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ladyautie · 4 years

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get to know me more!

@funyasm tagged me and I’m bored after writing my chapter, so here it is!

✨ what do you prefer to be called name wise?

My name’s Sophie. My friends call me Spencou or Spence. We met on a Role-Playing game forum where I played a character named Spencer. We’re used to call each other by our characters’ names and nicknames, most of the time. My brother calls me Sis’.

✨ when is your birthday?

15th november 1993.

✨ where do you live?

Paris, France.

✨ three things you are doing right now?

I’m watching an episode of AT4W on youtube, scrolling on Tumblr and I’m drinking a coffee.

✨ four fandoms that have piqued your interest right now?

Definitely It and especially Eddie Kaspbrak and the ship Reddie. I’m kinda obsessed right now, writing fanfic, reading fanfic, daydreaming about it and all.

I just played the Last of Us 2 and I’m currently watching a let’s play from my favorite youtubers, Mari and Stacy from Geek Remix. I’ll probably read a few fics as well.

The tv show Barry (HBO) is a definite special interest for me. I’m probably going to watch it all once again real soon and I’m planning on writing a fanfic or two in the future. I’m dying for the third season to come.

Finally, I’m probably going to be super into The Umbrella Academy once again, when the second season will be released. I’m just really into Vanya, Klaus and Allison and I can’t wait to see more of them.

✨ how is the pandemic treating you?

None of the people I know have been contaminated, so I’m lucky about that. I’m not quarantined anymore, back to work, and the transition is not easy.

I feel like I’m more openly autistic than I used to be and that I can’t stand the rest of the world for a long period of time. I’ve experienced multiple meltdowns and shutdowns and I have real difficulties to socialize with most people or to focus on my work.

I feel incredibly naked and vulnerable whenever I’m leaving my flat without my mask on, so I think that’s definitely something I’m gonna have to work on in the future.

Leaving Paris and meeting my folks for my mother’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by people who mostly didn’t care about the virus, kissing each other on the cheek in true french fashion to say hello, hugging, not wearing a mask, not respecting any kind of social distance.

I was quickly overwhelmed by all of that, plus the noise, and I had to isolate myself in my parents’ car, sobbing hysterically and willing to suffer in a overheated car if it meant having a bit of peace.

There are definitely going to be long-term consequences. I can only hope that my physical health will remain okay, though.

✨ song you can’t stop listening right now?

Keep On by Sasha Sloan. I just really love the lyrics and the message.

✨ recommend a movie.

Whenever I have to think of a movie to recommend, Frank by Lenny Abrahamson is the first one that comes to my mind. This movie is an obsession for me since the first time I watched it and I often find myself watching it again and again. Despite its heavy subjects, it’s definitely a comfort movie for me.

Too often, movies featuring mentally ill characters will aim for the characters to “get better”, which doesn’t mean for them to find healthy ways to cope with their issues, but usually for them to look more “neurotypical-like”, if you know what I mean. Frank doesn’t go that way at all. On the contrary, it pushes the viewer to empathize with the main characters and to understand their point of view, their way of being.

It’s so incredibly comforting to watch a movie featuring mental illness realistic and not romanticized and to have the movie say “you’re different and you have issues, but you’ll find your tribe someday and be able to find your own happiness, even if it’s unconventional by society’s standards”.

I don’t know, I just have so much feelings about this movie. Plus the music slaps, the humor is hilarious (kudos to the random French guy who can perfectly understand English but refuses to utter a single word if it’s not in French) and the actors are truly on point (I can only salute Domnhall Gleeson, among everyone else who is also worthy of praise, because he definitely managed to make me hate his character in a way I almost never hated a character before).

Watch it!

✨ how old are you?

I’m 26 years old.

✨ school, university, occupation, other?

I used to be a librarian, but I couldn’t find a stable job in this field, so I passed an entrance examination and I’m now working in the tax administration. Yeah, not really glamorous, but it pays the bills and I’m accommodated for my disability, so it helps.

✨ do you prefer hot or cold?

Definitely cold. When I was a kid, I used to swim in mountain lakes, at temperatures close to 13° celsius, and I still take my showers mostly cold. I can’t stand heat, I get headaches very easily when it’s sunny and I’m getting confused easily whenever it’s too hot. I recently had a nosebleed at work so intense that I found myself spitting blood (it went better once I got a fan, making the temperature bearable).

✨ name one fact others may not know about you.

I used to be allergic to my own sweat when I was around 18, until my early twenties. Whenever I was doing a mild physical effort or getting stressed out, I would get hives and itchy skin rash all over my whole freaking body, which was so exhausting that I would fall asleep immediately as soon as the rash was gone.

It disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, without me ever doing something about it. I still don’t know why I experienced that and if I’m going to experience that ever again. I hope not.

✨ are you shy?

My autism makes social interactions complicated, but I’d say I’m mostly impaired by my social anxiety and the various traumas I’m dealing with daily.

Traumas I got after having been bullied pretty badly by kids and teachers during my school years, my stepfather being borderline abusive and different traumatic experiences, including my childhood crush dying from a ski accident when I was 15 or so (and me never being able to tell him that I loved him) and people betraying me so many times that I can’t even recall every little thing.

As a result, I find myself doubting constantly that I’m worthy of love, affection and respect and I often wonder when I’ll do or say the “wrong” thing that will cause me to lose everyone I care about. I also have a hard time knowing who I am and, as a result, allowing everyone to know who I am as well.

I often don’t know what to say and will find myself keeping my mouth shut, even on topics I’m knowledgeable about, because I’m scared of people shutting me down, among other things. My friends make it easier for me to talk about things I like and all, but I’m still heavily doubting myself.

I try to challenge myself regularly. I’ll force myself to take part in events that are taxing or that are forcing me to perform in front of people. That’s how I found myself taking part in the casting part of the french equivalent of “American Idol” (I merely met the pre-judges, but I did manage to sing my whole song in front of them). I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.

✨ do you have any preferred pronouns?

I’m using she/her, but I don’t mind people using they/them to talk about me if they don’t want to be gender-specific.

✨ any pet peeves?

I hate how people can freely and openly be homophobic, racist, ableist, transphobic, sexist and so on, but as soon as I open my mouth to let them know that what they said/did wasn’t appropriate, I’m labelled as one of those “hysterical feminists” or a “party pooper”. s/ Sorry if your antisemitic joke isn’t making me laugh, my “dear” colleague... /s I hate whenever people infantilize me, especially my mom. She’s still keeping an eye on my bank account, despite me telling her that I didn’t want her to do so again and again. I don’t dare to block her out, because I’m scared of her emotional reaction. I hate the ugliest parts of fandom, notably the obsession with “who’s topping / who’s bottoming” whenever there’s a gay pairing or the racism / ableism / transphobia / homophobia I’ve witnessed again and again.

I don’t dare to engage in the Last of Us 2 fandom because of that and the way some people describe the character of Abby (a very muscular woman), focusing on her physical appearance and calling her awful names (being downright transphobic when they thought that she was the transgender character that Naughty Dog announced there would be in their game).

✨ what’s your favorite “dere” type?

I had to google it, because aside from Yandere and Tsundere, I didn’t know a thing about it. I guess you could say I’m a Dandere (someone who is quiet and asocial. They are afraid to talk, fearing that what they say will get them in trouble.).

My favorite type is Kuudere though, when it comes to anime in particular (someone who is calm and collected on the outside, and never panics. They show little emotion, and in extreme cases are completely emotionless, but may be hiding their true emotions. They tend to be leaders who are always in charge of a situation.).

My favorite anime character, Kiyotaka Ayanokōji from the anime Classroom of the elite, is the most extreme case I can think about. He’s completely expressionless for most of the anime, talks with a very dull voice and it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking about at all times or what’s his overall plan. His hidden depth makes him all the more fascinating. He managed to keep me interested in a mostly meh anime.

✨ rate your life 1-10. 1 being really crappy and 10 being the best you could ever be.

It’s a bit hard, but somewhere around 5 or 6? I went through tons of crap in my life but I’m still here and able to live on my own, even if my quality of life isn’t all that good. I live with nearly daily suicidal thoughts since I was a teenager and have to compose with my meltdowns and anxiety attacks as well. I feel “other” most of the time and I can’t relate to most people I’m meeting and interacting with, which can sometimes feel very lonely.

On the other hand, I have wonderful friends who are willing to put up with my trauma crap and are overall amazing to talk to and be around. I have a cat I love dearly. They’re the reason why I’m still alive to this day, giving me a reason to say fuck off to my suicidal thoughts.

✨ what’s your main blog?

My main blog is Ladyautie and is about autism. I have another blog, reddie-4-more, focusing on the It movies and Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie Tozier.

✨ is there anything you think people need to know about you before becoming friends with you?

So, uh, don’t be weirded out by the kind of things I can tell you about my past. Even if it seems a lot, all of it is definitely true.

For example, I was almost kidnapped when I was around 8 or 9 by a random guy, while I was camping with my father.

My father and my paternal grandmother actually kidnapped me and my brother when I was around two and I stayed with him until the social workers determined that my mother had to raise us again because our well-being and overall life were threatened.

Lots of events of my life seem far-fetched or out of a movie / a book or something and I had people telling me that I must be lying or that I’m over-exaggerating, something that always hurts deeply.

I’m terribly awkward and more or less openly autistic, so you’re definitely going to notice something different about me. I can’t change for you and I’m not willing to hide my traits only to make you feel more comfortable about frequenting me, so if you can’t handle my socially anxious and disabled ass, then just leave.

I need people to actually tell me what they think or feel. I’m very “first degree” and I’m pretty bad at guessing what people are thinking about. Don’t be afraid to be frank.

Finally, never, and I mean never, infantilize me. I’m a 26 years old woman. I’m not a kid.I’m fine with my friends offering to help or making sure that I’m okay or so, but never assume that I don’t understand something and don’t force your help on me if I say that I’m okay.

That’s it, those who want to take part in this exercise, don’t hesitate!

#tag game #not entirely autism related #suicide mention

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takaraphoenix · 5 years

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Did you watch batwoman? If so, what are your thoughts?

Yes, I just did. Now, I do have to preface this with: I’m a huge lesbian.

And that preface is important, because I watch different properties with different levels of leeway. Say, a show with a female lead already gets away with more things, but if you give me a show with a lesbian lead character, and not just “one of the group of main characters is a lesbian”, but “the titular only main character is a lesbian”, then you’re just... getting all the bonus points and you already have me about 150% more enthusiastic than your usual Straight White Male lead does.

So, that had to be said because I look at this with very rosy-tinted happy gay glasses.

Now, that being said: I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT. *vibrates at high frequency*

Ruby Rose is amazing and I love her and when she puts on the Bat-suit that’s like that’s my sexuality. Seriously! The action, the acting, the look, it’s perfect, I love it. *fans self*

And I love her sister! Uh, the stepsister, not the blood-sister. I thought she was just going to be an airheaded rich girl character, or at the very least take A While to develop like Thea Queen did, but nope, she’s a doctor and she runs her own secret underground clinic to help the poor. What a damn badass. Can’t wait for her to be in on the secret and to join the team, which she inevitably will.

Now about that blood-sister. Urgh, I love Alice in Wonderland so to have an Alice themed villain is great. And, sure, I’m aware she’s comic-canon, but she’s not been in any recent major adaptations - those just circle through the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin. Which I all do not like. In fact, I don’t like the majority of Bat’s rogues gallery - and I know I’m the exception there because most people overhype Bat’s villains so so much. But the fact that The Iconic Batman lays in the past in this show means that his most major villains do too, the fact that they fully remove Bruce from the show makes me hopeful I will not have to see anything Joker related at all seriously I am very much over that creep. That seems like something incredibly refreshing to me that I, personally, am very much looking forward. Not to mention that the sibling dynamic is going to make this incredibly interesting!

And oh! Oh that Kate figured it out by the end of the first episode?? Wow! I thought the “Who the fuck is Alice?” plot would at the very least stretch out until say half-time on the first season to keep the ““suspense”“... because that’s kind of what the Arrowverse does. Even way past being reasonable, they still pretend that the good guys can’t figure out the villain’s identity, even when it is painfully obvious at times and I am very happy to know that this won’t be the case here! That Kate is a clever cookie who indeed can put one and one together in record time! That has me highly optimistic about where this show is going to go.

Now, there is one thing that... kind of... bums me out a little and that’s the costume and design choices made on Luke Fox? Because, uh, Luke Fox is a strong, athletic guy who can kick butt. That’s how I first met him in Bad Blood and that’s what Google image search tells me about his comic-counter part too.

So this inane compulsion to make The Tech Guy wear tacky sweaters over button-up shirts (a style that literally only nerds wear on TV??) and of course wear glasses... and also be really squeaky and jumpy... just why. You didn’t have to go this hard to make sure he is The Nerd Guy. You really didn’t, because source material shows you he actually isn’t that type. That’s the weird part for me? Like, this character specifically wasn’t the nerd stereotype, so I don’t quite know why they felt the need to change him into one??

I’m wary of Sophie and Kate’s relationship. I need someone with inside knowledge to tell me that Sophie is bisexual, or pansexual, but just... not a lesbian. Because if this is going to be “out and proud lesbian chases after closeted lesbian who is about to marry her beard” I may have to head-desk a lot. I genuinely hope that where they’re going on that front is a friendship and that Sophie is going to join the team. I really truly want Sophie and Kate to overcome the past and to become friends and not to be a Straight Rom-Com Trope of Sophie choosing Kate just when she’s about to walk down the aisle or some shit because that’s just the most cringey thing possible.

From all I gather, Kate’s endgame is Maggie Sawyer anyway, right? Like, in the context of Kate and romance, there are only two names I have ever really heard and those were Maggie Sawyer and Renee Montoya (who I expect to see on this show sooner or later too).

Really hoping they move Supergirl’s Maggie Sawyer over here, doesn’t have to be the exact character since she’s from an alternate Earth but I mean this Earth’s counterpart would do just fine.

I also hope to see Nyssa al Ghul moved to Batwoman considering Batman’s ties to Ra’s al Ghul and the fact that Nyssa is gonna be homeless once Arrow ends and that another strong badass lesbian character would be amazing in it? After all, last we heard from Nyssa, she was destroying Lazarus pits with Thea and Roy... and you can’t tell me that this quest wouldn’t lead her to Gotham too...

Seriously, I want a lot of gay women on this show. And! Not even just as love interests, but because straight-written gay stories often are “The Gay met The Only Other Gay and they immediately started a relationship with each other because Being Gay is the only thing they need in common to work” and it’s kind of tiresome so I would love for this show, with a lesbian lead character, to actually introduce a variety of wlw characters to actually represent the fact that even we gays do need more than a shared sexuality to work out! That you can have gay friends without dating them and that sometimes, you don’t click, even if you both are gay.

What else aside from the gays, the potential future team (Kate, Luke, Mary, Sophie) and the villain? Ah. Yeah, the parents.

I don’t like Kate’s dad very much yet? Which feels odd because usually in these Arrowverse shows the Cop Dad is always awesome. Granted, he’s not really a cop. But let’s see where he goes.

And stepmom is totally shady? That shot of her reading the newspaper with concerned eyes? Worst case: She was behind the car-accident fifteen years ago. I just... do think that she’s shady somehow.

I’m eager to see what other Bat-elements will make their way into the show, what other characters can translate onto it, considering the “timejump” - the whole Batman having vanished three years ago and being already apparently... older, to say it mildly (he was already working at Wayne Enterprise and a very fully fledged Batman 15 years ago when the accident happened so he’s at the very least in his 50s now).

But! I am absolutely enjoying this show. Even had to put my laptop down to pay full attention to it. I don’t pay full attention to things, I always write fics while watching TV because I like the background noise. I only have/had a small selection of shows that I watch with my full attention on them and I’d be very pleased if Batwoman becomes one of them.

#Batwoman #Arrowverse #DC Comics #Phoe's Random Show Rants #Batwoman Spoilers #I mean duh #Anonymous

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intotheblackhq · 5 years

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INTO THE BLACK CHARACTER AND WORLD BUILDING

(Sophie Skelton, 26, cis female) Word around the quadrant is that (CATLYN ‘CAT’ THUGHY) is originally from (LIEVIS), but have been on the terminus for (3 YEARS). If you’re in a pinch, she is a talented (HEALER). Is that why they’re a (MEDIC)? Anyway, everyone says she is (EMPATHETIC) and (ENERGETIC), but don’t get on their bad side because they’re (IMPULSIVE) and (STUBBORN). Oh shoot, don’t look now! She has her (MODIFIED PISTOL) out! (ooc: bee, 21, est, she/her, n/a)

WORLD BUILDING:

—-> Name: Lievis (pronounced lee-vihs)

—-> Located On: specifically from the city of Gria on Lievis

—-> Brief Description:

While the planet Lievis is on the smaller side as planets go, it was highly sought after by the Company for its abundance of resources both in the form of the wealth of natural resources and the people who inhabited it. Lievis is a primarily peaceful planet- that is, the people who live there almost entirely pacifists. It is extremely rare for the Lievians to start wars or show any amount of hostility to outsiders, thus making it quite easy for The Company to take over.

The city of Gria is located in the northern hemisphere of Lievis, and rises up out of a large forest by the same name. The buildings almost look like they are one with the trees. Gria is also known for its university and hospital, which have both respectively discovered the latest and greatest in medical care. They have developed everything from the latest in minimally invasive surgery to the cure to the common cold.

ROLE DEVELOPMENT:

—-> Important History:

The educational system on Lievis is fairly advanced, starting children off at the age of three or four in some sort of exploratory learning, encouraging them to question everything and search for the answers. ‘Normal’ schooling ends at the age of seventeen, and while there is an option of furthering one’s education, it’s almost an unspoken rule that you attend some sort of higher learning, be it through a university, or through an apprenticeship. The universities of Lievis are highly selective on who they let in, and are usually specialized in one field of expertise: science, law, the arts, etc.. For Cat, there was no option as to who or what she might be, what she might do with her life. She was expected to excel in her normal schooling, go to university in Gria, become a doctor, and take over the family practice. Things obviously didn’t go according to plan.

Catlyn doesn’t exactly know how she feels about the Company and their takeover of Lievis. It wasn’t like her home planet gave up much of a fight, all things considered. They just surrendered themselves rather than breaking their peace. She knows that other people had it much worse than she did, but she didn’t witness any of the carnage that other people might have.

The Company developed a habit of plucking up recent graduates of their universities of Lievis to work for them. There wasn’t a lot of negotiation involved if you were a student. If you stood out, if you were smart, if you were one of the best at what you could do, then you were almost definitely going to get selected for a placement ship or something. Cat was lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint…) enough to get plucked up the moment she graduated- just a fresh faced silly 23 year old who had no idea what she’d just gotten herself into.

Leaving behind Lievis in exchange for a job on a ship was a weird experience. On one hand, Cat had more adventure and excitement in her life than she’d ever dreamed of. On the other, she would probably never have the simple life she’d been expected to have all her life, and some piece of her wanted: a small practice, a happy little family, a home somewhere in Gria or Devana or some little town in the Cerulean Valley. It was hard for her to adjust to a world of metal confinement and distant stars instead of beautiful forests and fresh air.

There was a year long training program in Keres before she even set foot on a ship. Probably to make sure that no one accidentally gets thrown out into space when trying to find the galley. Cat stayed quiet, more afraid of asking The Company to let her go home than she was happy to be there. The day she was finished, Catlyn was given an assignment and had no choice but to report for duty the following morning.

—-> Headcanons:

There are ‘two Cats’. There’s the Cat you get when you’re hanging out, the one who always has her door open for company, the one who has a not so secret stash of snacks hidden in one of her drawers, the one who’s good for a laugh and a joke, who will listen to someone vent and won’t say boo about it. She’s a warmhearted soul, the type that you can’t help but wonder what the hell she’s doing with a bunch of bounty hunters. And then there’s Medic Cat. Medic Cat is a no nonsense sort of person who will yell at you if you don’t sit still and let her clean you up. If you try to play off a gaping wound as a scratch, she will chase you down with her go-bag until you let her assess the damage and stitch you back together. She’s like a little ball of fire and energy packed inside a little frame. She’ll do anything for her patients, even if she has to cross a galaxy to save them, even if it means putting her own life at risk.

Cat has developed a large amount of wanderlust with her job. Going to new places has instilled a certain love of traveling in her, and she always gets excited to visit a planet or a city she’s never been to (even if it’s because they’re there for less than pleasant reasons.

Cat has become fiercely loyal to her crew. She’d do anything to take care of them

I would love an arc that pushes Cat to fight. Growing up on Lievis instilled a sort of ‘do harm to none’ value in her, and I’d like to see what she would do and how she would react to having to hurt someone to save her friends, or having to choose one life over another (something that I can already hear her screaming in the back of my mind “I’M SAVING BOTH, SHUT UP”). Both in the moment and the aftermath would be very interesting to me. A sort of psychological study on Cat, if you will.

—-> Key Relationships:

The Pseudo-Relative- If you didn’t know any better, you’d think these two are related in some way. It could be a sibling sort of relationship or a parental thing, but I’d love this. Cat gets so attached to the people she loves and treats them like they’re her family- but if there was even one person that was just as attached to her in the same sort of way, I think it’d be a great dynamic. I don’t know, I’m a sucker for cute platonic relationships just as much as every other sort of connection.

The Worst Patient- The one Cat always has to chase around and yell at for doing dumb shit and getting hurt AGAIN after she had to practically put them back together like a rag doll last time. Don’t get her wrong, it’s not like she hates this person, she just hates the fact that they’re always coming into her looking like they got chewed up and spat out by something and acting like it’s nothing. If she could hit this person over the head with a book and knock some sense into them, she would… and that’s saying something.

The Disagreeable One- These two couldn’t be more opposite. While Cat is generally peaceful and laid back, this person is much more aggressive in nature. Cat might avoid them, or get into an argument with them about how to handle a situation. It could cause problems for Cat both personally and professionally.

The Best Friend- Really, another title for this one could be The Other Half. They balance each other perfectly- a conglomeration of perfect dissonances. This could easily be platonic or romantic. If romantic, I feel like Cat would be stubborn about not wanting to ruin a friendship and be afraid to take that leap, and it could be interesting to see where things go. If it’s platonic, it could easily be combined with the Pseudo-Relative.

—-> Wanted Connections: N/A

ADMINISTRATIVE:

—-> How Did You Find Us: the literate rpg tag on tumblr.

—-> Anything Else: I am so ridiculously excited about this group. Have been since the first day I found it! I hope you’re having a great day, lovely admins. <3 (PS, I hope the app is okay, but if I missed anything, let me know!!!)

About time you showed up, CATLYN THUGHY, we were just about to take off without you. Stow your gear and make sure you send in your account and finish off the checklist within the next 24 hours, or else we might have to dump you out the nearest airlock. SOPHIE SKELTON has now been claimed. Oh yeah, did I forget to say welcome aboard?

#submission

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wolvesonmars · 7 years

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As a member of the speakers Bureau list of Plan International Canada, I was invited to an event they were hosting for International Women’s Day. As I read my email the evening I was invited, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Sophie Gregoire Trudeau was going to be there, of course I had to attend.

When I got to the event I was welcomed by warm faces and smiles, a good start I thought. I was directed to a larger room where students from university and high school were and began to mingle. I skimmed the room for a familiar face and realized I knew no one there. The only faces I could relate to were the other two black girls present. We started off with an activity in groups of ten where we listed all of the “social norms” society has boxed us in as men and women. As we discussed these norms and how hard we try to resist them, we came to a conclusion. As men and women we were all fighting the same demons. We were all feeling the pressure of being boxed in, mimicking what the media wants us to look like, act and be. With this conclusion, I believe it is important to highlight that we are not alone. We are all in this together, whether we like it or not. Our struggles are not all the same but we are all craving deeply to be understood and loved.

Once the group activity was completed, we were asked to take seats in the circle made for us where we would be speaking on these matters with Madame Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. The mood in the room shifted as people began to scatter. I was nervous myself but also very excited as I wanted to learn more about what Madame’s thoughts were on this topic. When she walked into the room, she was glowing. Walking with such grace and poise, you can’t help but be in awe of her. She asked us to share stories and personal experiences where we felt we were being pushed into those boxes of social norms forced by society. One thing I would like to point out about this activity is how easily people were willing to share with her. When she introduced herself to us she said, “Please call me Sophie”. I believe she did this on purpose because she wanted people to see her as just an average person; without the title of wife of the Prime Minister. She was inviting us into this vulnerable space to express our feelings and stories, she wanted to understand from our perspective and listen to what we had to say.

At the very end of the activity she shared a personal story with us about when she was in post-secondary school. I won’t go into detail about this story as I respect Sophie’s privacy, but it did have to do with her past and her struggle with bulimia. Sophie has a past of being in the media as a journalist and she received a lot of criticism from her peers when she went public with her story about her struggle. Her peers couldn’t understand why she would want to share something so personal. However for Sophie, it was her call to action. Once she started to speak out about her past struggle, she realized how important it is to normalize this topic as others struggle with this too and so she knew she had to continue. As she summarized this story she said to us, “You are the master of your own actions. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently”. I reflected on this and nodded in agreement. As much as I know this myself, it is encouraging to be able to hear these words from someone whom is as inspiring and is willing to pass on that message. She encouraged us to have more conversations like these with our peers, in order to break down the social norms. Once the activity was done we took some group photos and called it a day. As expected, everyone ran to Sophie to ask for pictures. I for one did not get a selfie with Madame Trudeau but was not disappointed as I was on another mission. I wanted to have a conversation with her, so I did.

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In recent news, Sophie posted a photo on social media asking women to share pictures of themselves with the male allies in their lives and thanking them for standing by us as we fight for these rights because “#equalitymatters”. Because of this post she received a huge backlash and criticism from the public. Imagine, a feminist declaring equality for all is bashed on International Women’s Day? The irony. Our conversation went as follows:

T: “Sophie I have a question for you. I saw your post online about asking women to thank their allies and I saw that you received a lot of criticism, lots of comments from people. As someone that is constantly in the public eye, how do you deal with all of that energy?”

S: “When my media team came to me and explained what was happening online, the response I was getting, I was happy. I said, ‘Good! This is exactly what I want to happen.’ I wanted to spark a conversation. I was hoping that people would realize that we are all in this together and we stand stronger when we stand together. This is not a Us vs Them fight, it is all our fight.”

T: “I definitely agree, can you give advice to those who may have a hard time ignoring negative responses they may receive online?”

S: “Turn it off. If the comments are too much, take some time off of social media. In most cases, when I see negative comments instead of responding I just give more love to those individuals. Chances are they need it most.” After our quick interaction, Sophie was called to do a segment for the media and so we dispersed.

We were directed to stand around her as she gave out this message to the media:

“I invited on my Facebook page, men and women, boys and girls to hold hands in the fight for more equality. Because if boys and men aren’t part of the equation where we learn from one another, have truthful conversations and complement one another, we will not achieve the prosperity and peace that we deserve as human beings, we are a team, we are partners in our quest for equality and we stand together.”

Everyone in the room applauded in agreement.

This was my first event that I’ve ever attended that was in honour of IWD. I must admit, Sophie surprised me. I wasn’t expecting her to be as interactive as she was or to be that open with the group of new faces she was meeting. If people are willing to be as open and vulnerable as Sophie was with us, when it comes to sharing a space discussing equality, we’ll realize that we have similar stories. There are others out there both men and women whom feel boxed in just like you, pressured just like you by social norms adopted by this “stick to the status-quo” culture. I can understand the public’s reaction to her post, but we need to look at the bigger picture here. IWD is all about women, who we are, what we’ve accomplished and where we are going. However the discussion doesn’t stop there, it can’t. What about the transitioning women? The women that are pro-choice, or the women that are survivors of harassment that have been silenced? Will they too be praised on IWD? Are male allies standing in solidarity with them? Are women praising these types of women? What type of woman do you have to be, in order to be recognized and praised? These are the type of conversations we need to be having. We already know what the social norms are, we do not need more reminders on special days, the media reminds us daily enough.

The next conversation I am invited to on International Women’s Day, I would like for the topic to shift to something more relevant and powerful. Equality matters yes but let’s make sure we aren’t excluding women from all walks of life when speaking on equality, before thanking men. Lets be sure we are including all types of women from all walks of life first, for being our allies. In order to learn from our mistakes and move forward, we need to hear all types of stories. Instead of trying to be an advocate for all women and be their voice, just pass on the mic and listen. Personally, I look forward to attending more public events in honour of IWD and others. I look forward to bringing up more complex topics that may be too uncomfortable for some. Until we start approaching the bigger and nastier issues, let’s save the talk about social norms for later.

International Women’s Day 2017: A Conversation with Madame Sophie Gregoire Trudeau As a member of the speakers Bureau list of Plan International Canada, I was invited to an event they were hosting for International Women's Day.

#canada #canadianpolitics #culture #feminism #health #inspiration #journalism #journalist #life #lifestyle #motivation #my life #politics #school #sociology #thoughts #university #writing

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spamzineglasgow · 6 years

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SPAM Digest #2 (Oct 2018)

A quick list of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling.

‘How to Write About a Vanishing World’, by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

Like many others, I’ve spent a week in a state of grief about the recent IPCC report. I’m all over The Guardian like a traumatised fungus, trying to find nourishment in the form of answers, devouring data I don’t understand. I sense the dyspeptic effects of all those figures. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014), who draws us back to the role of narrative in making sense of our vanishing world. Provocatively she opens with the familiar trope of the ‘stormy night’ and tells of ‘an American herpetologist named Marty Crump’ who, after a neighbourly tip, discovers the emergence of golden toads not far from her home in northwest Costa Rica. This is in the late eighties. These strange and beautiful creatures are part of the biospheric treasure trove whose loss Kolbert then documents across the intervening decades, up to the present. By the turn of the century, she suggests, biology had become a practice of living elegia: ‘A biologist could now choose a species to study and watch it disappear, all within the course of a few field seasons’.

Her article collects numerous other stories of scientists losing their subject — from Arctic ice to Great Barrier corals — until extinction becomes the presiding litany of our times. She notes how researchers find themselves paralysed, unsure of intended outcomes when faced with such scales of ecological loss. Even as scientific projects to assist vulnerable ecosystems gather in nuance and strength, there’s a sense that we’re already fighting a losing game. Science becomes a question of narrative transmission, as much as active intervention; by doing research, you’re sending some sort of message of hope. As Kolbert puts it, ‘Hope and its doleful twin, Hopelessness, might be thought of as the co-muses of the modern eco-narrative’, inspiring nature writers and scientists alike. The central question is ‘how we relate to that loss’: is it a question of elegy and mourning, or sparking a call to arms? Even those writers who urge us to act, who celebrate the potentials of direct intervention, admit that none of this will happen fast enough to make a lasting difference. Ending on the phrase ‘Lalalalalala, can’t hear you!’, Kolbert sardonically evokes that familiar, Trumpian stage of climate denial which has been rearing its all-too-human, deluded head of late. But what persists is the value of keeping on — ‘Narrating the disaster becomes a way to try to avert it’ (and here I am reminded of Maurice Blanchot’s writing of the disaster as a polysemous, irreducible event) — writing, as Kolbert does in this piece, our stories in the face of defeat. An earnest act in the face of inevitable cynicism, a careful digestion of failure. Maybe ecological writing just needs to be more metamodern.

M.S.

‘Your favorite Twitter bots are about die, thanks to upcoming rule changes’, By Oscar Schwartz, Quartz

Twitter bots fans, you might want to take a seat: there could be some terrible news out there. According to Oscar Schwartz and his article on Quartz, many of our favourite sources of coded linguistic beauty might disappear in the coming months due to what he calls ‘a company-wide attempt to eradicate malicious bots from the platform.’ A couple months ago, Twitter announced that they would start requiring bot developers to undergo a thorough vetting process in order to gain access to Twitter’s programming interface (where the essence of a Twitter bot lies) - an amount of bureaucratic load that prolific bot artists have told Schwartz would simply be too much work to keep up with.

Regardless of the bleak prediction, the think piece reads less like a eulogy for Twitter bots, and more like a defense of them. Schwartz provides us here with a real goldmine for Twitter bots to follow - from Jia Zhang’s @censusAmericans, which composes little biographies of nameless Americans by compiling information provided to the open census database, to Allison Parrish's @the_ephemerides, which couples images of distant planets from NASA’s archive with computer-generated poetry. In a statement to Schwartz, Parrish (a poet, computer-programmer, and educator as well as a Twitter-botter) states that ‘asking permission to make a bot is like asking someone permission to do graffiti on a wall (...) It undermines everything that is interesting about bot-making.” - a point that is not only rhetorically effective, but possibly a very productive way of conceptualising Twitter-bots as an art form.

‘For these bot-makers, letting their creations die off on Twitter is an act of protest. It’s not so much directed at the new developer rules, but at the platform’s broader ideology. “For me it’s becoming clear that Twitter is driven by a kind of metrics mindset that is antithetical to quality communication,” Parrish says. “These recent changes have nothing to do with limiting violent or racist language on the platform and are all about making it more financially viable.”

[Darius] Kazemi [another prominent bot artist] agrees, adding that to continue making creative bots on Twitter is making a bargain with the devil. “We’re being asked to trade in our creative freedom for exposure to a large audience,” he says. “But I am beginning to suspect that once we all leave Twitter, they will realize that we represent a lot of what made Twitter good, and that maybe the platform needs fun bot makers more than we need Twitter.”’

D.B.

‘Erasing the signs of labour under the signs of happiness: “joy” and “fidelity” as bromides in literary translation’, by Sophie Collins, The Poetry Society

Some of our most significant intellectual epiphanies occur in lecture theatres, often in resistance to the lecture in question. Maybe this is a form of vicarious translation. In her piece, Collins begins with an anecdote about a lecture she was looking forward to leaving her cold. The speaker’s takeaway slogan, the ‘joy of translation’, rang hollow as a company ‘mission statement’. Against this platitude from the corporate happiness factory, Collins explores the affective entanglements of reading translation through various types of negativity, the disciplinary disparities around its process, intentions and attendant critical debates. Drawing upon her own experience in translating literature from the Dutch, Collins explores the value of acknowledging struggle in translation — from ‘uncertainty and self-consciousness’ to ‘breakdown and frustration’. She makes room for the translator’s own vexed identity to be critically recognised in the process, and thus asks for analytic frameworks which keep in mind the theories around hybridity posited by thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhaba and Julia Kristeva.

Working through the negative space of translation, Collins goes on to deconstruct the concept of ‘joy’ itself, upon whose insistence various arms of society’s ideological apparatus are able to keep us in stasis and check: ‘Given that the desire for happiness can cover signs of its negation, a revolutionary politics has to work hard to stay proximate to unhappiness’. Joy becomes less a personal experience than ‘something more like obedience to a collective cause’. Translation might allow us to notice relationality and difference between cultures; but as a creative act in itself, translation also provides a discursive technology for intervention in structures of power. Often denigrated as secondary or indeed ‘women’s work’, translation occupies a precarious position in the ‘creative hierarchy’, and this is reinforced by vacuous proclamations about its joy. Whose joy are we reveering here anyway? What we need, Collins argues, is a more complex set of theories around translation, which bring into play its disruptive, ‘negative’ aspects. Her productive alternative to ‘fidelity’ or ‘faithfulness’ as the goal or logic for translation is that of ‘intimacy’: a translation process that ‘exhibits a heightened contextualisation of its source text for the reader’; one that bears with it the often fraught emotional truths around the act of moving between texts, times, cultural tones and affective states. Emotional truths whose discernment opens a space for seriously ‘affirm[ing] the possibility of change’:

As a proposed ideal for translations, ‘intimacy’ brings with it its own questions, problematics and risks. Ultimately, however, my application of the term is intended to shift the translation relationship from a place of universality, heteronormacy, authority and centralised power, towards a particularised space whose aesthetics are determined by the two or more people involved, in this way amplifying and promoting creativity and deviant aesthetics in translations between national languages.

M.S.

‘On Translating Human Acts’ by Han Kang - By Deborah Smith in Asymptote

Han Kang plays language with the kind of near-unbearable intensity which Jacqueline du Pré applied to the cello, exploring its sensory possibilities through a continual detailing of the minutely physical—a bead of sweat trickling down the nape of a neck, the rasp of even the softest fabric against skin—which builds to such a pitch that even the slightest physical contact, no matter how intentionally tender or gently performed, is felt as violence, as violation.

As someone who works in the field, I'm always eager to read the translator's note before commencing my reading of the work. Translators' introductions, beyond outlining the context of any novel, tend to reveal the hyper-specific difficulties they faced when attempting to replicate linguistic nuances of the source language into the target language. In this case, one example given was the 'brick-thick Gwangju dialect', as Korean dialects are distinguished by grammatical differences rather than individual words. Looking to avoid 'translationese', Smith identifies that her primary concern was the effect the text had over the reader, rather than specific syntactic structures, aiming for 'a non specific colloquialism that would carry the warmth Han intended'.

Already intrigued by Smith's introduction, and after having finished Human Acts, I continued my research of Smith, coming across much of the criticism she received by many academics for her translations of both The Vegetarian (she had been studying Korean for only three years before commencing this work) and Human Acts. In this essay, Smith takes us on a journey through the complexities and challenges she faced as a translator. One that really stuck out to me was the necessity to find as many possible synonyms for the verb 'to erase'. This word continued to resurface in the original often as a straight repetition. As Smith notes, Korean is 'far more tolerant' of this than English. I had once encountered a similar issue myself when translating a memoir based in one Rio de Janeiro's jails. The prisoners in that text frequently used the word 'parada', a local slang that can mean 'thing', 'business', 'occurrence', but is context specific. The heavy repetition of any of these options in English didn't read well, making the text clunky and awkward. Only through methodically finding specific synonyms to match with each context was I able to resolve this.

Out of all the nuances and subtleties Smith had to work through, none can be more thought-provoking than the title itself, 'Human Acts'. As Smith notes, a literal translation of the Korean would have resulted in the slightly awkward title 'The boy is coming', leaving her with the tricky task of finding a captivating title that retained the neutrality of the original. Read the full article to hear about which elements Smith had to keep in mind when deciding how to translate Kang's 'restrained Korean'.

M.P.

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