#this essay embodies chaotic energy

[torgophylum]

FAR CRY 6: IT IS USELESS TO RESIST

This essay contains spoilers for Far Cry 6 For all of its bombastic flair, confident swagger, and funhouse style mad-cappery, Far Cry 6 is an anxious game. It is a game which highlights the problems inherent to trying to say something in a mass media format intended to appeal to all audiences. But, when it does decide that it is time to say something real, Far Cry 6 cannot decide what side it is on except for a deeply cynical core belief: Revolutions will never end, because revolutions are pointless. No one who seeks power can be trusted, and those who would depose someone in power are similarly suspect. The only thing which can be trusted in Far Cry 6 is violence, and violence will never let you down. 

At times both leftist and wildly conservative, Far Cry avoids coming to direct, didactic conclusions about the future of its fictional Latin American island nation, Yara, preferring instead to sit in its profound anxiety regarding the nature of revolution and revolutionary figures. Far Cry 6 offers often contradictory messaging and a bleak, nearly hopeless vision of the future of revolution. This collection of conflicting ideas is most apparent in the game’s cast of characters, many of whom primarily express a desire to fight above all other causes. 

Dani Rojas:

The game’s protagonist does much to focus the games themes primarily around what it means to be a revolutionary figure. Far Cry 6 is a bombastic, tonally diverse, game full of chaotic energy and hardline idealogues. It often comes as a surprise therefore, that its main character Dani Rojas, flits about her allegiances and beliefs throughout the narrative, resolving her (the game allows you to play a male or female version of the character, but I played through as female) story with little more than a shrug regarding what they thinks should happen next, and a commitment only to continuing to inflict guerrilla style violence regardless of who is in charge. Dani begins her narrative as a typical reluctant hero. Though they are no stranger to violence, having served for a short time in the hyper-oppressive Yaran military, Dani dreams only of leaving the island as soon as they can with her friend to open a mechanic shop in the US. It is only after her friends are slaughtered in front of her by the nation’s brutal dictator, Anton Castillo, that Dani begins to consider a life as the muscle behind the revolutionary Clara Garcia and her ragtag resistance, Libertad.

Dani is a different style of character than the franchise’s previous entry, Far Cry 5, in which the player embodies a nameless deputy with no discernable personality beyond what the player imbues themselves. Dani, by contrast is given miles of script, painting a picture of an often standoffish, serious, foul mouthed, and mistrustful individual who becomes a loving, compassionate, and devoted friend when the ice has been broken through. Critically, Dani never offers any beliefs beyond what is immediately in front of her. Dani does not believe in Libertad’s political goals, hell, they are barely even aware of those goals might be. But Dani does believe in Clara Garcia, and in her journey, believes in the strength of several other characters they recruit to the cause. 

Dani’s allegiance to Clara also hinges on Clara’s own ambivalence about revolution. Clara has many ideas about how things should be run - her propaganda regarding her plans and her grievances with Anton are surprisingly detailed and can be gathered in pamphlets throughout Yara, the game’s form of environmental storytelling. However, Clara tells Dani that she believes she will likely die before the fight is over, that she will never see the future that she is hoping to create. Dani is swayed ultimately by this promise, “fight for me because I do not want power, because I am honest about not knowing what happens after.” 

There are some ways in which Dani is still ultimately a product of how the player would like to embody her. In what is considered a joke ending by many, at any time beyond the game’s introductory tutorial Island, Dani is free to leave Yara by hopping in any boat or plane and flying beyond the country’s borders. Doing so will trigger a scene in which Dani is enjoying a cocktail on the beach in Florida, while listening to a news report about the death of Clara Garcia and the end of Libertad. In the open world genre, which emphasizes choice, it is interesting that this game includes the choice to leave the conflict as an explicit win condition for Dani. But it also, potentially reflects Dani’s ongoing ambivalence. Dani’s commitment to Libertad is only as strong as the players. 

The gameplay is familiar to the Far Cry franchise. Armed with that belief and an assortment of comically violent animals, and an absurdly large arsenal of mega weapons known as Supremos provided by Dani’s mentor and foil, Juan Cortez, Dani begins her rampage across Yara. Framed as recruitment efforts of Yara’s most influential potential rebels to join the cause of Libertad, Dani is enlisted to kill hundreds, possibly thousands of Yaran soldiers, clearing checkpoints and capturing military bases. These actions, in conjunction with missions specific to each region, endear several important groups to join Libertad and march on Anton Castillo’s stronghold of Esperanza. They also usually result in the death of Anton’s most trusted generals, which Dani carries out specifically with the goal of revenge for atrocities inflicted on Yarans generally as well as her friends. These victories come at cost, however. By the end of the game, Libertad has won, but Clara Garcia is dead, and Dani’s extensive contributions to Libertad make herthe necessary leader. While Dani has been very successful at recruitment for Libertad, Dani has not actually picked up any significant convictions or beliefs about what should happen next, and abdicates power immediately after winning their revolution. “They will never hold free elections”, Juan Cortez remarks to Dani after they leave control of the country up to her revolutionary allies, a sentiment that Dani readily agrees with. 

Cortez himself is a deeply ambivalent character, who fully confesses that his only interest is in violence and fighting. Cortez warns Dani constantly that she will end up just like him eventually - a premonition that will indeed come to past although she protests. Cortez and Dani take on some of the dirty work needed for the revolution so their leader, Clara, can keep her hands clean. This includes working with the CIA to overthrow Castillo; a realistic but also shocking acceptance of imperialist help that not even Anton Castillo, the game’s protagonist, would have stooped to. In the end, Cortez only finds himself at odds with Dani over one issue, namely whether or not Anton’s son, Diego, should be kept alive. Even this is not enough to permanently come between them, however. 

Dani’s journey represents a strongly held ambivalence that there will ever be a meaningful end to violence. As the game’s resident poet remarks, “Revolution is over when we all are free.” Such an end will not come at the end of this game, and following its logic, should never have been expected. Dani believes in people, but not people in power - a wholly contradictory stance to take from one who takes power through such profound amounts of force. Dani is a defacto anarchist in many senses, but professes no allegiance to that as a philosophy. Dani has no ideas about what should happen next, and is annoyed with people who do. In the end, all Dani wants to do is keep fighting. 

Dani’s arc, the change she progresses through the story, is not to come to any sense of beliefs about the future, but rather to become an almost mythic legend of the Yaran people. Far Cry 6 is as much about the invention and concept of folk heroes as it is about revolution - Dani taking on the mantle of another mentor, El Tigre, a “Legend of 67’” that takes her under his wing. To emphasize this point, through a long but easily achievable quest that connects Dani directly to the indigenous peoples and religions of Yara, Dani is eventually blessed by the gods of Yara and given a panther guardian and the ability to shoot through walls. Compared with Far Cry 5’s Junior Deputy, Dani is essentially a demi-god of death by the game’s conclusion, her exploits wholly unbelievable except that you have lived through them. 

Dani allowing herself to take on and love the mantle of folk hero, revolutionary, guerilla, “the lucky one”, is the emotional journey they complete by the game’s end. But what does that have to do with Yara? Does it even matter, ultimately, what they fight for? 

Of course, Far Cry’s themes are often not present in the protagonist, but in the antagonists, who after all, tend to take up the majority of space on the cover art. So, let us examine Anton. 

Anton Castillo

Anton, played by the excellent Giancarlo Esposito, who was featured heavily in the advertising for the game, is the president of Yara and the son of its previous dictator who was killed by revolutionaries in 1967. That revolution resulted in a short lived democracy. Anton won his election by all accounts honestly, through his wealthy connections of interests, and through his close involvement in the discovery of “Viviro”, a cancer killing chemical that grows naturally in Yaran tobacco leaves, and can be enhanced greatly by the use of a chemical fertilizer that is deeply, immediately poisonous to everyone who handles it. Both Clara Garcia and Dani Rojas say they voted for him, and another revolutionary group, La Moral, is lead by someone who used to work directly with Anton to develop his technological dominance over communications throughout Yara.

After cementing his power, Anton quickly upscaled production of Viviro, which required hard and dangerous labor that would quickly kill anyone who performed it. This required the use of forced labor, which Anton employed extensively throughout Yara. Anton justifies this action by a familiar tactic of strongmen autocrats: he divides his population into true Yarans, who support him and look forward to a modern Yara with power on the world stage, and fake Yarans who seek only animalistic depravity and destruction. Anyone who Anton decides to use as forced labor is of course, retroactively a Fake Yaran who needs to be punished. 

As mentioned previously, one of the longest quests in the game is also one which seems designed to rebuke Anton’s “true yaran” claim by accepting it; becoming an even truer Yaran. Through the exploration of various caves, Dani helps return three artifacts related to the local gods of native Yaran’s - by doing so Dani unlocks two weapons to their arsenal which transform the games challenges into a breezy jaunt. The gods first bless Dani with a Supremo (super weapons normally made by Juan Cortez), that allows her to shoot through walls with a one shot killing sniper rifle for around 20 seconds a pop, more than enough time to clear an entire army base. Secondly, the gods provide Dani with a phantom panther, a powerful cat that will often clear the base for you before you even get going. By showing deep respect to the cultures and customs of the land, Dani becomes essentially a folk hero demigod; the truest Yaran there could be. 

While this is an obvious tactic to divide his populace, reinforcing his power, Anton soes in fact divide the world into two types of people. Anton considers himself and his lineage to have a pre-ordained right to rule; in one of his longest speeches to his son, Diego, Anton reveals that he believes his family to be “lions” among the “sheep” of Yara. It is this binary by which Anton is easily able to justify his decisions to enact modern slavery and widespread death on his island in the name of progress. Anton views the people of Yara as he does Viviro - resources to build the future. 

Further informing Anton’s actions is his deep resentment of colonialism - a concept that the game in particular is very concerned with. The first shot of the intro sequence is of a menacing crocodile eyeing the arrival of spanish conquistadors, deftly introducing the games major concept that Yara is a place of endless, centuries long conflict between oppressors and the oppressed. As in Far Cry 5, what we are presented with is a funhouse mirror version of  reality. There, it was a distortion of the populism of Trump, the growth of the evangelical right, and the opioid Epidemic, a stew resulting in a dangerous and mystical cult. Here, the funhouse mirror is turned on Latin American revolutionaries and dictators in Cuba and Venezuela. 

 

Anton, like all Yarans, seeks to end this conflict permanently on the side of the oppressor; creating a state of such wealth and prosperity that not even invaders and imperialists will ever threaten it again, let alone revolutionaries from within. In particular, Anton makes it a point to not provide Viviro to Americans, and taunts journalists who question this move by pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of Americans who question his use of slaves. America built its wealth and prosperity on the blood of slaves and conflict, and continues to do so throughout the world; to Anton, this is simply how prosperity is accomplished. Why should Yara be held to higher moral standards? The lions would agree, it is the only the sheep who would have a real problem with this, and who cares about the sheep? 

One might notice a distinct similarity between Dani and Anton from this description; neither has any real political beliefs or convictions beyond the belief that through violence is the path forward. Like Dani, Anton Castillo is a contradictory figure. Deeply egotistical and self interested, and at the same time, deeply and seemingly selflessly concerned with the fate of Yara as a prosperous, independent nation. He is a student of history and intensely interested in revolution, but convinced that he will never be overthrown after committing countless atrocities throughout the nation. Often, Anton’s characterization seems overstuffed; a mish mash of every popular conception and angle on Fidel Castro. Anton does not represent what such people are really like or what their goals might be; rather, he is the amalgamation of every American idea of what such a person is like, informed by America’s own insecurities about themselves and who they are. Why does Anton seek power? Because he believes it is who he *is*. There is no reason beyond that which seems very interesting to him. 

One of the tragic failures of Far Cry 6 is that the imperialist phone call is coming from inside the house; this is not a story about Latin America. Ultimately this is an expression of US anxieties about itself, transposed on a fictional island where the characters all speak spanish for flavor, and english to be understood. 

Diego Castillo

Diego is the son of Anton, first introduced in the game’s introduction as the direct cause of the very slaughter which inspired Dani to join Libertad. With the help of a servant, Diego begins the game attempting to flee Yara. It is not revealed exactly what spurred his escape, but through his reactions to his father’s various atrocities, it is clear that he feels a moral disgust with the happenings in Yara under his father’s rule, and a basic unwillingness to continue his father’s work. 

There is some ambiguity to this however. Through various cut scenes, we see Anton begin to have more influence over his son’s worldview, coaxing him to become more comfortable with murder and applying a sense of entitlement to his position. How much of this success is a true transformation of Diego, and how much of this is a survival tactic is left deliberately uncertain. What is clear by the end of the game, however, is that Anton considers Diego’s life to only be worthy if Diego can be formed in Anton. This is a fact that Diego is distinctly aware of. 

Diego’s mother is a white woman who is the media face of Anton’s propaganda arm. While their relationship continues behind the scenes, the public only has rumors to substantiate Diego’s parenthood. Why Anton chooses to lie about Diego’s mother is not spelled out, but it would expose some hypocrisy to Anton’s supposed righteous anger towards the white imperialist world. When she is killed on live television (The result of Dani’s handiwork), Anton and Diego grieve in solemn and angry silence. 

Dani remains an influence on Diego as well. During a failed assassination attempt on Anton, Dani stumbles across Diego, whom she unthinkingly spares; he in turn helps her escape capture by directing her towards Anton’s garage. A bond is immediately formed between the pair - one which is challenged by all of Dani’s compatriots, who urge her to kill Diego whenever she may next get the chance. This bond is further strengthened when Dani is captured and tortured, and is once again saved by Diego’s intervention. 

Dani’s attempts to protect Diego can most effectively be read as one in which she is keeping the last vestiges of her humanity. By not seeing a “Castillo” in the place of a confused child attempting to survive a dark world, Dani’s soul remains committed to the idea of a better future, though she is unclear about what that might look like. This is contrasted, it must be reiterated, against Dani’s otherwise extremely judicious use of violence throughout the rest of the game. 

And so it is set up for the perfect catharsis: Two opposing forces, both committed to the use of extreme and unrepentant violence to achieve their ends, attempting to win the heart of a powerful young boy who detests violence and only seeks escape. Who Diego eventually sides with will ultimately decide who will take on the future of Yara. 

Except, that’s not what happens. In the last moments before his death, Anton senses that Dani will never be able to protect Diego from her bloodthirsty compatriots, and kills him himself. Diego refers to Dani as “the lucky one”, and passes away in her arms, echoing the last words of her friend, who also died by Anton’s hand. Dani’s extreme efforts to save Diego’s life despite the total indifference of everyone she is fighting with, suggests that it is his death which radicalizes her to believe that fighting and revolution, as well as her part in it as a guerilla, will never end.

Further details also point to the pointlessness of the Libertad revolution; In a late game revelation, it is revealed that Anton was likely one of the first patients to be treated with Viviro, to treat his leukemia. The treatment, however, has ceased to work, creating a few implications about what might have happened in Yara had Dani and Libertad not intervened at all. Viviro eventually would have been revealed as not the miraculous cure it was purported to be, drastically changing Yara’s potential importance on the world stage as well as the value of Anton’s moral compromises. Anton would have died regardless, leaving Diego in charge. 

While it is left intentionally ambiguous as to what kind of leader Diego would have been as a 14 year old presidente, the glimpses we get were provided with suggesting a strong handed but compassionate dictator, with a great deal more internal conflict and moral consideration than his father had. But we will never know; a person like Diego was never going to survive long enough in this world to make it into a better one. 

Pointless Revolution: 

For a game that does not wish to take strong political and moral stances, Far Cry 6 occasionally takes for granted several rather conservative ideas. In a late section of the game, Dani encounters a mobster priest named Bebo, who puzzlingly tries to make a distinction between what Dani does and what he does, remarking to Dani, “you may have killed, but you are not a killer”, when he is threatened by her. 

One must laugh at the absurdity of this attempted distinction; it is likely that just on the drive over to this mission, the player as Dani has casually flicked a knife out of her window while driving into the brain of a soldier on the side of the road. Dani does not just kill at a distance or in unscripted “non-canon” ways - the first kill they make in this game is with a machete, straight through the gushing throat of a soldado. In the sense that Dani is willing and able to kill at a moment’s notice, never expresses remorse and the killing they are required to perform, often participates in drunken celebrations after significant killing, and ends the story with the commitment to continue killing far into the future, Dani is indeed a profoundly adept and uncompromising killer. 

So what is meant to be taken from this? In one sense, this is the instinct of the writer to keep a positive spin on the central protagonist, who is on the face, an affable enough person. For example, Dani is also very good with animals and has several animal sidekicks with varying levels of adorableness and ferocity, a classic signal of inherent goodness. A killer? Would a killer have a daschund in a wheelchair named Chorizo?

A Killer might own Chicharron however

The rights of people to commit acts based on “who they are inside” is the essence of conservative thinking. We see it portrayed, and indeed critiqued by the game’s perspective, in Anton, who justifies his right to kill on his status as a Lion among Sheep. Dani, likewise, is given free moral reign to kill thousands in the name of Clara Garcia because she is a Guerilla at worst, and “not a killer” at best. A true Yaran can do no wrong, a fake Yaran can only do wrong. A crime is not something which is against the law: A crime is something that a criminal does. Similarly, a war crime is something a war criminal does. Dani is not a war criminal, and therefore, slaughtering thousands of people is not a war crime. Bebo is of course, not to be taken at his word (he’s a criminal, dangit!!), and his observation is in direct opposition to the game’s central anxiety. What if there are no good people? What if there are no good systems? What if all revolutions are simply the oppressed trading places with the oppressors in an endless cycle? How does one be moral in such a scenario, except to be a victim of it? Once war and imperialism is brought to your shores, can it ever be fixed - or does the history simply live on, as indigenous to the land as the crocodile? Dani’s brand of anarchism is an expression of this exact hopelessness: My fight will never end. 

Log on with your friends for the next season of the FoREveR WaR

A bit of optimism. A bit. 

  The 2021 film “One Night in Miami” explores similar anxieties about revolution, in a much more powerful and thoughtful way than is achieved by Far Cry 6. Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown share a hotel on the night of Ali’s first heavyweight title victory. The night evolves quickly into impassioned arguments between Malcolm and Cooke about the right way to achieve justice and equality for Black people in America, either through militant revolution or through the systems already in place. 

  Furious with Malcolm after constant belittling, Cooke leaves the hotel room with Ali. Drinking in their car, Ali tries to explain the value of power to Sam. “Power just means a world where we’re safe to be ourselves. To look like we want. Think like we want. Without having to answer to anybody for it. After all we put in, don’t black folks deserve that much?” Here Ali explores a different version of power than one which is defined by compelling others; he speaks of power as a sense of security in one’s place in the world. 

This version of power is a starkly different version than the one which is explored throughout much of Far Cry 6. However, there is one character present which is of interest. Paolo de la Vega, a trans man who DJ’s for the musical duo “Maximas Matanzas” with his girlfriend, Talia, is the most reluctant member of Clara Garcia’s revolution. Like Dani, when we meet Paolo, he has a foot already off the island; he is working off a debt to Bebo for a safe trip out for he and his girlfriend. Unlike Dani, he is not so easily swayed by unclear visions of a brighter future.

After helping Paolo pay off his debts to Bebo, he is still unwilling to join Libertad - this is despite Talia’s insistence that they use their music (and their guns!) to bring down the Castillo’s which have tortured them both. Paolo’s resistance is based on a simple fact: He does not believe that Yara will ever be accepting to trans people, regardless of who is in charge. Paolo never comes around to fully trusting Libertad; it is only his devotion to Talia which keeps him involved through to the end. It is Talia’s belief that with the power of their music and through revolution that people like Talia and Paolo may have a future on Yara, and Paolo resigns himself to have faith in her. 

Ultimately, Paolo and Talia understand about power the same thing that Ali does in “One Night in Miami”. Power is about being allowed to be who you are. It is the closest Far Cry 6 will ever come to a real reason to fight, or optimism that things can change for the better. 

Some have written about Far Cry 6’s lack of a revolutionary purpose as a frustrating mistake, but I do not believe that this is the case. Far Cry is a series about revolutions, shifts of power driven by enigmatic, larger than life leaders who seek to radically rebel. Far Cry 5’s spin on this was counter-revolutionary: the protagonist’s aim is to put down a dangerous and deadly cult whose religious leader has accurately prophesied the coming nuclear war, in favor of the status quo which will cause it. Far Cry 4’s examination was about the method’s of revolution, and if meaningful steps can be taken to be compassionate and humanitarian amidst the violence necessary to overthrow an oppressive force. 

Here in 6 however, we see a different kind of anxiety being expressed. Namely: What is the point, of all of this? What good can ever come out of violence? And what kind of “good people” could ever commit such violence in the first place? Far Cry 6 does not ultimately see a purpose in violent revolution, regardless of how heinous the powers that be are. It also doesn’t offer any better ideas. 

#essay #video games #far cry series #far cry 6 #anarchism #leftism

[inspector-montoya-fox]

#10 - Jailbreak

Setting: let’s enter the SpOOkY!!! girl, i’m sorry i have to take a moment to appreciate the KI that this episode is. from the statues that come to life to the purple water, the red sky, the bat props that Sly can ninja-spire onto, the music. it’s like a Scooby-Doo episode. Contessa’s house looks like a freakin insane asylum hahahahaha this is all fantastic. i’ve been to Prague and the towers are literally the same. i know i should be analyzing this in the Themes section but in terms of environment, Prague (both levels) are the crux of Sly 2, if not narrative-wise, then definitely emotionally-wise. @designraccoon made this amazing post a while back which went into detail about how the Prague levels represent the darkest nights in the entire series and then in Canada it’s day. i mean, the whole game is great but these central four episodes (from A Starry Eyed Encounter until A Tangled Web) are, in my opinion, what make it so amazing. there’s definitely climax because the stakes are so high. 2/3 of the gang and Carmelita have been captured, Neyla has double-crossed us, Bentley (who was up until this point the weakest link physically) is all alone, and as we find out by the very beginning of the episode, the Contessa is a secret Klaww Gang member. well, this is all dandy. having Bentley alone further establishes how haunting this episode is because we first witness the hub as him, which has never happened before. he’s an itty-bitty-witty turtle roaming around the ultimate spooky level. and the Contessa, she didn’t come to play hunty. i’ll go into more detail about her character below, but she feels more of a threat than Rajan or Dimitri. not because she herself is scary, but because she’s built an empire. Dimitri had bouncers and Rajan had his staff, but Contessa has an entire army and (at this point) Interpol backing her up. in terms of environment, the hub feels huge because of the giant prison in the centre. it truly is a pain in the ass to enter the prison, but that just highlights the fact that, well, it’s a prison. in general, SP really captured the essence of a European town: the stone pavement, the bridges and the sections under them, some historical arcs blocked by cage bars, etc. all this being said however, if we factor in the narrative, Jailbreak’s Prague feels very dead. maybe it’s done on purpose, but due to the gang’s absence and the prison’s overbearing presence, this (similarly to A Starry Eyed Encounter) feels like a prelude. we’re defo onto something big, but we first have to break out Sly and Murray. and lord knows what comes next is big...

Characters: i want to expand the Setting section here but also leave the big gang moments for the Theme section, so this is really about the Contessa. this episode is soaked in melodrama. the themes are heavy, the morale is low, the narrative is complex to say the least. The Predator Awake’s ending was such a shock that we genuinely forget about Carmelita’s whereabouts, as she’s not even mentioned here. we meet the Contessa and, even though she’s already been introduced, this is the first time we really get to know her. the hub really encapsulates her character: a total psychiatrist witch whose gothic surroundings reflect her malicious intentions. a true villain, the definition of the word. she’s a member of the Klaww Gang but also has an ulterior motive and even gives the gang a run for their money with her hypnosis. the bitch also has a blimp she uses for swift getaways, i mean what more can you want. and this is not even her ultimate form as A Tangled Web will see her deliver some very important lines of dialogue and truly show off how evil she is. but for now, she lurks in the shadows. similar to Rajan in the previous level, she spends most of the episode absent (you’ll notice there’s no Clockwerk part in this episode too). this is probably done to give the player some breathing space after the Neyla twist and allow the gang to gather their strength. but her presence is felt, due to how she embodies her hub, the personification of the obscure and the SPOOKY ! for me, the Contessa is as big a villain as Clockwerk, Neyla and Dr M. she’s just selfish and that’s her downfall, as we’ll see in the next episode where she’s presented in a very Nietzschian fashion. it’s like they merged Miz Ruby and Clockwerk: they honed the spooky aspect by added intelligence. Miz Ruby was too short sighted and lacked ambition. the Contessa created herself after she murdered her husband, made herself rich through her psychiatry scam, earned a strong rep via Interpol, and touched the divine by getting her hands on the Clockwerk eyes. the self-confidence is unreal.

Themes: uh, fear theme !!!!!!!!! (like the full shebang, not the half-baked version from The Predator Awakes) our characters are put to the test, forced to face their fears. Bentley had to learn how to drive the van, drive all the way from India to Prague, and explore this nightmare of a level all on his own. Sly was captured by the police and Murray was rendered weak, his will and control taken from him with the use of spice. the theme fits the level like a glove and everyone gets to confront their fear. Bentley succeeds in saving his friends, Sly (although not shown directly but instead mentioned via the Contessa) breaks free from the “hole” under which he’d go mad, and Murray goes head to head with the Contessa at the end of the level. as i analysed in the Setting section, the fear theme is further established by the spooky environment and missions (werewolf statues and evil robots that come to life), as well as the prison’s interior. i mean, consider the gang’s biggest fear is getting arrested but enhance it by a hundred by making the prison seem as hellish as possible. its sombre green and blue tones are reminiscent of Arkham. it truly feels like an insane asylum, with its towering cells, booby traps and devices used for hypnosis. the fear theme is dominant here, but there’s also the theme of separation. up to this point in the game, the gang’s unity has been taken for granted. soon after Bentley and Murray learn the basics, the gang is split. this not only increases the difficulty of the challenges they have to face on their own, but also puts things into perspective. mainly, things only work out when they’re together. you’ll notice that after Jailbreak (and by extent A Tangled Web), there’s an increase in group missions. He Who Tames the Iron Horse, is full of them. their time apart has all three of them realise that teamwork is essential, and that their friendship is the basis for their success. and lastly, a mind theme. i feel like there’s a connection between the hub and the Contessa’s character: her trained mind is so hard to breach, similar to the prison with its high walls. she’s a brittle spider but shouldn’t be underestimated. mind over matter, basically. her head’s interior is full of high security and intricate designs, spotlights and guards. everything feels so claustrophobic in there. both her expertise in psychology and the prison are devices used to break through with her prisoners. and once Sly and Bentley manage to penetrate the walls and get through to Murray, she’s caught off guard because of her seemingly flawless fortress.

What I Like: lots of stuff here. i was always a fun of the spooky-ooky so this is perfect. Bentley is my least favorite gang member but i really enjoyed his narration and how he came through even though the odds were stacked against him. the Contessa is my fav villain from the game, maybe even the series, so there’s that too. in terms of details, i really like Sly disguising himself as a werewolf statue on the bridge, even going so far as to imitate their open mouths. and the prison’s interior is great too. OH! AND that little bell you can hit to distract guards in the hub. i love that little bell.

What I Don’t Like: i’d have to say, the missions are kind of a drag, especially after The Predator Awakes which had some pretty good ones. apart from following the Contessa around and playing as Murray in the prison, the rest are tiring in my opinion (i’m not referring to the operation). specifically, Code Capture and Lightning Action feel like filler, maybe because they’re all made available at the same time, when Sly breaks out. i was never fond of the hacking and this is the episode it’s introduced in so... yea...

Quote: Inconceivable! She's no health care professional!

#inCONCEIVABLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #SHE'S NOT HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL !!!!!!!!!! #Bentley sweetie... she's not. #sly cooper #episode project #this essay embodies chaotic energy #and i love that for her

[itsagrimm]

The Bad Batch writing Assignments

Tech:

if he has to write a 10 page essay within 5 days, he will write 30 perfect pages on the first day and spend the rest shortening it down to 20

will therefore not score a perfect mark because it is too long and too elaborate

is an absolute ass to everyone struggling with deadlines and academic tasks

"according to the Encyclopedia of lnwpeJHFÜ<OSJGÜ<ÄOJR"

will write your essay in no time if you ask

Wrecker

brings crayons out to brainstorm for his work

is that one kid that naturally talks too loud in the library

his notes for the assignment are extremely messy and chaotic

will struggle with the task but is smart enough to ask for help and will pass

will pull an all-nighter to finish the assignment and drink ungodly amounts of sweet sweet energy drinks

Crosshair

is that one person that is never seen to work on his assignment but magically has it all done on time

will be super smug about everyone with a lesser mark than him

which will be basically everyone because this sneaky little overachiever will pass with flying colours

"Oh you failed. Thats too bad. I could help you - but I don't want to. Sorry." He is not sorry.

Has even read super obscure literature about the topic and will impress with that at extremely surprising moments

"What would Adorno say about that? Oh yeah, you still failed, bye underachiever."

Basically is that one kid, that makes Uni/school/work/... so incredibly unbearable but will shut up and become somewhat tolerable after failing once magnificently

Echo

is the nicest library and study partner, always brings snacks and tries to be encouraging

has a work schedule to finish his assignment that he'll actually stick to

will share his perfect notes with you and debate about the best ways to solve the assigned task

will get a good mark, maybe even the best mark possible

will turn in the assignment a day earlier

is basically the embodiment of lo-fi study remixes

Hunter

if he can get out of doing the assignment, he will do so

will join a study group and see how others solve the problem to use that and make a better hybrid version of all of them ( he will be fair about that an give credits in his work)

does not get how the library is sorted so he will flirt with the desk person to get the best books and documents for his work

manages to go to party's and be social during his crunch time

will get up at 5 am to work out to manage his stress this way, yes he is somewhat of a himbo

will pass

#i am wrecker *cries* #the bad batch #tbb #the bad batch headcanons #tbb crosshair #tbb tech #the bad batch tech #the bad batch crosshair #tbb echo #tbb hunter #star wars #the bad batch echo #the bad batch hunter #clone force 99 #crosshair #wrecker #bad batch #alternative universe #university #tbb thoughts #star wars the bad batch

[endexe]

Whew, okay, uh, ya star child, Mori, here whipped out a fucking long ass essay just regarding to the things I realized while writing Zero and how much Zero means to me, especially on the personal level. Some heavy areas are to be touched as warned ahead in the sixth paragraph, but I promise I’m okay! I simply have a lot of thoughts and emotions whirling around in me that I need to place somewhere! But to summarize: Thank you all so, so, so much for loving Zero Orez, my one and only bestest foolish glitch child, and for giving me the safe and gentle space where I can be at my most joy and comfort having him here. <3

So the concept of Zero was created this month on April’s Fool, which is the second most ironic thing to happen with him ( the first is honestly  the fact that within the same month, Zero have interacted with five muses who share the same faceclaim as him, like lmfao poor Zero, he’s just not having it --- shoutout to Mercy ( maskeraide ), River ( wxrldkiller ), Oli ( teletropic ), Vi ( heartbetween ), and Grace ( evermxre ) for having me so delighted and entertained by this concept, it makes my experiences writing with Zero so much more fun ). I created him for this episodic novel series Let There Be with Noble and Grim, the angel and demon respectively, who are private investigators. I had the concept of how there would be eldritch monsters trying to take over Earth by using the elements of the horror genre, which created mundane appearing but still supernatural linked cases that Noble and Grim had to solve when no other ordinary humans could, and the monsters were linked to their respective tarot card. Zero was considered to be the Fool.

I was excited to make Zero be a side character of the novel, the foolish and childish character who would constantly help and betray both sides of the series, one side being Noble and Grim, and another the Arcane. But I didn’t know what more to expect from him. I was reading the tag within the post I made in Noble’s and Grim’s blog that was the NPC introduction of Zero. It’s so funny that I said I didn’t know if I’d end up writing him on here because I thought Noble and Grim, my impossible lights, would end up taking all of the muse from him. BUT IN THE END... They were the ones who I set up the indefinite hiatus note few days ago while Zero’s still thriving, and I find that so bizarre because I thought Noble and Grim were the ONES who I’d always have the muse for. You know how you’d have that thing where you’d expect something to happen with your muse, but they would do the exact opposite as you least expected? Zero’s like that ALWAYS, but the fact he pulled the UNO reverse card on my impossible lights? Truly wild and now here I am, writing him for almost a month!

And... creating him, writing him is the BEST choice I had ever made in my entire life. Yes, Noble and Grim had helped me a lot, especially I do face a lot of struggles when it comes to the matters of hope and despair, what Noble and Grim embody of respectively but Zero eventually become so many things to me. The vent character, the comfort character, the character who I can channel my childish and curious energy into when I was rarely given the chance to let them out in the real world when I was younger, the character who is a learner but as slow and easily frustrated as me and a lover of life like me despite everything / anything. I realize also that I have so much fun and easier times writing him than I had with Noble and Grim, I won’t lie about this. Noble’s and Grim’s aesthetic and energy seem to attract more of an urge to write a bit more purple prosey with a hint of seriousness to it, and... it was so time and energy consuming to write them with these expectations I had on myself. And for some reason, I sometimes had trouble plotting with them, maybe because, again, I felt like they had to be these serious characters having to be put in serious situations. Few of the things I love about Zero is he have bare limits to his character as he can be anything and anyone I want him to be. He has about everything that I can use to develop and have fun with. I love how ultimately, Zero is ever unbound to labels and he is ever changing.

I’m just amazed realizing how many writings and developments I have done with Zero within a month than I had with those two, but that’s because with Zero? He is truly... all over the place. He is so messy, chaotic, flawed, but also, he is loud and open and FREE. Having to get into his energy makes me feel my most self where I can be too loud and loving, and not care too much about how I write and format my posts, unlike with Noble and Grim. He makes me so so SO happy and comfortable, and there is a lot of times I’d think about him and sometimes with my friends’ muses, and it’s a lot more than I had thought of Noble and Grim. The love I have for Zero is endless and beyond, always. He reminds me that original characters are so fucking important when they can be anything and anyone you want them to be, and as long as it’s nothing of harm to others and yourself, whoever and whatever they are, they are more than good enough when they provide you so much joy and comfort.

[ trigger warning: mentions of ( child ) abuse and traumas ] Zero have... about about everything I’ve ever loved in general from my interests to tropes ( adorkable, the fool, fourth wall breaking, etcetera ) to my love of aesthetics ( such as glitchcore / cybercore / kidcore / weirdcore ), and so many more. As well as he have learning disability, hypersexuality, tendency to be so distracted and forgettable like me. Along with he does these things that I do as stimming like he’d just rock or always love to touch blankets that have very soft materials. As well as he have experienced so many traumas that resulted him having so much trouble remembering and wanting to be childish as hating to be responsible, which is what I have. I don’t remember anything of my childhood or honestly, majority of my life but traumas. I don’t remember much of what I did yesterday. I don’t even remember if I had breakfast yesterday or what I ate if I did because I had been through so much mainly involving abuse from my own mother, still do unfortunately as I live with her, that makes my brain shut down, which also makes me have so much trouble being in deep thoughts when my brain is just. Numb. When I’m going to be more real here, despite how I appear online here, I do have trouble experiencing and expressing much emotions because, again, of the traumas I have dealt with for so long.

From all of these things I had gone through in life, I have dealt a lot with these concepts of who I am, what I am, like Zero does, and having him, I eventually realize how extremely important he is to me, so much more than any characters I ever created. He is my biggest coping mechanism and my gentlest reminder that it’s never too late to be... free. Just enjoy everything that I’m so fortunate to get from life. Draw clumsily, listen to music loudly, love too much and just let my heart be louder than the thunderstorms and crashing sea waves combined. Just be free and happy, despite everything, anything. I said before with Noble and Grim that I hadn’t been this happy before writing them, but I was so wrong. With Zero, I am so much more happier than I could ever be, and there are so many people on here who I am beyond lucky and grateful to be friends with who let me have him with no judgement like over how ridiculously overpowered he is or how much I self projected myself into him. And all of the connections Zero made on here so far are very touching and wonderful. I didn’t know what to really expect when I decided to give Zero his own blog, but having him for a month, this decision brought me so many beautiful things that I will always cherish.

I also wanna give a quick shoutout to River for. Fuck, everything. They’re truly the biggest reason why I decided to keep writing Zero and even make me love him more. They had made me talk about so many things with Zero I probably would’ve never thought, or wouldn’t have thought about so soon. I always extremely enjoy everything River and I would go over about together, and... literally, River, if you see this, know that you’re truly a wonder to have. I am so beyond thankful to have you as, honestly, already my close friend. Thank you so much for giving me that extra push to keep Zero and one of the most meaningful reasons why Zero still exist today, and for being just an amazing friend.

Just thank you all so much, to those we had known each other from the other blog and those we just became mutuals, for giving me and Zero a chance to be a bit more free and happier at least when our life won’t let us have that so often. Just thank you, thank you, thank you.

#* ❪⠀ 📺⠀❫ : 𝚎𝚙𝚜1.2:outofcharacter.𝚝𝚊𝚐 // #( I'm not expecting anyone to read it I just. again I had so many thoughts and feelings on this that I had no where to put but here ) #( but again and again thank you everyone for this <3 )

[jazzbambi]

James Ransone is the embodiment of Chaotic Energy, an essay by me

#james ransone #it 2019 #it chapter two

[jamiebluewind]

List five things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box for the last ten people who reblogged something from you. Spread the positivity :) ❤💛💚💙💜

What a fun question! Hum... let's see

1. My best friends. I love them so much. I have two wonderful best friends that have stuck by me for years, even during the hard times. They are just the source of so much of my happiness with our all goofs and indide jokes, but also a feeling of comfort and safety with them. I can tell them anything and they either just accept it (like me coming out or telling them about my past) or are ready to help (like if I'm having a panic attack). It's not all one way of course. I will drop everything yo be there for them too. It's funny, but when we're tired of people and want to be alone, it never includes each other. Like we just don't drain each other's batteries. It's nice.

2. My online friends. Yes. I'm talking to you @winterpower98, @fuocsniperbot98, @parano--vigilant, @fangirltothefullest, @random-pianist, @thesearcher1092, @champions-of-spirits, @madly-handsome, @crystrifoglio, @anotherphaseofpain, @5am-the-foxing-hour, @shoot-i-messed-up, @dillbugg, @an0therrand0, @ymmm-someone, @uwillneverknowwho, and anybody else on here that has touched my life (sorry if I missed anybody!) as well as the wonderful people I've met on other platforms too. You all have brought me so much joy. Yes, some of you can annoy the ever lovin HELL out of me sometimes, but I still love ya ;) Thanks for being a part of my life. You are all such wonderful people, each in their own way.

Winter, you are overflowing with kindness, understanding, and artistic talent that makes everyone who knows you see you as precious. I mean it. You are a beautiful precious bean. Anybody who doesn't see that is an idiot and I will fight them (and I wont be alone). You are always willing to listen, always ready to help, and always willing to learn and grow as a person. You accept everyone as they are and you are such a giving friend. You love what you love so purely and enthusiasticly too. Is it any wonder that anyone who knows you is ready to protect you with the ferocity that most people reserve for their favorite character and baby animals?

Fuoc, you are filled with chaotic energy, but also so much good and such a strong desire to help that you at times feel like a dnd character given human form. You are also a kickass artist! I love what you create and watching you put your own spin on things. You are a delight my wonderful rainbow demon seal and I am so lucky to have met you. ^_^

Celeste, you are a great listener and so brave and creative with your art. Not a lot of people are able to withstand the pressure to keep putting themselves out there like you do. You also have this... undercurrent of kindness that flows through your being. I'm not sure you're even aware of it, but it's always there and it's beautiful.

Toshi, you are just... you. A goose let loose on the world. You feel how you feel. You art how you art. Just... stream of conciousness randomness creating beautiful insanity. You own who you are and what you believe fearlessly. You work hard to achieve your dreams (even when your professors are being idiots) and harder to help your family. You deserve to be as kind to yourself as you are to others.

Random, you are cautious and walk the world like an adventurer exploring a cave with light steps and wide eyes, but when you share something, it's always worth it. Rather it's art, a story, or letting down a wall just enough to let yourself shine through. I love the caring talented person you are.

Blue, you are the embodiment of the kid in a candy store. Just so filled with bubbly pure excitement (with a bit of anxiety that tends to leak through at times *hugs*)! You apreciate things from rooftops, both creations and people. It's a sight to behold and absolutely contagious. I can't tell you how much I squealed when I seen your art of my story. I really did print it out ya know? I lost it in the move, so I plan on making another at some point. My new fridge requires art ;)

Josie? My dear? You are a doll. A tiny ball of hope, anxiety, and dreams. You care - just so much - about everybody. Strangers? Animals? Superiors? Friends? Family? It doesn't matter. You want to help them all. You will drive yourself into the ground to help someone. You will juggle as much as it takes. Your major in college was even picked BECAUSE of how much you want to help people! You are an amazing talented beautiful person who deserves all the love and appreciation in the world and your love of the written word is precious and contagious. Just... try to direct some of that beautiful carring nature towards yourself ya?

Madly. Madly, Madly, Madly. My fellow beautifully insane person and lover of dark things. We literally met brainstorming a serial killer! I love your dark sense of humor. Sometimes it's nice to just sit down with someone that I know wont get nightmares from darker story ideas and recommendations (or look at me like I must have something seriously wrong with me to come up with such things). You are that person. And you care. You really do. When you ask someone how they are, you mean it. You sincerely want to know. And you are so very... alive. It's the only way I can describe it. Just filled with... life. It's a beautiful thing.

Cryst, you are one of the people that inspired me to come on tumblr and share my first short story. You are wise beyond your years, kind, creative, and a real friend to those you know in real life and online. Your that person who always needs a tablet on hand because you never know when creativity will strike. You love the silly things and jokes, but you aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves and get down to business. You're also also a good listener and an honest editor and I'm so glad you seen my note on your speed paint. ^_^

Menace, you are the other person who inspired me to come to Tumblr and share my story, but instead of excitement (like Cryst), you used a gentle nudge and I think the one-two punch of the two of you is exactly what I needed. You my dear are made of feelings. You wear them like a cloak and they pour out of you with pure sincerity... and yet you somehow still have this quiet calm energy about you. It's like a flowing stream; calm and overflowing with life and movement at the same time. It actually comes through in your art and gives your pieces a very unique and beautiful feel. You're also kind and willing to listen. I know sometimes it feels like the world is on your shoulders, but I also know that you are filled with such great and beautiful things that sometimes are hidden just under the surface. Thank you for finding me.

Foxy? God. What do I even say about you? You dive in head first when you love something and make it your own. And when you don't like something? You don't play around with it either. You walk the world with a stubbornness that could put some bolders to shame, but because of it, you are honest about how you feel. You talk to a person because you like them, not because of social norms. You praise something because you think it's good, not to take it easy on somebody. It's actually very comforting. You're also silly and goofy and fun. You're empathetic and always trying to help out your readers, rather it's through asks, over tagging your creations, or making sure you balance your creations so they never end on a bad note. You are... you.

Shoot, you were my first reader. The first person to find me on this mess of a site. God. How confused were you when I practically wrote an essay thanking you for liking my little fic?! XD I've watched you grow and become the person you are and that person is pretty cool. Your desire to create comes in bursts. You live up to your username a little too much though and I desire to flick your ear when you worry so much. This momma bear says you are an amazing creator and a good friend and I'm proud of you ^_^

Dilly, you were always a hoot. I loved your stories and your creativity. It's been entirely too long since we've talked.

Rando, I haven't known you long, but I like you. You remind me of a kid rocking on their feet before jumping into a game of double dutch (type of jump rope with two ropes), hesitate and anxious, but still willing to jump in. I look forward to getting to know you more.

Ymmm, you are also fairly new, but I have had so much fun getting to know you. I think we started talking when I seen my phone was blowing up and realized you were going through and liking everything I've ever posted and reblogging half of it. XD You are fun, energetic, and you still read my tumblr even though I'm far less active than I used to be. I love your asks, your random messages, and chatting with you about nothing in particular. You are half the reason that I started getting back on occasionally to post things. ^_^

Who, you are the embodiment of a keysmash. Just stream of conciousness feelings and thoughts and all the things you love. It's a blast. You love to listen, you love to talk, and you love to have conversations about everything and nothing. It's wonderful to witness you finding something new and spazzing out over it. Your energy is infectious and sometimes it's nice to talk to someone who is cool with me talking in paragraphs. Case in point. Jesus. I think my point 2 went on a LITTLE long O_O

3. My cat Danny. He's a wonderful spoiled boy and a FANTASTIC ESA. He makes me laugh, he brings me comfort, and no matter what's going on, I know that this gray ball of crazy cat energy loves me.

4. Reseraching. Yes. I'm well aware that that's weird, but there's something about diving into something new and learning new facts and viewpoints that you never knew your entire life that is just so satisfying. Reading, experiments, or just talking to someone outside of my social circle. They all help me understand the world a little better and be more open minded. Some are simple (like learning how dice are made and what makes them more or less likely to be fair), some that seem simple at first turn out to be complex and nuanced (like black haircare, styling, and culture), and some are massive undertakings from the start (like intersex conditions). Each subject - from big to small - changes how I see the world.

5. Enjoying creations. I know that sounds vague, but I sincerely enjoy seeing what people create! As long as the creations aren't bigoted, odd are I'll love it because I love seeing the result of somebody take something from thought to reality. From classical art to fanfiction to my nephew's lego towers, each creation has it's own merit because each creation (even commissions) shows a part of the person that created it. After all, you can give five guitarists the same chord to play and no two sounds would be exactly the same. Now rather I actually like the end product of their creation varies. Some thing just aren't for me (like creepy pasta and country music). However, I can still appreciate that they made it.

On a side note, please don't be cruel to creators. Imagine there's a toddler still inside every creator who shows what they create. Some who are shy and fragile. Some who are overwhelmingly confident and proud. Some who just want to draw on the walls. All so easily crushed with a single hurtful word. Choose to see the good in what they make. Point out where they improved, tell them what you liked, and gently and tactfully pointing out small mistakes (like a typo or some other small overlooked thing) if you need to. And for god's sakes, don't be a bully.

#chain mail #bluewind talks #love my readers #dear god this got long #gonna copy this just in case it doesn't post #learned my lesson after so so many lost posts

[bk-lostintranslation]

ESSAY: Globalization - Limits & Liminality as Explored in “Paprika”

Kon’s animated film Paprika, through symbolic and stylized means, serves as a critical frame for the phenomenon of globalization. 

X-Posted at Pangaea Journal

Inspired by Yasutaka Tsutsui’s titular novel, Paprika begins much in the same fashion as it ends: in medias res, with a phantasmagorical montage of cultural iconography, quirky characters and surreal scenery interwoven at a frenzied pace, each scene jumping into the next with a fluidity that coalesces time and space itself into a distinctly Einsteinian continuum. Audiences are left dazed, disoriented, yet intrigued: there is no way to know whether the introductory sequence is chronicling a dream, or reality, or a freakish blend of both. This destabilizing visual narrative is fairly typical of Satoshi Kon’s craft, yet what calls for critical focus is the unique symbolism underpinning his work. Beneath its rich and densely-layered imagery, the film tackles a number of pertinent issues: from whether multimedia has warped from a benign platform into the jealous architect of our desires; to the tragic dissolution of individual ideas and complex cultures into a miasma of grotesque transnationalism; to whether the weakening friction-of-distance within a digitized world has brought us closer together, or merely distorted the very axes upon which time-space functions and is perceived. Indeed, at its crux, the film embraces a broad spectrum of issues uniquely linked to globalization, all while invoking relevant aspects of human fallacy and social degradation.

Central to Paprika, from the beginning, is its clear disdain for the linearity and two-dimensionalism of traditional narrative. Instead, like a hallucination, there appear to be no distinguishable boundaries between characters or places, no fixed destinations or rational coordinates. The most vivid example is the introductory sequence, where the eponymous protagonist, Paprika, leaps winsomely out of a man’s dreams and into the physical world: flitting from brightly-lit billboards as static eye-candy to a well-meaning sentry spying through computer screens to a godlike specter freezing busy traffic with a snap of her fingers to an ordinary girl chomping hamburgers at a diner to a stylized decal on a boy’s T-shirt to a motorcyclist careening through late-night streets (0:06:12-0:07:49).

Space and time are rendered meaningless – or, rather, are reshaped into something entirely novel and surreal. As Paprika navigates through a complex and dynamic mediascape, she effectively embodies the spilling-over of the virtual into the physical world – and, more significantly, of both the subtle and blatant permeation of media-based globalization in every step of our lives. Indeed, with its alternately fascinating and disturbing chaos of imagery, the very premise of Paprika blurs the boundaries between the inner and outer-worlds, conveying through both symbolic and subtextual allusions the phenomenon of globalization run riot – a dreamscape that unfolds with the benign promise of forging new connections, only to seep past the barriers of reality and engulf and reshape the world to the imperatives of dystopian homogeneity at best, and the subjugation and disintegration of individual autonomy at worst.

It can be argued, of course, that it is hypocritical for animation – in many ways the nexus of metamedia in its most intrinsically illusory form – to lambaste globalization. The media pivots on globalization in all its multifaceted vagaries, and vice versa. Renowned social theorist Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase ‘the global village’ in his groundbreaking work The Medium is the Message, was one of the first to point out that the form of a medium implants itself inextricably into whatever message it conveys in a synergistic relationship: “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered (26).” That the media and the phenomenon of globalization go hand-in-hand, shaping and influencing one another, therefore goes without saying. However, what the imagery of Paprika draws attention to is how the multiplicity of media leads to unpredictable consequences and vicissitudes – which are not always quantifiable or even tangible. Much in the same way technology and global interconnectivity have narrowed – at times even erased – the demarcations of time and space, so too have they led to paradigm shifts of what it means to belong to a static, physical place as a cultural and individual identifier.

Globalization is often defined as fundamentally kaleidoscopic, with a dizzying mobility of ideological, economic, physical and cultural interchanges across a rhizomatous network – but one that is increasingly powered by its own unstable energies and its own besieged and untidy logic. Of particular interest is the ‘disembodied’ component of globalization, where the flow of information and capital is increasingly encoded and abstract, and thus increasingly more likely to permeate local spaces that may not always be open to such profound transformation, imposition and redefinition. In their work, The Quantum Society, Zohar and Marshall liken the chaotic, fractal nature of the modern world to quantum reality, stating that it

…has the potential to be both particle-like and wave-like. Particles are individuals, located and measurable in space and time. Waves are ‘nonlocal,’ they are spread out across all of space and time, and their instantaneous effects are everywhere. Waves extend themselves in every direction at once, they overlap and combine with other waves to form new realities, new emergent wholes (326).

Unarguably, the focal point in Paprika is globalization as a catalyst of “new realities.” But while these can be captivating and edifying, allowing us to create or explore new identities, or to grow more closely tethered together, they can also represent the sinister infiltration of exploitative elements within our most intimate lives. This is made chillingly evident through the plot of the film, which centers on the theft of the DC Mini – a futuristic device that allows two people to share the same dream. While intended as a tool to help treat patients’ latent neuroses and deep-seated pathologies, the film makes clear that, if misused, this prototype can not only allow an intruder to access and influence another’s dreams, but can unleash the collective dream-world into the sphere of reality itself. The DC Mini, on its own, would function as a tepid metaphor for the symbiotic dance between globalization and technology. But following its theft, the resultant chaos it invokes sets the riveting, psychedelic stage upon which the inner-world of dreams erupts out into mundane reality, a fantastical convergence that not only threatens the safety of the entire city, but also denies each citizen their own private realm of dreams, within which they have the freedom to nurture a true inner-self. As Dr. Chiba – the no-nonsense alter-ego of our dreamscape superheroine Paprika – remarks: the victims of the abused DC Mini have become mere “empty shells, invaded by collective dreams… Every dream [the stolen DC Mini] came into contact with was eaten up into one huge delusion.” The scene is made particularly memorable by its vivid visual symbolism: two droplets of rainwater on a car window merging into one, highlighting the irresistible flow between not only dreams and reality, but the liminality of globalization as a fluid force that cannot be bound by temporal or spatial delineations (0:52:12-0:52:37).

It is precisely this unpredictable fluidity that runs rampant across real-life Tokyo in the film, wreaking havoc in its wake. Of particular interest is the gorgeous riot of imagery employed to represent the collective ‘delusion:’ the recurring motif of a parade, in all its clamorous splendor, that unfurls through the city streets, infusing spectators with its own peculiar brand of madness. For its eye-popping and mind-bending details alone, the sequence warrants close examination. But accompanying the visual feast is the nightmarish gamut of cultural, technological, social and historical commentary embedded within its imagery. To the cheerful proclamations of, “It’s showtime!” a procession of Japanese salarymen leap with suicidal serenity off of rooftops; below, the bodies of drunkenly-staggering bar-hoppers morph into unbalanced musical instruments, while families frolicking through the parade transform into rotund golden Maneki-neko to disturbing chants of, “The dreams will grow and grow! Let’s grow the tree that blooms money!” Here, in a scathing political lampoon, politicians wrestle one another in their eagerness to climb to the top of a parade-float; there, a row of schoolgirls in sailor uniforms, with cellphones for heads, lift their skirts for the eager gazes of equally cellphone-headed males.

Satoshi Kon does not bother with coy subtext; he announces the mind-degenerating effects of globalization on both dramatic and symbolic planes: a parade that swells into disorder and eventual destruction, headed by a clutter of sentient refrigerators, televisions, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, deck tapes and automobiles. Traditional Japanese kitsch competes with lurid Americana; cultural symbols like Godzilla and the Statue of Liberty waltz alongside such religious icons as the Virgin Mary, Vishnu and the Buddha, while disembodied torii arches and airplanes soar overhead to the discordant serenade of money toads and durama dolls. The effect is at once hypnotic and horrific; the vortex of collective dreams lures in countless spellbound bystanders, transforming them into just another mindless facet of the parade, from a robot to a toy to a centerpiece on a parade-palanquin. Witnessing the furor, one character dazedly asks, “Am I still dreaming?” and is informed, “Yes. The whole world is” (1:11:09-1:12:42)

In her book, Girlhood and the Plastic Image, Heather Warren-Crow remarks that Paprika “…proffers a visual theory of media convergence as not only an issue of technology, but also one of globalization… [Its] vision of media convergence is one in which boundaries between cultures, technologies, commodities and people are horrifyingly permeable… While our supergirl is eventually able to stop the parade… these multiple transgressions cause mass confusion, madness, injury and death (83).” If this seems a dark denouncement of globalization, one cannot deny that it is in many respects fitting. With the vanishing delineations between nations, cultures, ideas and people arises the phenomenon of “cultural odorlessness,” or mukokuseki. The term was first applied to rapid social transformations in Koichi Iwabuchi’s book Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, although the phenomena can just as readily be applied to postmodernity in all its miscellaneous facets (28).  While globalization has engendered new intimacies and easier connections (on the surface), this overwhelming grid of interconnected information has simultaneously become a web trapping human beings inside it. Individuality – on a national, local, or personal scale – has been pushed aside in favor of a real and virtual superhighway powered by pitiless self-commodification and voracious consumership, within which the cultivation of a true self no longer holds meaning. One particular scene in the film captures this with wistful succinctness. As a weary Dr. Chiba gazes out of the window of her office, her livelier alter-ego Paprika (real or imagined) appears superimposed before her reflection. “You look tired,” Paprika says, “Want me to look in on your dreams?” to which Chiba replies, “I haven’t been seeing any of my own lately.” Against Paprika’s winsome overtones, her own demeanor strikes a chord that is dismal in its flatness. Although Chiba’s profession is to dive through the colorful welter of others’ dreams, it is her grasp of her own self that proves the ultimate fatality in this venture (0:24:10-0:24:23).

Indeed, it has often been argued that as both the physical and disembodied aspects of globalization grow increasingly more pervasive, so too do diverse organs of surveillance – from institutionalized dogmas meant to restrict personal development by branding it as outdated or subversive, to internal and external disciplinary structures meant to monitor and subjugate a person’s ‘inner-self:’ the very stuff of his or her dreams.  Such themes, while hardly novel, are nonetheless relevant, tethered as they are to such iconic works as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, both of which – through literal and metaphorical means – examine societies wherein people are subject to relentless government scrutiny, mind-policing and the absolute denial and denigration of privacy.  Foucault’s work, in particular, is useful for deconstructing social mechanisms. Utilizing a genealogical historical lens, Foucault traces the slow and oppressive transformation – as opposed to ‘evolution’, a phrase often touted by proponents of liberal reform – of the Western penal system. His main focus is to illustrate how, despite our self-congratulatory complacence at moving away from the barbaric model of medieval punishment, in favor of gentler and more civilized modes of discipline, we have in fact simply transferred the imperatives of controlling human beings – be they deviants or conformists – from their bodies to their souls. As Foucault states, “Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights,” thus intimating that the organs of institutional control have not grown less harsh or restrictive, but simply less overt (11).

Certainly, by relying on a framework of internal rather than external constraints, it has become possible to erode the very modicum of individuality, reducing human beings to what Foucault describes as “docile” bodies complicit in their own exploitation. Foucault lays the blame for this phenomenon on a capitalist system whose economic and political trajectory has led society to a place of commodification and classification (“governmentality”), where the complexities of dynamic individuals are pared down into reductionist categories of ‘acceptable’ or ‘unacceptable.’  According to Foucault, surveillance and regimentation as a means of producing compliant individuals is the crux of modern economies, to the point where society has transformed into an industrial panopticon – a nightmarish perversion of Jeremy Bentham’s original ideal. As such, whether individuals live as offenders within a prison, or as free citizens, is irrelevant. The scant difference in both their constraints is measured by mere degrees (102-128).

In Paprika, these issues are not explicitly announced, but are instead woven through the story’s fabric in an alternately lulling and disquieting fashion. Noteworthy scenes – such as where Paprika, a captive chimera with butterfly-wings, is pinned to a table while a man literally peels away her skin to paw rapaciously at the prone body of Dr. Chiba, nestled pupae-like within, to the moment where Detective Toshimi Konakawa, harried by recurring nightmares, bittersweetly comes to terms with boyhood dreams he had suppressed in order to survive by the dictum of a cold and prescriptive adult world – are all reminders that it is our inviolate inner-space that makes us uniquely human. To allow it to be invaded, subjugated and erased is to reduce ourselves to passive automatons, our every desire governed, our every choice predetermined. In Paprika, this knowledge blossoms only when each character delves deep into themselves, to find at their core the dream-child that remains untouched by reality’s smothering hold, and to discover within that dream-child both untapped softness and strength. “She’s become true to herself, hasn’t she?” Paprika playfully remarks of the somber Dr. Chiba, when the latter finally comes to terms with her repressed affection for the bumbling genius Tokita (1:15:42).

For Paprika, it is evident that social or technological transformations cannot be powered by the erosion of individual dreams. To do so is to condemn the world to an eldritch darkness sustained only by greed. The film’s penultimate scene, where the egomaniacal chairman – the true thief of the DC Mini – looms as a monstrous giant over the despoiled city, proclaiming, “I am perfect! I can control dreams and even death!” could almost serve as the critical foreshadowing of globalization taken to its bleakest conclusion: the desecration of nature and humanity alike by a self-serving force that, in its thirst for absolute control, will cancel out the very diversity of dreams that once made globalization possible. It is only when Paprika – fusing with Dr. Chiba and Tokita – reemerges in the form of a baby to battle the chairman, is equilibrium restored. “Light and dark. Reality and dreams. Life and death. Man and woman. Then you add the missing spice [Paprika],” she recites, as if listing ingredients to a recipe (1:19:50-1:20:32). Yet, in keeping with theme of liminality and indeterminacy, the key to vanquishing the chairman is not in these binary oppositions, but in their capacity to combine together and shape the world into more than one thing at once. As Paprika swallows the chairman whole, reversing the shadowy post-apocalyptic city to its original state, battle-scarred but still intact, the audience is reminded of fluidity of the quantum world. Life and death, dreams and reality, destruction and rebirth, all coalesce within an ever-transforming continuum.

So too, as the film’s open-ended yet distinctly uplifting ending makes clear, is the process of globalization inherently free-flowing and malleable in its interaction with its environment. Rather than focusing on the split between globalization as a force of cultural erasure versus a celebration of differences, the film highlights the alternately delicate or brutal negotiations between the two: a friction that is necessary to keep the phenomenon in flux. Zygmunt Bauman’s book and selfsame concept of Liquid Modernity proves especially useful here, in that in order to comprehend the mutable nature of the modern world, it is necessary to look beyond traditional models and regimented perceptions. As he makes clear:

Ours is … an individualized, privatized version of modernity, with the burden of pattern-weaving and the responsibility for failure falling primarily on the individual’s shoulders… The patterns of dependency and interaction … are now malleable… but like all fluids they do not keep their shape for long. Shaping them is easier than keeping them in shape. Solids are cast once and for all. Keeping fluids in shape requires a lot of attention, constant vigilance and perpetual effort – and even then the success of the effort is anything but a foregone conclusion (8).

Of course, the exchange of images and ideas across a would-be deterritorialized realm does not mean that the myriad components within must lose their separate identities. Rather, those identities become more essential than ever, bringing with them their own consequences and questions – all of which must be understood through the dynamic lens of globalization, until we come to understand not only the frailties of the social order, but how they can improved, in order to make connections both genuine and mutually-beneficial for a polyphonic future. The answers lie not within the inherently-shifting structure of globalization, but rather in its creative use. In the film’s final segment, where Detective Toshimi Konakawa purchases tickets to the movie, Dreaming Kids, after decades of stultifying self-repression, speaks of the capacity of globalized multitudes to enthuse as well as to ensnare the individual’s dreams. Globalization does not exist in a vacuum; even as it threatens to engulf nations, localities and persons into a bilious swamp of depersonalized shells, so too can it be transformed by the nature of the worlds it encounters. The change is double-edged and double-sided; the effect is a living, breathing bricolage that grows and alters as we do – and how we do.

That said, it is evident that Satoshi Kon’s message is not one of a facile globalized utopia. Rather, it is about the dangers of losing ourselves within such a seductive phenomenon, whose effects can too easily be maneuvered toward mass surveillance and subjugation. For Paprika, the cross-flow of cultures, ideas, commodities and people is illustrated as an unceasing process, but one that we ourselves are responsible for shaping. If done right, there is the tantalizing promise of a happier, freer life, within which globalization may enhance rather than exploit our dreams. But if done wrong, Kon’s narrative is bleakly apocalyptic – a world fallen victim to a hostile and all-pervasive force that gnaws away its very humanity. While the film’s content-driven, as opposed to structural, formula can be mystifying and overly-abstract at times, there is no denying its visual ingenuity: a multimedia extravaganza that beautifully translates the welter of dreams into reality. With its alternately fascinating and disturbing chaos of imagery, Paprika blurs the boundaries between the inner and outer-worlds, conveying through symbolic and subtextual allusions the phenomenon of globalization run riot – a dreamscape that yields both brighter possibilities and special connections if we do not allow it to diminish us, yet also a sinister agency of mass domination and dystopian homogeneity if we fail to put it in its proper place.

Works Cited

Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2015.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY, Random House LLC, 1977.

Iwabuchi, Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, Duke University Press, 2007.

Kon, Satoshi, director. Paprika. Madhouse Studios, 2006.

MacLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Message. Corte Madera, Gingko Pr., 2005.

Warren-Crow, Heather. Girlhood and the Plastic Image. Lebanon, University Press of New England, 2014.

Zohar, Danah, and I. N. Marshall. The Quantum Society: Mind, Physics and a New Social Vision. New York, Morrow, 1994.

#essay #review #academic writing #paprika #satoshi kon #japan #globalization #anime #published

[convndrums]

here the FAWK she ( the semi-finished masterlist of all my characters ) is ! took way too long but hopefully as you proceed to click on the linque below you’ll know why smh but yep ! i’ll be adding their pages on my account when i’m done with them soon i hope and maybe come back with a bunch of connections for each character but for now this is all i got & smash this like or im me for plots i’d love to get on those finally xx

reintroducing amanda wheeler;  intro & info page.

queen of irony. rich post- faux country gal who’s a loud homosexual and writes hetero fics/has an indie het smut for the absolute shits and giggles. dates a married woman she’s utterly in love with and will pull the life support cord for. said to be possessed by a possessed flapper. cute and knows it even though she looks like a republican. socially open & everywhere. morally grey.

reintroducing imogen yates; intro & info page. ( tw violence )

the grey area between your mom friend and your drunk aunt. happily vegan & owns a vegan restaurant called the fork, alt. the vegan cult’s lair. won’t kill you, but will convince you she really wants to. local brat tamer. minds her business via minding others. clashed head-first into nature’s very own reset button: amnesia. used to be satan and traumatized everyone. disgustingly active and accomplishing.

reintroducing ethan holland; intro & info page. ( tw suicide )

he is a sk8r boi, she said see ya later boy ( and meant it. they’re dating now. hey lourdes ! ) a nice person, so nice he doesn’t realize how fake he sounds/is. a certified headass. previously a bully/bully enabler, current guilty fuck. #torn. does the most for his loved ones. doesn’t remember his own birthday. googled foot fetishes once. trolls stan twitter with his fake selena gomez stan account when tumblr crashes. burned a sue of cide note with his name scribbled on it.

reintroducing sebastian miller; intro & info page ( tw violence )

kazimer sokolov whom. russian ex-cult member well-adjusted into a mundane life via lies, a fake canadian accent he’s ‘trying to get rid of’, being a twilight saga aficionado and a dickwad, a lame record store and a tumblr blog to keep himself sane by maintaining a general aesthetic and shitting on people and every discourse out there. knives/books sniffer. allegedly fucked a moose. probably kinkshames as a way to deal with his own “kinks” aka please keep the dead bodies away. ( im kidding i swear but [redacted] )

reintroducing prudence zima; intro & info page ( tw death )

parents died in a fire when she was two months old and it shows. idolizes avril lavigne & her favorite movie is lords of dogtown for aesthetics references. dude. social leech or effortless networker ? both. remains in her lane regardless. cry-types probably. here for a good time, not a long time. steals your stash and smokes you out with it. avid dick connoisseur. minimum effort lifestyle. either on her way to become a manager of some one hit wonder band that finds it’s demise in a freak accident, a drug dealer or god forbid, a guidance counselor; depends. mild cool girl syndrome. 

reintroducing jennifer meade; intro & info page ( tw death, violence and abuse )

bi/pussy muncher and proud misandrist, first and foremost. remembers killing her brother very fondly. the one girl in a room to call when you want to kill a bug and you’re relieved until she kills it with her bare hand. tops. unstable & chaotic evil, respectively. the ginger devil. biased and has her minion whom she invests a great deal of her time in brain washing and obsessing over. supposedly here to make amends but that’s not happening any time soon.

reintroducing margot williams; intro & info page ( tw mental illness )

deserves better. very gay. all her friends are heathens xtra, take it slow. corrects typos in the gc. a nerdy editorial assistant daydreaming about publishing houses instead of the magazine she works for. lowkey shy and she’s angry about it. goes off if she must. jacks off to #knowledge and yuri anime. helps with homework and essays and takes the kids out. deadpan because we’re original but she swears it’s just the face & unresolved trauma. stans her therapist. unofficial older sister.

reintroducing chandler accardi; intro ( re-written ) & info page

needs to do better. dropped out of college for culinary school then dropped out of that too. was engaged to an absolute goddess he ultimately wronged ( with her damn best friend, bitch disgostin* ) and got kicked out to the curb. currently residing in the couch of his sister until things are resolved. thot-by-default & annoying. has like three ( 3 ) redeeming qualities. has never been told to shut up and it shows. works at buzzfeed.

reintroducing abel gautier; intro & info page

french and “confused”. lives a minimalist n’ expensive life. if american psycho & french kiss were the same movie. wine sniffer. the devil bakes croissants. will watch you die. takes grudges to the afterlife. gets attached but either ruins it or ruins it to spare everyone, himself included. falls in love a lot but knows how to calm the fuck down. very giving, fortunately. manipulative but isn’t too wild about bending everything to his will. 

reintroducing simini gale; intro & info page ( tw abuse, violence & mental illness )

token white actress & character in rosie’s show. [ britney vc ] its me.... against dissociation. a loud mess with an intense mental state and anger issues dulled out by her prescribed meds and whatever pill she got in the bottom of her manager’s purse. dependent and distraught about it. grocery shopping for garbage food and attending comedy stand up shows half drunk as a hobby. stable ? where. very nice and super flighty. heels are hot. wishes she could fight someone without feeling the urge to actually fight someone. 

reintroducing calvin o’shea; intro & info page ( tw mental illness )

it’s not just the depression more than the incredible self hatred. walks into rooms with his bad energy, grumpy mood and cunty attitude. graduated college just to shut his dad up. wants to die harder than edward cullen. just doesn’t give a shit. has a baby named freddie mercury ( also known as the antichrist, with alanis, his mortal literal enemy whom he absolutely despises and will not hesitate to put his dick back in again lbr ) who will probably grow up to talk shit about his parents whom he also mentioned in his tell-all book on ellen. works at his family’s bookstore that sucks the life energy out of college students nearing a mental breakdown.

reintroducing isabel pavia; intro & info page ( tw drug use )

contemporary dances her feelings away. too ambitious for her own good but knows what she’s doing. in a goth ass secret society ( here ) a.k.a her new found purpose. knows everything eventually. oddly trustworthy. doesn’t know what speaking loudly is, let alone yelling. loves the moon & has that moon app. had to take painkillers when she twisted her ankle very badly and would take them for a while for stress and performance reasons, but has stopped. a quiet angel. 

reintroducing anastasia zeller; intro & info page

ambitious/multi-talented asshole. horror trash & an emotional/mental maze which translates well into her weird works on no sleep reddit and current horror comedy podcast. ( click here for info ). needs a therapist according to a friend, whom she dropped for saying that. will bite your head off. obsessed with her works to an unhealthy point. would love to establish a company and stuff out of it and is working on that. healthy relationships are a semi-foreign concept.

reintroducing morgan booker; intro & info page ( tw death )

vape-curious and takes photos of ghost towns and abandoned-everythings because #vision. had a roadtrip phase like the fake deep idiot he is. morally grey. genuinely here for a good laugh and spreading joy in the form of hover-friendships and taking lit candids of his friends. knows shit and comes off as a creep sometimes but does he really care. knows your mom’s name. lives in a disused hospital bc he’s marinating on that aesthetic. 

reintroducing bowie harmon; intro & info page ( tw drug use & abuse )

part of a duo in a web series as the anxious n’ cackling mess. showcases her depressión & anxieté by her colorful wigs n’ new hair dyes. painful receptionist at a tattoo parlor. recovering addict who advocates for drug use. thinks tattooing a ruler on someone’s dick one day would be the peak of her accomplishments as a tattoo artist. daily bad decisions. “ it’s complicated. ” when asked about literally any relationship she has with anyone in her life. traumas include her failed singing career. an ex viner-by-association.

reintroducing shaheen bin baz; intro & info page ( tw violence & mental illness )

the physical deception of going through hell in a short amount of time with zero mental durability to begin with during midterms. trigger-anxious. will shoot your toes off your foot if caught off guard. aided in criminal operations with the brilliance of his mind in codes. would not mind dying. seasons your food. waters his crops in his balcony garden. the grey area between a super laidback dude and a crackhead with violent tendencies. nearing a mental breakdown probably. 

reintroducing minka abbott-santos; intro & info page ( tw abuse )

defeats the evil stepmom stereotype one breath at a time. the human embodiment of a deer. gothic angel. alarmingly gets black swan. type to wake up to her staring at you from an armchair across the room, but lovingly, with a book she was reading in hand and two hot cups of tea; she was waiting to start the day with you. spooky until you get to know her and even more spookier when she’s ( note: calmly ) pissed but that’s extremely rare. gentle voice, soul and everything.

reintroducing reuben faulkner; intro & info page ( tw abuse & violence  )

rekt hell prince. lived in an amish community with his family until he got kidnapped away from home when he was seven into an awful living situation. doesn’t remember if the gas leak that happened five years later and killed everyone was his doing or not. knows where his real family is after months of tracking them down but. blood kink under investigation. shady bouncer at a shady club. has issues he has no care or time to diminish. fights for the shits and giggles. leaves texts at read. leaves you alone for your own good and his own sanity. 

reintroducing alexandra turunen;  info page

wants to do everything and be everything and doesn’t know what to do with herself ( read: post-graduation identity crisis ) currently investing in a motorcycle for no reason. essentially jobless. a “retired” kathryn merteuil who “outgrew” her cunning ways since highschool but really only found new socially destructive interests. appears to be self-possessed but she’s #shaken. doesn’t care about how well she presents herself anymore after getting rejected by four universities and refusing to accept her father’s offer to pull some strings to get her in one. sleeps a lot. 

reintroducing giuseppe del vecchio;  info page ( tw death & drug use  )

goes by pepe because well. son of italian oil peeps & is extra. said to be in a cult when all he’s in is this extra ass dining club that does the most for initiation ceremonies. ready to fall in love with you. goes to the king’s college in london and studies business & changes his minor way too often for everyone’s liking. into everything and will be down to do whatever. faux deep. mischievous shit. incredibly unbiased. had his rawrk n’ roll phase that died along with someone in a club literally. still has it but he knows god now & less drugs.

reintroducing kelian scott;  info page ( tw death & drug use  )

a father/father figure who tries™. runs a mechanic shop/chop shop because bad decisions and dire needs ( had his son to send to school and his daughter who passed away due to a disease he couldn’t afford to treat even after turning his shop into a chop shop. his wife then left him ). stares into the distance. wants the best for the kids but one of them is a junkie ( he doesn’t know yet ) and the other -- his niece -- is an orphan he’s worried about. thinks ahead 24/7. needs to pull out of this dull n’ depressing daily routine he has fallen into like the basic ass divorced dad he is. 

reintroducing sal presley;  info page

smexy trace & fingerprint detective. talks. the perfect illusion to bring home to your parents and friends. gets shit done which is both a good thing and a bad thing. looks calm, collected n’ well-rested but isn’t. his actual name is salvatore but no. knows how to mix drinks and more; used to showcase his multi-talented ass to make his ( currently ex ) fiancée look good now just himself. was engaged three times; two of those times with the same person. obsessive; gets into his job a little too intensely for no reason but #justice and maybe something else whom knows. loses sleep at least two nights a week as a habit at this point. has an extended family back home he misses occasionally. wishes he could calm down truly. 

#smoke:intros #FINALLY RISING HOLY SH- #ill do some plotting n hopefully get on replies soonish hell yea lets GO!

[spclmxrbsprgrm]

AFFECTIVE TOUCH / EMBODIMENT

Before the emergence of DJ culture, minimal art made changes in the way people experienced an artwork. In her text on what she calls the Experiential Turn, Dorothea von Hantelmann speaks of this shift.

”Certain positions within Minimal Art during the 1960s fundamentally changed the relationship between the object and its viewer, between art and its venue, by completely shifting the meaning of the object to the experience had with and through it. They suggested a situational focus in the visual arts through the way in which they introduced consciousness of the space and the bodily situatedness of the viewer” (2014).

The evolution of audio technologies has been an attempt to manufacture this sense of being together here and now in a reliable way. In music this is produced via a trans-personal, delicately human capacity often thought of as a very rare occurrence amongst the neurodiversity of the species. Attempting to machine the air into the byproduct of this inter-human form of communication and alignment is particularly true of loudspeakers: aside from lightning, they are the primary interface between electricity, air, and our bodies. 6

Micah Silver

In club experience, the notion of the space concerns not only the built one but the created one, made by the performance of sound and media technologies. This means that club experience not only includes them but also merges them in a dynamic consciousness of space over an ongoing individual experience.

The difference from similar experiences proposed by museums or galleries, like immersive sound installation exhibitions, for example, is the sensation of unique communal meaning that rave involves, and obviously, diverse accepted practices that are socially ‘permitted’ to be made in each place. Museums or galleries are less chaotic and more ‘controled’ than clubs, but both involve similar intentions in what relates to the impact in the visitor’s perception.

Entering a club could be astonishing, as could be experiencing a James Turrell light installation, or attending sound artist Byron Westbrook’s performance of `Threshold Variations´. In this piece, he manipulates the created space during the progression of the performance. He makes sudden shifts in lighting and sound within an open setting to explore the space, playing with the experience of the audience.

The performed experience of club space, nested into the “arena space” (Smalley,2007,42), is bound together when the embodied cognition of the “co-performers” (Iyer, 2016, 6) is mixed with the dissolved notion of time and space. This last does not depend only on drug use; the power of the sound system, flashing lights, and dancing bodies are capable of modifying our perception.

The influential jazz musician Vijay Iyer in his text ‘Improvisation, Action Understanding, and Music Cognition with and without Bodies’, writes about this:

“Theories of embodiment hold that the body, the brain, and the mind must be understood as one system and that the brain is an organ optimized for producing motor (i.e., bodily) output in response to sensory stimuli. This “sensory-motor loop” becomes the basis for what we call cognition.” (2016, 3)

After every other boundary is dissolved during embodied cognition, the sensation we experience is a feeling of being here and now, in the present, in our tracking point of time and space. This is enabled by the touch of amplified sound and the immersion into the energy in-between bodies. This positions us in a state of awareness of the wider range of events that form our perception of the world.

6 Silver Micah - Figures in air: essays toward a philosophy of audio- Inventory Press, LLC - 2014 p. 62

[mrmichaelchadler]

Slut in a Good Way

Countless books, gender studies papers and personal essays have poured over the meaning of the term slut for as long as there has been feminism. Yet, no matter how far we think our culture has progressed, the gendered term is still one that women – like the teenagers at the heart of Sophie Lorain’s righteously funny “Slut in a Good Way” – have to face. Ditching many of the high school movie tropes for an idiosyncratic raunchy comedy, Lorain’s film deliberately calls out the double standard that still exists while letting her flawed young characters still have fun.

After the devastating break-up of her first major relationship, Charlotte (Marguerite Bouchard), and her two best friends, the outspoken anarchist-spirited Mégane (Romane Denis) and the soft-spoken Aube (Rose Adam), drunkenly wander into a store and apply for low-level retail jobs at a toy store. Thanks to the impending holiday rush, the trio find themselves hired and in the company of many cute eligible young men.

From there, “Slut in a Good Way” becomes an absorbing dramedy about friends, gossip, feelings and sex. It’s alarming how much of these youthful mistakes and arguments are either painfully relatable or still relevant to the petty one-upmanship among adults. The three girls stumble through crushes, bad sex, blurred lines between friends and sexual partners, and the mortifying situation of taking a Halloween costume party too seriously. As much as the guys talk behind the girls’ backs, the movie shows that girls are just as guilty in calling each other sluts to put others down. When problems mount between the two sides, the girls start a sex strike as a fundraiser like “Lysistrata” by way of “Clerks.”. The film’s sharp critique of double standards never feels like sermonizing, the teenagers’ observations about their situations feel organic, like stray musings traded over smuggled booze in the park.

Screenwriter Catherine Léger gives so much life to these characters in the movie’s short runtime. Mégane holds the group’s chaotic energy, declaring all vestiges of the patriarchy unfair and challenging them in a serious but playful manner. Aube, the tall, quiet one in the group, embodies almost every insecurity we may have ever felt about our bodies and whether or not our crush will ever notice us. While Charlotte talks a big game, she and her friends still have a lot to learn about love and life. Bouchard, Adam and Denis’ naturalistic performances bring these lively characters off the page in a way that’s effortlessly charming.

Charlotte’s fun-loving spirit extends to the visual style of “Slut in a Good Way.” Cinematographer Alexis Durand-Brault shot the movie in a soft-focus black-and-white digital way that feels both modern yet romantic. It’s in greyscale rather than in crisp black-and-white so that even the colors on the screen are quite clear about the relationship boundaries. There’s a lot of visual humor in the way the film captures this awkward in-between stage of life. The characters engage in grown-up behavior while working among kid’s toys, a visual metaphor for the teenage years. Certain scenes play up conventions of romantic comedies, like the soft focus attention when Charlotte has real feelings for one of her coworkers. Other moments poke fun at the animalistic aspects of our mating rituals, like crude flirting techniques like picking on the person you have a crush on or when the boys gather to ogle the new girls on their tour through the store.

The soundtrack is just as energetic and eclectic as can be, moving from pop song to Bollywood-inspired tracks. Why it’s the music choice for a story of three white French Canadian teens I’m not sure, but it does lead up to one of the cutest credits dance scenes in recent memory. Another interesting musical choice is Charlotte’s fascination with Maria Callas, whose version of “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen” is the soundtrack to one of the film’s spectacular moments of editing from Louis-Philippe Rathé.  

“Slut in a Good Way” is fun in a great way, the kind of movie that leaves you on an upbeat note and a smile. Lorain’s direction feels so free-flowing, Durand-Brault’s cinematography so dreamy, Léger’s characters so wonderfully rendered by the film’s young cast, that the overall result is too delightful just to watch once.

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[entergamingxp]

Pride Week: Final Fantasy 7

Hello! All this week we’ll be celebrating Pride and the power of positive representations in games. Every day we’ll be bringing you stories and insights from different parts of the LGBT+ community. You can also help support Pride with Eurogamer’s newly redesigned t-shirt – all profits from which will be going to charity.

In the midst of a recent replay of the original Final Fantasy 7, I found myself welling up. Not because I’d reached that bit – the mandatory, number-one entry in every ‘gaming’s top ten saddest moments’ list from now till the Lifestream runs dry. No. The tears were rising much earlier in my playthrough than that. And those tears were accompanied by a big goofy grin. What in this gloriously janky PS1 classic that I hadn’t picked up in almost fifteen years could have had such an effect on me?

I was in Wall Market – Midgar’s gleefully ungentrified equivalent of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, or London’s Soho, a century ago – and the game’s taciturn, hyper-masculine, ex-mercenary protagonist, Cloud, had just donned an extremely pretty silk dress. Not only that, but he’d put on a blonde wig he’d won from a body-builder at a local gym, splashed on some sexy cologne, and had just had his make-up done by a burlesque dancer. And, to top it all, upon emerging from the dressing-room to reveal his transformation, he had been greeted with utter delight by the friend, ally, and (though it pains the Clifa stan in me to say it) love interest who had accompanied him there.

The reason I was crying was because, here, in chunky polygonal miniature, was my entire experience of coming out as a non-binary trans person.

No, you’re crying!

Okay, maybe not my entire experience. I didn’t start wearing make-up and femme clothing as part of an elaborate plan to rescue my childhood sweet-heart from the clutches of a local sex criminal, and Cloud’s family weren’t around to worry about what the neighbours might think. But, the key components were all there: the thrill of a new wardrobe; the unforeseen generosity of strangers; the relief that comes from the support and acceptance of friends and loved-ones; and, above all, the quiet euphoria of suddenly looking the way you’d never even realised you wanted (or needed) to look before. Heck, even the frantic squat-driven glow-up at the local gym was present and correct.

Don Corneo (trans. ‘Lord Horny’), slum-lord sex pest, in action.

I concede, I may have been projecting just a little. But, if there is one thing that queer culture and, indeed, gaming culture, have taught me, it’s that queer people find representation wherever they can, and that, often, those discoveries occur in the most unexpected of places. And here was an echo of the moment at which my gender identity suddenly ‘clicked’ for me, captured in a game I had played and replayed as a kid. It was uncanny.

Admittedly, the fact that I had the uncanny feeling of suddenly finding my queerness so clearly reflected in a game I had loved as a child while playing Final Fantasy 7 should, perhaps, have come as no surprise. To paraphrase Paris is Burning: it is a known fact that Final Fantasy 7 do be as camp as a row of tents and as queer as a ten-bob note.

A reminder: We played this. As children.

Rightly described by Eurogamer’s Aoife Wilson as a ‘bi thirst-trap‘, Final Fantasy 7 buzzes with enough queer energy to power a thousand Sister Rays. Whether it be Cloud’s journey of self-denial and self-discovery (coming-out story much?), Tifa’s status as the living embodiment of soft-butch energy, Reno’s status as a chaotic bisexual pinball (you just know he and Rude met on Grindr), Jessie’s omnidirectional flirtation, the way everyone talks about Cloud’s eyes, the fact that everyone is wearing a harness, or Sephiroth’s, like, entire deal (if you ever thought a twink couldn’t also be a leather daddy, he’s here to prove you wrong), the game is, if you’ll pardon the expression, queer af.

Everyone’s favourite chaotic bisexual makes a graceful exit…

But, aside from being almost impossibly horny with virtually no concern for the gender of the parties involved – a feature the recent Remake has turned up to 11 – the game is also queer in deeper, more meaningful ways; ways that resonates strongly with the origins of Pride month, and its roots in a tradition of anti-assimilationist political protest.

A key figure in this regard is Barret (or, as he may be known to some of you, ‘Gunny’). In terms of representation, the game’s off-beat tone and broad-brush-strokes story-telling sometimes leave it seeming… unnuanced. At its worst, Barrett’s characterization in the original game comes off feeling like the production team watched a couple of re-runs of The A-Team and that music video where B.A. Baracus told us all to be nice to our mums and decided that they had learned all they needed to know about Black people (a serious problem in an industry as White-washed as gaming). But, without wishing to downplay these problematic elements, it is worth taking stock of who we ultimately discover Barret to be across the course of the game: a Black, physically-impaired adoptive father and climate activist, whose lost hand forms the basis for a narrative not of disability, but of empowerment, as he engages in a liberationary struggle to protect his local community and the planet at large from the toxic influence of a militarised form of corporate capitalism.

Barrett Wallace: Queer Big-Shot.

Like so many queer people who find themselves at the intersection of multiple forms of violence and oppression, Barret surrounds himself with a diverse team of like-minded individuals, united not by externally imposed categories of identity, but by a shared set of values and a desire to change the world for the better. This chosen family – for, what is the ‘party’ in an RPG if not a version of the ‘chosen family‘ of friends, partners, and allies upon which so many queer people rely? – comes to include not just a former member of SOLDIER like Cloud, who turns his skills and training against the oppressive forces he once served, but a figure like Nananki / Red XIII, a character whose story parallels those of many Indigenous and First Nations people whose lives, land, and heritage have been devastated by corporate imperialism. Like the Stonewall rioters, the Gay Liberation Front, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Lesbians and Gays support the Miners, the AIDS Coalition to Unlock Power, or the queer activists currently taking to the streets to support Black Lives Matter, AVALANCHE – the revolutionary band of eco-warriors Barret founds and leads – take a stand against a society, culture, and political system that seek to oppress them and exploit the planet they inhabit.

Barrett tells it like it is.

This is not to claim that everyone in AVALANCHE or Final Fantasy 7 at large is ‘queer’ in the same-sex attraction / gender non-conformity sense of the word (though, again, does anyone really believe that the Turks aren’t living together in a gloriously messy, pansexual polycule?) But, if, as one influential theorist has it, ‘queer’ refers to ‘whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’, then Barret and AVALANCHE are about as queer as they come.

It is for that reason that, with Covid-19 necessitating the cancellation of in-person gatherings across the globe, I recommend Final Fantasy 7 to you as the perfect way to bring the spirit of Pride month to life in your living room. Whether you think Pride should be a protest or a party (hint: it should be the former), Final Fantasy 7 is both, and, in its depiction of a radically inclusive chosen family squaring off against a militarised, corporate police state to protect marginalised communities and the environment, it has never been more timely.

So, do yourself a favour, unfurl your rainbow flag, boot up the game, and try to decide which character you fancy the most. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a body-builder about a wig…

For a fun and accessible introduction to queer theory and queer history, check out Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele’s gorgeously illustrated Queer: A Graphic History (2016). If you are interested in thinking about gaming from a queer perspective, Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (2014) and Queer Games Studies (2017), edited Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, are a great place to start. To learn more about the history of Pride and the queer liberation struggle more generally, you may wish to explore some of the books listed here. For some beautifully written reflections on the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and disability, take a look at the work of Audre Lorde, particularly her essay collection Sister Outsider (1984). Two books I have found particularly resonant in my own gender journey have been C.N. Lester’s Trans Like Me (2017) and Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (2019), edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane. To support QITPOC (Queer, Trans, Intersex, People of Colour) charities and organisations in your area, check out this list for the UK, or this list for the US. Also, everyone go watch Paris is Burning (1990). Right now. I’ll wait.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/pride-week-final-fantasy-7/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pride-week-final-fantasy-7

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) The Ritual of Panic, by Rhiannon Auriol

Rhiannon Auriol situates panic in its personal, cultural and political contexts. With reference to fire festivals, witchcraft, film, visual art and literature, historical upheavals and contemporary crises, the essay considers the tensile, sometimes erotic, functioning of panic in relation to ritual, fetish, social boundaries and the pressures of adolescence.

> The opposite of an orgasm is a panic attack. It is also its twin. Both can leave you shaking. Breathless. Sweaty. You can have them in multiples (if you’re female-bodied), sometimes in a row for hours. There is a sense, to both, of a ritual release; once the last throes dissipate there is a violent shape of relief. And although the emotional aftermath of each is radically different, one thing is for sure – you always remember your first time.  

> The ritual of panic is brutal and cyclical. I had my first panic attack aged 14. At school, they were reliable company. I would lock myself in a toilet cubicle when I felt one coming. I learned early on how to have panic attacks very, very quietly. Learned to carry all the right kit in case of an emergency rendezvous with my panic: tissues, makeup remover, water, gum, rescue remedy (I’ve graduated now to cigarettes and CBD). I have been panicking in this routine for years; all my life high-functioning anxiety has affected by ability to form healthy relationships with food, sex and work. I came of age nervously and erratically, swinging from confidence to collapse on a roughly six-month rotation. Terrified and in thrall to my panic, I was prepared to try anything to satisfy its crippling needs. And in this way my panic became ritualistic, a deity, pacified ineffectually by a private ceremony performed in bathrooms up and down the country. I got by without ever asking why I felt so trapped in this cycle, without examining what my struggle showed about the myth of worry that so many live by. Then I tripped over an essay by Fiona Duncan which struck home with its line, ‘Anxiety is a story I am telling myself’. My panic controlled me through my belief in it, I realised.

> Ritual, panic and sexuality are old lovers, intimate enemies. One of the definitions of panic is ‘of or relating to the god Pan’, the pastoral deity and mythological figure who has been portrayed alternatively as a kindly satyr or a sexual-Satanic symbol of ritualistic sacrifice. The myth goes that if the sleeping god was disturbed, panic would ensue, the flocks and herds of his slumberlands scattered by the resultant wrath. In order to placate the divine sleeper and avoid panic, animals were ritualistically slaughtered at Pan’s altars, ancient blood spurting onto stone in perfect harmony with the people’s nervous heartbeats. Pan’s association with nature also ties him to ideas of fertility and sexuality, to the rhythms of the seasons and their accompanying rituals such as the pagan celebrations of solstices and equinoxes. To an extent these festivals, as with many religious rites, are also sacrificial acts, alternative performances of homage to the power of the worshipped object (be it moons or gods) while also hoping for protection from fearful forces of change.

> There is something to be said for exploring the erotic element of these acts. As a child I regarded pagan celebrations in the same light as sexuality; they seemed mysterious and thrilling peaks of energy, climaxes if you will, strange and enchanting and (according to my Catholic mother) forbidden. When I moved to Edinburgh for university, I was free to go to the Beltane Fire Festival on Calton Hill, a ‘ritual drama’ and Gaelic celebration of May Day which throbs and flickers with sexual energy – from the raw allure of the dancing to the fierceness of flesh painted red, flowers of fire streaking the night sky. I saw how Beltane welcomed chaos and through this sense of liberation and lightness, the darker side of our impulses, panic, was staved off.

> It is possible however for the object of worship to become fetishised through rituals, symbolically distorted into something it is not. In the 18th century ritualism began to be associated more and more with notions of perverse sexuality, as did the god Pan. The goat-like form of the nature god began to take on a Satanic symbolism, largely due to Christianity’s moral panic over anything to do with sexuality and alternative deities, both of which Pan embodied. Consequently, people who worshipped Pan or Satan were denigrated by mainstream society as Satanists, pagans, witches. Demonstrating this shift in attitude with his Black Paintings series the 1798 Francisco Goya painting Witches’ Sabbath depicts a Satanic Pan surrounded by a coven of worshipping yet cowering witches. The great goat is garlanded and presides over the painting as if a priest in ceremony, the object of awe but also fear as indicated by its emphasised size and centrality to the composition, as well as the terrifying eye contact it maintains with the viewer. One of the witches clutches a baby, suggesting at first the Christian ritual of baptism, except the way the infant is grazed by one of the Devil’s hooves means it could also be a sacrifice, thus the baby is transformed into a signifier of both life and death. As a symbol of fertility, the baby also contrasts with the barren landscape of the piece’s background, which is littered with the skeletons of children. Such ominous depictions of Pan became rife, particularly in Europe at this time. And through such widespread portrayals, the concept of Pan was fetishised as the image became more powerful than the reality, especially when coinciding with proximity to moments in history such as the Basque Witch Trials. The tendency towards fetishisation taps into something fevered and feared stemming from how our societies are organised – the psychosexual release that comes for many with the mystery of worship is tempered by the craving to have control over a dominant wildness in our being, to shape power into a more limited comprehension.

Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Sabbath, 1789, oil on canvas. Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid.

> From witchcraft to devil worship and paganism (among a plethora of other beliefs and practices), people get nervous about what they can’t comprehend. Deviant sexuality makes people panic. In fact, anything considered out of the norm does – that is why ‘witches’ were hunted. Witch hunting was political panic warfare, of a kind we still see today and have done throughout history under different names and faces, from the Red Scare to the Satanic Panics of the 80s. A lot of the time politics is about Eros, not Logos, as evident from looking at how it is emotionally guided voting which underpins the rise and normalisation of extreme and dangerous political phenomena – 20th century fascism, Donald Trump, Brexit. Each of these things could be described as having been fetishised by its supporters, while creating a sense of extreme panic or doom in its opponents. Susan Sontag describes how ‘the fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets’ where the former requires placation and the latter worships or is punished. Sontag goes on to locate Nazi control within a cult-like eroticism: ‘the colour is black, the material is leather…’.

> On the 29th March 2019, incidentally the day that Brexit was supposed to have its chaotic way, I experienced a major depressive episode which lasted most of the following summer, triggered by a violent panic attack which woke me up in the night and made me see static. Mine was unrelated to Brexit (at least consciously) but others’ mental health is being disastrously affected by the Brexit cacophony, from counselling for MPs to the new term of ‘Brexit anxiety’ the uncertainty is eroding the country’s peace of mind. In failing to make sense out of public sacrifice – very literally, in the form of taxation, time and trust – the ritual of government has failed over Brexit, something which we are perpetually made aware of thanks to the fuel of media panic. Yet even amidst so much chaos, tradition and structure are clung to, the rituals repeatedly performed (Boris Johnson asking the Queen for permission to prorogue Parliament strikes me as a prime example), still hopeful of something changing, something miraculously being fixed. This is comparable to the more quotidian scale of ritual action. We seek control over things we cannot predict or see, all these things keep happening and there is no control over any of them, so we fill each day with things, with plans and schedules and jobs and lists to try and wrestle something back but only succeed in being so busy that we cannot breathe at night.

> As was the case with the mythological rites to Pan, vital things are sacrificed to my panic – relationships, money, time, happiness. The normalisation of the anxiety-inducing rites of passage which we describe as ‘coming of age’ is reflected in the documentary film All This Panic (2016) which follows a group of teenage girls through their Upper West Side lives in modern day New York, that city of anxious architecture and nerve-wracking streets. Throughout the documentary, directed by Jenny Gage, the girls exude a childish confidence which fails to mask their inner struggles with anxiety. ‘There’s all this panic…people are texting each other all the time… I’m petrified of getting older’ are just a few such indicative lines in the film which capture the sharp contrast between a mulled blasé outward attitude and the confusion within as the girls ricochet between casual crises. They are analogous characters to J M Barrie’s creation Peter Pan, a figure whose defining feature is eternal youth, a boy forever, fetishising the state of childhood. Peter plays the pan pipes, an instrument named after the god Pan, and in possessing the secret to flight appears to be a free spirit – and yet ‘he can never quite get the hang of [life]’.[i] Exaggeratedly careless, the iconic character appeals to the desire in readers to regain the laissez-faire boldness of youth. Today however, this idealised formative country is under siege. All This Panic portrays a post-wounded girlhood where beneath the ritual of performative femininity – make-up routines and coven-like cliques – is a terror at what may be waking, at what has to be covered up.

> What All This Panic highlights is how the milestones and expectations young people are expected to meet as they carve out lives for themselves are literally ‘rites’ exerting immense pressure upon the individual to follow them, to perfect each one: the correct clothes must be worn, the magic words that will make everyone want to be friends with you must be said, everything must be documented online, everyone must know when you start having sex for the first time, and you hide the 99% of things which don’t measure up to the pretty and perfected life – such as losing your mind. But what happens when these rituals fail, when the sacrifice is not enough, when things go wrong, and the sleeping demon is woken? Panic.

> The artist Laurie Anderson treats panic with a dose of hope in her video We Are In Constant Panic Mode. She would have us ‘try to see these great surges in a mode that’s not panic’. When a wave of anxiety approaches instead of drowning in it, we should ‘find a really good way to ride that. Fighting is a disaster’. What I took from Anderson’s observation is that perhaps the death of panic is found not in liberation from fear but in its acceptance. As the news that ‘The Great God Pan is Dead’ struck despair through the hearts of the ancient citizens of Palodes, they were simultaneously freed to explore new conceptualisations and interpretations of the world. We have a habit of killing our gods, of suffocating our emotional life, denying our desires. Perhaps after all it is not the panic which must be fixed, but the rituals we are restricted by. Rituals which are distancing us from nature and distorting our spiritual clarity – rituals which are creating, rather than placating, all this panic. But first there are more immediate things sufferers of anxiety can do – seeking medical help, taking (prescribed) pills, reducing intake of caffeine and alcohol, meditation and reconnection to the natural world. Like first figuring out how to have an orgasm, the body and brain must learn how to make positive joyful connections rather than repressing those pathways, and that is what anti-anxiety medicine can help create. The stigma around taking pills and the fearsomely described side effects led me to the most ironic panic of all – anxiety over taking my anti-anxiety medication. But I took it anyway and stepped outside the prison of my panic. And that is how the ritual ends.

~

Text: Rhiannon Auriol

Illustration: Maria Sledmere

Published: 19/3/20

[i] Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan. 2008.

#essay #essays #panic #Rhiannon Auriol #criticism

[angrycollectordaze-me-blog]

Essay代写：Art design under semiotics theory

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文- Art design under semiotics theory，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了符号学理论下的艺术设计。在生活中，处处都充满着符号的含义，在艺术设计中同样也不例外。设计师将表达不同情感的符号重组编排起来，形成一种新的符号文化内涵。同时，设计师通过这个新的符号内涵来表达设计的想法与思路，以此来展示设计师在自己的设计中内在的精神文化。艺术设计是将符号学运用在不同形式和不同载体上的设计，可以是听觉上的或者是视觉上的，更可以是视听相结合的。艺术设计离不开符号学的支撑，符号学也不能少了艺术设计的这一分支，它们相互联系又相互作用。

The Swiss linguist saussure believed that symbols, like paper, are divided into two sides, namely "signifier" and "signified". From the perspective of material object, "signified" refers to the material object that can be perceived by people, and "signified" refers to the meaning that the material object refers to. Symbolically, "signified" is the language image of the symbol, and "signified" is the concept of the meaning of the symbol. Art symbols are also included in the symbol system. The "signifier" of art symbol is the image expressed by art, while the "signified" is the designer's expression of human emotions through the artistic image. As the signifier of art symbol, artistic image is usually a symbol, and itself has a dual relation between signifier and signified. Art design expresses the external image of art design through people's subjective will, which is the yearning for a better life or the expression of people's inner feelings.

Moreover, the connotation of symbol also plays an important role in art design. In today's art design, designers should not only understand the design from the surface of the design, but should seek deeper meaning from the connotation of the design and the symbol of the art design display. Understanding the meaning between art design and symbol connotation makes us make deeper efforts to design better art design. In my opinion, while paying attention to the external form of artistic design, we should also pay attention to the symbol meaning at the core. Therefore, displaying the symbol connotation is the direction we need to further understand and explore.

In artistic creation, whether it is architecture, landscape or furniture, artistic creation needs to show the symbolic meaning of the creator through the hands of the designer. Usually, designers express different feelings and long-cherished wishes through different shapes, techniques and images. All good works of art show the inner feelings of the creators while having the inner feelings of the sign language. They integrate the deeper meaning into their works through such a technique, which makes the works thought-provoking.

In traditional Chinese garden landscape, people will express their good wishes for life in a variety of decorative design patterns. People collage pebbles and shingles on the ground to make them into a variety of concrete or abstract animal or life patterns, so as to express people's desire for peace and happiness. For example: cranes, deer, bats and so on, are the symbol of good meaning of the design elements. There are many elements like this which symbolize the beautiful meaning, whether in the landscape courtyard or in the architectural design. In the theory of semiotics, symbol is the universal function of symbol. In this understanding of the meaning, symbolic can be said to be the general function of the symbol. No matter what kind of symbol and symbolic object, it is people's expectation of novelty or expression of good wishes.

In life, everywhere is full of symbolic meaning, in art design is no exception. The designer reorganizes the symbols expressing different emotions and forms a new cultural connotation of symbols. At the same time, designers through the new symbol connotation to express the idea of design and train of thought, in order to show the designers in their own design of the inherent spirit of culture. Art design is the design that applies semiotics to different forms and carriers. It can be auditory or visual, or it can be combined with audio-visual. Art design is inseparable from the support of semiotics, semiotics can not be without this branch of art design, they are interrelated and interactive.

In our art design, usually hidden symbol spirit of culture. For example the expression of stylist exaggerated and novel idea, blessing look forward to, different mood and all sorts of wonderful ideas, revealing the expression of emotion in all its artistic design works. In China, there is an idea called "the unity of man and nature". People believe that everything should be harmonious and unified. Under the guidance of this idea, the design will give full play to the designer's works with rich emotional expression, so that his works have the characteristics of both expression and expression.

Deconstruction, from the literal meaning, is a symbol of rebellion, split, torn rebellion. Deconstructivism evolved from constructivism, and deconstructivism and constructivism have some similarities in visual elements, both of which try to emphasize the structural elements of design.

The initiator of constructivism was tatlin, who advocated that art should serve politics, and he made his works abstract and geometric. Later, he created the "third international monument", which is also one of the representative works of constructivism.

However, what constructivism wants to express and emphasize is the integrity and unity of the overall structure. Individual components serve the overall structure. Deconstructivism, on the other hand, believes that the individual component itself is an important individual, so it pays more attention to the study of individual structural shape than the study of the whole structure and shape. It combines things that are not related to the structure together, and deconstruction is the criticism and negation of orthodox principles and orthodox order.

Deconstruction is a break and dilution of traditional modernist architecture. It USES exaggeration and deformation to highlight each part of the architecture. In addition, deconstruction is rich and diverse, breaking the traditional "glass box" prevalent in modernism. While breaking the characteristics of modernism, deconstruction is a deconstructive structure.

Symbols represent one kind of things as well as another kind of things. They are the transmission of information, and they also have the relation between signifier and signified. The signifier of deconstructive architecture is the technique of breaking, exaggerating, transforming and twisting, presenting a novel and weird architectural form. Its meaning is to express the characteristics of breaking the rules and square of traditional modernism through these novel, weird and broken buildings, and also to express a kind of ambiguity of social order. Although deconstruction has always created a chaotic, distorted and broken form of architecture, it cannot escape the regularity and restraint of architectural rationality. Therefore, deconstructivism and structuralism influence and contain each other.

Vitra furniture museum is a very important work of gehry and one of the representative works of deconstruction. The overall architecture of vitra furniture museum embodies the distorted and dynamic morphological characteristics of each part. Vitra furniture museum combines different forms with exaggeration and deformation, which is the product of the dynamic distortion of each part. Vitra furniture museum is one of the representative architectures of typical deconstruction. Its focus is not on the whole and integrity of the whole building, but on the exaggerated deformation of each part of the building. The overall unity of other buildings is totally different from that of traditional buildings, which is an exaggerated expression of its structure.

From the aspect of appearance, vitra furniture museum is composed of different deformed geometries, and the whole seems to be free combination of different elements and forms, forming a random architectural shape.

At the same time, the interior space of vitra furniture museum is interrelated and permeated, and all the interior Spaces are communicated and integrated. Similarly, due to the distortion of the external structure and the connection with the interior environment, vitra furniture museum is like a sculptural building, with closely connected internal Spaces and a well-lit environment. Its indoor environment is different from the previous building, but also gives people a unique shape feeling and good natural lighting needs.

The concept of urban park emerged in the middle of the 19th century. With the increasing population of urban residents and the increasing pressure from society and work, people wanted to enjoy the city and be exposed to the natural environment. Through the idea of garden to make up for the shortage of the city, the natural environment full of green plants and reinforced concrete society together, the same, the nature placed in the city, is to reduce energy saving and environmental pollution, but also to improve people's living environment. So the idea was to lock in an area that would be heavily planted with greenery and equipped with infrastructure and structures that would make it a green space in a city. After such an idea and plan, the city park was born, and ravelette park was born.

The park is located in the northeast corner of Paris, the edge of the city, at the same time, it has a large population, mostly from the world's overseas immigrants. In order to meet people's living and production needs, tschumi places different building systems in different areas of the park, which also play different roles.

Transformation and unity is the point of view emphasized by tschumi in the design of ravelette park. On the premise of this point of view, the design of ravelette park is carried out. Although there is a great contrast between architectural elements and plant elements in the whole park, the treatment methods and architectural colors of the whole park are completely consistent. It also reflects the overall unity of the partial change of view.

In such an environment, people enter the park as if they were entering the real nature. Although it is a combination of artificial creation, after the novel and exaggerated deformation, the architecture and a large number of green plants are combined together to release people's mind, and at the same time, it is also a change to the traditional reinforced concrete city. This design not only does not separate the park from the city as a whole, but also infuses the city with the breath of life and fresh blood.

The guggenheim museum in New York is the headquarters of the guggenheim gallery group. The building is a famous New York landmark, designed and built by frank Lloyd Wright, the most famous American architect of the 20th century. The guggenheim's exterior resembles a teapot or a giant spring. The guggenheim has long been considered a museum gem, so much so that in recent decades no other museum has come close.

The guggenheim museum deconstructs the construction of the building and combines it with irregular forms such as distortion and tilting. However, the reconstructed guggenheim museum still has its beauty of form. Although it makes people feel that the shape of the building is a group formed by random stacking and transformation, people from different perspectives all present a balanced composition of the middle high and the lower side. The exterior of the building spirals upwards and outwards, while the middle of the spiral forms an open space that is illuminated by a circular layer of glass.

In terms of architecture, the guggenheim museum USES deconstruction to decompose and reorganize it. Its exaggerated modeling and sense of design, curved interior space and reasonable use of natural light make guggenheim museum better than other art galleries on the whole.

In people's life and production design, we can't get away from the knowledge of semiotics, as well as various forms of design art. I think excellent art design should have good design connotation, and every excellent art design should be endowed with power and cultural symbol. If art design is separated from people's sign cognition and sign culture, then art design will lose its charm.

In ancient China, the idea of "harmony between man and nature" is to integrate our thoughts with all things and integrate human and nature in harmony. In terms of the idea of "the unity of man and nature", the idea of the integration of thought and everything can also appear in our art design. Good art design works, whether architecture, patterns or products, should have a soul, they should also be injected into the concept of symbols, they should both be able to point and point. Only with the characteristics of both theory and creation can we get a better artistic design.

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The Calm Company (our next book)

It’s about time for something new. What follows is the introduction to our next book The Calm Company. We’re working on it now, and will be shopping to publishers soon for publication later this year.

“It’s crazy at work”

How often have you heard that? Or said it yourself?

Probably too often.

For many, “it’s crazy at work” has become their normal. But why so crazy?

At the root is an onslaught of physical and virtual real-time distractions slicing work days into a series of fleeting work moments.

Tie that together with a trend of over-collaboration, plus an unhealthy obsession with growth at any cost, and you’ve got the building blocks for an anxious, crazy mess.

It’s no wonder people are working longer, earlier, later, on weekends, and whenever they have a spare moment. People can’t get work done at work anymore.

Work claws away at life. Life has become work’s leftovers. The doggy bag. The remnants. The scraps.

That’s just not OK. It’s unacceptable.

What’s worse is that long hours, excessive busyness, and lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for many people these days. Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity. Companies that force their crew into this bargain are cooking up dumb at their employees expense.

And it’s not just about organizations — individuals, contractors, and solopreneurs are burning themselves out the very same way.

You’d think with all the hours people are putting in, and all the promises of tech’s flavor of the month, the load would be lessening. It’s not. It’s getting heavier.

But the thing is, there’s not more work to be done all of the sudden. The problem is there’s hardly any uninterrupted, dedicated time to do it.

Working more but getting less done? It doesn’t add up. But it does — it adds up to a majority of time wasted on things that don’t matter.

Crazy companies all tend to be especially great at one thing: wasting. Wasting time, attention, money, energy.

Out of the 60, 70, 80 hours a week many are expected to pour into work, how many of those hours are really spent on the work itself? And how many are tossed away in meetings, lost to distraction, and withered away by inefficient business practices? The bulk.

The answer isn’t more hours, it’s less bullshit. Less waste, not more production. And far fewer things that induce distraction, always-on anxiety, and stress.

Stress is an infection passed down from organization to employee, from employee to employee, and then from employee to customer. And it’s becoming resistant to traditional treatments. The same old medicine is only making it worse.

The promises keep coming. More time management hacks. More ways to communicate. More information spread across separate platforms and disparate places. New demands to pay attention to more and more real-time conversations happening all the time at work. Faster and faster, for what? Panaceas left and right. Snake oil. Crazy.

On-demand is for movies, TV shows, and podcasts, not for you. Your time isn’t an episode recalled when someone wants it at 10pm on a Saturday night, or every few minutes in the collection of conveyor belt chat room conversations you’re supposed to be following all day long.

If it’s constantly crazy at work, we have two words for you: Fuck that. And two more: Enough already.

Not only does crazy not work, but its genesis — an unhealthy obsession with rapid growth — is equally corrupt. Towering, unrealistic expectations drag people down.

It’s time for companies to stop asking their employees to breathlessly chase ever-higher, ever-more artificial targets set by ego, not need. It’s time to stop celebrating crazy.

Over the last 17 years we’ve been working at making Basecamp a calm company. One that isn’t fueled by stress, or ASAP, or rushing, or late nights, or all-nighter crunches, or impossible promises, or high turnover, or over-collaboration, or consistently missed deadlines, or projects that never seem to end, or manufactured busywork, or incorrect assumptions that lead to systemic institutional anxiety.

No growth-at-all-costs. No constant, churning false busyness. No ego-driven decisions. No keeping up with the Joneses Corporation. No hair on fire.

And yet we’ve been profitable 68 straight quarters, 17 straight years. We’ve kept our company intentionally small — we believe small is a key to calm.

As a tech company we’re supposed to be playing the hustle game in Silicon Valley, but we’re blissfully far away in Chicago with employees working remotely in 30 different towns around the world.

We each put in about 40 hours a week most of the year, and just 32-hour four-day weeks in the summer. We send people on month-long sabbaticals every three years. We not only pay for people’s vacation time, but we pay for the actual vacation too.

No, not 9pm Wednesday night. It can wait until 9am Thursday morning. No, not Sunday. Monday.

Walk into our office and it feels more like a library and less like a chaotic kitchen. Noise and movement are not indicator of activity and progress — they’re just indicators of noise and movement.

We’re in one of the most competitive industries in the world. An industry dominated by giants and frequent upstarts backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in VC money. We’ve taken zero. Where does our money come from? Our customers. They buy what we’re selling and we treat them exceptionally well. Call us old fashioned.

Our benefits are focused on getting people out of the office, not enticing them to stay longer. Fresh fruits and veggies are delivered to people’s houses, not the kitchen at work. Want to learn to play the guitar in your own time? We’ll gladly support you and pay for that too.

We’ll pay for you to get a massage, but we won’t bring the masseuse to the office. Loosening up for 60 minutes only to tense back up hunched over your desk is faux relaxation. No “stay here” signals. Everything’s about wrapping up your reasonable day, going home, and living your life.

Are there occasionally stressful moments? Sure — such is life. Is every day peachy? Of course not — we’d be lying if we said it was. But we do our best to make sure those are the exceptions. On balance we’re calm — by choice, by practice. We’re intentional about it. We’ve made different decisions than the rest. At Basecamp it’s not always crazy at work.

We’ve designed our company differently. We’re here to tell you about it, and show you how you can do it. There’s a path. You’ve got to want it, but if you do you’ll realize it’s much nicer over here. You can have a calm company too.

This book treats the patient, and points out the diseases plaguing modern workplace and work methods. It calls out false cures, and pushes back against ritualistic time-sucks that have infected the way people work these days. We have a prescription to make it better.

Chaos should not be the natural state at work. Anxiety isn’t a prerequisite for progress. Sitting in meetings all day isn’t required for success. These are all perversions of work — side effects of broken models and follow-the-lemming-off-the-cliff worst practices. Step aside and let the suckers jump.

Calm is profitability. Calm is protecting people’s time and attention. Calm is reasonable expectations. Calm is about 40 hours of work a week. Calm is ample time off. Calm is smaller. Calm is a visible horizon. Calm is meetings as a last resort. Calm is contextual communication. Calm is asynchronous first, real-time second. Calm is more independence, less interdependence. Calm is about sustainable practices that can run for the long-term.

By the end of the book you’ll understand it all.

Let’s dig into it.

Additional details

We’ll be posting occasional essays from the book as we write it. The best way to stay on top of The Calm Company news, is to click the green Follow button at the top of our Signal vs. Noise blog here on Medium, and by following me (@jasonfried) and David (@dhh) on Twitter. And be sure to check out Basecamp 3 — the product that best embodies the spirit of a Calm Company.

The Calm Company (our next book) was originally published in Signal v. Noise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.