#its probably a male because males tend to emerge earlier

[sophiamcdougall]

I saw a post earlier about "women's spaces" and how the writer had often experienced them as hostile rather than inherently safe and welcoming and therefore precious. Now, I could relate to that to some degree, as I still tend to start off pretty tense at events for, say, queer women even though I now go quite a lot of them: "hello I'm bi! If anyone's going to have a problem with that it would be nice to get it out of the way immediately!" But I do value some women's spaces. I would be sad if gendered loos, for instance, went away completely. I've had mad, intense conversations in women's loos that I do not think would have happened in an evenly mixed setting. I have experienced the Drunk Girl Oracle who exists nowhere but in the queue for the ladies: I want her habitat to continue to exist. But the thing is: no "women's space" I've ever been in has ever been this inviolate grove of Artemis where no man may set foot without getting turned into a fucking stag.

Trans women are women. Trans women belong in women's spaces. Trans women make me feel not less but more safe in women's spaces, for reasons that will become clear. When transphobes are screaming that the sky will and does fall in whenever a trans woman walks into a women's bathroom, of course I argue from that starting point.

But also I think it's worth examining the entire premise that spaces FOR [this type of person] are inherently spaces from which [that type of person] is banned.

So like, where are these women's spaces that don't come with the common-sense understanding that while usually, mostly you won't see men in there, if you do he's probably got reasons and its fine?

Is no one else seeing those signs that say "these premises are cleaned by male and female staff"? What about dads with small daughters? Is it really that bad if a man just plain gets lost or has one shot to avoid an emergency from time to time?

There was this meetup for bi people I used to go to. But of course there were never only bi people there. People brought along friends and partners who might be straight or gay. And oh-shit-it-turns-out-I'm-bi people who were still identifying as gay in the rest of their lives came on the quiet. And there was this one lesbian who -- ironically given a certain slur the GC crowd like to throw at bi women -- came quite unapologetically as a tourist, to observe our strange ways and, as she put it, to "encourage us."

These people were explicitly welcome. It was not a space from which not-bi people were barred. It was still a bi meetup. It was still a "bi space." I was at a sapphics' club night last Friday. And there were some men there. I mean, apparently cis, entirely male-presenting, gender-conforming men in the Women's Space™ . Some of them were bar staff, for starters. Is that OK with the GCs? Does all the terror and horror and loss at the thought of a man in your precious Women's Space go away if the man's being paid? If so, it seems oddly ... conditional. But also some of them some seemed not to be working but just sort of ... there. Maybe they were somebody's friends? They certainly didn't bother anyone. I didn't see where they ended up. You see, I was mainly focused on the hot chicks.

There's another wlw event I go to, to which a guy regularly shows up and we've chatted a few times. He usually wears what you'd conventionally call "women's clothes" but does not present as a woman. I know he uses he/him pronouns at present, (I asked) though he implied there was some possibility that might change. I don't know if he's a regular because he's a friend of the host or if he's a friend of the host because he's a regular. I don't know if something about the wlw label speaks to him on some personal level or if it's about queer solidarity, or if he's like the encouraging lesbian at the bi meetups. Whatever the reason, he's just there.

And aside from the fact that we have similar taste in hats, his presence in ye olde sapphic space also makes me feel more safe, for much the same reason the presence of a woman I know is trans does. I'm afraid it's selfish. Because if everyone's being cool about him, or about her, I can be pretty confident no one who finds out that I, too, disrupt binaries just by existing, is going to decide to ruin the evening over it. Because, you know, that has happened to me.

Now like I say, Actual Men in women's spaces aren't the reason trans women belong in women's spaces. But Actual Men entering women's spaces and not thereby ruining them forever do illustrate the utter pointlessness of thinking of women's spaces as these high-walled fortresses to begin with. Spaces for [a type of person] can exist, and still be porous. In fact, to be healthy and functional, they have to be.

[otherworldsjt]

Death's Fury Chapter V: Meeting Death (Pt.3)

A memory of being in a dark space and hearing a voice full of security and loneliness painfully flashed across my mind. The voice! How could I forget such a voice?! It was vague, like a dream, but I remembered the feeling it gave me – like sleep itself was lonely and pleaded for company. That I'd be at peace and could sleep forever in its arms if I wanted. It was a plea I couldn't refuse.

There was a nagging sense that I'd forgotten something important, but it dawned on me that I hadn't heard the voice in a while, which was probably what helped me come to.

"Trik, I don't think it was the spirit energy that was influencing me. I heard a voice speak to me. Like it was calling to me. I don't know, it forced me under its will and there was loneliness but also something sinister. It's hard to explain. I know that sounds crazy, but I'm telling you, I heard it."

Trik stared blankly at me.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said flatly.

"As I said, you were pretty delusional. The only other voice I heard was his," Trik pointed behind him then continued, "and it's nowhere near as compelling or as majestic, or whatever, as the voice you just described; it's full of arrogance if you ask me. But I can say that we've officially found Death."

I squinted in the direction he was pointing but couldn't see anyone. Even after extending the field back to ten feet, I couldn't see anyone.

"Trik, I can't see anyone."

"Right," Trik commented. "Could you take a few steps forward? There would be fine," he said while pointing at a spot within the field.

A male figure seemingly materializing from the shadows emerged within the field. Instantly, the once dark world outside the field became illuminated by the evening sun (which was odd since I could've sworn there were thick thunder clouds overhead). In front of me stood an inhumanly attractive man. He was a little over 6 feet tall, anywhere between 160 and 175 pounds, and very muscular yet not bulky.

He wore dark, black jeans, and a black t-shirt. He had an intricate, thin, gold necklace laced with black steel and a tiny cross as a pendant hanging from his neck. His hair was well-groomed as it was trimmed around the sides, with each strand on top being 2 inches of perfectly curled, healthy hair. I also noticed a couple of the 1-inch marks just above his left temple.

Even from looking, I could tell his skin was extremely tough as the sunlight reflected off its brown surface. This was definitely not a human.

Trik was right; we found Death.

Externally, he appeared to be around my age, but that didn't feel right for some reason. The consciousness I experienced earlier felt like it was ancient, not 19.

"How old are you," I forced myself to speak. It came out a little hoarse, though.

He didn't seem to hear me at all. Instead, he was squinting in the direction of the sun and was being mesmerized by the sky.

"Could you quit acting like this is your first time seeing the sky? There're more pressing matters that need to be tended to," Trik spoke out.

"Trik!" I said, pulling him down to me. In a hushed whisper, I said, "You've been rude towards him since I came to. Why? What happened between you two?"

"Just look at him!" Trik exclaimed. "We're trying to talk to him, and he's staring at the sky, completely ignoring us. When he does speak, it's in short sentences with a tone like he doesn't owe anyone an explanation. And if what you say is true, let's not forget the weird power he uses in his voice or him letting his spirit energy out like he did – both of which almost killed you, by the way. It's almost like he's unaware of what he's doing, which would be worse than him doing it on purpose because that would mean he has no idea how to use his powers – which would mean he's completely useless in our mission."

"Even if he doesn't know how to control his powers, you need to remember who he is," I said solemnly. "He's still a Primordial who could easily kill both of us if you keep antagonizing him – which is also useless to our mission. So, start showing him a little more respect for both our sakes... Besides, if he really doesn't know how to use his powers, we can teach him the basics, then we can stop back home where he can train."

I hated pulling the "Leader" card on him, but his attitude may not be as appreciated by the Primordials as it is by me.

Trik glared at Death before eventually giving in.

"Fine. Your team, your call, but I don't see how he'll be useful in stopping a couple of millennia-old gods as an inexperienced newbie," Trik conceded.

"He'll be fine. After all, he is one of the Supreme Primordials, and they're way stronger than your average Primordial. It shouldn't be too difficult for him to get Greed and Despair back in line," I assured him.

"I don't know, Lisa. Someone took down an older, more experienced version of him, remember? And it wasn't Life or Fury. Plus, we did find traces of Greed and Despair's spirit energy near the site... Like you said, something big's going on. We can't get overconfident because of his potential as a Supreme Primordial. This may be the most dangerous mission as a Watcher yet." He glanced back at Death with a look of uncertainty.

I hadn't looked at it that way before. I mean, I've had a feeling this could become dangerous, but now that we've found Death in the state he's in – now that I can see him with my own eyes – it's starting to feel real. I kind of understood why Trik was so stressed and insistent not to have Death be part of this mission. But I also knew that having him on our side would be better than not having him at all if things became dangerous.

"How about we also track down one of the others – see if we can convince them to help us out if need be." Initially, the plan was to gather the others after we'd found Death and put a stop to Greed and Despair, but it might be beneficial to seek out one more just to be safe. That idea reassured me. Hopefully, it'd reassure him as well.

"Yeah," he replied. "The others have been around for a while. If things do get dangerous, having one of them on our side too would be a big relief."

"Great, glad we're on the same page."

"Uh-huh," Trik took a good look at Death, still staring at the sky, and sighed. "Oh, and don't think I don't know why you really want to take him back home."

I couldn't help but smile from the excitement of thinking about it.

"Mom and Dad are going to be so happy to have a Primordial as their houseguest," I said, beaming with joy.

"I can see them now.... Well, let's figure out what His Lordship here knows about himself before heading out," Trik said.

"Right," I replied. After helping me to my feet, we redirected our attention to Death and moved closer to him.

"Um... excuse us...."

Death averted his gaze from the now-setting sun to look at me.

"If it's okay with you, we'd like to take a few minutes to discuss something with you," I said while attempting a bow. When I glanced back up at him, he looked confused about the bowing, so I stopped and stood like I normally would – which was a relief (hopefully, the others' tastes are as modern as his).

He said nothing but his dark eyes somehow delivered his message clearly.

"Ah, you heard me tell Trik how your voice had affected me. So now you don't want to risk influencing me again, is that right," I asked.

He gave a slight nod. Aw, how thoughtful. I don't see any of the arrogance Trik claims to see in him.

"Alright then, allow me to properly introduce ourselves and why we're here. I'm Alissia – Alissia Heart – and this is my partner, Trik. Um, we're from one of three families known as Watchers. You may or may not have heard of them in history, but in lamest terms, Watchers are people who were tasked long ago to find and guide the divine. Speaking of which, have you ever heard of The Primordials?" I asked him.

After a brief pause of trying to recall, he nodded his head.

"Do you know anything about them other than them being powerful beings that once resided on Earth long ago?" Trik asked this time.

We both received a silent stare. Guess we'll take that as a no.

#anime and manga #supernatural #superpowers #fantasy novel #fantasy

[fakename-bill]

First Brood X cicada of the season!

I have named him Zefram Cochrane

#its probably a male because males tend to emerge earlier #brood x #cicada #cicadas #insects #bugs #in case someone is freaked out by them and blacklisted the tags #op #photo

[missnight0wl]

What do you think of Rowan, Ben, Penny and Merula's Patronus? Though I don't like Merula very much, I still think she is able to conjure one.

I’m putting it under the cut because it turned out a bit lengthy.

Rowan

I used to think of an Owl for Rowan because, y’know, it's “a symbol of wisdom” and all. But when I got this ask, I remembered that I found the site on Irish Astrology just days earlier – the same Rowling was using for birthdates and wand wood of the Golden Trio. Interestingly, each sign has assigned an animal there, and since the rowan tree is one of them, I decided to check it to find out that it’s a crane or a green dragon. A dragon makes me think of Charlie, but I did a little bit of digging on another option, and I have to say – I think I’m gonna stick with a Crane Patronus for Rowan.

This is what I found on the Crane symbolism:

Throughout Asia, the crane is considered as a bird of happiness and prosperity. The Japanese, Chinese, and Korean traditions relate it to longevity and fidelity.

Aristotle wrote about this bird that it always held a stone in its mouth so that if it fell asleep and the stone would fall down, the bird would wake. Thus crane symbolism came to be linked with vigilance.

I also checked Indian symbolism since Rowan is part Indian, and I found this:

[The Sarus crane] is also known as the eternal symbol of unconditional love and devotion and good fortune.

Interestingly, cranes are monogamous and they mate for life. That’s actually why in Japan, they’re often incorporated in wedding décor!

Overall, we have pretty positive symbolism. The parts about devotion and unconditional love sum Rowan up as a friend pretty well. We also have a part about vigilance which again is pretty fitting for Rowan who was probably the most aware from all of our friends that MC is indeed in constant danger – and that’s why they were suspicious of Ben (not because they simply didn’t like Ben – let’s remember that Rowan and Ben were friends at the end of a day).

Admittedly, “in some cultures, the meanings of crane birds can be negative: they represent deception, a harbinger of death, and even the symbol of the devil.” However, it’s actually a bit meta, considering all the people suspecting Rowan of being a traitor.

Ben

I really like the idea of a Lion Patronus for Ben. A Patronus form is not only about representing one’s personality, but also “the Patronus represents that which is hidden, unknown but necessary within the personality” - and it fits Ben’s bravery so nicely. I talk here mostly about Old Ben, but that’s also a pretty old idea of mine. I mean, Ben was always super brave when his friends needed it, he just couldn’t really accept it himself. I also find it kind of heart-warming to imagine Old Ben being intimidated by his own Patronus at first, only to become more and more comfortable around it with time.

Another thing, I remember reading once someone else’s point that it could be a funny reference to the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz – which, now that I think about it, Ben would be probably familiar with as a Muggleborn!

Now, as for New Ben… Well, honestly, I don’t think that Ben would be able to cast Patronus Charm at this very moment. He probably still feels too much guilt for Rowan’s death and whatnot. Still, I remembered a discussion I had with my friend after Rakepick’s Patronus was finally revealed, and she pointed out then that male lions tend to kill little cubs if they defeat a previous male lion and take over his pack. Y’know, to eliminate wrong genes. And you know what? It’s kind of what Ben did with his old self. Before the end of Y5, Ben had a pretty good understanding of bravery. There was that very sweet moment in the O.W.L.s TLSQ, for example:

But then, the end of Y5 happened, and Ben was like: “Nope. I know no fear and THAT’S bravery”.

Either way, I do hope that Ben will eventually return on his path of a healthy balance between his old and new self, and I have a feeling that a Lion would still be a pretty good match then.

Penny

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I always thought that Penny’s Patronus should be some kind of a predator. I once even proposed a Black Panther, but I didn’t have a lot of reasoning behind it, to be honest. Now, I think I’m gonna change it anyway, and I’ll say that Penny would have a Fox Patronus. This is information I found on it:

The fox is a natural trickster, and brilliantly charismatic. Those with this Patronus are often more reserved, but do have the social capability to speak to just about anyone. They are strongly ambitious and observant of the behaviour of others, watching key points in what others do and storing them for further reference, when they may need them. They are good talkers, meaning they can convince people to do what they want and make them think it was their idea in the first place.

Foxes are quick, intelligent and strongly ambitious. Although they are known for their cunning nature, they are very charismatic and easy to love. If your Patronus is a fox, you have an ability to think outside of the box and act quickly during emergency situations.

Penny is insanely ambitious about her Potions-making. She said on more than one occasion that she couldn’t pass the opportunity to brew more advanced Potion. She’s also obviously charismatic, and the part I might like the most is about “making others do what they want and even make them think it was their idea”. Because when you really think about it… it’s exactly Penny.

Like, making MC steal the ingredients for the Forgetfulness Potion and very similar situation again with the Draught of Peace (each time not even telling MC what it’s about until the very end). Making MC impersonate a Professor or a Prefect. All those situations could get us in pretty serious trouble. Yet, the best example in all of that is the Animagus TLSQ, in my opinion. 

The quest started with the rumours that Talbott is planning to become an Animagus, and so MC got intrigued and decided to help Talbott get ingredients, hoping that Penny could make an extra Potion for them. But then, it turned out that Penny doesn’t make the Potion for Talbott at all, and she wanted MC to take it instead. Moreover, Talbott was already an Animagus, so the whole story didn’t really make much sense from the very beginning. Now, it might be the case of Jam City screwing up badly in writing, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is basically what happened: Penny wanted to brew the Animagus Potion, so she sent Talbott to get MC intrigued in the whole thing, so MC thought it was their idea while Penny could brew her Potion. Now, tell me she’s not a Fox – especially that again it could’ve been pretty dangerous for MC if anything went wrong.

There’s also a part about thinking outside of the box and acting quickly during the emergency, and funnily enough, it’s also kind of true for Penny. The thing is that she doesn’t act well in those situations – but that’s a separate problem.

Also, I don’t know if you can tell it by now, but I totally believe that Penny should’ve been a Slytherin, and I will die on that hill. Just a digression.

Merula

Hm, how about a Mole? Or a Rat? :D Just kidding, of course. Mostly…

Seriously though, I had a bit of a problem with Merula. I thought of a Skunk or a Frilled-neck lizard at first, y’know, because they try to look more threatening as a self-defence mechanism. I considered a Yorkshire Terrier as well because they’re always yapping at bigger dogs. And while they kind of fit Merula, they’re definitely not perfect matches. Merula has no dog qualities whatsoever, and even though her aggression is probably caused by a lot of insecurities, skunks and frilled-neck lizards don’t really harm whatever threatens them. Merula does harm, whether physically or emotionally, and she’s pretty calculated in that.

So, I kept thinking about something else, and there was one option I was coming back to. And even though I didn’t fully like it at first, I think I’ll stick to it, and I’ll say that Merula would have a Black Mamba Patronus.

Here’s some information about Black Mambas:

Cloaked in the color of death and measuring over 14 feet in length, the Black Mamba is regarded as one of the most vicious snakes in the world. It’s also one of the most venomous. (…) Unlike many animals, which simply have an anger problem, Black Mambas are driven by an extreme form of fear-based aggression. Being exceedingly nervous, the slightest sense that the snake’s escape route is compromised may unleash an attack of unparalleled ferocity.

There’s also an interesting quote from the discussion on whether or not they chase humans:

No, they absolutely don’t chase humans. No snakes chase humans. However black mambas are so high-strung they’re practically hysterical the moment something makes them nervous, and they’re really not very intelligent. As a result, these snakes are extremely prone to absolute panic. If you corner a mamba, its fight/flight reflex is triggered, and it will freak out and try to fight you to escape. This involves wildly throwing itself around and biting you like 60 times in a row, if you don’t get the blazes out of the way. (…) And they’re not very good at evaluating the level of danger they’re in. Or… much of anything.

… and that’s basically Merula. She’s in a constant state of panic that people are better than her. Especially in earlier years, she constantly felt threatened by MC’s mere existence, even when MC was clear they just don’t care about her – so she was attacking. All. The. Freaking. Time.

Moreover, snakes in general are often associated with deceit, so there’s that.

Of course, there’s also much more positive symbolism around snakes, like a rebirth, transformation, or heling. And while I have no doubts that Jam City won’t give Merula a proper redemption arc (because they're too lazy about it), she clearly is a character who’s supposed to be all about redemption. So, I guess that’s another reason why a Black Mamba would fit nicely, even though it seems a bit stereotypical for a Slytherin (then again, Merula totally should’ve been a Gryffindor, but that’s a topic for a different discussion).

#long post #hogwarts mystery #hphm #rowan khanna #ben copper #penny haywood #merula snyde #patronus #about characters #ask #anonymous

[allaboutve]

FAVORITE MOVIE REVIEWS: #10 DREAMS, Akira Kurosawa

Dreams earns a spot as one of my favorite movies because it inspires childlike wonder and mature reflection in me.  Its images inspire wonder in me that I only ever seem to feel within my own dreams.  At the same time, I am moved by the movie’s careful treatment  of its main theme--how to live in a world where the only certainty is our own mortality.

Dreams is a thematic sequel to Ran, the 1985 epic period film that earned Writer-Director Akira Kurosawa an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.  Several critics have described Ran as pessimistic and nihilistic.  Some have even interpreted the film as evidence of Kurosawa’s depression during the later part of his career.

Kurosawa’s later life certainly contains elements of tragedy and hardship, but Kurosawa’s outlook should not be described as nihilistic.  Ran ends with a moral that human folly, not divine will, caused the film’s human tragedies.  

Dreams continues this theme.  It explores the subject of mortality and fear of death and seemingly concludes that this fear is the cause of human folly, and its crimes against nature.  

Dreams shares many creative elements with Ran and Kurosawa’s earlier film Kagemusha.  These elements are worth an entire treatment in and of themselves.  Instead, I will discuss the themes and artistic aspects of the movie that make it one of my favorite films.

Dreams is part of a subgenre of movies that are anthologies of dream sequences--a genre that includes some of the most famous films by Luis Buñuel.  Even though Buñuel was a surrealist with an interest in dream interpretation, Dreams may be a clearer window into its artist’s psychology than are Un Chien Andalou or The Phantom of Liberty.  This is because Buñuel created structure in his scripts by inserting conscious political themes and dream sequences provided by his collaborators--Salvador Dalí and Jean-Claude Carrière. 

Kurosawa frequently attempts to replicate the experience of his dreams.  His most frequent device is to end each dream sequence with a cliffhanger, which he does in dream sequences “Sunshine Through the Rain,” “The Tunnel,” “Mt. Fuji in Red,” and “The Weeping Demon.”

Kurosawa also tries to elevate the dreamlike quality of each dream sequence.  The most successful instance is in “The Tunnel,” when Kurosawa as a soldier sighs with relief after walking safely through a tunnel path.  There is no reason stated reason for apprehension, except that a dog illuminated in a red aura blocks the soldier from walking any other direction.

Details like these communicate Kurosawa’s experience within the dream.  Another device with the same effect occurs at the opening of the dream sequence “Crows.”  Kurosawa studies the Vincent Van Gogh painting The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing.  The sequence cuts to a live action image of the painting and Kurosawa steps into the foreground from outside the frame, implying he is walking into the painting.   Later in the sequence, Kurosawa runs through several of Van Gogh’s unfinished paintings, searching for the artist.  

For reasons I will elaborate further below, Kurosawa’s attempts to replicate the dream experience sometimes fall short and weigh down the movie.  Yet they are most effective where they distort space and time.  One of the best examples is in “The Peach Orchard,” which I will return to below.

Some details of Akira Kurosawa’s biography inform the meaning of Dreams.  Kurosawa paid attention to detail regarding his childhood home and his mother’s mannerisms in “Sunshine Through the Rain.”  Kurosawa is also said to have taken mountain climbing as a hobby as a young man, which informs the sequence “The Blizzard.”

The movie’s themes of artistry, suicide and the Pacific War all affected Kurosawa’s life.  Yet although Kurosawa was a soldier in “The Tunnel,” the real Kurosawa never served in Japan’s Imperial Army.  

Kurosawa’s career has at times put him at odds with Japanese culture.  His early films were at times criticized for emulating a Western style.  He did draw on literature by Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.  And was also quoted saying the Occupation changed the Japan’s film industry in some positive ways.  It’s conceivable his critical relationship with the Japanese film industry may have contributed to Kurosawa’s industry struggles between 1965 and 1985.

The theme of suicide in Dreams suggests Kurosawa’s tone may also be an example criticism directed toward Japanese social values.  Kurosawa was born in 1910 during the Imperial Period of Japan, where ideals of militarism and Samurai culture would have still been preserved.  

In “Sunshine Through the Rain,” young Akira is shut out of his home by his mother and told to either commit suicide or to find kitsune, spirit foxes, and beg their forgiveness.  Walking away from his home, the camera zooms out so he remains the same size in the foreground while the background shrinks.  Literally, young Akira is growing up.  However, he is leaving his home to beg forgiveness, not to commit suicide.

If “Sunshine Through the Rain” was an authentic dream, Kurosawa as a child may have emotionally understood suicide in its cultural context.  And this is supported by details at the end of the dream sequence.   

In every dream sequence Kurosawa rejects suicide when given the choice.  Yet Kurosawa himself attempted suicide in 1971.  Japanese ritual suicide (seppuku) is referenced in this sequence as he is given a dagger to disembowel himself. 

Seppuku is referenced in one other sequence--“The Tunnel.”  In that dream sequence, Kurosawa tells the spirits of several dead soldiers that as a POW he felt like dying, that it would have been easier.  The statement refers specifically to the expectation during World War II that Japanese POWs were to commit suicide--by seppuku or by other means.

Other references to suicide in Dreams do not involve sepukku.  But Kurosawa’s understanding of suicide as a child, when he presumably first dreamed “Sunshine Through the Rain,” would have come from his cultural context as Japanese.  Although Kurosawa may not have intended to criticize social norms regarding suicide directly, as far as he was criticizing suicide itself he was doing so from his own cultural context.

The theme of suicide is a small part of the larger theme of Dreams--fear of mortality.  Western critics tend to misunderstand this theme within the movie and believe Dreams as ‘misguided’ environmentalist preaching.  

Yet the environmental themes in Dreams are not as cohesive or detailed.  The theme regarding mortality is present in “Sunshine Through the Rain,” “The Blizzard,” and “Crows.”  The only other dream sequence with only an environmental theme is “The Peach Orchard.”  

Both themes are presented at the same time in “Mt. Fuji in Red,” “The Weeping Demon,” and “Village of the Watermills.”  I believe this caused critics to misunderstand Dreams.  Kurosawa was concerned about the environment and probably wanted to advocate for a harmonious relationship with nature.  But his message about morality is the more consistent and more clearly articulated theme in Dreams.

As far as Dreams is an authentic representation of Kurosawa’s inner life, it also provides insight into the way he saw women throughout his life.  This is important because Kurosawa has been criticized for his representation of female characters throughout his filmography.

The first three dream sequences heavily feature women.  “Sunshine Through the Rain” shows young Akira Kurosawa intruding into a Foxes’ Wedding.  His mother responds by refusing to let him into the house.  

An important detail is that the Foxes’ Wedding is a traditional Japanese wedding and the female and male foxes are separated based on gender.  For a young child, this detail represents an understanding of sexual difference.  And that understanding separates young Akira from his mother.

“The Peach Orchard” contains a similar theme.  However, young Kurosawa instead leaves his sister to chase after a young girl who is in fact the spirit of a peach sapling.  

In “The Blizzard,” Kurosawa is now a young man climbing a mountain during a snowstorm with three male companions.  When Kurosawa finally succumbs to exhaustion, he is visited by a Yuki Onna (literally “Snow Woman”).  He pushes her away as she tries to comfort him and as the storm subsides Kurosawa and his companions make for camp.

Female characters only feature heavily in two of the remaining dream sequences in Dreams.  This fact strongly suggests Kurosawa’s emotional life was not as strongly influenced by women after adolescence, a possible explanation why women are frequently not protagonists in Kurosawa’s filmography.  More than that, female characters in Kurosawa’s dreams are all either family or magical creatures until the dream sequence “Mt. Fuji in Red.”  

One last theme worth discussing is the role that Vincent Van Gogh played in Kurosawa’s career.  Vincent Van Gogh appears as a character in the dream sequence “Crows.”  Kurosawa was well known as a painter and used his paintings as storyboards.  His paintings have a wild quality and use a surreal, vibrant color palette--which influenced his use of color in Kagemusha and Ran.

Embarrassingly, it took me a few years and several rewatches of Dreams to realize Van Gogh was Kurosawa’s primary influence as a painter.

Dreams is one of my favorite movies.  However, it is Number 10 because it has some fundamental flaws.  

I have mentioned that the movie attempts to replicate the experience of a dream with mixed success.  The failures are mostly in scenes when the protagonist observes and responds to his surroundings.  The device works in dream sequences such as “The Tunnel” because the script viewer shares the character’s apprehension.  The tunnel is shot pitch black and a threatening dog emerges from the tunnel before Kurosawa enters.

Other sequences are less successful.  In “The Weeping Demon,” Kurosawa walks from the ruins of a city onto a desolate slope.  There is no shot establishing what Kurosawa sees as he changes his path from one direction to another.  This goes on for several minutes before any payoff.

Other dream sequences have the same problem with pace.  “The Blizzard” opens with approximately ten minutes of Kurosawa and his companions hiking through a snowy mountainscape.  Although we learn that the men are lost, no dialogue or action establishes that the mountaineers are lost or confused.  I must confess that I have fallen asleep more than once in the early parts of the dream sequence “The Blizzard.”

Another sequence with this problem is “Crows.”  The second half of the sequence shows Kurosawa chasing after Vincent Van Gogh while inside the artist’s unfinished paintings.  Unlike “The Blizzard,” this sequence does not harm the narrative of the dream sequence because the first half already established two things.  It established that Kurosawa is inside Van Gogh’s paintings and that he is chasing the artist himself.

One possible reason the film makes these mistakes is budgetary.  Shooting vast landscapes would have required the resources to shoot on location or create large elaborate sets.  Some sequences do exactly that--“The Peach Orchard” and “Village of the Windmills.”

Dreams had a large budget for a Japanese movie of its time.  But at approximately $12 Million US, the budget would have limited what could be done.

The mistakes regarding the pace in the end fall onto the screenwriting.  The runtime of Dreams is 119 minutes.  Trimming “The Blizzard” and “The Weeping Demon” would have solved these problems and still kept the runtime over 90 minutes. 

Critical characterization of Dreams as self indulgent is probably correct, and is the best explanation for these decisions.  But it is also a creative decision Dreams has in common with the earlier Ran and Kagemusha.  Both run nearly three hours and include several lingering shots--a stylistic trademark of Kurosawa’s later films.  The criticism that Dreams is self indulgent is less an indictment on this style than it is on the quality of the movie itself.

However, Akira Kurosawa’s self indulgence is forgivable because Dreams is such a pretty movie to look at.  Many sequences were Kurosawa’s first experiments with digital special effects, which are never used in a distracting way.  

Beyond that, several shots in the movie are made using experimental cinematography to great effect.  One shot is in the sequence “The Peach Orchard.”  Young Kurosawa is confronted by the spirits of several cleared peach trees in the form of hina-ningyo--ornamental dolls representing the Japanese Imperial Court.  When young Kurosawa expresses his grief for the trees, the spirits respond by performing a traditional dance for young Kurosawa.

The dance takes place on a hillside that is not especially steep.  Yet the spirits appear at the same approximate distance from the viewer, as though they are on the same display as a hina doll set.  Such a shot is obtained by using a strong telephoto lens, which tends to compress the depth of frame in a shot.  For this effect, Kurosawa would have had to shoot this image from at least 250 meters away.

“The Tunnel” is another surprising sequence for its cinematography.  Specifically, the dog that emerges from the tunnel is illuminated in a red aura that contrasts with the color palette of the rest of the scene.

Modern viewers might assume this was accomplished with simple digital editing.  In fact, the red light comes from a street light that is barely visible throughout the scene.  It does not shine brightly until the dog appears and is barely visible as faint glare on the street gravel.

How this shot was made confuses me.  I am certain that the effect is caused by increasing the brightness of the light because the red aura touches Kurosawa’s protagonist in some shots.  But I am not certain the shot could be illuminated from a street light unless the set was already shot in low light.  Other details suggest the sequence was shot entirely in low light.

These and other sequences in Dreams create surreal visual splendor that is only glimpsed in the earlier Ran and Kagemusha.  Although Dreams was not nearly as commercially successful, it is less trapped by its genre and is one of the best movies to look at.

Some of the sequences appeal to me personally because they are things I have only seen in my dreams, such as the mob of crows at the end of “Crows.”  Other images remind me of what I imagined as a child or the paintings I would have wanted to make when art was a greater part of my life.  For these reasons, I recommend Dreams to any viewers who look for that certain visual quality in what they watch.  

But Dreams also has an important message about mortality and loss.  For that reason, I recommend Dreams to anyone dealing with grief and recovery.

-ve

NEXT POST--#9: THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (dir. John McTiernan)

#akira kurosawa #dreams #dreamscape #movies #cinema #cinematography #90s #japan #japan aesthetic #photography #painting #kagemusha #ran #luis bunuel #salvador dali #vincent van gogh #van gogh

[animeniacss]

A Palette of Emotions - Artist! Taehyung x Teacher!Reader - Chapter 5 - Taehyung’s First Day

Synopsis: Taehyung dreams of being a professional and famous artist one day, but finds that the sea of creativity can be lurking with blood hungry sharks, as well as bland, motionless starfish. Swimming through the sea of opportunities somehow washed him up onto the shore of Bright Star Preschool, as an art teacher. This wasn’t where he expected to be 4 years into his career, but anything to get his big break though, right?

Feat. BTS, TXT, ITZY, Jisoo (BlackPink), Taeyong (NCT)

Genre: Romance, Slow Burn, Love Triangle, Drama, School Setting, Working!AU

Length: approx. 6k words

Chapter 5 - Taehyung’s First Day

The first day of school was always a bittersweet moment. Weeping mother’s and father’s releasing the hands of their children as they stroll into the school building, their backpack taking up most of their tiny bodies. Even as children get older, entering middle school, high school, and even college, it can be a difficult pill to swallow as you watch a child grow up. This tends to be the case with younger children and parents experiencing this for the first time. However, for some reason, Taehyung found himself standing in the middle of his living room, watching Jimin walk in and out of his bedroom with multiple different outfits, rubbing his chin as he examined each one. He had been like this all day, like a mother who was getting ready to ship their child off to a new chapter in their lives behind giant gates and wooden desks.

            Jimin seemed to think he was one of those mothers at this moment.

            “Jimin…” Taehyung sighed when his friend emerged from the bedroom. “You’ve been doing this for like 2 hours. Why does it matter so much?” Jimin finally looked up.

            “It’s your first day on the job tomorrow, you need a good outfit!” Taehyung sighed. It had been two weeks since he got the call from Kim Seokjin, congratulating him for the new position. As Jimin lifted a button-up shirt on a hanger, Taehyung plopped himself down on the couch as he thought back to the phone call. It was only four days after his interview.

            “Congratulations, Mr. Kim. We at Bright Star Preschool are excited to welcome you as our new art teacher!”

            “Wha- really?” Taehyung asked, standing up in his seat. Jimin looked up from the other side of the table, drink in his hand, and noodles slurping into his mouth.

            “Yes! We loved your interview and think you’ll fit in very well with the rest of the staff.” Taehyung blinked, running a hand through his hair. Once Jimin swallowed his bite, he looked up at his friend, noticing the stunned expression on his face.

            “Who is it?” he asked, but Taehyung simply waved his hand in his direction.

            “Uh, can I be honest?” Taehyung asked curiously.

            “Hm? Yes, of course.” Seokjin said.

            “I realized after the fact that I was rude to your headteacher. Are you sure you called the right number?” There was a moment of silence, and Seokjin began to laugh.

            “Do you regret what you said?”       

            “Well, no, but-.” Again, Seokjin began to laugh.

            “Taehyungie, can I call you that?” Taehyung hummed. “I’m hiring you because of what you said. My headteacher needs to be knocked around once in a while, and honestly, I respect the absolute honesty you carry about yourself.”

            “I see…”

            “Are you still interested? Please say yes…” Taehyung bit his lip and ran a hand through his hair. He really needed the job, but he honestly had no idea that he would get this one, and so quickly too! “Mr. Kim?”            

            “Yes,” Taehyung said. He heard Seokjin let out a sigh of relief.

            “Excellent. I’ll call you in the next few days so we can talk details.”

            “Taehyung,” Jimin called, pulling Taehyung back to the present day. He looked at his friend with wide eyes as Jimin held out a plaid shirt with a variety of different browns and reds decorating the pattern, and off-white pants. “This is cute, isn’t it?”

            “I don’t want to wear stuff that’s going to get messy. I spent a lot of money on that shirt.”

            “…I bought it for you last Christmas, Tae,” Jimin said, pouting. Taehyung felt guilt hit him like a sack of brick as he stared at his friend’s sad face.

            “…And I appreciate it so much, it almost feels like I spent my own money to buy it,” Taehyung said quickly, nodding his head as if that quick excuse was enough to sell his lie. Jimin rolled his eyes. “Even more reason why I don’t want to dirty it.” Jimin tossed the clothes in his friend’s direction.

            “Wear a smock then, dummy,” Jimin said. Taehyung chuckled a bit as he held the clothes in his hands. “What time do you need to be in tomorrow?”

            “Well, since I’m joining in the middle of a year instead of at the beginning like normal, they told me to come in an hour earlier and finish setting up my little office. But I did that this weekend, so I don’t really know.”

            “You did your whole room in a day?”

            “I don’t have much, they stocked the room up on all the art supplies. I made all the posters and charts and stuff; I just need to hang them up when I get there tomorrow.” Jimin sighed.

            “Wow, maybe you are cut out for this after all.” Jimin teased. Taehyung finally got up, laying his clothes out on the back of the couch. “Get some rest, you have a long day tomorrow.” Taehyung watched Jimin head back into Taehyung’s bedroom.

            “Where are you going?” he asked curiously.

            “Your bed. Consider it your apology for forgetting about my expensive Christmas gift.” Jimin playfully stuck his tongue out as he headed into the room. Taehyung hopped up, following his friend in.

            “No, no, no. I get the bed.” He said, hurrying after his friend as childlike laughter erupted from the room. “Sleep on the couch if you don’t want to drive home.” Jimin tried to close the door, but Taehyung was strong and pushed it open. “Jimin.” His friend grinned.

            “Alright, alright fine.” He said, finally allowing Taehyung entry. Taehyung went over to his bed and climbed into it, burying himself under the covers. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

            “And don’t come to me if you have another nightmare.” Taehyung huffed, nuzzling his head into his pillow as he heard his friend laugh, finally exiting the room and turning off the lights. As Taehyung laid in the dark rooms, his eyes fell over to the clock. It was currently just after midnight, and he knew that the faster he fell asleep, the faster the next day would be there, and he would have to start his new job. He had no idea how he felt about that, but his eyes were heavy, and he huffed as he fell back asleep.

---------------------------------

            Taehyung’s trip to the preschool felt a lot longer this morning than it did when he first arrived for the interview as well as returning last weekend to prepare his room. Maybe it was the nerves, maybe it was the fact that he got only 3 hours of sleep, maybe it was both.

            Probably both.

            A groan escaped Taehyung’s lips as he sipped his coffee, scanning the posters that were spread out across the tables. He had a banner of the Korean alphabet, each sound represented by a color or art-related topic, allowing students to form an easy connection between art class words as well as the letters and sounds they were already being exposed to. He had also created a chart with all the student’s names on them, allowing them to give themselves a “Thumbs Up” using finger paint for each day that they behaved. If they made it to certain check marks on the chart, like a week, two weeks, etc. they earned rewards such as extra time with Playdoh, or their own set of crayons. Jimin, as well as his mother, both were a big help in giving him some ideas that would entice the children to behave while they were in his care. He had a few craft ideas for the first few weeks, that could help him get to know the students better, as well as allow them to get to know him. He even made a few examples for the kids to look at.

            “Uhhh….” Taehyung pursed his lips as his eyes darted from one side of the room to the next. This was the last thing he had to do, and he had been standing and staring for a good fifteen minutes since he arrived, sipping coffee and wondering how long it might take the others to realize he snuck out the window. He tried that, the windows only cracked up slightly to not only allow a breeze to come through on hot days, but to prevent students from flinging themselves out as well. Damn it. “Okay, let’s see. I want this one to be at eye level, I guess.” He hummed, lifting the behavior chart. Just as he was trying to decide, he heard a knock at the door. “Hm? Come in.” The door popped open, and a beaming smile showed its face between the crack. Taehyung immediately recognized him as the male who entertained the students while he had his interview, but he never caught his name.

            “Hi there.” He said happily, stepping in. “We haven’t met yet, but I wanted to introduce myself.” He walked over, sticking out a hand for Taehyung. “I’m the Teacher’s Assistant here, Jung Hoseok, but the kids love to call me Mr. Hobi. Great to meet you.”

            I feel like I’m staring at the sun. Taehyung thought to himself, unable to pull his eyes from the heartwarming smile plastered on Hoseok’s face. Finally, he stuck out his hand as well, shaking it as he offered a bow of his head.

            “Nice to meet you too. I’m Kim Taehyung.”

            “You excited?” Hoseok asked. “I can feel your hand kind of trembling.”   

            “Just a bit,” Taehyung admitted. “Never thought I would be a teacher.” Hoseok offered a happy chuckle.

            “It seems like a lot at first, but the kids are really cute and lots of fun, so you’ll be just fine.” Taehyung nodded, not sure if that helped him in the way Hoseok had intended it to. Hoseok tilted his head, examining the posters behind Taehyung that were still resting on the table. “Are you still setting up?”

            “Yeah. I was so invested in actually creating everything, I never set any of it up when I was here. That and Mr. Kim had three different twenty-minute conversations with me through the day.” Hoseok laughed a bit.

            “He does that. Do you need help?” Taehyung blinked, hesitating for a moment. “…I’ll take the silence as a yes.” Hoseok walked to the desk, picking up a huge rainbow. “Waaaaaah! This is amazing. You made this?”

            “Yeah. I don’t normally use rainbow colors, but I read online that kids like bright colors, so…” he shrugged. “Rainbow.” Hoseok nodded. “Besides, maybe we can make something with it someday, you know?”

            “Cool. Where do you want it?” He asked. Taehyung scanned the room, finally pointing to a blank wall right beside the door. “Awesome.” Without hesitation, Hoseok grabbed a few pieces of tape and flipped the dried painting over, securing it with tape and bringing it over to the wall. “I’m really glad you’re here, Kim Taehyung.”

            “Thank you, sunba-.”

            “Don’t even,” Hoseok said quickly, turning over his shoulder to offer Taehyung a stern look. “Call me Mr. Hobi like everyone else. I’m nobody’s mentor.”

            “…Hyung?” Taehyung asked curiously. Hoseok nodded, humming.

            “I’ll take that too.” He said, smoothing the rainbow out with his hands. “There. Really cute.” Taehyung lifted the behavior chart, taping it up to the wall right beside his little desk. His desk had a plate with his name on it, a binder of all information regarding the children, and another folder that consisted of different pictures of crafts and notes he had made over the past few days. It was simple, but he didn’t mind. Not like he would be at his desk often anyway. “What else do we got?” Hoseok asked, walking back over towards the table.

            As the duo worked diligently, Taehyung looked at Hoseok, who was taping the back of posters as he hummed a little tune.

            “So, what other kinds of people work here? Is it just us four?” Hoseok looked up.

            “Oh, no. Three days a week, one of the local high school gym teachers and coaches, Min Yoongi, comes by on his lunch break for an hour and does the gym class. Mr. Kim said he had to work with him on the schedule those days, since now you’ve kind of taken his spot, but I think he’s just going to push your time back an hour for those days.”

            “Oh, okay,” Taehyung said.

            “Mr. Kim will probably tell you about it when he gives you a final schedule for the week. Don’t stress. He may look silly and carefree, but he’s meticulous and good at keeping things organized.” Taehyung nodded. “But other than Yoongi-Hyung, we get two older women who sometimes act like lunch aids and watch the kids while they eat, but that’s kind of on a touch and go basis, you know?”

            “This is the weirdest preschool I’ve ever seen.” Taehyung joked. “I wish I went here as a kid.” Hoseok laughed a bit.

            “Yeah, so do I.” He admitted. “But I’m going to call Hyung and tell him to come by today and say hi, even though he’s not scheduled.”

            “Alright.”

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            You were walking down the hallway, shuffling papers in your hand, when you passed by the art room door. It was a short walk from your classroom, the building was not particularly big on the inside. As your eyes wandered up towards the door, you saw a banner reading: “Welcome, Mr. Kim! Fighting!” On the top. Seokjin had placed it up there when he arrived this morning, with the help of an exhausted Hoseok, and Taehyung looked surprised when he saw it hanging there. At least, that’s what Hoseok told you. When you arrived, you stayed in your classroom, preparing for the day and making sure that you had enough materials for all of the day’s lessons for each student. You had no interest in welcoming Taehyung into this “family” as Seokjin began calling it. Ever since his interview, his deep voice kept popping into the back of your head to replay the same line over and over.

If you did your job and taught them basic respect towards adults, then I’ll be sure to work hard and keep them on that track.

Just thinking about it again made you crumple the paper currently sitting on your hand and toss it angrily into the trash beside your desk. How could he be so cocky so quickly? The anger that was bubbling up inside of you made you have to take a stroll down the hallway of the building, escaping for your classroom, which suddenly felt very claustrophobic the longer you were in there. Though you were shuffling papers, you weren’t focused on them, you just intended to run your brain around before the day began. And that was how you ended up in front of the art room, staring at the banner above the door. It wasn’t visually appealing, but it wasn’t meant to be up for a long time. Just as you were ready to continue down the hallway, the door to the art room opened, and you looked towards it. Hoseok popped his head out, stretching his arms.

“Your room looks great, Taehyungie~!” Hoseok said. You saw Taehyung stick his head out behind Hoseok, smiling.

“Thank you for your help.” He said.

“Of course. I’m going to go to get-.” Hoseok turned on his heel as he spoke, his eyes landing directly on you. “Oh! There you are.” He grinned. He hurried to you, taking your arm. “You saved me a trip back to the classroom, come see Taehyung’s room, it looks amazing!” You glanced at Taehyung, who stood watching by the door. His head bowed, and he smiled. The slight sparkle of excitement behind his eyes may look whimsical to the normal eye, but every sparkle in Taehyung’s eyes only seemed to spark in your face, burning you with its fiery touch. You huffed, shaking your arm from Hoseok’s grasp. “What?”

“I need to take stuff to Mr. Kim.” You said simply. Just as you were about to turn on your heel, Hoseok took your hand again. “Hoseok-.”

“Mr. Kim said he was going to stop by here in a few minutes to give Taehyung the schedule for the week, so don’t worry, you can give them to him then.” You blinked, shooting daggers at your friend, who shielded himself from them with familiar ease. “You don’t want to miss him, do you?” Your eyes scanned back up to Taehyung, who still stood, hands at his sides, and his neck craned to look at the banner above his door. You saw his eyes continue to sparkle as he stared at it, and Hoseok, not waiting any longer for a response, simply began leading you into the room. “Come on.”

Stepping into the room was like a huge, burst of color when compared to the lights that were illuminating the colorful pictures in the hallways. It felt as if you were in another universe, a world where it looked like someone had put a bright lens over your eyes. Colors seemed almost neon, and you instinctively had to squint for a moment when you first stepped in. The first big thing you noticed was the smell. It smelt new, like the inside of a new car, or the smell of a brand-new book that was recently cracked open at the spine. That, or maybe it was the lemon-scented Lysol wipes that were used to wipe down the tables every day. Everywhere you looked, there was something to admire. The huge painted rainbow beside the door, giant, colorful closets filled with any sort of art supplies one person could imagine, and maybe even more. All the stuff in your classroom that was unneeded was pulled out and instead placed in his closest, leaving you with two empty closets that you needed to figure out a purpose for. You noticed the behavior chart, titled “Thumbs Up for Good Behavior”. All the posters were given clever puns if the opportunity presented itself. A sense of familiarity washed over you, though it was a feeling you had long since forgotten. The brightness of the room, the newly laminated posters, the curiosity of what would come in store the first moment those kids strolled through the front door, curiosity, and wonder filling their little eyes. It was something you had long since forgotten, being in your classroom for as many years as one of your little ones could count on a single hand.

“Doesn’t it look great?” Hoseok asked, looking at you. You looked at him, seeing him grin in satisfaction. “It kind of reminds me of when we decorated your classroom for the first time.”

“It looks…good,” you said softly. Taehyung sighed in relief, smiling.

“Thanks. My mom helped me with some of the ideas, but I made everything. I’m pretty proud of how it came out.” You watched as Taehyung walked to his desk, running a hand along the wood surface. “I’m excited, now that everything is set up and ready.”

“You’re going to do great,” Hoseok said, giving a thumbs up. You glanced back down at the papers in your hands, noticing now that they were once again crumpled in your fist, most likely while you stared in awe at the room around you.

“Can I come in?” A third voice hummed behind the sound of a knock on the door. When the three of you looked over, Seokjin stood there, grinning. He was holding something in his hands, a small box with the words Song’s Bakery scribbled on the top in a bright, bubbly pink color. “I brought donuts for us~.”

“Oooooo~.” Hoseok and Taehyung hummed in unison, walking over towards the box and staring inside it with wide eyes and salivating mouths. “Those look so good.”

“Thanks, ~.” He grinned. “I bought them on the way here, but I didn’t want to bring them over until you finished the room.” Seokjin’s eyes scanned the vicinity, and he chuckles. “It looks incredible.” You watched as Seokjin and Taehyung chatted, Hoseok’s eyes staring down at the donuts while he silently waited for permission from his boss to take one. Seokjin glanced down at his employee and raised an eyebrow in amusement at his friend. “…Go ahead, Hoseok,” Seokjin said. An excited squeal came from Hoseok’s mouth as he reached in and lifted one. “You too, Taehyung.” He nodded, taking out his choice before Seokjin turned to you. “…Go on~.”

“I can’t stay.” You said as you reached out to take a donut. “I need to finish preparing for the day.” Seokjin nodded.

“I put a new weekly schedule on your desk with Taehyung’s time block in it.” You nodded, waving your hand as you exited the room, biting into the donut in hopes that it would prevent any further conversation. Closing the door behind you, Seokjin lifted his donut and glanced at Taehyung, who was eating silently. “Don’t worry, the kids are much more mature than her.” He teased, and Taehyung chuckled a bit. “Now, can you give me a little room tour?”

The walk to your room was silent, the only sound being that of your heels clapping against the floor, and the quick-paced chewing of the donut you were finishing up. Stepping into your room felt…different than it did when you stepped in it an hour before. The room was fully lit, with bright lights and colorful pictures decorating the room, even more so than Taehyung’s room. However, standing in the front door, it felt much dimmer than before, though nothing had changed. It was a familiar feeling that washed over you, but…a different familiarity than the one that hit you in Taehyung’s room. You walked past the desks, smelling the fading scent of the Lemon-scented wipes Hoseok had used to wipe them down before. You sank into your seat, flipping over the folder of today’s activities. You knew you had lessons to finalize if you wanted to get a head start on the upcoming weeks, however, you couldn’t find the motivation to move, until the door opened, and Hoseok popped his head in.

“The kids are starting to arrive.” He said. You nodded, standing up from your seat and heading out to the front of the building with him. You didn’t see Taehyung exit his room, and honestly, you didn’t want him too. Hoseok must’ve seen you looking because he quickly looped your arms together. “He said he’ll meet the kids when they come in for their art lesson. Mr. Kim said that he’s going to be there today, and he wants me to stay in there with the kids for the first week or two.” Your eyes went wide as you looked at him. “It’s just to help Taehyung get situated with the kids and their behaviors. Once they do, I’m all yours to help prepare. Besides, you like silence, don’t you?”

“I guess…” you said. Just as you both stepped outside, you saw a set of car doors open up, and little kids hopping out of the backseats, fixing their bags.

“Teacher! Mr. Hobi!” Yuna shouted, hurrying over as her pigtails bounced freely on the sides of her head. “Look! I cut my hair, but it’s still long enough for pigtails!”

“That’s lovely, Yuna~,” Hoseok said, kneeling to her level. You watched as the next student to hurry over, rambunctious Beomgyu, was holding something in his hands.

“Look!” He shouted, holding up a child-sized police hat. “Daddy bought it for me!”

“So cool. Do you want to use it for Show and Tell?” you asked, patting his head. Beomgyu grinned, nodding excitedly at the thought alone. “Okay then~ You can go first.” Beomgyu’s eyes sparkled, and he hurried towards his best friend, Kai, to show him as well. You watched as Namjoon stepped out of the car, closing the door behind him and calling out to his son, was already totally invested in Beomgyu’s cool hat.

“Kai!” He called, and his son looked over. “Come here. I need to go, or I’ll be late.” As Kai hurried over to give his father a big hug, his eyes raised and landed on you. You were not in the mood for this now, but still, you offered him a polite smile and raised your hand in his direction. He did the same, his grin a bit wider than yours, however. After squeezing his son goodbye, he stepped back a bit to head to his side of the car, only to bump into the car door just slightly. You could see his eyes widened a bit in surprise as he turned to look at the car, then back to you. A sheepish smile crossed his face and you couldn’t help but chuckle. With another wave goodbye, Namjoon finally made it into his car and sped off. The kids were arriving quickly, all talking to you about their weekends and everything that they did. You had to settle them quickly, before leading them inside to start the day. As you walked down the hallway, Hoseok shuffling the kids playfully into the classroom as they giggled, you looked at the door that sat still farther away. You had to admit, you were wondering what he was doing right now if he was doing anything at all. He was meant to have the kids around 12:30, right after their hour lunch break, leaving you alone for a good forty-five minutes to get some much-needed work done. However, that was a few hours away, and they were yours until then. Closing the door behind you, a grin shot onto your face and the day began.

-----------------------------

Taehyung was looking over the student information while he waited, as well as mentally prepared himself for the introduction period with the kids. Knowing that Seokjin and Hoseok, who knew these students well already, would be there assisting him for a while, made him feel a bit more at ease, but the last thing he wanted was to make a fool of himself. As he flipped through the pages of a binder, glancing down at his phone as Jimin sent the occasional good luck text, Taehyung was trying to put names to faces before they kids even arrived, since their school pictures were also provided. It felt as if time was moving at a snail’s pace for him as if 12:30 would never get here. He was already hungry, but maybe that was nerves? He had no idea, but he greedily stuffed his sweet bread into his mouth anyway at 10:00. While he was setting materials up at each desk for their introduction project, a simple self-portrait using paint, he wondered if there were any bad kids. The paperwork didn’t show any kids with behavior issues, but you never know with kids who can count their age on one hand. They liked to test the waters, he used to be like that when he was a tot, according to his mother. Just the thought of having to discipline kids sort of terrified him, and he hoped it would never come to that.

11:30 rolled around and Taehyung heard kids chattering as they headed outside for lunch, the beautiful day allowing them permission to use the picnic tables by the playground. Taehyung was tempted to get up and say hello, but he was unsure if you had even mentioned to the kids that he would be a new teacher in their daily routines. The last thing he wanted was to mess anything up. So, he sat in his room.

“What’s that sign say, Mr. Hobi?” He heard a little girl ask.

“That’s a surprise.” Mr. Hobi hummed. “You’ll see it right after lunch, okay? Aren’t you happy we get to eat lunch with you today?” Immediately, a group of kids began to express their undying excitement at the idea, and Hoseok let out an amused laugh before the disappeared out one of the side doors and out onto the fields. Taehyung hummed, walking out the door. Slowly, he propped it open and poked his head out. He was the only one in the hallway, the sound of children still heard, but extremely faint. There was only an hour left before it was his time to shine, and he could feel it. Seokjin was planning to arrive before the kids did in hopes of offering any last-minute assistance, but Taehyung said he was ready. He wasn’t.

“Hey! Is that the new kid?” An unfamiliar voice hummed from behind Taehyung. Quickly, he spun around to see yet another male walking over to him. He was a bit shorter than the other teachers here, with dark black hair and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses over his eyes. The other man could immediately sense the confusion and nervousness coming from Taehyung, and he laughed. “Must be. Hoseok called me before about it being your first day. I wanted to come to say hi.” He walked over. “I’m Yoongi, the gym teacher.” He stuck his hand out towards Taehyung. When he realized this, his eyes widened a bit, and he took his Hyung’s hand quickly.

“O-oh, of course. Hi. I’m Kim Taehyung, the new art teacher. How are you?”

“Fine. You settling in?” he asked. Taehyung nodded. “Good. Everyone’s talking about how great you are, so I’m excited to work with you.”

            “Everyone?” he asked, feeling a bit hopeful. Yoongi chuckled.

            “Yeah, well…except…” he glanced back at the door to your classroom, Taehyung following his gaze for a moment. “But that’s not important right now.” Yoongi looked back at him. “Can I see the classroom? I don’t get anything but open fields here so I always like to glance when I can.” Taehyung nodded and led him inside. He watched as Yoongi looked around. “Wow. Colorful. I like it.”

            “Thank you.” He said. Yoongi looked at him, still sensing the ball of nerves forming in Taehyung’s stomach.

            “Nervous?” he asked. Taehyung nodded once again. “Don’t be. The kids are great.”

            “I just want to have a good project for the first day. I was going to do a self-portrait but that’s kind of boring.” Yoongi chuckled.

            “I’m sure you’ll be okay.” He offered, patting Taehyung’s shoulder. Taehyung nodded. “I can’t stay long, I need to head back to school. I’ll see you tomorrow, alright? Good luck today, and don’t be nervous. The kids can sense nerves.”

            “Can they?”

            “They feed off fear, little kids.” Yoongi hummed. Though he was kidding, the way he said it sent shivers down Taehyung’s spine. Yoongi laughed again as he headed out the door, Taehyung following behind. “Bye, Taehyung. It was nice meeting you.”

            “You too.” Taehyung agreed, bowing slightly to his new Hyung. Yoongi smiled a bit, putting his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Taehyung looked up at the banner as he watched Yoongi begin to walk away. As minutes ticked away, Taehyung tried to rack his brain for a good idea. He wanted to get to know the 17 little ones that he would be sharing his love for art with. He wanted to know the ins and outs of their behavior, what they liked, and disliked, how they reacted in certain situations. Would he get all that from a little self-portrait on a piece of printer paper? After a moment, he quickly looked back to his Hyung, who was almost down the hall. “HYUNG?!” Yoongi quickly turned around. “I’m sorry. Can you help me with something fast?” He pointed to the banner as Yoongi made his way back over. His eyes were raised to the banner, and he raised an eyebrow.

            “I’m not making you a banner.” He said. Taehyung chuckled a bit.

            “I need help taking it down and into my classroom.” Yoongi hummed.

            “Alright.” He said. Taehyung nodded as he hurried quickly towards the janitor’s closet.

He had a plan.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the kids returned from lunch and washed their hands, 12:30 rolled around. You never expected it to go this fast, it rarely went this fast! Hoseok stood by the front door, watching as you lined students up based on how well they were sitting at their seats. Yeji was first, and Kai and Yeonjun were last. It was the same as it always was.

“Where are we going?” Kai asked up, lifting his hand in hopes you would take it. You did, and he smiled.

“We’re going to…meet a brand-new friend for art.” You said.

“Oooohhh.” He hummed, though most likely not knowing what you meant by that. You signaled Hoseok that he was good to go, and he began to lead the kids down the hallway. The second they turned the corner, they saw Taehyung standing at the front door of the art room, Seokjin standing beside him. They immediately began waving to their favorite principal.

“Hello, hello, yes!” Seokjin grinned. “Hi, my little ones. Come inside, we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about today.” Taehyung was waving silently, a smile on his face as the kids offered curious, yet jovial, waves back. It wasn’t until Yuna looked up at him that someone asked:

“Who are you?” Taehyung knelt to the little girl, who was tugging at her pigtail.

“My name is Mr. Kim. We’re all going to meet each other inside, okay?” Yuna nodded.

“I’m Yuna. You know me first now, so that means I’ll be your favorite.” Taehyung grinned his little boxy grin as Yuna hurried inside behind her friends. When he stood back up, he heard a little girl go:

“Woah! That’s the biggest piece of paper I’ve ever seen!”

“Don’t shout, Ryujin.” You hummed, watching as the kids surrounded the paper that laid spread out between the desks.

“Are we painting, Teacher?!” Little Soobin asked as he looked up at Taehyung. Taehyung had pushed the tables back, and as you scanned the room, your eyes widened. Paint buckets of varying colors were set on each table. Smocks were laid out on one of the tables, tiny white ones that you hadn’t seen out of a closet in months. The kids stared at the paper.

“What does it say?” Ryujin asked, the kids looking up to see Taehyung as Seokjin approach.

“It says Welcome, Mr. Kim. Fighting!” Seokjin lifted his hands. “Can we all say that?” The kids shouted the phrase along with the principal as you approached Taehyung. Quickly, you spun him around to face you.

“Paint on the first day? Are you nuts?!”

“…No, why?”

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“Well, I’m an art teacher. So yeah.” He nodded. “Wouldn’t have gotten hired if I didn’t know what I was doing.” You scowled at him, but Taehyung simply turned back towards the kids. “Alright, ready everyone? I need you all to sit right where you are, okay?” The kids immediately did what they were told, eyes wandering around to the paint behind them. You could see the excitement in their eyes as Taehyung walked over. Seokjin put a hand on your shoulder.

“Go rest up. We’ll see you in 45 minutes.” He said. You blinked, looking at Hoseok, who was already standing behind Soobin and Kai, making sure he could see all of the kids. You nodded, heading out the door as Seokjin clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone. Can we all say hi to Mr. Kim? He’s our new art teacher!” A sea of kids said hello in perfect unison, and you closed the door behind you. You walked down the hallway, back into your oddly familiar classroom, and plopped yourself at your desk.

“Paint on the first day. Unbelievable.” You mumbled. “He’s trying to spite me. I just know it.” You groaned, running a hand along your face as you felt yet another headache coming on. However, you quickly sat upright and opened your folder, turning on your computer and turning on your computer and pulling up your lessons. “I can’t worry about him and his stupid classroom, I have lessons to finalize.” As you pulled up the first lesson, you sat in silence and got to work. It was a feeling you were used to, constantly working in silence as the kids ran around with Mr. Min or the days where they went to lunch with a lunch aid. The silence was normally a blessing for the teacher of preschoolers.

However, unlike those other times, you could faintly hear the kids down the hall shouting and chatting with one another. That sound made your silence only feel lonely and suffocating.

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#bts #bts fanfiction #kim namjoon #rm #namjoon #kim seokjin #jin #seokjin #min yoongi #yoongi #suga #jung hoseok #hobi #hoseok #jhope #park jimin #jimin #kim taehyung #taehyung #v #jeon jungkook #jungkook #taehyung x reader #fanfiction #A Palette of Emotions ff

[qqueenofhades]

Women and “medieval cruelty and ignorance”

Okay. So. We could probably have guessed that this tweet was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, but here we are anyway.

(Tagging @artielu​ because I know she enjoys my history smackdowns and this is right in her wheelhouse of interest.)

First: nobody denies that the Alabama bill and similar efforts are absolutely heinous, are designed to be test cases to get Roe v. Wade overturned, and are deliberately gratuitous in their constitutional overreach and general horrible Handmaid’s Tale nature. But for well-meaning liberals, such as above, calling them representative of “medieval cruelty and ignorance” is a) not accurate and b) counterproductive. If we insist on using “the medieval” as a conceptual category inferior to “the modern,” these recent bills bear a complicated, at best, resemblance to medieval canon law and social practice. And there was never, I promise you, any law that prescribed a 99-year jail term for abortionists. So if we want to point out how the modern Republican party is actually much worse than their medieval counterparts, we can do that, but also: trust me, this is thoroughly modern cruelty and ignorance, and we should insist on that distinction.

First, obviously, women’s bodies have always been subject to a social discourse of power, control, gendered anxiety, and attendant responses. This was certainly the case in the medieval era, but our modern interpretations of that discourse can be... iffy, at best. In discussing the feminization of witchcraft in the late 15th century, M.D. Bailey critiques how scholars have tended to take the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witch-hunting handbook, as representative of a self-evident and endemic medieval and clerical misogyny. In fact, the Malleus was the equivalent of the extreme right wing today, was relatively quickly condemned even by the church itself, and was largely reworked from earlier ecclesiastical anti-sodomy polemics, because the idea of “disordered gender” was certainly one that occupied medieval moralists and theorists. I have discussed the Malleus in other posts, but while it certainly is virulently and systematically misogynist, it also was a work of rhetoric rather than a reflection of historical reality. Medieval misogyny absolutely and obviously existed, and it impacted women’s lives, but we also really need to get rid of The Medieval Era Was Bad For Women, (tm), Therefore Everything Was Worse Back Then.

The possibility of magic being used to cause impotence/loss of fertility was another concern, and one of the main anxieties about the practice of witchcraft was that it would bring “sterility” and irregular sexual activity (usually with the devil). However, an extensive corpus of contraceptive and abortifacient knowledge has existed since antiquity, and in tracing the representation of unborn children in medieval theological thought, Danuta Shanzer notes:

My findings suggest that it is overstatement to claim that from the start Christianity considered the fetus a living being from conception. Augustine is a major agonized and agnostic counter-example.

Hence, contrary to right-wing claims that the church has “always” thought that life began at conception (spoiler alert: the church has never once “always” thought the same thing on anything), it was almost never the case in medieval legal or theoretical practice. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians argued that “ensoulment” or the separation of the fetus into a living being happened at quickening, when the baby could move on its own (which medieval medical treatises had various standards for measuring, but it would be the equivalent of about 20 weeks of pregnancy). Monica Green, a leading medieval medical and gender historian, has examined a vast corpus of obstetric and gynecological Middle English texts, and in “Making Motherhood,” argues:

Texts on women’s medicine might also be concerned to “unmake” or prevent motherhood, either by preventing conception in the first place or expelling a dead foetus that would not emerge spontaneously. Abortion per se was almost never mentioned.

In other words: abortion was not paid attention to in nearly the same way we do today, and while canon law, in theory, prescribed penalties for contraception and abortion, historians have consistently (surprise!) discovered a disconnect between this and secular law and everyday practice. And while some twelfth-century (male) jurists did attempt to equate miscarriage with homicide, and to install it in canon law, these laws were almost never practically used or prosecuted. In Divisions of Labor: Gender, Power, and Later Medieval Childbirth, c. 1200-1500, Rebecca Wynne Jones surveys the extant literature and notes:

In his 2012 book The Criminalization of Abortion in the West, Wolfgang Müller documents how 12th‐century jurists' increasing tendency to equate violence resulting in miscarriage with homicide was institutionalized in canon law. Though this development led to the widespread criminalization of abortion in ecclesiastical jurisdictions, Müller has little to say about gender relations on the ground. Rather, by highlighting local communities' reluctance to prosecute, he presents laws that might once have been seen as proof of a medieval “war on women” as legislative enactments whose practical power remained limited.

Once again: medieval ecclesiastical proscriptions against abortion were, at best, sporadically enforced, communities were reluctant to actually prosecute women or to criminalize early-term pregnancy loss, and church law was not identical with secular law, which was the standard ordinary people used and were subject to. This concords with what Fiona Harris-Stoertz has found in her survey of pregnancy and childbirth in twelfth and thirteenth-century French and English law:

It is striking that in these thirteenth-century English texts, no penalty was assigned for the loss of less developed fetuses. This absence flew in the face of high medieval church legislation, which, in theory at least, took all contraception and abortion seriously. John Riddle finds that the idea that early-term abortion is less serious than late-term abortion occurred in the work of Aristotle and appeared occasionally throughout the early Middle Ages, particularly in church penitentials, although it also appeared in the early medieval Visigothic code.

While late-term abortion of potentially viable fetuses was still a crime, secular law still essentially held to quickening as the moment at which a pregnancy could not be terminated. Before that, however -- anywhere in the first 4-5 months of pregnancy -- it could often be dealt with, if desired, without any penalty. Anne L. McClanan has investigated the material culture of abortion and contraception in the early Byzantine period. And Ireland, which as recently as last year remained one of the last European countries to outlaw abortion, had a medieval hagiography that actively canonized abortionist saints:

Medieval hagiographers told of Irish Catholics par excellence, the saints themselves, performing abortions as well as of “bastards” becoming bishops and saints. In hagiography and the penitentials, virginal status depended more on a woman’s relationship with the church than with a man. To my knowledge, no other country in Christendom, medieval or modern, produced abortionist saints or restored virgins, apart from the nun of Watton. Why Ireland is among the few European countries to maintain severely restrictive policies on reproduction remains an unanswered question, but it clearly cannot be attributed to its medieval Catholicism.

Last part bolded because important. Modern bans on abortion don’t relate to how these notions were conceptualized or used in the past, and they are not holdovers from The Medieval Era (tm). They don’t represent medieval concerns or medieval ideas of gender, or at least certainly not in a direct genealogy. Even as late as the seventeenth century, when ideas of childbirth, marriage, and reproduction were more strictly controlled, the period prior to quickening, or the movement of the baby, was still generally not penalized or subject to legal control or coercion. So in sum: while religious moralists and canonical lawyers absolutely did object to abortion (aka right-wing men, the same ones who object to it today, funnily enough), in secular law and daily practice, a pregnancy that was terminated prior to quickening was not subject to practical prosecution or legal punishment, and medieval women had access to a vast corpus of gynecological texts, medical practices, herbal recipes, rituals, and charms intended to accomplish a wide range of fertility goals: conception, contraception, abortion, a healthy pregnancy and delivery, and so forth. I also answered an ask a while ago that discussed all this in detail.

Also: abortion was explicitly mobilized as a wedge issue in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of the religious right in American politics, and that happened not because of abortion, but in resistance to the IRS penalizing them for refusing to racially integrate evangelical schools and colleges. Randall Balmer has written about the history of the “abortion myth”; do yourself a favor and read it. The Southern Baptist Convention campaigned in 1971 for the liberalization of American abortion laws, and hailed the 1973 Roe decision as a win for the rights of the mother. (Oh how the mighty have fallen?) The right wing came together as a political force to resist racial integration, exemplified by their loss in the 1983 Supreme Court case Bob Jones University v. United States. But since it was not a winning political strategy (yet, at least) to fly the flag of “let us be racist in peace,” they, as Balmer discusses, created the “abortion myth” to make themselves look better and to present a narrative of holy/moral concern for the lives of the unborn. The reason abortion is as huge as it is in the present American political landscape owes to modern religious conservatism and extremism, resistance to racial equality, ideological control over women, and other bigotry, and (again) not to medievalism or medieval practices.

So, yes. Let us call the Alabama bill and other heinousness exactly what it is: a modern effort by a lot of terrible modern people to do terrible things to modern women. We don’t need to qualify it by fallacious equivalences to so-called “medieval cruelty” -- especially, again, when medieval practice and perspective on these issues was nowhere near the stereotype, and certainly nowhere near this “99 years in prison for performing an abortion” dystopian nightmare. If we want to shame the GOP, by all means, do so. But we should not resort to distorting and simplifying history to do it, and using the imagined “bad medieval” as a straw man to club them with. There’s plenty on its own. The modern world needs to take responsibility for its own misogyny, and stop trying to frame it as a historical issue that only existed in the past, and that any manifestations of it must be medieval in nature. Because it’s not.

#history #medieval history #women in history #history of sexuality #history of medicine #cw abortion #long post

[kunsthalextracity]

The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

In the framework of the group exhibition ‘Daily Nightshift’, Kunsthal Extra City collaborated with the Urban Studies Institute of the University of Antwerp on a lecture series. Due to COVID-19 we unfortunately couldn’t allow these lectures to take place at our premises.

To replace his lecture, professor Bart Eeckhout wrote an interview with himself.

In his text Eeckhout, board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp, researches the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp and the spatial shifts that have occurred along the way. Where in the city were sexual minorities able to make contact? In what kind of places of entertainment? How did these change in shape and location? Which material traces of this nightlife remain?

Text & images: Bart Eeckhout

The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

Q. So, professor, before Covid-19 changed everyone’s plans, you were going to give a lecture about the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp as part of the public program for the exhibition?

A. Well, not quite a lecture.

Q. But you were going to entertain our audience with lots of slides and flashy pictures?

A. Not really. As a matter of fact, I was wondering how to turn the presentation into something more than the delivery of an academic text, something that could satisfy an audience that is drowning in audiovisual information. The thing is that I saw myself forced to talk about a topic that is hard to illustrate, and to do so moreover as an amateur historian.

Q. How do you mean?

A. I actually teach English and American literature. But I happen to be the only board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp who is simultaneously on the board of A*, the network of colleagues who specialize in gender and sexuality studies. There I have a reputation for being into queer studies and for stimulating the collaboration between queer academics and activists, since I consider myself to be both.

Q. And so the organizers came knocking on your door to ask if you could speak to the topic of queer nightlife in Antwerp?

A. Yes. And I accepted to do so because I have coincidentally been acquiring some expertise on the topic. Last year a colleague with whom I love to collaborate at the university, the media scholar Alexander Dhoest, got an invitation to contribute a chapter on Antwerp for an international book on gay neighborhoods in cities around the world – what used to be called “gay ghettoes.” We remembered that a PhD student of ours, the musicologist Rob Herreman, had spent a lot of time in archives to find out more about the recent history of LGBTQs in Antwerp in relation to music. Though we were hesitant to venture into terrain that should ideally be explored by skilled historians, we’re not aware of any Flemish colleagues doing academic research into recent LGBTQ history, certainly not with a specific focus on Antwerp. In addition, the book for which we were invited was being put together by architects and would thus probably cut us some slack. So we realized that the case of Antwerp would get attention in the collection only if we were willing to undertake the job ourselves.

Accepting to write the chapter has meant that we were forced to immerse ourselves quickly in the materials and sources we had at our disposal so as to develop a critical narrative that would meet the minimum requirements of academic scholarship. We were primarily interested in all the things we might learn from the exercise.

Q. And did you learn a few things?

A. I certainly hope so! One thing we hypothesized from the start is that the Anglo-American way of understanding gay neighborhoods would be only partially applicable to Antwerp, at best. And that is also what we argued at the more theoretical level. If you want to look for queer forms of geographic clustering in a Flemish city such as Antwerp, you should omit a lot of the social functions you find historically in the gay neighborhoods of New York or San Francisco. The “reverse diaspora” of sexual minorities from the countryside to the city that underpinned these metropolitan neighborhoods in the US never took place to the same extent, or in the same manner, in Flanders or Belgium. 

In addition, a historic city such as Antwerp is relatively small by international standards. Getting around, even on foot or by bicycle, is easy, so that there’s no urgent need to choose particular residential areas if you happen to be queer. For these and several other reasons, the first thing to note about gay neighborhoods in Antwerp is that there was never anything more than some spatially clustered nightlife.

Q. Let’s talk for a moment about that nightlife then. How easy was it to go back in time to undertake your investigation?

A. That was one of the difficulties. It’s not as if you can simply fall back on standard published histories of queer life in Belgium or Flanders, let alone histories that deal specifically with Antwerp. The larger context isn’t so hard to sketch, but the specifics are a bit of a problem. When you research the history of public sex in Antwerp – by which in this case I mean the institutional environment for nondomestic sexual interactions among citizens – it isn’t hard to figure out how the first red-light district emerged during the city’s historic heyday in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As this red-light district catered primarily to sailors, it was understandably located close to the river, in the narrow streets just north of the City Hall that came to be known as the Schipperskwartier or Skippers Quarter.

This much is standard knowledge. But how did same-sex interactions ever figure into that lusting, lawless, lowlife milieu? What might possibly be the historic sources in which you might find reliable evidence for same-sex intercourse taking place in this environment? There isn’t much you can go by. You must hope that somewhere a slight flicker will flare up to evoke a fleeting image of what might have been going on. Let me illustrate this by showing the invisibility of our topic at its most palpable. Here’s the picture of a street in the former Skippers Quarter. Do you recognize it?

Q. Not immediately.

A. Don’t blame yourself. Though I personally love to roam through all the little streets of Antwerp’s historic center, I must confess I had never bothered to walk through this one before my research took me there. It’s called the Gorter Street and it’s a very short, narrow, one-way street that is about as bland and uninteresting as you can imagine. Do you see the red-brick house in the middle of the image? That wasn’t always there, of course. If we can trust the history of house numbers, it stands where previously the Crystal Palace was to be found, a gay bar whose building collapsed, literally, sometime in the 1960s. But before the Crystal Palace was a gay bar, it was a luxury brothel, as far back as the turn of the twentieth century and even earlier. And that’s where we were able to locate our first piece of not entirely reliable evidence for same-sex goings-on – not entirely reliable because it requires a detour via the fictive world of novels and a willingness to fill in the blanks. What do you remember about the Flemish writer Georges Eekhoud?

Q. Not much.

A. He was our own Oscar Wilde, if you like – the first famous gay writer in Flanders who, like Wilde, had to defend himself in court. Unfortunately, he wrote in French, which means we’ve forgotten him even more efficiently than if he’d written in Dutch. Anyway, he published a novel in 1888, La nouvelle Carthage, in which he appears to evoke this particular brothel in great detail as a cave full of mirrors in which “all stages of debauchery” took place. Given his own sexual orientation, it’s very easy to imagine that these must have included same-sex interactions, but in his description Eekhoud preferred to remain coy about the sexual acts, so that it’s really for our own 21st-century imaginations to flesh out the specifics.

Q. So for what period did you find the first evidence of same-sex activities in the Skippers Quarter that didn’t take the form of literary fiction but of nonfictional testimony?

A. We had to jump to the first half of the twentieth century for that. Mainly, what we then find is people testifying to drag performances taking place in the Skippers Quarter. Our favorite example is that of Danny’s Bar, a notorious bar for sailors where both the owner and his male staff were dressed as women and the sailors were being tempted into maximum binging.

On an online forum for retired sailors, we found some very juicy recollections of the kind of ritual that typically went on in this bar – how young sailors were being lured in as a sort of prank by older sailors, how these youngsters tended to be awestruck by the Hollywood-star prettiness of the women, and how they would be made to drink so much (and sometimes be drugged as well) until they woke up in bed upstairs only to find they had been sleeping with a man. It’s fair to speculate that some of the visiting sailors must have known they were going to be able to sleep with a man at Danny’s Bar and must have returned to the place to experiment with sexual desires and gender identities that fell outside the mainstream norms of their day and age.

Q. Are there any signs left of Danny’s Bar?

A. Not unless you have x-ray vision. The street is now almost entirely residential, though there is a modern-day “brasserie” in the house where the bar used to be. If walls could talk!

Q. These recollections of Danny’s Bar take us automatically into the second half of the twentieth century, I guess?

A. Yes they do. On the eve of the Second World War, we know that the Skippers Quarter had acquired a gay connotation to those in the know. Yet it didn’t stick to that area. After the war, its gay nightlife started to spread beyond the city’s traditional red-light district. A few of these new bars were still nearby, in the area around the Cathedral and the City Hall, but the majority sprang up close to the Central Station. This is also when we’re beginning to see some diversification. The Shakespeare, for instance, was a bar in the historic center. On the one hand, it was still occasionally visited by sailors and sex workers. On the other, and more importantly, it had a female bartender and gradually came to attract a female crowd – a niche for which there hadn’t been a market yet in the Skippers Quarter. 

Meanwhile, in the working-class streets leading toward the Central Station, a number of bars were opening that were all operated by men and served a male clientele – places like Fortunia, Week-End (later known as La Vie en Rose), and La Ronde. These were generally small operations. One of the streets, the Van Schoonhovenstraat, would go on to sport more than twenty such gay bars. In this picture I recently took, you get a sense of what this may have been like when you look at the structure of the street front, for instance the houses in the middle painted in blue and mauve (one of them surviving as a sex shop):

But the Van Schoonhovenstraat wasn’t the only street. Even if nearly all of the area’s gay bars have in turn disappeared, you might still recognize this iconic place, the one with the greatest staying power and cult status: 

Q. Ah yes, Café Strange! It’s in the Dambruggestraat, right?

A. Yes, and it still allows you to step into a time machine and take a trip down memory lane. We used it as our prime architectural case study, because its history shows you a lot about such gay bars in the second half of the twentieth century. A few facts and details hopefully help bring this history to life.

Café Strange was started by a gay couple as a gay-friendly “brasserie” back in 1955. The name, “Strange,” was meant to be suggestive without being explicit. In those years, the curtains behind the windows were still systematically drawn so that no passerby could look inside. You couldn’t just step inside either, but had to knock or ring a bell and wait for someone to let you in. To expedite this process, a small porch was constructed so that you could first step into the anonymous porch, close the door behind you and then open the door to the actual café – all with an eye to being as discrete as possible. 

Over the years, the bar became so successful that its interior had to be reorganized and expanded so that it could accommodate not only a buffet at the back but also make some space for a dance floor. The café had a good reputation for many years until one of the owners died in the mid-seventies and his remaining partner got into various kinds of trouble that ended dramatically with his getting killed. It was then that a new gay couple, Armand and Roger, took over – you probably know Armand as the remaining owner. This was in 1980, in the era of early emancipation, and so they decided to be less discrete by painting the building’s façade in a sort of pink and adding a drawing of a sexy sailor on the outside. Inside, pictures of semi-naked and naked men were hung on the walls. The buffet was moved to the front of the room and a professional DJ was hired to turn the place into a small part-time disco. For a while, the owners even produced their own little magazine to inform gay patrons about leisure opportunities – remember that this was before the internet made looking up such information a piece of cake. 

The first decades under the new owners went well: the place had the reputation of being at the same time modern, unpretentious, and laid back. There were a lot of flamboyant theme parties in which patrons could win grand prizes such as a flight to Athens or a weekend in Amsterdam or Paris. What’s interesting to observe also about the history of Café Strange is the shift in demographic over the years: while in the 1980s you could find a mix of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from a wide range of ages and social classes in the bar, this narrowed down in the 1990s to mostly gay men, and then by the new millennium morphed again into a mix of gay and gay-friendly visitors. Indeed, by the nineties, these smaller gay bars in especially the area close to the station were increasingly being pushed out of business by a new type of venue, such as The Hessenhuis. 

A building with a totally different allure, of course. It’s originally from 1564 and part of the city’s historical patrimony. After undergoing renovation in 1975, it reopened as a temporary exhibition space, and then in 1993 a gay-friendly bar opened that doubled at night as a club for mainly gay youngsters. Soon, the Hessenhuis became one of their two favorite commercial nightlife venues, together with the Red & Blue. This new generation of larger, trendier, more spectacular, and essentially self-contained clubs gradually drove the small gay bars out of the market, and thus also put an end to the sense of a particular neighborhood or area in which many such bars were clustered.

Today, much of the city’s history of gay and lesbian nighttime entertainment has evaporated and become materially invisible in the streetscape. There was a time, during the second half of the twentieth century, that Antwerp contained literally dozens of gay and lesbian bars, but almost none of these survive now. Unfortunately, I’m not aware that anyone is actively trying to honor this material history by installing commemorative plaques or making exhibitions about it. It survives mostly in the memory of an aging cohort of participants, hence my insistence at the outset about the relative difficulty of bringing my topic to life to a younger generation raised on a constant stream of immersive images. But perhaps now that Alexander, Rob, and I have made our first archeological efforts and undertaken a basic form of mental mapping, a curious young historian will come along to flesh out our very schematic findings and dig up all the beautiful, funny, and naughty traces of queer nightlife that may still be hiding in public and private archives. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

[healersworld]

Labourers in White Coat

It's 3 in the morning. And I'm tired. My legs hurt. My back hurts. I have a severe headache. My heels… oh… they are so tender that I can't touch them on the ground anymore. So basically I'm toe walking now. I'm a doctor and have been working as a general surgery resident for the last one year. And today I'm serving in emergency room which is usually a twenty four to thirty hours shift starting from 8 a.m. to the noon next day. Around 2 to 3 a.m., we (the doctors working in ER) take turns to sleep for two to three hours to gain strength to work for leftover cases in the next morning. I've been dealing with patients of various surgical issues all day but the ER is quiet now. There are no more patients and we are sitting on our chairs, tired, at the brink of falling apart, praying that PLEASE GOD, DON'T SEND ANYMORE PATIENTS. I look at the clock at the wall in front of me. It's my turn to sleep and I just want to lie on bed and never get up. Just to think about sleeping at this hour of night makes me relax a little bit. But for the last few hours, I'm feeling stomach ache, probably because of something I ate earlier. So I decide to take a little walk outside the ER before I sleep. I go out, pace a little, listen to the silence of the night, see the guards sitting on the chairs with their heads hanging down their necks in sleep, find the attendants of the patients snoring in their self-made beds over the muddy ground. I walk to the cafeteria a few yards away and sit on a chair spreading my legs on another chair. I close my eyes, lean backwards against the backrest of the chair with my head resting on it and feel lightened and vulnerable, and I'm afraid that if I sit here like this for an another few minutes, I would fall asleep and nobody could wake me up, not even the angels-of-waking-people-from-sleep (if such things exist). So I forcefully open my sleepladen eyes, pull my head up and contain my legs. But I'm still not ready to go back in ER because of the stomach ache which is kind of getting harsh now. I look at my cell phone. It's 3:15 a.m. Fifteen minutes of my sleeping hour have already been gone. If I sleep, probably my pain will go away. I shouldn't waste anymore of my precious time because I have to be back at 6:00 (after two hours and forty five minutes). Each single minute of sleeping hour is like a diamond and losing more minutes will be like losing more of my fortune. And while I'm thinking of saving diamonds, an ambulance pulls up in front of ER. The back door of the ambulance opens. The paramedics pull one stretcher out and then another one. These are two patients in one ambulance. So something isn't right. Then again whenever an ambulance pulls up in front of an ER, it's never right. And there's always an element of doubt that the patient might not be in severe condition. But two patients in a single ambulance at 3:15 a.m., it's definitely not right. I'm still sitting in the cafeteria watching this entire picture with the knowledge that my colleagues will handle. Those two patients are still on their way in through the door that another ambulance pulls up. Paramedics pull the stretcher out. By looking at the attendants of the previous two patients following this patient, I assume that these three patients are related to each other which means something disastrous has happened.

Okay. Enough! I can't sit anymore. I run to the ER.

The whole view of the trauma station has changed. Before I left, it was all quiet and peaceful, and now it's all uproarious and swarming with people. And that's the thing about working in ER, the situation is unpredictable. Nothing is for sure. One minute it's peace; another minute it's hell. I come to know that they are firearm cases. I see my colleagues tending to the patients. But their hands are full. They need help! I look at the clock, it's 3:20 a.m. already. I'm losing more diamonds and I'm tired and having stomach ache and my whole body is crying for rest. But I can't go to sleep now. Can I? Losing all my fortune is worth saving their lives. I buckle up. I put on gloves, cover my face with the mask and tend to those patients. Among the patients is one male in his thirties having multiple firearms in his left leg and a firearm shot in his chest. Damn! It is going to take whole night now just to manage this one patient. Firearms in different body parts are a sign of how much time it’s going to take. If they are in the limbs, there isn't much time it would take to manage unless an artery has been breached which is going to take a whole lot of your time. And if there's a fracture, it's out of my domain (because I’m a general surgeon). It's going to go to orthopedic, and that's a relief. If the firearm is in the chest, the time it would take depends where in the chest the bullet has made its entry. In some cases, the bullet is just beneath the skin over the ribs and that wouldn't take much. And in some cases, passing a chest tube will do the trick. And in others, you may have to cut open the chest, and that can give you the idea about the time it would take. If the firearm is in the abdomen, that's a red flare. It means we are going to cut open the patient and depending upon the damage inside, it takes about three to six hours of your time. If the firearm is in the neck, it's another red flare. And if it's in the head, it's again out of my domain and it's going to go to neurosurgery. And that's a relief too!

This man in his thirties is in my care now. He's conscious. Breathing. Responding to my commands. By looking at his chest wound, it seems like the bullet is just under the skin. That's a good thing and it has saved me from going through a whole lot of trouble. I count six holes in his leg. Probably three bullets have pierced their way in. And by looking at the contour of his leg, there's definitely a fracture. I check his distal pulses and feel the vibrations of his vessels over my fingertips. They are intact. Thank goodness! So this case is going to orthopedic, but his vitals are gradually dropping. His BP is falling. He's tachycardiac and sweating. He has lost a lot of blood through the holes in his leg. Before sending him to ortho, I have to resuscitate him first and make him vitally stable. And I need blood for that. I run to his attendants and ask them to arrange it as soon as possible. As I wait for the blood, I ask nurse to pass IV line and start fluids. That will give the patient enough time to survive until the blood is arranged. A few minutes later, I come to know that this patient has a blood group AB negative and nobody in his family is a match. And they are a long way from home. About a hundred kilometers away.

I'll be damned!

This blood group is so rare that people who have this type of blood group are just 0.36% of the world population. Of all the types of blood groups, this patient had to be AB negative. And I live in a country, where there are blood banks but still it is the family of the patient who has to arrange the blood. I go into a state of temporary paralysis. I'm standing still, deprived of sensations, not knowing what to do next and this is the worst kind of feeling when you are losing control. When everything is going out of your hands. And then suddenly, I break. I holler! I holler

at the attendants that do whatever the hell you can to arrange the blood because I'm not losing this patient tonight. I have seen so many people losing their lives in this same ER because they couldn't get the blood in time. I'm angry. I'm helpless. And now I'm sweating and can feel my heart jumping in my chest. I check his vitals every 5 minutes. My eyes are fixed at the monitor, beeping at his head side, showing his pulse and his oxygen saturation. His systolic blood pressure is in 80s now. Pulse is revolving around 120. He's shivering. Hypothermic. Confused. Slowly closing his eyes. I shake him every two minutes to make him stay awake. All this is

happening in front of me and I can't do anything about it. I'm losing him and I can't do anything about it! And in that moment, when I have done everything I could, I close my eyes and pray which I haven't done in a long time.

OH DEAR GOD, SAVE THIS MAN. DON'T MAKE HIS CHILDREN SPEND THEIR LIVES WITHOUT A FATHER. DON'T MAKE HIS WIFE SPEND HER WHOLE LIFE WITHOUT A HUSBAND. OH DEAR GOD, SAVE THIS MAN BECAUSE HE'S TOO YOUNG TO DIE NOW. BECAUSE HE STILL HAS SO MUCH LEFT TO SEE OF THIS WORLD. OH DEAR GOD, SAVE THIS MAN FOR IF HE IS SAVED, I'LL BE SAVED.

While I'm holding this man's hand, praying to the Almighty, my heart still pounding, my body still sweating, I hear a voice.

THE BLOOD IS HERE!

WHAT?!

AB negative?

How is that even possible? I don't know how the family arranged it, but they did it and I'm grateful. The blood is transfused. I monitor the patient's vitals every five minutes. An hour later, he's getting better. He's no more confused. No more shivering. His BP is coming up. His heart is going back to normal. He’s slowly opening his eyes. I'm relieved. I'm thankful. I'm happy! I see his family and tell them that he'll be okay, that they need not to worry anymore. Their melancholic faces have a new look now. They are blooming. And to see them like this makes me feel proud. When he's fully stable, I patch his wounds up and shift him to orthopedic bay for the orthopedic surgeons to deal with his fracture. My work with him is finished. I look at the clock, it's 07:00 a.m. I've lost all my diamonds. My pockets are empty but my heart is alive and filled with solace. I'm tired but kind of feel rested. I'm having body aches, but they are not killing me. My stomach ache has gone. I'm no more sleepy.

I'm a doctor and this is my life. I chose to live this life because when I was ten years old, I fell down the stairs and had a laceration on my knee which hurt like hell. I was taken to a hospital and the doctor stitched my wound and gave me medicine to relieve my pain. I was new again in a few days. I had no more gap in my knee. There was no more pain. All of it made me wonder about the life I was going to live. I was going to save lives as my profession! And here I am now seventeen years later in a hospital stitching people wounds, relieving their pain, saving their lives. It's just one incident I have mentioned here which occurred during a few hours of this night and I deal with these kinds of situations every day. I try to save people. Some I do, others I lose. And it's not just me. I have my colleagues here who work day and night, sacrifice their sleep, their comfort to save lives. We are just like the labourers. The difference is that they are in ragged clothes building houses brick by brick for the people to live and we are the labourers in white coats saving lives of those people.

[soulvomit]

I'm really feeling that *when* you grew up, can have really profound impact on sense of self and identity in some pretty all-encompassing ways, and childhood experiences (not merely exterior socialization, or that would be all kinds of essentialism about everything, but probably a mix of interior and exterior experiences) can even feed into identity formation differently based upon when and where that childhood took place.

I had to form my identity at a time when there was still a major zeitgeist of there only being Weird and Normal. "Weird" cliques tended to be more often be Big Tent.

People weren't talking about autism (the stereotype of autism was an institutionalized individual with profound disabilities) as a spectrum. Geeks and nerds were basically the same thing still (in the 70s through early 90s, there was no mass consumer fandom culture). There wasn't the big public scrutiny over fanfic because most people didn't even know about it. (When something is deeply subcultural, it often becomes a place of refuge from "the norm." But then becomes subject to scrutiny by people who don't understand that thing or its history, when it becomes better known.)

You were normal or you were one of The Freaks(tm). If you were a middle class or working class person and you did ANYTHING or had ANY interest that wasn't basically whatever your gender, class, and race prescribed interest by 1980s society, then you were a Weirdo. Basically all weirdos were lumped together. WE WERE NOT USING THE WORD "GEEK" YET. We only barely used the word "nerd" at that time.

Some of us formed our identity through this and began calling our cliques "the freaks" or "the weirdos."

Though crowds of Freaks(tm) like my own often contained people who would have modern identity labels later, or later be diagnosed with clinically based reasons for Not Being Normal, these weren't actually what made a person Weird.

What made you Weird was simply Not Being Normal, and 80s Normal was a very specific thing. Ever notice that the "losers club" or "the group of outcasts" trope in 80s kid stories, often contains Jewish kids and POC kids as well as really smart kids and kids with disabilities? That's how specific 80s Normalcy was. (And certain kinds of weirdo culture were heavily gender-specific. I basically formed my identity as the female token in Weirdo Space.)

I struggle with where I'd fit into modern youth culture, because we didn't have all of these boxes: just one or two giant ones.

And my identity was largely already formed, I'd come to terms with being Weird. When I left my old group, things were already starting to change (that or the Bay Area has a much more atomized culture than LA does, idk.)

I actually have a lot of resistance to trying to further atomize my identity, or trying to in any way medicalize my weirdness. Gender norms and lack of cultural and class fit were the main reasons I thought I was autistic. It was my involvement in LGBTQ culture coupled with being around autistic people IRL (not online!) and learning about the deeply homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist history of psychiatry, that made me realize that if "female autistics can be taken for having a male brain" (ugh, but it was a common emerging trope of the 90s and 00s) then some version of the reverse must also be true - and based on my connections with Boomer aged gender non conforming people who endured medicalization during their 50s and 60s childhoods, often being GNC *was* the main thing "different* about them.

The idea of interior feelings of gender non conformity having nothing to do with hobbies or clothing preferences, just was not even on the map yet. But fuck, I've been in social settings where merely being AFAB and SPEAKING IN COMPLETE SENTENCES made one gender non-conforming. (Lots of us aren't aware of this. It's in the air we breathe.) I'm not sure at that point what is 1) my internal reality being different from most people's (how would I know?!) and 2) my external reality's rigid ideas of "normalcy."

I understand my weirdness as in no small part being because of culture. I feel like I have friends whose lives were ruined because the culture hadn't caught up to them. What if my best friend, a 6'4 trans woman, had been able to transition earlier, or live her best life in the 80s and 90s, instead of being a reclusive agoraphobe. What if my 40something friend who was diagnosed autistic in recent years, had gotten earlier recognition - before dropping out of school. I think about this all the time.

But I understand my own weirdness as being a combination of gender, cultural, and class based forces. I did not understand this until my 30s and 40s, when I started interacting with social justice culture. To some degree I'm weird because my parents are weird and raised me weirdly. Being raised weirdly makes a person weird.

There is a lot of stuff I held myself back from, or was held back from, because of being falsely medicalized. I used medicalization to fuel imposter syndrome: your interests are your talents and passions and gifts but mine are merely "special interests." Somehow over the course of my life everything that was actually a feature in other gendered and class settings was a bug in the ones I was raised in.

My believing I was autistic, was based on enough early life, school, and clinical data to be supported by clinicians who agreed that my early narrative sounded like a typical Aspergers narrative.

What the clinicians didn't know is that early in my life, I lived in a neighborhood where none of the other kids even spoke the same language. I had a father who raised me gender-neutral in many respects and I'd had more boy friends than girl friends as a child. My parents were always more privileged than our neighbors. Nowadays people would say we were the artsy first wave of gentrification, because people love to simplify things like whoa, but in reality many of the places I lived never gentrified at all and really we were just the one white family sometimes and later, the one computer family. I had white privilege in the real world but had parents who raised me to not think of myself as having white privilege or often not see myself as white. (That took a long time to unpack.) Finally if you are AFAB and have an IQ over 90 then you are probably already the “normative” society’s definition of Weird.

All of this would make anyone feel weird.

It's in big tent, mixed-use Pan-Weirdo Space that I found a home.

#i feel like in California the geek culture absorbed a lot of people who had been kicked out of other big tents #you find a hobby or setting inclusive when others aren't accepting you and soon you have a new big tent #i feel like Bay Area and SoCal geek culture were the spaces for lgbtq people who didnt otherwise fit in with local lgbtq culture

[the-a-j-universe]

oh wait what? you're working on a book? drop those deets my dude! I gottah hear what it's about!

There are more details on my writing blog, where I’ve even posted earlier versions of the first half-ish of the story.

The best way to describe it would be to say that it’s like a martial arts anime in written form. I play a lot of the tropes of that genre completely straight, even doing the thing where overcoming personal issues and growing as a character is tied to the characters overcoming powerful enemies.

At the same time, though, there are tropes that I’m trying to subvert. The character who I focus on the most has a male best friend, for example, but she and he never become romantically involved. I also get her together with her actual love interest, another girl, as early as possible, avoiding a will they won’t they dynamic because I hate those.

The story is set in an alternate version of our world where, thirty years ago, people found themselves suddenly able to manipulate a form of energy, giving them powerful supernatural abilities. It was discovered that the disciplines of martial arts could be used to better control and strengthen these abilities, and a new sport was built around people using these abilities to fight each other.

Meanwhile, the emergence of this new form of seemingly infinite energy allowed a small company, the Prometheus Corporation, to become the most powerful company on Earth by developing technology which utilizes it. A lot of their tech is still in its infancy, but they still have a major, mostly positive, impact on the story.

More immediately, though, this power has allowed evil people to grow large followings, but one is worse than any other. He is so strong that the other most powerful characters in the series are afraid of him, plotting against him in secret, and his followers think of him as something akin to a god. What’s worse is that there is something that our heroes have that he wants. If he gets it, he’ll become even stronger.

The cast grows over time until there are (probably too) many side characters, but the primary focus never really extends much beyond the original four who are the main characters of book one. I don’t think of them as having a true main character, though.

The stories also tend to be pretty morally gray, and I tend to avoid making definitive statements about morality. It’s pretty clear where the characters stand, but I want the reader to be able to make judgments on their own regarding whether the characters’ choices were right.

[leadside48]

The Psychology Behind Breath Play

In truth, the lady takes verbal agreement one step further more, encouraging partners to not solely establish some sort of safe word yet in addition a secure gesture. "Maybe it is like a thumbs up, thumbs lower, or swiping your current hand across your own neck, gesturing to halt, " she help. Foxtailapp.com can also be an possibility in case you are thinking about adding power dynamics in to your sexual performance. Incorporating bondage or even a blindfold to the combination can add to the dominant-submissive dynamic as well.? Also this is a kind involving play that truly demands you trust the associate, and thus this doesn't lend on its own particularly well to casual play,? your woman adds. Each type of breath-play tends to a different twist in each correlate? many are obviously more harmful. There happen to be some main dangers with breath play, as a result of oxygen or blood deprivation to the particular brain. At the worst, there? h no tip-toeing round it, the person upon the receiving surface finish can die. Discuss the person in the giving conclusion at risk as properly, as folks cannot legally consent being killed. There may be a natural danger of inflicting cardiac arrhythmia, and almost certainly cardiac arrest. Asphyxiation is the technological term for staying deprived of air. The concept with this most probably emerged from subjects that have been performed by hanging. Experts at public hangings noted that males victims developed a good erection, generally remaining after death, plus infrequently ejaculated when being hanged. Should you? re the link restricting someone? h respiration it? s i9000 very important that you examine in often, launch your hold and inquire when they? d want to proceed. As together with any sexual activity, informed, enthusiastic consent will be important. Consent is an ongoing conversation prior to, during, and after intercourse. And this kind of "causes blood to be able to turn into extra acidic because associated with interfering with the blood's equilibrium. " Nevertheless much like choking, breath play is considered one regarding the riskiest love-making acts. Additionally, right now there? s a solid cross-over with people who have open up or polyam relationships. You may would like a couple of minutes to revive bloodstream move and fresh air. If your companion has stopped breathing, instantly name your local emergency service. Hiding could also become safer with the help of a partner, although you? ll require a safe word or perhaps sign to show if the stress is definitely merely too wonderful. If strain is definitely too great or even goes on for very long, it may possibly trigger cardiac arrest, actually death. The best issue, though, is exactly how badly informed folks are about precisely what they may be doing. Just holding your breath just like you were going underwater can provide the similar sensation plus hunt for breath play. Just please don't do that for therefore prolonged that you merely get dizzy and move out. Another difficulty is that after indulging in breath play, throughout addition to the particular scarcity of oxygen, there could end up being an accumulation of carbon dioxide that occurs also, says Nolan. Inhale play is innately dangerous since you're restricting your system's entry to air. According to the kind associated with play you interact in, it can possibly limit blood circulate in order to sure parts of your current body, together with your mind. Along with an associate, this type of breath play may become safer, however alone, you run the particular risk of fainting earlier than a person can take typically the bag off the head. Different kinds of breath play present totally different hazards, and precautions might help you prevent attainable issues. A lot of sexual actions hold some danger, on the other hand there? s simply no denying the many forms of breath play have some additional vital dangers. Self-induced autoerotic asphyxiation may well be accomplished in most of the similar methods using variations that perform not demand a companion. Endorphins are released when airflow resumes and folks with had their air withheld begin to take fresh breaths. This endorphin discharge, paired with the dash of hormones already heightened during lovemaking activity, is a good extremely desired experience for some men and women. In the novel Soaring Sun, demise since of this kind of sexual arousal is definitely defined when that is supplied as an attainable cause of a murder victim's dying. All they must do once that they require a breath is definitely shake their mind, which is able in order to break the close up created by the palm of your hand and permit all of them to breathe. Systems discovered with the picture of an unintentional demise usually current evidence of different paraphilic activities, many of these as fetishistic cross-dressing and masochism. Inside circumstances involving youngsters at home, people may disturb the particular scene by "sanitizing" it, removing evidence of paraphilic exercise. This can have the result of constructing the dying appear to be able to be a strategic suicide, quite as compared to an accident.

#Breath play:BDSM:Kink:Glossary

[doomonfilm]

Ranking : M. Night Shyamalan (1970 - present)

Like most people, I was introduced to Philadelphia-native M. Night Shyamalan through the massive success of his debut film The Sixth Sense.  I vividly remember him being labelled “the new Hitchcock” right out the gate, which even then I felt was a lofty title to appoint to a director who hadn’t even given us a follow-up film, which can usually be taken as an indication of how much potential range one will have over their career.  His skill behind the camera was evident, and his first five years of output hammered home the fact that he had a knack for writing twist endings that in itself took on a meme-worthy life of its own.  Nobody is perfect, however, but unlike most directors that are suddenly met with criticism after a span as wunderkind and critical darling, Shyamalan took things in stride and did not fold, and as a result, his career has seemingly lost little to no momentum twenty years in.

Ranking the films of Shyamalan is, at heart, an exercise rich in folly, as his ambition and diversity almost calls for the films to be previously grouped into sub-genres prior to being ranked.  In my opinion, however, there is enough stylistic definition and clear-cut writing panache that makes his films definitively Shyamalan, so I hope that you’ll join me as we enjoy our ride on this fool’s errand.

11. After Earth (2013) They say always shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars.  With After Earth, M. Night Shyamalan showed that sometimes you can shoot for the moon, miss it and the stars, and land somewhere in the void.  Lots of post-apocalyptic flourish and setup is used for what basically equates as a side-scrolling quest, and the choices made for the characterizations are so distracting in their oddness that it’s hard to invest yourself in the movie in any capacity other than a surface level dissection of the accent and dialogue.  Shyamalan does have a knack for building lore in his films, but he does way more telling than showing in After Earth.  If not for the ties to Will and Jaden Smith, this film could’ve sunk the Shyamalan ship.

10. Lady in the Water (2006) I’m sure that M. Night Shyamalan had good intentions when he decided to turn a story he created for the enjoyment of his children into a feature-length film, but not every idea needs to be seen through into fruition.  Many of the same issues that plague After Earth popped up in Lady in the Water, from the infinitely deep lore being smashed into exposition down to the extremely odd choices for characterizations, but unlike After Earth, at least there are recognizable aspects of the film that one can hang on to.  There are a handful of surprisingly strong performances, given the ridiculousness of the content, but ultimately all other elements are shadowed by the sheer absurdity of the root narrative.  I try not to pick on actors, but Bryce Dallas Howard just doesn’t do it for me in this flick.

9. Signs (2002) This is probably going to be the one that causes the most feedback in terms of position.  According to the masses, this film is the true masterpiece in the M. Night Shyamalan canon, but as an aficionado of alien invasion films, Shyamalan seems to zig at every point he should have zagged.  Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix is an interesting coupling on paper, but if there is chemistry between the two of them as the film’s leads, it didn’t translate on screen.  And for God’s sake, don’t even get me started on having aliens who are harmed by water choosing to come to a planet that, from space, is CLEARLY MOSTLY WATER.

8. The Happening (2008) While M. Night Shyamalan had presented “dumb” twists prior to The Happening (we’ll get back to that shortly), the sheer vastness of the revealed enemy creates a sort of inverse danger arc in regards to the journey we were presented… while there does seem to be destruction, and a sense of danger about what will happen next (and to whom) is built up, it pales in comparison when one realizes that nature is the enemy, and if this premise were true, the events seen more than likely would not have been so random in their scale, location and severity.  Maybe I’m dumping a lot of speculation into this one, but when our male lead is doing what he does in most every film, and your female lead is given an uncharacteristically underwhelming performance, you get time to think about these kinds of things.

7. Glass (2019) All of the potential in the world was there for Glass to be a mind-melter.  What felt like the biggest, most elaborate twist in the entire M. Night Shyamalan universe had been revealed in the form of a secret trilogy that took nearly two decades to present itself, but sadly the landing was not stuck.  All of the grandness of the world built in Unbreakable and Split suddenly felt much smaller and less elaborate when our characters essentially found themselves grounded, and while we were sold the idea that all of what happened was some sort of elaborate group hallucination, the feats pulled off by Crumb are still sold to us as reality, leaving the lines blurred much more than what was likely intended.  We are even teased with a storyline that feels like mockery of what could have been, but in the end, Glass was the tragic landing that undercuts the brilliance that preceded it.

6. The Sixth Sense (1999) This film is a tough one to place, because in terms of its technical prowess and execution, it is not only a brilliant film, but a stunningly impressive debut.  The problem with this film, however, is the same that tends to plague even the best magic tricks… it’s amazing until the trick is revealed.  In the case of The Sixth Sense, the first watch blows you away.  The second watch, as a result, feels like a completely new movie, and is even more rewarding as it resolves itself once again.  Any viewing after the second one, however, is plagued by a lack of surprise, intrigue or anticipation, and what we are left with is a good movie with no wow.  Perhaps the best way to watch this film, at this point, is with someone who has never seen it and has somehow managed to avoid any spoilers, as it would be the closest one can get to experiencing this film with an uninformed eye.

5. The Last Airbender (2010) With a black cloud hanging over this film due to overwhelmingly negative backlash from fans of the Avatar animated series, I stayed away from it like one stays away from rotten garbage.  Interestingly enough, I had no dog in the fight, as I had never seen any of the source material, and only had a layman’s understanding of it as a result, with no emotional ties to anything about it.  I say that to say this… I can certainly understand how an adapted work can be met with brutal skepticism and aggressive analysis, and if even one stone of fan service is left unturned then the whole thing must be cast aside, but if taken on its own merits, this is a surprisingly strong film.  It hits the bullseye in terms of being an epic kid’s tale in all the ways that Lady in the Water did not, and it has the big budget feel that was missing in Glass.  Who knows... my thoughts on the film may change as I finally dive into the animated series, but as it currently stands, this film should be considered as a win in the Shyamalan collection.

4. The Visit (2015) What a truly bonkers movie.  Watching M. Night Shyamalan’s take on the found footage film is surprisingly kinetic, and thanks to some of the best casting found in any of his films, we are given characters that evoke emotion and make us either care about them or fear them.  There are probably even some who would claim that they “saw the twist coming”, and maybe I’m just a sucker, but when the curtain is pulled back on what’s really going on it feels like every loose string representing a question is suddenly pulled tight enough to choke.  There are just enough games present in the writing that, while we question the crazier things we see, we can also shrug them off with “acceptable” answers.  If you’ve managed to go this far without anyone spoiling the ending for The Visit for you, I highly recommend checking this one out immediately, as it is that vintage Shyamalan that many people are seeking out.

3. Split (2017) If this one were just a one-off, it would probably still sit extremely high on the list of Shyamalan films.  Anya Taylor-Joy is good in most everything she does, and James McAvoy is putting on a clinic in terms of range and character variety.  The film gets about as broad as it can without going over the top, and that size is translated in the tension that emerges from the captivity that Kevin Wendell Crumb puts the girls in, forcing them to his live wire and ever changing personality.  With much of the film boiling down to a few locations, and a freight train of a premise that is seemingly headed in one direction, it is natural to anticipate a Shyamalan swerve, but it’s the button at the end of the film that makes you realize the sheer existence of Split in itself is the twist.  For that feat alone, this film must be applauded.

2. The Village (2004) Remember when I brought up “dumb twists” earlier?  I’ll be honest with you… this was the film I had in mind, despite it being my favorite (albeit it not my top ranked).  Up until the moment of truth, everything presented in this film works : as a period film it is well-executed, the use of reds and yellows is iconic, the lore presented is actually shown and not left solely to exposition dumps, and Adrian Brody brings a performance level to his character that far exceeded what was necessary.  I also tend to be hard on Bryce Dallas Howard, but she steps up to the plate when the story is shifted completely to her shoulders.  The twist isn’t even actually all that bad, other than the fact that it may have been the most obvious premise for a twist, but I think that even a slight tweak in regards to the overarching location or the person who discovers Howard’s character would have greatly improved the execution of the twist moment.  Even though M. Night Shyamalan had already made a great movie (which is coming up in just a moment), this was the one that brought me off the fence and into the camp that supports Shyamalan.

1. Unbreakable (2000) It’s quite rare in the grand scheme of things to see a director make light year jumps in his second film, especially when their first film reaches phenomenon status.  Somehow and someway, however, M. Night Shyamalan did the impossible by topping a film on the Mount Rushmore of debuts with the film that feels like the most ambitious and well executed of his career.  A cursory search of the Bruce Willis filmography will show that outside of the first Sin City film and Looper, M. Night Shyamalan got the last of good acting he was giving directors.  The visual interpretation of the comic book world framing is so nuanced and subtle that, upon learning the context and intention of the film, each repeat viewing brings new attention to these very layered visual details.  The presentation of Elijah Price was so phenomenal that it ultimately caused expectations that crushed Glass upon arrival.  Even if the Eastrail 177 Trilogy didn’t quite live up to expectations, there is no denying that Unbreakable was a pitch perfect table-setter, and an impressive film to boot.

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