my journal whenever I'm sad, mad, or scared is an enormous comfort to me - one that I think every woman should experience by age thirty. 29. Put your phone away when you're with friends. Unfortunately, I come from the generation where "hanging out" means sitting next to friends while scrolling through your individual Pinterest feeds. Fortunately, all it takes to change that is a little bit of will power...good thing I have 12.5 years to master that one! 30. Set reasonable goals. I learned from Girl Scouts that if there's anything all goals should be, it's SMART: in other words, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Saying "I will become a U.S. Senator" probably isn't realistic for a twenty-year-old soon-to-be college graduate - but saying "I will apply to intern with my state Senator by the start of second semester" is. That isn't to say we shouldn't dream big - but in the wise words of Drake, who "started at the bottom/now he here," the path to success starts small and gradually grows over time. Nobody learns to run before they learn to walk - except maybe Amy Poehler. She's so fabulous; I'm pretty sure she ran first.

#lovehaley

[ourhealthyfoodblog-blog]

New Post has been published on Healthy Food and Remedies

New Post has been published on http://www.healthyfoodandremedies.com/2017/05/24/50-incredibly-weird-facts-human-body-2/

50 Incredibly Weird Facts About the Human Body

As long as we make efforts to take care of ourselves and live healthy, there is a good chance that our bodies will serve us well for a long time. Our bodies truly are amazing. You might be surprised at what your body is capable of after reading these 50 weird facts about the human body:

The Brain

Complex and poorly understood, the brain is what makes everything work properly. The body may be kept alive, but without the brain, a person can’t truly live. Here are some interesting and weird facts about the brain.

The brain doesn’t feel pain: Even though the brain processes pain signals, the brain itself does not actually feel pain.

Your brain has huge oxygen needs: Your brain requires 20 percent of the oxygen and calories your body needs — even though your brain only makes up two percent of your total body weight.

80% of the brain is water: Instead of being relatively solid, your brain 80% water. This means that it is important that you remain properly hydrated for the sake of your mind.

Your brain comes out to play at night: You’d think that your brain is more active during the day, when the rest of your body is. But it’s not. Your brain is more active when you sleep.

Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.

A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.

The brain changes shapes during puberty: Your teenage years do more than just change how you feel; the very structure of your brain changes during the teen years, and it even affects impulsive, risky behavior.

Your brain can store everything: Technically, your brain has the capacity to store everything you experience, see, read or hear. However, the real issue is recall — whether you can access that information.

Information in your brain travels at different speeds: The neurons in your brain are built differently, and information travels along them at different speeds. This is why sometimes you can recall information instantly, and sometimes it takes a little longer.

Your Senses

You might be surprised at the amazing things your various senses can accomplish.

Your smell is unique: Your body odor is unique to you — unless you have an identical twin. Even babies recognize the individual scents of their mothers.

Humans use echolocation: Humans can use sound to sense objects in their area using echolocation. It is thought that those who are blind develop this ability to heightened effectiveness.

Adrenaline gives you super strength: Yes, with the proper response in certain situations, you really can lift a car.

Women smell better than men: Women are better than men at identifying smells.

Your nose remembers 50,000 scents: It is possible for your nose to identify and remember more than 50,000 smells.

Your hearing decreases when you overeat: When you eat too much food, it actually reduces your ability to hear. So consider eating healthy — and only until you are full.

Your sense of time is in your head: How you experience time is all about your perception. Some speculate that stress can help you experience time dilation. Apparently, time manipulation isn’t just for superheroes.

Reproduction

How we as a species reproduce offers all sorts of interesting weird facts. Here are some of the weirder things you might not know.

Your teeth are growing before birth: Even though it takes months after you are born to see teeth, they start growing about six months before you are born.

Babies are stronger than oxen: On a pound for pound basis, that is. For their size, babies are quite powerful and strong.

Babies always have blue eyes when they are born: Melanin and exposure to ultraviolet light are needed to bring out the true color of babies’ eyes. Until then they all have blue eyes.

Women might be intrinsically bi: There are sex studies that indicate that women might bisexual intrinsically, no matter how they class themselves, while men are usually either gay or straight.

Most men have regular erections while asleep: Every hour to hour and a half, sleeping men have erections — though they may not be aware of it.

Sex can be a pain reliever: Even though the “headache” excuse is often used to avoid sex, the truth is that intercourse can provide pain relief. Sex can also help you reduce stress.

Chocolate is better than sex: In some studies, women claim they would rather have chocolate than sex. But does it really cause orgasm? Probably not on its own.

Body Functions

The things our bodies do are often strange and sometimes gross. Here are some weird facts about the way your body functions.

Earwax is necessary: If you want healthy ears, you need some earwax in there.

Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.

Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.

A full bladder is about the size of a soft ball: When your bladder is full, holding up to 800 cc of fluid, it is large enough to be noticeable.

You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.

A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.

Coughs leave at 60 mph: A cough is much less dangerous, leaving the body at 60 mph. That’s still highway speed, though.

Musculoskeletal System

Find out what you didn’t know about your muscles and bones.

Bones can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.

You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilage between your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.

1/4 of your bones are in your feet: There are 26 bones in each foot, meaning that the 52 bones in account for 25 percent of your body’s 206 bones.

It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.

When you take a step, you are using up to 200 muscles: Walking uses a great deal of muscle power — especially if you take your 10,000 steps.

Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.

Bone can be stronger than steel: Once again, this is a pound for pound comparison, since steel is denser and has a higher tensile strength.

Unnecessary Body Parts

We have a number of body parts that are, well, useless. Here are some facts about the body parts we don’t actually need.

Coccyx: This collection of fused vertebrae have no purpose these days, although scientists believe it’s what’s left of the mammal tail humans used to have. It may be useless, but when you break your coccyx, it’s still painful.

Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe‘s evolutionary purpose is disappearing — and maybe the pinkie itself will go the way of the dodo.

Wisdom teeth: This third set of molars is largely useless, doing little beyond crowding the mouth and sometimes causing pain.

Vomeronasal organ: There are tiny (and useless) chemoreceptors lining the inside of the nose.

Most body hair: While facial hair serves some purposes, the hair found on the rest of body is practically useless and can be removed with few ill effects.

Female vas deferens: A cluster of dead end tubules near the ovaries are the remains of what could have turned into sperm ducts.

Male Uterus: Yeah, men have one too — sort of. The remains of this undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs on one side of the male prostate gland

Appendix: Yep, your appendix is basically useless. While it does produce some white blood cells, most people are fine with an appendectomy.

Random Weird Body Facts

Here are a few final weird facts about the human body.

Your head creates inner noises: It’s rare, but exploding head syndrome exists.

Memory is affected by body position: Where you are and how you are placed in your environment triggers memory.

You can’t tickle yourself: Go ahead. Try to tickle yourself.

Being right-handed can prolong your life: If you’re right-handed, you could live up to nine years longer than a lefty.

Only humans shed emotional tears: Every other animal that produces tears has a physiological reason for doing so.

#Human Body

[jimmerscrackpotideas-blog]

Thoughts From My First Week Watching First Take

First Take is EPSN's flagship daily program, even more so than Sports Center. It was a show built around the friendship and rivalry of Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith. It achieved success by having scotching hot takes, and the sometimes contentious chemistry between Skip and Stephen A.  That version of the show, though wildly popular by the standards of morning basic cable sports television, is a show I have never watched a single episode of, in its entirety. I watched many clips of that version of the show, and heard many sound bites from it, on radio and podcasts. But I never, ever watched it. Why? Well, the purpose of this essay isn't really what First Take was, it's what it is now, but I'll just say that I wasn't a fan of Skip Bayless, or his influence on sports commentary, and I'll leave it at that.

When I heard Skip was leaving, I thought of one man that would be absolutely perfect for the show. As fate would have it, that one man ended up getting the job, Max Kellerman.  I was quite happy for Max, as I've been a fan of his going back to his ATH days, but I became a huge fan from listening to his NYC  radio show on podcast ( a market I didn't live in, and who's sports teams I don't care about at all, I listened 100% because of Max's talent). Yet, I still did not watch First Take. It was opposite one of my all time favorite sports media show, of any genre, The Dan Lebatard Show.  If I was up at that time of day ( which in truth, I'm not often, as I'm typically a night owl) I was watching TDLS.

However, my hours have been changing, and starting on Tuesday of this week, for the first time ever, I've been watching First Take. Watching it with completely fresh eyes, as I've never seen a complete episode, only clips, and had no idea who Molly Qerim even was ( she's the third chair, the “host/referee”), as I was wholly unfamiliar with her previous work.  What follows is how I perceive the current show with these fresh eyes, what I like about it, what I don't particularly like about it, and what changes I think would make this show (which I now enjoy) even better.

First Take is ESPN's premier sports talk as competitive debate show. ESPN has many shows of this genre. Pardon the Interruption was the first it's kind, and plays more like two old friends arguing about sports ( which it is) than a truly competitive debate.  Around the Horn takes the competition to it's most literal extreme, awarding points to the 4 contestants,  and awarding a “winner “ each episode. Highly Questionable is in many ways is a satire of this form, making fun of genre while still fitting into the form of it.  Yet, First Take is different from all others, both in tone and scope.  Stephen A and Max are rhetorical boxers, going round after round with each other, over the course of two hours. They stunt on each other, they playfully mock each other, and they try to rip down each others points while lifting up their own. There is a highly competitive element to the show, even though the “winners” of these debates are solely in the minds of the viewer. We are the boxing judges, scoring every round. What's remarkable about this show, to my mind, is not the competition between Max and Stephen A, but the length of the show itself, and by extension the length each take can be. That First Take is two hours long is rather extraordinary and a feature of the show I'd never considered before watching it in full.  All the other shows ESPN has of this genre are half hour shows. Because of time constants, the competitor-commentators have to get their takes in as fast as they can, or get left behind.  So, while a show like ATH might touch on some really weighty topics, the structure of the show itself prevents any topic, even important ones, from getting more than soundbites from the participants.

First Take does not have this problem, and I think that's potentially First Take's biggest virtue.  Max and Stephen A can seemingly use as much time as they want,  to present ideas as complex and deep as they want. Much of the time the topics are not particularly “deep”, but even with light weight topics, it's fascinating watching the way Stephen A will bombastically bluster with the tone of a highly effective preacher, or the way Max will use rhetorical trickery to bend an argument to his will, even if the logic behind it is not always solid (though it often is). Both Stephen A and Max are incredibly enjoyable to watch in their own ways, and  both quite often they make legitimately thoughtful points. For example, this Friday Stephen A  made a compelling case that the NFL, because it partners with beer and alcohol companies, has a greater social responsibility when dealing with alcohol related issues from it's players. It was a great point by Stepehn A, and one I'd never considered before.   That, I think, is the strength of the show. If you have two deep thinkers, who are both also entertaining communicators, First Take has a near unique opportunity to deep dive into issues, to a degree unlike anything on television, at least not on sports television.  My favorite form of sports media is the Podcast, for that very reason. Because in podcasts, sports commentators move past the short soundbites, and really get to explore issues, for as long as they want, and as long as it takes to express their point.

However, I do not like everything about the show. The first thing that stood out to me was the show is at it's weakest when guests came on.. Maybe it was just the guests they picked, during my short sample size, but I don't think someone like Tedy Bruschi is capable of communicating beyond soundbites, so the format of the show is not really suited for him. Honestly, I would much rather have a smart civilian analyst, than almost any former athlete other than the truly remarkable ones, like Dominique Foxworth. Howard Cosell called it the “Jocktocracy”, that former athletes got their spots in the media based solely on being ex-jocks, and not on the value of what they had to say.  I think this is largely true, and most of the former jocks on ESPN I could really do without, unless they are legitimately smart and/or funny.

Worse, however, than the ex-jock guests was Will Cain. In Will, I can see First Take's past. There were rumors that when Skip left First Take, it would be Will that would replace him. Had he, I would never have watched a single episode. Beyond his politics ( which I find abhorrent), I find his method of communication to be odious. At one point on Thursday's show, he said he hoped to cause Stephen A a heart attack, and called him clinically mentally ill. On Friday, he started off the episode insulting Stephen A's clothing.  I know he's trying to be funny, but he wasn't. He wasn't clever, it just came across as cruel . Max and Stephen A snap on each other, and it's enjoyable. But Will Cain comes across as an unlikable asshole when he openly disrespects Stephen A.  I promise if he is ever a guest on the show again, I'll be flipping over to Lebatard. I have zero use for him, and life is too short to waste on him.

However, worse than these guests (who ultimately are not a core of the show), is the problem of the 3rd chair, the host's chair. Now, I want to be careful here, because I do not want to come across as insulting to Molly. I think she's effective at hosting. I think she's great at transitions, for example, and at steering the show forward.. When the topic is football, she seems quite engaged and knowledgeable. However, for large portions of the show, she is just window dressing. She will throw out a topic and then disengage, watching as Stephen A and Max go back and forth. Then, when they are done talking, her transition comment will seldom pertain to anything either of them actually said. Perhaps this is a structural issue, and she is not meant to speak, interrupt or challenge Stephen A and Max by design of the producers. However, if this is a design, I think it's a terrible one. It comes across as a pretty woman sitting there in silence, as the men folk talk about sports. Perhaps the producers know something that I do not. On Wednesday, the topic was Lavar Ball, and what his public role is and should be, as father of Lonzo Ball. After an interesting back and forth between Stephen A and Max, as a way of transitioning out of the topic, Molly said something to the effect of “The bottom line is, Lonzo would be getting just as much attention from his talent, without his father saying anything”. Which, is a nonsensical statement. The whole reason this was a topic on the show, was Lavar's insistence on talking up and hyping his son, at every opportunity. Lonzo, while great, would never be a 10 minute topic on First Take, without his father's advocacy. Both Max and Stephen A instantly recognized this, and Stephen A absolutely crushed Molly, who seemingly had no ability to fight back, or defend what was ultimately a  thoughtless throw-away line. Perhaps this is why Molly doesn't talk more, doesn't challenge Stephen A and Max about their points. Perhaps she is simply either not inclined or not able to think on her feet quickly enough to analyze and critique their arguments in an effective way.

Two other things that bothered me, in regard to the 3rd chair. One was the final take on Wednesday. Wednesday was international women's day, and a wonderful opportunity for Molly to use her platform, as an exit ramp off of sports and into a weightier issue of women's rights and empowerment. Yet, the time was used for Max to hype Tim Tebow's Spring Training at-bats ( which was entertaining, but ultimately trivial). I feel like this was a missed opportunity. A producer should have seen this and adjusted the final take, and if a producer missed it, Molly should have insisted on it. I don't know the behind the scenes politics of the show, and if that's even possible, but it seemed glaring to me, to ignore the day.

The second thing that bothered me, was the whole discussion about Joe Mixon. When this topic was discussed, Will Cain happened to be sitting in, and they took what seemed like 10 minutes the subject.  Each of the men spoke about Mixon at length. However, on the topic of Joe Mixon, wouldn't it be valuable to hear a woman's voice? Molly didn't say a word, until a transitional blurb at the very end. I am much more interested in what a woman has to say on the topic of Mixon, than I am Will freaking Cain. And yet, she was mostly silent. So again this comes down to the question, is this a structural issue with First Take, is the production simply sexist? Or, do the producers not think Molly can handle weightier topics? Is she uninterested in tackling them, or unable to in a meaningful way?

I suspect that this is not the right place at ESPN for Molly. I think she would shine on a Football show, which seems to be he wheel house, and it is this topic that she is she is most engaged with and challenging of Max and Stephen A. I think she's great at transitions and keeping the show moving, and should absolutely be a host somewhere at the network. The problem is, I believe that the First Take 3rd chair should NOT just be a host role. It should be a woman who can think and comment dynamically. Who can absorb what Max and Stephen A are saying ( which are often complex and deep), and challenge the logic of what they say. The 3rd chair is in part a referee, so you need someone intelligent with a strong personality to be able to go toe to toe with Stephen A and Max (who can be larger than life if I'm being kind and overbearing if I'm a little less kind).

ESPN is full of talented women, who I think would shine as the 3rd chair. Mina Kimes was a serious business reporter before joining ESPN and has shown, in various venues, her ability to synthesize different topics and use sports as an off ramp for broader social issues. Sarah Spain is is both smart and legitimately funny, and would bring much needed levity to a show that largely takes itself too seriously. Whom I would argue for, however, is someone who is not (I don't believe) currently an employee of ESPN, though she appears weekly on the ESPN True Hoop Podcast, and that's Kaileigh Brandt.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a neutral party here. I am a huge True Hoop Podcast fan, and I interact with Kaileigh often on Twitter. But the reason I interact with her so much, the reason I'm a fan of hers and the reason I'm advocating for her now, is because if she were hired at ESPN I believe she would instantly become the smartest on air talent at the network. Smarter than men who's intellect I admire, like Max, Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre. Just following her twitter, you can see that she's a math genius, but she not a limited specialist, she's a true polymath.  Take for example, these to clips of the True Hoop pod, taken over the past couple weeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSps7S3NIv4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZbIU26ilu0

That shows a depth of thought, an ability to take wide ranging issues and synthesize them brilliantly, in a way that is completely absent in most of life, let alone at ESPN.  These monologues are off the top of her head, not read from a prompter and without benefit of production. They are pure, natural talent. The reaction by the TrueHoop fanbase on these monologues has been tremendous. Shouldn't First Take want that kind of talent, the talent that can generate viral acclaim? In the old days of First Take, clips from the show would typically only happen when something particularly outrageous was said by Stephen A or Skip. That no longer needs to be the case. Some particularly thoughtful monologue by Max and/or Stephen A can be what goes viral, like it does for someone like John Oliver. Isn't that of primary importance, in this new media age?  How many people these days actually watch the full two hours verses how many watch clips of the show online?  So I ask you this, can Molly create a monologue that can create viral buzz, beyond her making some sort of catastrophic blunder?  If not, why have her on the show?  Anyone on the show should be capable of creating that kind of content, the kind that resonates on social media. Stephen A can, Max can,  but Molly? I have my doubts. I do not have any doubts that Kaileigh can, as I've already seen it, on a mircoscale, at TrueHoop. Coupled with the fact that she already has worked with and has chemistry with Max, and it seems like a perfect fit to me.

However, even if you don't replace Molly with Kaileigh, or any of a number of talented ESPN women, something has to be done with that 3rd chair role. This is 2017 and having a woman sitting quietly while the men folk talk, is a really, really bad look. That role seems something more befitting of Fox, than of ESPN, which as been so forward thinking the past 5 years . If Molly stays in this role, she needs to step up and have her role be expanded. Anything less, and she's just window dressing, and that's disrespectful to her, to the talented women who work at ESPN, and the women watching at home. If she is unable to step up, she should be moved to a show she is better suited for, and another woman should be given the chance to turn what is currently an empty role into a meaningful one.

Overall, I have enjoyed First Take. It's really great to see Max thrive again, in a role that he truly shines in. I find Stephen A incredibly entertaining, and find myself smiling at almost all of his arguments, even when I disagree with him completely. Yet, I think the show holds so much more potential, could be so much more than it is now. Currently it's reputation among sports fans is as a hot take volcano, spewing lava this way and that. With the format it has, and the talent available to it, it could be so much more, if the producers have vision and aren't beholden the Skip-era model of the show. I am cautiously optimistic about the future of First Take, and look forward to seeing how the Max era progresses.

[drygingermale]

“We are legion, each and every one of us. Always a ‘we’ and never a ‘me.’”

“I have observed many tiny animals with great admiration,” Galileo marveled as he peered through his microscope — a tool that, like the telescope, he didn’t invent himself but he used with in such a visionary way as to render it revolutionary. The revelatory discoveries he made in the universe within the cell are increasingly proving to be as significant as his telescopic discoveries in the universe without — a significance humanity has been even slower and more reluctant to accept than his radical revision of the cosmos.“We are legion, each and every one of us. Always a ‘we’ and never a ‘me.’”

That multilayered significance is what English science writer and microbiology elucidator Ed Yong explores in I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life (public library) — a book so fascinating and elegantly written as to be worthy of its Whitman reference, in which Yong peels the veneer of the visible to reveal the astonishing complexity of life thriving beneath and within the crude confines of our perception.

Early-twentieth-century drawing of Radiolaria, one of the first microorganisms, by Ernst Haeckel Early-twentieth-century drawing of Radiolarians, some of the first microorganisms, by Ernst Haeckel Artist Agnes Martin memorably observed that “the best things in life happen to you when you’re alone,” but Yong offers a biopoetic counterpoint in the fact that we are never truly alone. He writes:

Even when we are alone, we are never alone. We exist in symbiosis — a wonderful term that refers to different organisms living together. Some animals are colonised by microbes while they are still unfertilised eggs; others pick up their first partners at the moment of birth. We then proceed through our lives in their presence. When we eat, so do they. When we travel, they come along. When we die, they consume us. Every one of us is a zoo in our own right — a colony enclosed within a single body. A multi-species collective. An entire world.

[…]

All zoology is really ecology. We cannot fully understand the lives of animals without understanding our microbes and our symbioses with them. And we cannot fully appreciate our own microbiome without appreciating how those of our fellow species enrich and influence their lives. We need to zoom out to the entire animal kingdom, while zooming in to see the hidden ecosystems that exist in every creature. When we look at beetles and elephants, sea urchins and earthworms, parents and friends, we see individuals, working their way through life as a bunch of cells in a single body, driven by a single brain, and operating with a single genome. This is a pleasant fiction. In fact, we are legion, each and every one of us. Always a “we” and never a “me.”

There are ample reasons to admire and appreciate microbes, well beyond the already impressive facts that they ruled “our” Earth for the vast majority of its 4.54-billion-year history and that we ourselves evolved from them. By pioneering photosynthesis, they became the first organisms capable of making their own food. They dictate the planet’s carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus cycles. They can survive anywhere and populate just about corner of the Earth, from the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean to the loftiest clouds. They are so diverse that the microbes on your left hand are different from those on your right.

Illustration by Emily Sutton from Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes by Nicola Davies But perhaps most impressively — for we are, after all, the solipsistic species — they influence innumerable aspects of our biological and even psychological lives. Young offers a cross-section of this microbial dominion:

The microbiome is infinitely more versatile than any of our familiar body parts. Your cells carry between 20,000 and 25,000 genes, but it is estimated that the microbes inside you wield around 500 times more. This genetic wealth, combined with their rapid evolution, makes them virtuosos of biochemistry, able to adapt to any possible challenge. They help to digest our food, releasing otherwise inaccessible nutrients. They produce vitamins and minerals that are missing from our diet. They break down toxins and hazardous chemicals. They protect us from disease by crowding out more dangerous microbes or killing them directly with antimicrobial chemicals. They produce substances that affect the way we smell. They are such an inevitable presence that we have outsourced surprising aspects of our lives to them. They guide the construction of our bodies, releasing molecules and signals that steer the growth of our organs. They educate our immune system, teaching it to tell friend from foe. They affect the development of the nervous system, and perhaps even influence our behaviour. They contribute to our lives in profound and wide-ranging ways; no corner of our biology is untouched. If we ignore them, we are looking at our lives through a keyhole.

Illustration by Alice and Margin Provensen from The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales Kafka believed that we look at life through the narrow keyhole of our personal existence and in order to distinguish between appearance and reality, we “must keep the keyhole clean.” Yong performs a masterful act of keyhole-cleaning in demonstrating just how intimately entwined our personal existence is with that of the microbes that inhabit our bodies — a relationship nowhere more counterintuitive yet rife with promise than when it comes to our mental health. It’s hardly instinctive to consider that biology, much less microbiology, can influence the seething cauldron of mental and emotional experience we call psychology. And yet given the centrality of microbes to our immune system microbes and the constant dialogue between our immune system and our central nervous system in shaping our susceptibility to stress and burnout, it pays to probe how our microbiome might interact with our mental health.

Yong notes that research into this question is still in its nascency, so most studies are small and inconclusive, but he points to several curious and promising strands of research. One fMRI study by Kirsten Tillisch found that women who consumed a microbe-rich yoghurt displayed less activity in brain areas implicated in processing emotions, compared to those who consumed a microbe-free yogurt. In a clinical trial by Stephen Collins for patients with irritable bowel syndrome, a probiotic bacterium reduced symptoms of depression. Psychiatrist Ted Dinan, who runs a clinic for patients with depression, is wrapping up a clinical trial on “psychobiotics” — probiotics that might help people manage stress and depression. Although Dinan himself is skeptical that such treatments would be effective for those with debilitating clinical depression, he is hopeful that people with milder mood disorders might find some relief.

Art by Bobby Baker from Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me But the most striking implication of even the very possibility that microbes might shape our moods is that they might also shape our choices and, in consequence, our very destinies. Yong considers the overwhelming range of imputations:

These studies are already forcing scientists to view different aspects of human behaviour through a microbial lens. Drinking lots of alcohol makes the gut leakier, allowing microbes to more readily influence the brain — could that help to explain why alcoholics often experience depression or anxiety? Our diet reshapes the microbes in our gut — could those changes ripple out to affect our minds? The gut microbiome becomes less stable in old age — could that contribute to the rise of brain diseases in the elderly? And could our microbes manipulate our food cravings in the first place? If you reach for a burger or a chocolate bar, what exactly is pushing that hand forward? From your perspective, choosing the right item on a menu is the difference between a good meal and a bad one. But for your gut bacteria, the choice is more important. Different microbes fare better on certain diets. Some are peerless at digesting plant fibres. Others thrive on fats. When you choose your meals, you are also choosing which bacteria get fed, and which get an advantage over their peers. But they don’t have to sit there and graciously await your decision. As we have seen, bacteria have ways of hacking into the nervous system. If they released dopamine, a chemical involved in feelings of pleasure and reward, when you ate the ‘right’ things, could they potentially train you to choose certain foods over others? Do they get a say in your menu picks?

These questions flirt with the conundrum of free will by making us contend with the discomfiting notion that each of us might after all be what neuroscientist Sam Harris has called “a biochemical puppet.” And although these puzzlements are still largely in the realm of the hypothetical, Yong points out that such dependencies are far from uncommon in nature. He writes:

Nature is full of parasites that control the minds of their hosts. The rabies virus infects the nervous system and makes its carriers violent and aggressive; if they lash out at their peers, and inflict bites and scratches, they pass the virus on to new hosts. The brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii is another puppetmaster. It can only sexually reproduce in a cat; if it gets into a rat, it suppresses the rodent’s natural fear of cat odours and replaces it with something more like sexual attraction. The rodent scurries towards nearby cats, with fatal results, and T. gondii gets to complete its life cycle.

The rabies virus and T. gondii are outright parasites, selfishly reproducing at the expense of their hosts, with detrimental and often fatal results. Our gut microbes are different. They are natural parts of our lives. They help to construct our bodies — our gut, our immune system, our nervous system. They benefit us. But we shouldn’t let that lure us into a false sense of security. Symbiotic microbes are still their own entities, with their own interests to further and their own evolutionary battles to wage. They can be our partners, but they are not our friends. Even in the most harmonious of symbioses, there is always room for conflict, selfishness, and betrayal.

In the remainder of the intensely interesting I Contain Multitudes, Yong goes on to explore how these lines are drawn and what we can do to make the most of those alliances. Complement it with Tiny Creatures — a lovely children’s book primer on the universe of microbes — then grow agape at Yong’s terrific and slightly terrifying TED talk about mind-controlling parasites:

[vonnariana]

The Most Dangerous Fat Is the Easiest to Lose

It’s every weight loss enthusiast’s dream to zap belly fat but, far from pure vanity, there’s actually a reason why having a lot of fat in the abdominal region can be dangerous. Fat is stored all over our body, but how does an expanding waistline grow your risk for chronic illness?

Location, Location, Location: Your body’s fat impacts your health differently depending on where it’s stored. While most fat found on other parts of our bodies (think arms, legs, buttocks) are considered “subcutaneous fat,” belly fat is more likely to be “visceral.”

Pinchable versus Pressable: “Subcutaneous fat” is the pinchable, squishy fat right between your skin and muscle that helps keep you warm, cushions you against shock, and stores extra calories. “Visceral fat” stores calories too, but isn’t as pinchable because it is located in and around your organs. It’s hidden deep within the belly region, which is what makes it firm (rather than squishy) when you press it.

Proximity: Fat doesn’t just store calories—it’s a living tissue capable of producing and releasing hormones that affect your other organs. Because visceral fat sits near our organs, its release of these chemicals is poorly situated. Having more visceral fat can raise your LDL (a.k.a. “bad” cholesterol) and blood pressure. Visceral fat can also make you less sensitive to insulin, which increases your risk for Type 2 Diabetes.

TELLING BAD BELLY FAT APART

Even if you’re thin, you can still have visceral fat around the abdominal region—being “skinny” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy. There’s no sure-fire way to tell visceral from subcutaneous fat short of an expensive CT scan, but it’s important for you to get a rough idea of what your visceral stores are. Here are a few tricks to figure out where your belly stands:

Apples and Pears: You’re probably wondering, “What does fruit have to do with it?” These two fruits give a quick visual of where most of your fat is stored on the body. Pears tend to store fat in the lower extremities (hips, thighs, buttocks) as subcutaneous fat while apples tend to store fat in the upper region (belly, chest) as visceral fat. It takes a quick inspection, but this is an imperfect way to tell these two fats apart.

Waist circumference (WC): Feel for the top of your hip bone (it’s at the same level as the top of your belly button) and circle a tape measure around this point. Remember to relax and don’t suck in your gut (be honest!). Take 2-3 measurements and figure out the average. Men should have a WC of less than 40 inches (102 cm) and women should have a WC of less than 35 inches (89 cm).

Waist-to-Hip Ratio: The waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) takes the circumference of your waist (see above) and divides it by the circumference of your hips. To measure your hips, stand in front of a mirror then figure out the widest part of your butt and measure that circumference. Then use this formula: WHR = (Waist circumference) / (Hip circumference). Men should have a WHR of less than 1 while women should have a WHR of less than 0.8.

Know Your Family Healthy History: If your parents or siblings have insulin resistance, heart disease or non-alcoholic fatty liver, you may be at a greater risk for storing visceral fat. Keeping an eye on your visceral fat may be beneficial, but know that the causes of these chronic diseases are complex. If you’re in doubt, it’s best to speak with your healthcare provider.

BANISHING VISCERAL FAT

If you fall in the normal range for WC and WHR, that’s great! Keep working at your weight goals as you see fit. If you’re not there, don’t despair. Because of its proximity to the liver, visceral fat is usually the easier fat to burn. It’s the less risky subcutaneous fat that likes to stick around.

Unfortunately, you can’t forcefully spot reduce fat around your belly no matter how many crunches you do. The next best thing is to live a healthy lifestyle:

Go beyond weight tracking. You can track your waist, hip and even neck circumference in the app. Use this feature to see how your measurements change over time as you lose weight.

Sweat for 30-60 minutes each day. Visceral fat responds well to regular endurance exercises, such as running, biking, rowing, swimming, that elevate your heart rate. As your body uses fat to fuel exercise, it’ll start using up your visceral stores.

Eat a well-balanced diet. Eat a diet high in whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean protein with calories set for gradual weight loss (e.g. about 1-2 pounds per week). Cut way back on added sugars and alcohol since these nutrients will more likely end up as visceral fat.

Sleep more, stress less. It’s easier said than done, but in order to take care of your physical body, you have to take care of your mental state. Sleep loss and stress can sabotage your health and fitness goals, so learn more about getting a quality night’s rest and use meditation or yoga to calm your mind. Remember, it’s not just about your health; it’s about your happiness, too.

How do you banish belly fat? Share your comments below.

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