#thought for a bit about how methodical the process of killing nuance is on this site

[girlbob-boypants]

Bored at work so the demons are finding me

#girlbob.txt #both the customers and my thoughts #thought for a bit about how methodical the process of killing nuance is on this site #example: the way talking about how eldest sisters are used by their parents as secondary parents #and how that went into this weird sibling position dynamic #that then morphed into 'eldest daughters have a victim complex for no reason and are weird' #or to bring up Ancient Drama #do yall remember in like #2012-2014 when the conversation around gay bars went from #'gay bars arent accessible to everyone so itd be good to create other spaces to provide different experiences' #to 'gay bars are evil disgusting and bad and should be destroyed and removed with something that has no sex (sex is bad) and nothing i hate #and then there was a counter movement to that mocking gay cafe ideas and stuff #that shit was wild

[kiranatrix]

I feel like the nature of Light’s ideology and his methods get caricatured a great deal in the fandom (especially by those who only viewed the anime). I keep seeing popular memes about Light killing petty shoplifters who are only attempting to feed their family and I always get the sense that they’re largely inaccurate (for the most part). Light notices in the Yotsuba arc that Kira’s sentencing spares those: who’ve served their sentences and improved their ways, who committed justifiable crimes, and who have shown remorse. So it feels off to seeing portrayed that way, especially when Light’s elimination of innocents (such as the FBI agents, Naomi, etc...) are usually for strategic purposes, intended to help him progress ahead. Not to mention this pervasive belief that Light apparently didn’t know that he would be bound to sentence some innocents to death (with his large kill count per day). Wouldn’t it be more likely that Light knew that it was inevitable and was willing to sacrifice those lives for “the greater good,” in his view?

This is a doozy of an ask, anon. But it is GLORY bc these are all excellent things for me to ramble about Light (thank you!). I’ll take them point by point, strap in cause this is a bit long. *cracks knuckles*

You’re absolutely right that fandom often boils Light’s character and ideology down to a few basic elements that are distorted, mostly to drag him. Let’s be honest-- it’s fun to drag characters, even our favs-- and pretty much everyone in Death Note deserves it. But it does become annoying when its inaccurate, like with your example about who Kira focused on killing and some others I see. To be clear, this isn’t any kind of apology for the bastardly things Light DID do, but clarifying what he was and wasn’t about.

Did Light kill petty criminals?

The only time it is mentioned that Light kills criminals for non-serious crimes is when he was under surveillance by L (the infamous potato chip scene) and had to kill someone on the news right then, as well as the immediate coverup. In that circumstance, he couldn’t afford to be picky-- he needed L to see a signature Kira death (heart attack) when Light supposedly couldn’t be doing it. The crimes that appeared on the news that night (in his chip bag TV lol) ended up being non-serious criminals, and Light wasn’t so thrilled about this. 

Mainly because it meant he had to cover his tracks and kill a few more minor criminals so it really did look like Kira’s work. 

But his focus was putting himself in the clear with L; those minor criminals were incidental, and when he had choice/freedom again, he did not focus on them. The ruse didn’t completely work because L thought minor criminals dying was suspicious since it deviated from Kira’s usual MO. So, L knew the real focus.

This was a strategic move in service of, versus reflecting, Light’s ideology. This is something we see pop up again and again for Light. He is willing to do ‘wrong’ for the greater ‘good.’ We also see his distaste for killing petty criminals later when Light rebukes Mikami’s off-script killings in his thoughts. If Kira had been acting this way all along, then the Task Force wouldn’t have been surprised and Light wouldn’t have been pissed off that Mikami was doing it. 

Kira was looking for violent criminals who had escaped justice, that’s his main goal. He’s also disagreeing with Mikami’s methods of punishing wrong-doers who paid their debt to society (as opposed to the Death Row criminals I discuss below who haven’t ‘paid their debt’ yet). He doesn’t want people to fear Kira and thinks shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak, would do that. His ideology is not punitive; to him, its about prevention. Petty crime wasn’t on his radar until he had to make that a temporary focus for his safety.

Did Light focus on criminals already in prison? 

I’ve seen plenty of posts in the Death Note tag grousing about how Light was ‘dumb’ because he only focused on criminals in prison, but that’s not wholly accurate. The first two names he wrote were criminals he witnessed in the process of a crime with actual victims that needed help (a hostage scenario where the perp had already murdered people, and a man about to rape). Then he went for the Big Bads in the news- the most vicious criminals world-wide.

Other than criminals at large, he DID kill some criminals in prison. The times he did so were:

1) Killing criminals on Death Row who, in the eyes of law enforcement, “deserved the death penalty several times over.” These are criminals who had already been sentenced to die and Kira enacted the ‘justice.’

2) During Light’s ‘testing phase’ of the Death Note when he was trying to understand the rules in a population he could control 

3) When he was trying to be conspicuous about deaths for L’s benefit, like throwing off the assumption that Kira was a student. Light knew that those deaths would be found immediately and attributed to Kira. 

For 2 and 3, these criminals were likely to be on Death Row given what was said by INTERPOL about who Kira was killing behind bars. Ironically, even L thought Death Row criminals needed to die-- he chose Lind L Tailor from Death Row for his stunt, and said on TV he’d seek the death penalty for Kira. Hmm.

Why did Light kill innocent people?

The innocent people that Light killed include Raye Penber, the rest of the FBI agents in Japan investigating Kira, and Naomi Misora. L and Watari might be considered innocent per Kira’s ideology (Watari had probably murdered people but L had probably not, directly). Rem technically killed L and Watari, but Light certainly wanted them to die and orchestrated it that way. The innocent people that Light WOULD have killed include the Task Force (Mogi, Aizawa, Matsuda, Ide) and the SPK (Halle, Gevanni, Rester, Near,) if he’d won in the warehouse.

The main thread tying all these people together? They were all imminent threats to Light and were actively trying to stop and/or kill him. Killing them would never have crossed his mind if that hadn’t been the case. THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE DIDN’T ENJOY IT. Taking out his enemies was something Light did savor, he really loved that win. But it wasn’t like he wiped out the entire FBI or Japanese police force. Those were not his targets; these were individuals who threatened his goal and life, and he saw their killing as self-defense. 

Did Light kill any criminals who were innocent or wrongly convicted?

It’s certainly possible that he did but the manga never touches on it. Given that his MO for killing incarcerated criminals was limited to Death Row, he probably felt like those were safe bets (we know that’s not always the case in the real world, of course). But let’s say that Light, in canon, found out he’d killed someone wrongfully convicted. In the beginning of his journey as Kira (at 17-18), I honestly don’t think he’d given this a lot of thought. What’s funny is that Light was naively, and paradoxically, putting a lot of faith in the human justice system while simultaneously enacting his own justice that relied on having zero faith in the traditional channels. Makes my head spin, but Light is a fascinating character because of that kind of thinking. He championed sweeping ideals of right and wrong, but couldn’t be bothered with getting in the murky details. 

But by the time he’d grown up and matured some, especially after becoming part of the police force himself, he would have know it was a possibility. At that point, I agree that he’d view it as an inevitable sacrifice in service of, but not directly reflecting, his ‘greater good,’ like the previous choices he’d made. 

So why is Kira’s ideology so often distorted? For one thing, his thinking is kind of convoluted. The anime has less nuance about what Light’s about, and many people just watch that. Another common reason I see for this is that someone really, really hates Light for defeating L, and once we dislike someone it becomes easier to roll in more and more unlikeable qualities into a nasty villain pie. Any trait that is ‘bad’ can be overlaid onto Light because he is ‘bad,’ so it fits right?? Ha....no. He has plenty of bad traits and actions of his own to drag him for without inventing new ones. At the same time, I see L’s flaws and negative traits/actions being hand-waved away or justified because he is their fav. It happened with Minoru, too. 

#death note #light yagami #meta #character analysis #asks #anon #anyone who actually reads all this ilu

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Ok, I've been sitting on this awhile (mostly because I worry that my reaction stems from personal feelings, rather than the content of your actual post) but while I agree wwx's arc is not ABOUT trauma, I do think he IS traumatized. Like, he has a literal phobia of dogs due to childhood trauma w/ dogs??? And I take issue with the idea that someone cannot be simultaneously traumatized and resilient/always smiling. I mean, refusing to process and deal with negative experiences and emotions because if you can choose to be happy, why would you choose to be anything else can actually be worse for you than just letting yourself be sad for a little bit. People are supposed to feel the full emotional spectrum and refusing to acknowledge sadness doesn't make someone not actually sad. As someone with a sunny personality who almost always let's things roll off my back, that doesn't mean I don't have trauma to deal, it just means it presents itself in different ways than someone with a different personality. Everyone is entitled to their interpretation of characters, so I'm not trying to say yours is inherently wrong, my point is more that it's not a guarantee that having a happy personality = not traumatized, especially when there are other things to point to them being traumatized.

Hi anon,

I think it’s important to consider the context in which I addressed fandom’s discussions on “WWX’s trauma/ptsd,” which in this case was a response to people explaining many of his behaviours during his first life, from the Sunshot campaign onwards, as resulting from trauma. I never meant to suggest that WWX could not experience trauma, at all, especially since in an earlier post about my thoughts regarding the trauma argument I did highlight that we get in the narrative an example of how WWX reacts when faced with trauma through his cynophobia (although I can’t find that post because it I can’t remember exactly when I shared it 🤷‍♂️). It was more to oppose the ideas that (1) events are inherently traumatic and thus that because these distressing things happened to WWX, WWX must be carrying trauma from them (because if we’re going to use psychology/psycho-analysis for literary analysis, it might be good to consider that the perception of trauma in psychology is not that) and (2) that there are no other narrative or character explanations for those behaviours that are not rooted in trauma. 

In this case, I think the novel makes it clear that while WWX is of course affected emotionally by the events, the things that people point to as resulting from trauma are actually tied to his cultivation methods and him losing control. I do feel like that interpretation is coherent with the authorial intent, which seems to be confirmed in one of MXTX’s interviews. To share here the most relevant possage:

[WN killing JZX] was perfectly an example of how Wei Wuxian was losing control. The more he lost control over his demonic cultivation, the more likely he was going to receive a backlash.

Of course, authorial intent is not the end-all-be-all of everything, and, certainly, there exists probably as many interpretations of a text as there exists readers (or, in the case of MDZS, we should also probably include all the people who haven’t read it but still have an opinion on its content). However, my brand of meta focuses on reading the text closely and challenging interpretations that are floating around in the fandom space against the text itself--the narrative, the characterisation, the themes, the symbolism. To say, ‘perhaps some people tend to associate a certain behaviour with a specific thing (ie, emotional volatility with a traumatic response to a distressing event), however does it seem like the text wants to lead you toward this interpretation? Does the text provide other story-specific explanations, some of which might actually be more cohesive and coherent with the narrative/characterisation/themes (ie, emotional volatility in this specific instance is a side-effect of the influence of modao on WWX and his loss of control)?’ That doesn’t mean I’m always right, of course I’m not. But I also do not prescribe to the belief that every interpretations are equally credible. That is, I do believe that people are entirely free to interpret a text however they choose, even if it means reappropriating the text and completely ignoring parts of it or mentally rewriting parts of it; all the same, I do not think these interpretations are particularly helpful when it comes to understanding and analysing the text itself (though they are interesting in that they help understand how a work is received by certain demographics). So, yes, sometimes I will write posts that aim to contrast certain popular interpretations with what can be gleaned from a close reading of the text. 

In addition, let me clarify that when I contrasted “resilience” with “trauma”, it was not in terms of personality trait so much as a reference to terms used in psychology: where how a person processes a distressing event through a trauma response or through resilience. 

As for the “smiling thing”, I think it is important to remember the context of the discussion, where I cited the novel:

Jiang Yanli said that he was born with a smiling look. No matter what unfortunate thing happened, he wouldn’t cling on to them; no matter what situation he was in, he would be happy. Although it sounded a bit heartless, it really was not bad.

In the original post, I did reframe this quote by acknowledging that yes, smiling is not an inherent proof that someone has never experienced trauma.

To me, this is a clear move from MXTX to position WWX as the kind of protagonist who can face a storm and keep his smile on his face. I can imagine that some people take it perhaps as a subversion, as the text telling us that WWX is weathering it all with a smile but underneath it all he is just a bundle of unaddressed trauma. And that’s certainly a possible interpretation, but it’s not mine. In this case I think the text is being straightforward. What we see of WWX also seems to support that: the way WWX just rolls with being brought back from the death, how easily he finds a way to adapt to things, etc.

That was more of an acknowledgement that wrt this topic, the novel seemed to have chosen a very straightforward approach or, in other words, to choose to not be That Deep. The smiling disposition here is not part of a psychological diagnosis, but simply a story/characterisation shorthand. I also never suggested that this meant that WWX is not affected by events: “ My point is not that WWX is unaffected by the things that happened to him or the things he’s done during this portion of his life: of course he is! Especially as they are happening to him, or when he is still stuck in a very difficult situation. But I don’t think his character and his arc is about trauma”. I think that nuance is important. 

At the end of the day, I do not want to force people to change their minds. I only use my free time to over-analyse a novel and sometimes try to challenge people to reconsider their initial interpretations of the text or their approaches to literary analysis more generally. 

#anon ask #mdzs meta #mdzs #wwx #fandom discussions

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 6 of 26

Title: The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) (2012)

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, First-Person, Third-Person, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist, Asexual Protagonist.

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 2/07/2021

Date Finished: 2/13/2021

Peace is sacred in the walled city-state of Gujaareh, and must be maintained at any cost. The Gatherers are a priesthood tasked with maintaining this goal. In the name of Hananja, Goddess of the moon, they walk the city at night and harvest Dreamblood-- the magic of dreams-- from Gujaareh's denizens. They bring the peace of death to those who need it... and to those judged criminal or corrupt.

But something else haunts Gujaareh's streets. A Reaper, a rogue Gatherer driven to endless madness and hunger from Dreamblood, is preying on the innocent, casting their souls into an eternal nightmare. Ehiru, one of the elder Gatherers, finds himself caught in the middle of a political conspiracy between his priesthood, the holy Prince, and the monstrous Reaper. An insidious corruption runs deeper than Ehiru knows-- and it may be too late to stop. 

The Gatherer’s eyes glittered in her memory, so dark, so cold--but compassionate, too. That had been the truly terrifying thing. A killer with no malice in his heart: it was unnatural. With nothing in his heart, really, except the absolute conviction that murder could be right and true and holy. 

Full review, major spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic depictions of violence, gore, death, warfare, and murder-- including death of children and mass murder. Discussions of p*dophilia/grooming (nothing graphic). Brief reference to r*pe. One character is a minor infatuated with a much older character-- not reciprocated. Rigid gender and social roles, including slavery. Magic-induced addiction and withdrawal. Loss of sanity/altered mental states/mind control/gaslighting.

Last year I read N. K. Jemisin's short story collection How Long 'Til Black Future Month?  One of my favorite stories was The Narcomancer, which explored a vibrant, ancient Egypt-inspired world with themes of faith, dreams, violence, and duty. I wanted to read more from the universe, and finally got to do so with The Killing Moon, the first book in the Dreamblood duology.

Jemisin's creativity in worldbuilding is, in my opinion, unmatched in the fantasy genre. I thought Gujaareh was super interesting and fleshed out. While the ancient Egypt inspiration is obvious, it's also clearly an original fantasy culture in its own right. Everything from religious practices to social castes to gender roles to the fucking architecture felt methodical and thought out. The base premise of assassin priests compassionately harvesting magic from people is a fascinating idea and totally gripping. The pacing is a little slow, but I didn't mind so much because learning about the world was so fun.

While there's a hefty amount of worldbuilding exposition in the story, Jemisin doles out information gradually. Bits and pieces of Gujaareen law, etc are introduced at the beginning of each chapter, and usually have a thematic connection to the events of the story. Information is sparing at times, meaning that one doesn't have a full picture of how everything ties together until pretty far into the story. Even something as crucial as the dream-based magic system isn't fully realized until near the end. I like the mystery of this approach, and I can appreciate how difficult it must be to keep the reader invested vs frustrating them with a lack of info. Jemisin consistently does a great job with this in everything I've read by her.

I did want a little bit more from the narcomancy aspect of the story, since dream worlds are such a huge part of Gujaareen religion and culture. In The Killing Moon we see just a few dreamscapes, and then only briefly. There's so much potential with narcomancy as a magic system, yet most of what we see is an outside, "real-world" perspective, which isn't terribly unique compared to other kinds of magic. Dreamblood being a narcotic (heh) with some Extra Fantasy Stuff is interesting, but I wanted more. Perhaps The Shadowed Sun expands on this. 

Characterization is the other Big Thing with this book, as it's very much a character-driven story. Overall I'm torn. There's some things I really liked, and others that felt underdeveloped. I'll go over my favorite things first.

Ehiru is probably the strongest of the main cast, and I really enjoyed his character arc. Here's a guy who is completely devoted to his faith, regardless of what others may think of it. Yet he's not a self-righteous dick. He sees Gathering as a loving and holy thing, so when he errs in the line of duty, it totally consumes him. And things just get worse and worse for him as the story progresses. Say what you will about the Gatherers and the belief system of Gujaareh; Ehiru comes off as intensely caring, devoted, and compassionate, and I genuinely felt bad for him throughout the novel. I'm not religious but these kinds of faith narratives are super interesting to me.

Looking at characterization as a whole, I appreciate The Killing Moon's gray morality. No one in the story is wholly good or evil. The Gatherers are an obvious example, considering they murder people in the dead of night in the name of their Goddess-- but do so to help those in need. Despite being a megalomaniacal mass-murderer, the Prince has believable reasons for his horrific actions, and they’re not wholly selfish. Even the Reaper is a clear victim of Dreamblood's addictive and mind-altering nature; it sometimes regresses into the person it used to be, which is sad and disturbing. There's a lot of moral complexity in the characters and the laws and belief systems they follow. This kind of nuanced writing is much more interesting to read than a black and white approach.

Beyond this, though, I struggled to connect with the other leads. Nijiri's utter devotion to Ehiru is basically his whole character, and while the tragedy of that is interesting for its own reasons, I kept wanting more from him. Sunandi is a good "outsider perspective" character but I had a hard time understanding her at times. For example, the two most important people in her life, Kinja and Lin, die in quick succession. Yet besides a brief outburst when Lin dies, this barely seems to affect her. I get people mourn in all kinds of ways but it seems odd. Her sexual tension with Ehiru is also weird and underdeveloped. Perhaps this is meant to be a callback to The Narcomancer, but it doesn't accomplish much in this narrative.

Another issue I had was emotional connection to minor-yet-important characters. Kinja dies offscreen before the story, yet is supposed to be a big part of Sunandi's past (and thus emotional arc). But he's never even in a flashback, so I never felt WHY he mattered to her. Una-une is the big one, though. It's pretty easy to figure out he's the Reaper by process of elimination, but he's barely in the story outside of a few early mentions. There's this part near the end that's clearly meant to be an emotional moment; Ehiru realizes his (apparently beloved) mentor Una-une is the horrific monster, and thus a foil to the situation between himself and Nijiri. But we never saw the relationship between Ehiru and Una-une, and nothing really established this prior... so there's no emotional payoff. It felt at times like this book was part of a much longer story that for whatever reason we never got to see. In some ways that can be useful to make the world and history seem vast, but here it made me feel emotionally distant from several characters. Perhaps flashbacks with these important characters would have helped bridge the gap. 

Credit where it's due, though; it's clear a lot of the dark, often brutal tone and stylistic flair in The Killing Moon was adapted into Jemisin's fantastic Broken Earth trilogy. Probably the most notable are the cryptic interlude chapters told from the perspective of a mysterious character whose identity is unknown until the end. We learn bits and pieces of the beliefs and lore of the world through excerpts of common laws and wisdom. I also liked the occasional stream-of-consciousness writing during tense or surreal moments. The Broken Earth is an improvement overall, but I can appreciate The Killing Moon for establishing some of these techniques early.

I enjoyed this book overall and am planning to read The Shadowed Sun. While I have some criticisms about The Killing Moon, I think it just suffers in comparison to other works I've read by Jemisin. It was still an entertaining and intense read, with a captivating and original world. It's not a story for the faint of heart, though, so please mind the content warnings.  

#taylor reads #8/10 #2021 reading challenge

[team-crtq]

Who is really at fault for what happened at Argus?

Needless to say, the debate about whether Team RWBY and Co were right or whether Cordovin was right has caused a bit of a debate. 

However, I find that looking at it that way as one side having to shoulder all of the blame vs the other correct side removes a lot of nuance and the thoughts behind each action. Each side had their own reasons for making the choices that they did and those choices may not have been entirely correct with different consequences to each. 

So, with this, let’s look at the choices from both sides that lead up to this point. Also known as another episode of Regalia rambling. 

"Couldn’t they have come up with a better plan than stealing a military ship?”

Arguably, yes, they could have come up with a better plan, this is what happens when you leave a group of teenagers and an old lady in charge of a dire and dangerous situation. Sometimes in a desperate situation, the dumb and crazy idea is all you have. 

They tried asking Cordovin if they could get to Atlas, which, to any situation or plea, Cordovin said “No”. Understandable, their ports are closed and yes, she could have just left it at, “No we cannot help you, our ports are closed, no one is going out under any circumstance.”

and the only circumstance Cordovin would allow is Weiss returning to Atlas on her own... Which, given that Weiss had to smuggle herself out of Atlas, it’s understandable that she nor the group want to go back alone. Because once Weiss is gone, they will have no way of reaching or contacting her, she will be alone on a military ship with a lamp that attracts Grimm, and chances are, Jacques wouldn’t allow her to speak with Ironwood at all and would have her put right back under lock and key. 

If the team went with that plan and Weiss found herself in danger, it would be SOL for everyone, especially given they would have no idea what even happened to Weiss because she wouldn’t be able to reach them. It’s understandable neither team RBY and Co or Weiss herself wants to go through with that plan because there is no way back out for Weiss and we know what Jacques could do to her. 

Given the stress and direness of the situation, it’s only natural they eventually ended up going with stealing the ship... But it wasn’t their first choice. Before making that decision... Let’s go over the things that happened leading up to it.

They find out Ozpin is hiding a very dangerous secret about Salem’s presumed immortality and naturally, in their anger, tear him a new one and he retreats back into Oscar’s mind. 

They find a house and Qrow grabs himself a drink and ends up oversleeping and not waking the group up on time. 

In his frustration of dealing with the tire, he goes and gets himself another drink. 

Team RWBY and Maria end up fighting for their lives against the Apathy while Qrow was busy being drunk. If not for Maria, team RWBY would have died right under his nose... almost literally. 

He had to be dragged away from the bar and it was only while the house was going up in flames that he realized the kind of danger they had been in while he was drunk. 

Rather than deciding to drop the drink, he gets another one when they arrive in Argus. 

Oscar vanishes and it sends the group into a panic, while they are out looking for him Qrow is passed out drunk... on the stairs... in public. 

Needless to say, Qrow has caused more issues and grief for the group more than Maria or Ozpin. Ozpin’s worst crime is holding a secret and Qrow has been a hindrance to the group’s efforts and an unnecessary source of stress. 

When Jaune brought up stealing a military airship everyone looked at him like he had straight lost his mind. Even they thought it was a dumb idea... but no one had anything else. 

Sometimes when you have nothing else, the dumb idea is what you have to go with. 

But what does Qrow do? He immediately shoots down the idea as worthless and something they wouldn’t be able to pull off. Which, in hindsight, he was right... They didn’t really pull it off and it went just about as well as he expected. 

However, rather than assuming the reasonable adult position and sitting down with the team and saying “Let’s come up with a better plan.” what does he do?

He’s about to march right back to his room after shooting down the only other idea they had for getting to Atlas after the ones they had tried were exhausted either to mope around, sleep off his hangover, or get drunk some more. 

In either case, even though he is technically correct... He’s been more of a hindrance to the group than even Ozpin whose worst offense was keeping a secret and retreating into the back of Oscar’s mind. Someone who doesn’t help but neither actively hinders the group is better than the person who is an actual hindrance. 

So naturally, Ruby (and I assume the others as well, but the focus is on Ruby) is fed up with this and wants to hear Jaune out. Whether it is just pure defiance and teenage rebellion or desperation and stress of the situation they’ve been put in is a different analysis altogether, especially given Rubys mentions of not needing adults. Be on the lookout for that episode. 

At the end of the day, they ended up stealing the ship and given that they had Saphron and Terra’s help, they likely discussed the plan in further detail so they weren’t running entirely blind into the situation. 

Were they right to steal the ship in the first place? No. But they exhausted the other options they had seen because the only way to Atlas, is by an airship. 

Naturally, upon finding out the ship has been hijacked, Cordovin goes to stop them. 

Is she right to do so? Absolutely. 

But her methods were incorrect. 

You see, you can be correct in what you are doing or what you intend to do, but go about it in the wrong way. 

Cordovin went about it in the wrong way. Just like the question about whether or not team RWBY and Co could have come up with a better plan... Could Cordovin have come up with a better plan for stopping them?

Yes. 

With the reveal of this episode especially, it showed that they had more airships... Several more airships. 

She could have easily sent more airships out after them and given that the people of Argus live near a military base, it likely wouldn’t have caused any measure of panic or concern. They probably see ships flying in and out daily, what’s seeing two or three more fly after another ship? They’ll probably just assume they’re doing a drill or carrying cargo or something or maybe there was a Grimm spotted and they sent out ships to assess and take care of the situation.

No big deal. 

But what does she do instead? Break out this huge mecha that undoubtedly caused the people of Argus to panic. 

The panic wasn’t caused by team RWBY and Co stealing the airship... but the huge mecha coming out of the ground after all of the shit Atlas got from what happened at Beacon.

The people of Argus aren’t paying attention to the airship... but they are paying attention to that huge mecha that was likely not public knowledge and not to mention, absolutely hidden from public view. They do not see that thing all the time.

Where Cordovin is wrong isn’t in trying to stop them from stealing the ship, but rather the methods that she takes to do so... Because needless to say, that mecha isn’t for handling stolen ships. 

She brought it out not because she thought a group of teenagers, a drunk, and an old lady were a genuine threat to Argus safety... but because she felt like they had tricked them and her pride got in the way of her thinking clearly and felt that they needed to be shown Atlas’s might so they would never underestimate Atlas again. 

Her thought process and actions have little to do with protecting the people of Argus and trying to retrieve a stolen ship... but wanting the group to surrender and recognize how great Atlas is. 

While you can say that it is team RWBY’s fault that Cordovin broke out a huge mech... It really isn’t considering Cordovin had other options to choose from before getting to the mecha... The huge mech, intended for taking down huge Grimm like the Leviathan and not chasing after a group of teenagers and two adults. 

It was disproportionate to the situation. It’s like responding to some kids breaking your window by burning down the entire block.

Should you stop them from breaking your window? Yes. Are you right to have them pay for fixing the window? Yes. Are you right by burning down the entire block in response to them having broken the window? No. 

While Cordovin was right to try to stop them and right to try to arrest the group, the way she did about it is arguably the worst way possible. 

Team RWBY and Co should be blamed for stealing the ship, yes, but they shouldn’t be blamed for Cordovin’s disproportionate reaction to the situation and the resulting damage. 

Even though it was Ruby who broke the mecha, Cordovin was arguably willing to kill them by using a huge mecha because they stole the airship. She was going to use a cannon to kill a group of teenagers, an old lady, and a drunk who were of no immediate threat to the people of Argus... The people she was sworn to protect. 

The result is that the mecha got damaged and she was stuck in the water when the Leviathan surfaced along with the horde of Grimm that her military base had been fighting off while she was busying flaunting her power around. 

Cordovin’s actions caused more damage and panic than what Team RWBY and co did. So while Cordovin was right to stop them yes, Team RWBY isn’t responsible for the fact that Cordovin’s actions ended up causing more damage and panic than they did. 

It’s like blaming the kids who broke your window for you burning down the block because burning down the block was in response to the actions of the kids. 

Just because your actions and choices are in response to someone else’s, doesn’t mean that the actions and choices you made were correct... Even if your intentions were correct. Cordovin had the right intention on stopping them... Just not the correct method in stopping them.

And it was her choice that ended up putting the people of Argus in more danger and causing the destruction and rise of the Leviathan. Team RWBY’s choice of stealing the airship didn’t cause immediate danger or panic for the people of Argus. It was Cordovin bringing out a huge mech to deal with the choice team RWBY made. 

But naturally, RWBY and Co feel terrible about this. They feel bad that they broke the only thing that could fight off that Leviathan... So naturally, they do what they can to make it right but putting themselves in danger and risking their plan of not going to Atlas falling apart. Even though they could have easily made it to Atlas in all of the chaos, they didn’t want to leave helpless people in danger and that shows even though they stole an airship, they didn’t actually want people in danger. 

So they did the right thing and helped them fight back even though they were considered hostile... and Cordovin came to her senses about what she was sworn to do rather than her pride in the atlas military. Cordovin’s change of heart is a bit of an analysis in its own right. So I’ll save that for another time. Be on the lookout for that episode as well. 

But to keep it brief, Team RWBY and Co didn’t point fingers or blame people for their actions whereas Cordovin did.

At the end of the day... Team RWBY is at fault for stealing the ship... However, Cordovin is at fault for the resulting damage and panic at Argus. Either side is truly blameless for the situation, but one Cordovin’s actions caused more damage than the others... even if those actions were in response to some teenagers stealing a ship. 

Both sides had the right intentions, Team RWBY and Co were trying to fulfill their mission of getting the lamp somewhere safe and Cordovin in her attempts to stop them because they did commit an illegal act. But, they were wrong in their methods... Which naturally, both realized as well. 

#rwby #rwby volume 6 #rwby rose #qrow branwen #RWBY Ozpin #Ozpin #RWBY Meta #RWBY Analysis #crtq #character analysis #rwby character analysis #mod regalia

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor (2011)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, three times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Three (21.42% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eleven.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

The fun:boring ratio tilts considerably depending on audience mood and/or desire for originality; the majority of the story is generic in the extreme and can be tedious as a result, however those elements which are more unusual and intriguing arguably save the overall product. 

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Darcy asks Jane if she can turn on the radio. Jane tells Darcy to drive into the anomaly. Jane tells Darcy to stop talking about her iPod.

Female characters:

Jane Foster.

Darcy Lewis.

Sif.

Male characters:

Eric Selvig.

Odin.

Loki.

Thor.

Fandral.

Hogun.

Volstagg.

Heimdall.

Laufey.

Phil Coulson.

Clint Barton.

OTHER NOTES:

“But I supported you, Sif.” Good to know that Thor supports non-traditional gender roles, despite being such a macho cliche.

I’m really very concerned by Jane’s driving. Someone revoke her licence. 

“Son of Coul.”

Heimdall does not get enough credit for being the MVP of Asgard. 

Loki’s suggestion that maybe he’ll pay Jane a visit himself is clearly intended to goad Thor into fighting him and as such need not be taken seriously, but it’s still totally uncool. Of all the goading methods he could have used, we really didn’t need to go for the implied rape threat.

I thought they might manage a Bechdel pass between someone other than Jane and Darcy for a moment there at the end of the movie, but Frigga doesn’t actually get referred to by name in this movie, and she and Sif only talk about Thor anyway. Disappoint on both counts. I kinda also thought Jane and Darcy might do some more/better passing in general; it’s better than nothing, but the three passes they got were pretty freakin’ weak.

When it comes to uninspired, generic origin stories, this movie kinda makes Iron Man look like an innovative goldmine by comparison. ‘Arrogant man takes a humble, learns to value his power and earns it back through selflessness’, it’s...been done. A lot. And while Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is watchable and not without charm, he’s not an especially charismatic actor and the predictable arc of his character doesn’t offer much scope to impress, while the typically-excellent Natalie Portman suffers a similarly bland fate with prescription-love-interest Jane Foster. The chemistry between the two is pretty nonexistent, and frankly it’s easier to believe that Jane is a slightly-amoral scientist essentially using Thor for her own gain, rather than buying that she’s becoming genuinely enamoured. If the film had leaned into the idea of Jane Foster: Amoral Scientist a little stronger, they could have built a more interesting (though less comfortable) narrative and perhaps even a more believable romance as the two bond over their shared moral learning curve. But, that would require Jane’s character to be more of a priority beyond finding excuses for her to be in Thor’s presence and develop ~feelings~, so. Not shocked they failed to deliver there.

Pretty much every person who has ever seen this movie (and probably some who’ve only read about it) agrees that Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is where the fire’s at, both as an individual character and in terms of the plot he facilitates and inhabits. It’s not hard to understand why: while Thor has his dull human journey in the desert on Earth (the majority of which is spent just going places and talking to Jane and occasionally having a comedic ‘not from around here’ moment), Loki is a trickster God with magic powers living in the mythological land of Asgard and playing out a long con to win both the throne, and his adoptive father’s approval. Anything about the film that is clever or different or interesting, visually engaging, or emotionally poignant, it’s going on in Asgard, in the part of the plot where Thor is absent for the bulk of the film. Unfortunately, Thor’s absence from that thread means that we don’t get to spend nearly as much time enjoying it, and that’s why even the film’s best qualities can’t necessarily save it from the generic trash-pile. It’s easy to reach the end of the film in frustration, wondering how the Hell the strongest elements of the story (Shakespearean tragedy on alien worlds!) wound up as background noise to an unconvincing snooze-fest romance in Nowheresville, USA.

Broken into its component parts, Loki’s story isn’t that unfamiliar either; ‘jealous younger brother vies for older brother’s birthright’ has been done a fair bit (The Lion King being the most well-known example, let’s not kid ourselves), as has the juxtaposition of entitled brat vs scrappy underdog, as has ‘driven mad by envy’ and ‘power corrupts’ and pretty much any other trope being invoked in Loki’s lane. However, it works through 1. Hiddleston’s dynamic performance, 2. any and all majesty/intrigue/gravitas supplied by the setting, and 3. the additional factor of Loki discovering his adoption and true Frost Giant heritage. While it should not be ignored that Loki’s machinations for the throne predate that revelation and therefore it is neither an influence on his overarching ploy nor an excuse for him devising that ploy, Loki’s struggle with learning that his life as he’s known it was built on falsity and the way that complicates his desire to prove himself provides him some all-important nuance and pathos that gives the audience something to latch onto and identify with, even if only as empathetic understanding (one hopes that no one is going so far as to identify with the attempted genocide or the successful patricide; most of us can identify with betrayal/abandonment/daddy issues to some extent or another). Even if his ultimate decisions are plainly reprehensible, Loki’s journey to that point is littered with appreciable miseries, and that makes it an obvious emotional narrative standout compared to Thor’s paint-by-numbers excursion.

The villain narrative being the highlight of a story isn’t entirely unusual (though films in which this is unintentionally so tend also to be poorly conceived), but what’s really unfortunate is that Thor’s character motivations are not second in complexity to Loki’s; the criminally underused Heimdall is actually the next-most nuanced character around (and look at that, he’s also on Asgard and not bore-ing it up on Earth). The thing about Thor’s arc is that it’s not just predictable, it’s not just generic: it’s also barely there. We perceive the arc because we’re so familiar with the trope, but we don’t actually watch Thor learn anything, we don’t see practical signs of the degradation of his arrogance and his transformation into a wise warrior who understands restraint. Beyond causing a ruckus when he first arrives on Earth, Thor really doesn’t display any aggressive entitlement, he settles into pleasantly-strange-fish-out-of-water mode pretty much immediately, and he seems to ‘learn his lesson’ spontaneously after being told that his father is dead. He appears to mourn the implications of his inability to lift Mjolnir more than he is bothered by being told of Odin’s demise and that he can never go home; those latter revelations instead trigger his instantaneous reformation (insofar as he says the words “my father was trying to teach me something only I was too stupid to see it”) and that’s it. Confronting the destroyer and being ‘killed’ by it prompts the return of his Godhood, but refusing to shrink from a fight isn’t a change of pace for the character we saw at the beginning of the film; all in all, there’s no actual clear-cut learning in this process, there’s just a complication-free acceptance of his apparent new state of being, and that means he’s worthy of kingship now? Were they too afraid of making him dislikeable by playing out an excess of arrogance on Earth, so they softened him up immediately and in doing so, downgraded his character arc to just the concept of one rather than an actual presence? If there were more of a distinct process to his experiences on Earth, they’d be less damn boring, because we’d be following an actual story instead of just waiting for them to hit each predictable beat, and maybe they’d also generate some real characterisation of any of the Earth characters while they’re at it (instead, we have completely-useless-to-the-plot-comic-relief Darcy, and surrogate-dad-exposition-master Selvig, comprising the whole of Jane’s illustrious company). Thor’s clutch of friends back home may be a one-dimensional quartet defined almost entirely by their most obvious single descriptors (the female, the Asian, the fat guy, and...Sir Didymus), but at least they have a clear trajectory of plot-relevant motivation, even if they do become inconsequential by the end of it. Yeah, this isn’t a very good movie.

I said at the top that audience mood may be a deciding factor in the success or failure of the film, and I mean that in the sense that this is a movie that may prompt vastly different responses in the same person over different viewings; speaking for myself, I have watched it and been basically entertained and appreciative of the visuals and at least some of the characters and story elements, but I’ve also watched it and been overwhelmingly bored by the trite predictability and the flat characterisation of most of the players, and unimpressed by the soft-focus CGI of Asgard. Caught in the right mood, Thor’s inexplicable laid-back Earth persona can hit just the right note for casual comfort viewing. Caught in the wrong mood, Loki’s Asgard shenanigans feel over-hyped and not engaging enough to save the movie. Is Jane too bland, or full of shades of untapped character potential? Is Darcy funny, or painfully annoying? Is Heimdall intriguing, or too nebulous to matter? It all comes off very conditional, little of it anchored solidly or fleshed out strongly enough in-text to be considered an absolute. The plot floats, dependent on the aura of various cliches rather than categorically declaring itself in any unequivocal ways. It’s not particularly messy, so at least it has that going for it, but even that is a conditional statement. The film is rarely subtle enough to develop any depth, and the shallow invocations of the idea of a narrative arc lack the conviction necessary to make simplicity a virtue. The end result? I guess the best word for it is ‘forgettable’. 

#Thor #MCU #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation

[wingletblackbird]

I appreciate your nuanced and respectful anti-abortion post, and I want to raise a question that you didn't address. How do you regard medication abortions, which account for about 30% of abortions and can be performed extremely early? Your argument about fetal life wouldn't seem to apply as well at three or four weeks gestation. I'm not trying to pick a fight, just genuinely curious.

Don’t worry I don’t think you’re trying to pick a fight. I can dialogue with anyone on any subject really, so long as we’re both willing to listen and be respectful, even be willing to change our minds if we are exposed to something we hadn’t considered. I actually, generally, quite enjoy a good discussion. ;) I also am a firm believer that as long as you’re sincere, there is no such things as a bad question. I appreciate the ask, and I’m glad you felt my original post was respectful. I was worried about setting the wrong tone.

(On that note, before I get into this, I really want to make sure I make it clear I don’t think women who have abortions are any better or worse than anybody else. I don’t think most people who are pro-choice are bad people either–No more than the rest of us anyway. 1 in 4 people or so in the States, iirc, will have an abortion. It’s ludicrous to suppose they are all horrible people, or that their supporters are. I cannot know what women feel like going into those clinics, but I am given to understand that helpless, panicked, and desperate are common emotions, and if you are not given the proper support, or information, it is hard to make good decisions like that. Beyond even that, people make mistakes. I am not here to judge them, and if any woman is struggling post-abortion, I would say there is forgiveness, and redemption, and support out there for you.) 

You’re right; I barely touched on the issue of medication abortions. I felt the post was already longer than most people would care for anyway. Before I get into why I oppose those too, I should stress first that by the time most people know they’re pregnant there will already be a heartbeat, and likely discernible brain waves. Ergo, I think it would be rare that it wouldn’t be blindingly obvious you were dealing with a young child, even without the further evidence I am about to offer that life begins at feritilistaion. To offer a personal example, when my parents were trying to conceive my brother and I, my mom was very in tune with her natural cycles. She always knew when she was ovulating from the left side because she could feel a twinge in her lower  back, so she and my dad were able to conceive by brother and I on just the one attempt. Likewise, within a couple weeks after my conception, my mom knew she was pregnant even when it was too early for it to even be detectable by a pregnancy test, so she went to the hospital and asked for a blood test which confirmed she was pregnant. Then she and my dad went to get an ultrasound, and discovered my heart was already beating. That was when my dad went from pro-choice to pro-life, because he realised even at such an early stage, before it could easily be detected, I was alive!

But, of course, what if you have unprotected sex, or for whatever reason you have cause to believe that you could be pregnant really, really early? You’ve pretty much asked for an abortion from the first moment you could possible be considered pregnant. Even then I would say that this is wrong. The child is still a legitimate human being. There is overwhelming scientific consensus on this: Life begins at conception. 

First of all, we know that from the moment of conception the individual is alive. They have all the characteristics of a living entity. Cells are the smallest form of life. That is one of the basics of cell theory and biology. Moreover, once fertilization occurs they are the offspring of two humans, and they are humans genetically. Perhaps most importantly they are human organisms. They are not merely masses of tissue, or clumps of cells, because body cells do not have the capacity to grow, and change, and develop the way that an organism does. This is why sperm cells, egg cells, muscle tissue etc. do not have rights, while the human organism does. The zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, child, pre-teen, teenager, and adult are all humans in different stages of development, and each is as valid as the other. Furthermore, it is expected in our society to protect the most vulnerable of us such as children. To not do so is considered terrible, even monstrous, except when it comes to those who are developing in-utero. This makes no sense to me. Life begins at fertilisation, and if allowed to grow over the course of a couple decades, results into a fully mature adult of our species. This is the scientific evidence. To terminate that development is to kill the youngest of our kind, to deny them to right to continue to grow and learn and change. You would think every stage of human life from the zygote to the senior citizen would be equally as valuable. However, in the interests of profit and convenience, they are not. (Frankly, this applies to many seniors who are mistreated as well, and aren’t granted the respect and dignity they deserve.)

If you look at embryology textbooks you’ll see quotes like this:

Although human life is a continuous process, fertilisation is a critical landmark, because, under ordinary circumstances a new, genetically distinct human organism, is thereby formed. –Human Embryology and Teratology

Human life begins at fertilization.—The Developing Human 

Development begins with fertilisation—Langman’s Medical Embryology

Even amongst the pro-choice side we get:

There is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence, an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.—Peter Singer, Practical Ethics

Hence, the moment you terminate a pregnancy, whatever the stage, you deny a life the right to exist. You will never get it back. You will never know what that child could have been. 

Other issues that have to be considered with the understanding that life begins at conception is the issue of hormonal birth control, (since I’m on the subject and don’t really get into it in the first post...). I recently read an outraged News article talking about how some politician said that the Pill caused abortion. The man in question was called a religious nut, ignorant, and uninformed, but I rather thought the journalist was. Few people seem to realise that the Pill does not always stop ovulation, and hence, fertilization. While it makes it very difficult for fertilization to occur, it can still occur. If that happens, the Pill will usually result in a lost life, because the Pill also prevents implantation of the fertilised egg by altering the endometrium. This is why many claim that the Pill has the potential to be abortifacient. If you believe that life starts at conception, as I do, hormonal contraception is out. The morning after pill is really just a higher dosage of the regular pill anyway, so really this shouldn’t be surprising. 

Taking the next leap from the understanding that fertilization is the earliest stage of human development is the nature of IVF. To promote greater levels of success, multiple embryos are nurtured. They are screened for “undesirable” qualities whether it be for disabilities, or gender. (I’ve already talked about why that’s awful in my original post.) After successful implantation, the other embryos, the siblings of the lucky implanted ones, are terminated or frozen. Moreover, if the pregnancy results in multiples, because all embryos implant, there is often an abortion to reduce the pregnancy to something safer. Some mothers refuse to do this and you get “Octomom.” I respect them for not terminating their children, but it definitely made for some very high-risk pregnancies. The fact is if you are going to say that you believe something, you cannot pick and choose what it applies to. The evidence points to life begins at conception which means artificial methods of conception need to be looked at as well. I touched on this in my viability argument and I’ll just post that again here:

What about embryo adoption though? Did you know that that is possible? That that is even being done? It has already happened that parents who use IVF, and have no further need for the other embryos they have frozen allow other couples who cannot conceive naturally to adopt them. It has been called the earliest form of adoption. Well, how does this fit into the viability idea? If you can take an embryo and implant it into someone else’s womb? What if you can develop artificial wombs? What if you can remove a fetus in the first trimester and still keep it alive? The whole viability argument makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to be honest, because it is so inherently subjective.

As a side note, I wonder how those embryos who were adopted feel when they grow up. They know that they weren’t the lucky embryo chosen by their biological parents. They were the one frozen, unwanted, and then lucky enough to be granted a chance to truly live when they were given up for adoption. How do they feel knowing they have a biological sibling living with a different set of parents? That maybe they have more still frozen? When an infant is given up for adoption, it is usually a loving decision based upon the mother’s, and possibly even the father’s, recognition that they cannot care for the child. Frozen embryos though…they’re just children, or potential children if you don’t recognise them as being alive, stuck in a freezer. Their parents just have no need for them.

Since I’m on the subject I’ll just go all out and talk about that last point too: The family. 

I remember reading an article years and years ago about how in a family one child was given away, and one was allowed to stay. It was years ago, so I remember few of the details, but I do remember the parent was confused that the child who stayed kept acting out. Surely since she was the one who was kept, she would have felt more safe? In truth though, the child felt worse because she never felt “safe” in a family where people left. She learned that being loved seemed to be conditional. She wanted to know what the limits were for her. When would she be sent away? 

I was conceived right after my mother miscarried my elder brother. He was miscarried so late, he was almost born stillborn, but if he had been born, I would never have been conceived. It’s a crazy thought to me, because I was almost miscarried too. (My mom really struggled to carry a pregnancy to term.) I think sometimes about how it could have been James that was born, and me that was lost. As a consequence, I view my life as even more of a miracle then it already is. My brother died and I was able to live. It’s a humbling thought, and I can’t take it lightly. James is a part of my life, and while my family and I don’t speak of him often, when we do it is with love and grief and respect. My mother even cried once saying she could never have chosen between us, and she wishes she could have raised us both. I often find I want to live a good life, for his sake, as well as my own, and my family’s, and others. James is as important to me. I don’t want to waste the gift I was granted. I wonder though how it would feel if James had been aborted instead. There are, of course, few studies done on the siblings of aborted children, but what I have found indicates grief, anger, and survivor’s guilt–especially those who were once part of multiples that were “selectively reduced”. There have even been developed support groups for the siblings of aborted children who are struggling with it. Abortion rocks the entire family.

One woman who works at a Pregnancy Counselling Centre stated:

“Abortion teaches children that they have worth because they were conceived in the right conditions and at the right time; that they have value because their parents want them. Up to 50% of all American children have lost a brother or a sister to abortion, making it much more likely that they live with a performance view of love: I was born because I was wanted therefore I better perform so they will continue to love me.”

I imagine this is particularly understandable for those who were kept because they were a girl or a boy, and the parents wanted a girl or a boy rather than the opposite sex. Do you only love me because I’m the right gender? 

The above woman also said:

“I think one of the most difficult things for me to face is a woman who is attempting to justify an abortion for the sake of her other children. I always want to tell them…the best thing for her little ones is to have a brother or a sister. In fact, explaining to sons and daughters a few years in the future as to why they aborted their sibling will probably be the most difficult thing they will ever do[.]”

One sibling described how her mother felt unequal to raising a fourth child so aborted the baby. She was left wondering if she’d been that fourth child, would she have been aborted? It’s an uncomfortable question. Love is unconditional, and that should never be in question, and neither should someone’s right to live. These concepts go hand in hand. The value of a life does not rest on it’s convenience, gender, or health.  

This is the heart of the pro-life movement. It is about the inherent dignity of all human life from conception to natural death. It means to be so respectful of the dignity of the human person, you could not fathom supporting anything that would harm them. It means such a fundamental respect for human life that you do not terminate it, rather you do everything you can to support it. It means a respect for life so deep that you do not take the risks of having sex if you aren’t willing to carry a pregnancy, however unlikely it is to occur, to term. It means looking at children as blessing not burdens. It means loving the people you have in your life, young, old, or middle-aged whatever their physical or mental state. It means asking yourself the difficult question: Are people an inconvenience to you? It means pushing for better maternity leave, paternity leave, social services, health care, foster care, adoption services, palliative care, and so on and so forth. More than that, it means being willing to pitch-in and help out yourself. It’s not just about what happens in the abortion clinic. To truly believe in life and love means making a commitment. It will not always be easy, but it is worth it. Abortion may be the “easy” option, but it is not the best one. It shouldn’t even be option at all, and it is devastating in basically every way. 

#abortion #boytranscending #pro-life

[zombiiesque]

Nocturne Alchemy Icons

Originally published 4/10/2017

Ahhhh, long, long time no talk, huh? I have to blow the dust off and get back to work! And what better time to get started, than with news about a new release of Icon perfume oils from NA. I'm super excited, and I know so many other fans are as well. But maybe you're unfamiliar with this line of treasures from Nocturne Alchemy, and you're wondering what Icons are?

Well, they are a collection of oudh-based perfume oils!

I have been a bit intimidated to write about these, because honestly, I don't think I have the scent vocabulary to maybe do them proper justice - but I didn't do it last year during the release of the second collection of Icons, and so when I heard there would be a third, coming very soon, I knew it was time for me to give it a try.

Before I get started with my personal review, I want to mention as always, that I am by no means a scent expert. I'm passionate about my love of indie perfume, no doubt! But one other thing I want to say is that everyone's skin is different; so what may work on my skin, may not on yours. There are sometimes notes that are loud on my skin - for instance honey, I tend to amp that note to the point where I can smell nothing but honey in a perfume oil on my skin. I've had a few successes, with honey, and I'm glad, because I love it. I've had trouble even with hormones affecting the way notes work on my skin. These sort of "your mileage may vary" warnings apply to everything I review.

I'd honestly never had oudh in a perfume oil before NAVA, and for me, I was in for a treat. It's become one of my favorite notes, I just enjoy it so much. But I've always liked deep, resinous types of perfumes - I guess it shouldn't have been a shock. I've been given permission from NA to share with you the story of Oudh, and the House of NA, in their own words! So I hope you enjoy reading this and learning about it as much as I did.

"The story behind Oudh and the ICONS by the House of NA: Agarwood Oil was once as expensive as gold. It was considered a gift from the Gods. What is Agarwood? It is the basis of Oudh. On our continuing journey around the world, educating ourselves is an everyday rule. We search amazing perfume distilleries in far off lands like Egypt, India, Australia, and Hungary, as well as places not so far away like Canada and within our own state of California. Within this journey it takes a ‘nose’ to ask the right questions, to find the secret markets that harvest this sacred wood, and to become an observer as much as a student of the olfactory traditional methods of creating these dark and smoky wood revelations. During this time in our perfume journey, we came to the need to produce our own Agarwood, most recently in India. In India we found a very small organic sustainable Agarwood Farm and founded our own place within it. The Aquilaria does not yield perfume all by itself; there is a process and art of infecting the tree with parasitic ascomycetous mould, and in a sense the Oudh comes forth much like Frankincense tear resin comes from a Frankincense shrub, except Oudh is born when the tree begins to die. As the tree is taken over by the fungus, the tree begins to generate an anti-fungus by creating the oil we call Oudh. During this part of the process we take from the tree to create the precious perfume note Oudh. We use an inoculation to create this effect in the roots and trunk of the Aquilaria species, thus producing Agarwood and ultimately harvesting the Oudh after inoculation spreads into the trees, but without killing the tree as the farm we use is sustainable. The original ICONS collection began five years ago in 2012 when we walked through souks looking for that special Egyptian or Arabian object that was Iconic to these places. Looking through barrels of fresh dates, inhaling the subtle and sublime of incense, feasting our eyes on bowls and bowls of exotic and colorful spices, pouring coffee Arabic from an Arab Dallah, touching the silk of magic carpets and hand-woven Prayer rugs…within all the iconic thoughts of these exotic places, scent was always a fixture at the forefront of everything we did and continues to be at the forefront of everything that we do today. It was then that we decided that we, as a company, needed to create a palette of exotic Oudh that not only uniquely represented NAVA, but also would allow us to introduce these ICONS of perfume into our world of perfume oil. Our Oudh is not marked up like all other suppliers, they are a rare specialty created by NAVA and offered far below typical competitive pricing in the global Oudh market. We have used Oudh (this spelling is Arabic, you may also see ‘Oud’ or ‘Aoud’ as the spelling), in some of our blends before, but we wanted to create our own Oudh that was distinct enough to offer to our customers. There are only seventeen species of the genus Aquilaria and of these only eight are known to produce Agarwood and after inoculation produce Oudh. In the Souks in Egypt and Arabia and even in India, there is plenty of marked up Oudh for sale everywhere. Go to a high end fragrance house and ask how much alcohol-based Oudh is. You might be shocked at the price that is mostly alcohol, although it is understandable why Oudh is so expensive considering the time and effort and artistic precision it takes to create an Oudh and the precious nature of the endangered trees. In our best efforts, we have harvested organic Oudh that has not been harmed by chemicals and solvents; in fact, our trees are safe from animals and man alike, protected within a temple property, and taken care of as if a sacred gift from the Gods. Why is our Oudh not as expensive as high end fragrance houses? We do not put alcohol in our perfume oils; we simply use the Oudh as a blending tool and offer a beautiful collection of resin blended oudh for this set of magical scents. These are limited to 99 bottles. Once these sell out, we will no

longer carry them because each lot of Oudh is unique to its particular Agarwood harvest. Each Agarwood reacts differently to the notes that we have introduced in this Resin Collection, and each batch of Oudh oil is one of a kind. We've set aside 50 of each of the perfumes for our Facebook friends during the interim while we migrate our store over to a new vendor online. Once we go live (late Spring), we'll offer the remaining 49 bottles x 4 at the new home of Nocturne Alchemy. We wanted Oudh that was both pleasing to the Oudh connoisseur's nose as well as pleasurable to be worn alone or layered with another NAVA. Only the smallest drop can bring about the essence of what these Oudh compositions were created to be. If you are new to Oudh, try a tiny drop and understand how long this oil will be part of your perfume library because it is built on becoming more supple and elegant with the age of time. Only the SMALLEST drop can bring hours of an otherworldly experience. This is for true perfume connoisseurs. There are many ways to wear these, we recommend the usual pulse points but the discretion is in how much. Oudh is quite potent and will wear down on the skin, but you will find they are sometimes sticky and quite viscous. These resins have been expertly blended and will become better with age. For ICONS III, we understood a lot but we were still learning, so when we took to explore India, we found that a lot of Oudh was exported and a lot of trees died because of this. We wanted to only continue this journey for exotic oudh if the trees were sustainable. We found there were other people that thought as we did, so we bought our own trees and harvested our own oudh and with ICONS III, we used the makhalat method which is blending raw Oudh with the most beautiful notes NAVA has found in the world (Resin for this collection), and have collected over time. ICONS III Resin is our testament to the finest ingredients, sustainable Oudh and housed in a beautiful marble-esque bottle."

Absolutely amazing, and I'm so very glad I was able to share this story with folks. I love to learn, and my passion for perfume has led me on such an interesting journey.

There's no doubt these are special. So far, there have been two releases of Icons Oudh, and the third is just around the corner. The Icons I'm going to be reviewing today are from the previous two releases, and are no longer available for purchase; you could possibly find someone selling one in the NA Marketplace, the secondary market, on Facebook though!

We'll start off with my precious Egyptian Temple Oudh, which was from the Icons I release. Notes are: "A more intense Oudh that softens over time on the skin. Egyptian Agarwood Oudh is represented here and it is recommended for first time Oudh enthusiasts to inhale from the bottle softly or fan the open bottle toward you with your hand to catch the nuances of smoking embers, dried honeycomb and sandalwood."

In the bottle, ooo it's smoky. Mmm, smoky, and a sort of vaguely rubbery smell, and wood. My bottle is pretty aged at this point, so it's quite thick. I've decanted it into the marble-esque bottle you see in my photo, because it's very hard to get out of the 5ml bottle with the reducer cap. Wet on my skin, the smokiness intensifies, and the faintly rubbery smell gets a bit stronger for a minute. But that starts to dissipate almost immediately and the stickiness of the oil sinks into my skin. This is not fresh, unburnt incense. Immediately, I am transported to a temple, where piles of incense are smoldering, smoking. It's unapologetically strong, potent. Absolutely intense and gorgeous. I get the feel of the oudh, the sandalwood is in the background. My fiance is a big fan of this one, he likes all sorts of dark, woody scents, and this one is quite commanding.

Dry, after just a dab on my pulse points, it's really the same. It has incredible staying power, even after I wash my hands several times throughout the day I can still smell it on my wrists. It is indeed fantastic on its own, but as a layering perfume, it's a virtual powerhouse. I love it with so many options - much of the Studio Limited line, like Kashmir, Crystalline, Diamond, Santalum. It's a great base to hatch the Dinosaur collection with, like Giganotosaurus, Cryolophosaurus, Diplodocus, Pteranodon. I've tried it with several limited collection oils, Adele, Anticipation, Witch Cauldron. I like it with some of my OPs, Pakhet, Hathor. And with other oils that have oudh as a note like Phantasm Kiss or Horus Haven 2? Wow! The possibilities are endless.

As far as how strong it is, this one isn't shy - with just a dab, it lasts forever, and isn't hard to find - I often get compliments, or hear people asking if someone is burning incense, hah!

Okay, so that is one of my most prized oils. I have a little dab of Leviathan, from the first collection too, in a bottle, from a friend who knew I'd been wanting to try it. And so I'll give you my review of it. Notes are: An Amber Oudh. NAVA Oudh blend with guiacwood, rosewood, patchouli, nagarmotha, agarwood, atlas cedar and cardamom absolute. The opening note is naturally sweetened Oudh by the Amber notes.

In the bottle - bright amber, woods, and oudh. Wet on my skin, I get the slightest hint of a creamy cardamom, and it's already melding with the oudh, giving a slightly sweet tinge to the edges of this. As it dries down, this is a stunner. The amber feels bright and airy, kind of sweet, and the oudh and woods are a nice balance. I don't catch much of the patchouli, as this is one of those blends that is well balanced, and it's a bit hard to pick out individual notes. I keep huffing, and catch a slight hint of the cedar, and the rosewood, but again, it's so beautifully put together it's really hard to pick up the individual notes, but I definitely get the amber and oudh.

This is just incredible. As I mentioned, I don't have much of this, so I haven't tried layering it, but again as with Egyptian Temple Oudh, I can only imagine what a powerhouse it would be.

Next up, Labyrinth Oudh, from Icons II. The notes are: "Black Patchouli Oudh. An aged true earth Indonesian Black Patchouli wood oil, viscous and sweet and only gets better with aging; blended into a deep Indian Oudh with hints of our originally named: Arabian Oudh and Egyptian Temple Oudh (from the original ICONS series) and a drop of California Redwood Absolute."

In the bottle: Mmm, kind of a dark patchouli? And unmistakable oudh. I'm not getting that faint rubbery smell here. Wet on my skin: I'm getting the sweetness of the cedar, it's melding with the dark patchouli, which is a bit herbal. The oudh is just a bit smoky, mostly woody feeling here.

It's not as thick as my Egyptian Temple Oudh, and has a bit of reddish color, before it sinks into my skin. Dry, this is potent, unapologetic, patchouli. Beautifully done here, it is still a bit sweet, and it's melded with the oudh. It has incredible staying power. As with my experience with other Icons, it's quite strong, and a little goes a long way. This is another layering powerhouse. I have worn it with Crystal, Giganotosaurus, Santal Ombré, California Redwood Crystal Musk, and several others, including some of the Dinosaur collection. Very versatile! Giganotosaurus is actually quite an interesting combination, because it becomes a sort of feminine feeling scent! I tried layering it today with Black Raven, a favorite of mine from the VA side of NAVA. It's a wonderfully dark combination.

I have sniffies of a few other oudhs, from both Icons I and II. I could give you guys a little impression of those in another post, if there's interest! These are all lovely, oudh based oils, and the layering possibilities are truly endless. They are shipped to you in the usual 5ml bottles, and are accompanied by the faux marble bottles, which you can decant your 5ml jar into. I like using the fancy bottles, because these oudh blends get quite thick with aging, and it's easier to access and apply them in the fancy bottles. As with some other special lines from NAVA, like the OPs, these benefit from resting after they arrive, and aging as well - they definitely get richer and more potent with age. There will be 4 new Icons arriving at the site when they reopen, as NAVA has been closed, remodeling their website. I've been quite impatient, as I'm sure many fans have been - I miss them, and I cannot wait to see what the new website looks like.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and nervously publish this. I must say, I hope that I've done these little beautiful treasures justice. Oudh is a special note, and to have oudh based perfumes has been a real treat for me! I look forward to your feedback, either here or on Facebook, as always. And I'm sorry for my absence!

[psychidelica-blog1]

The Form-Caster Legend

Within the Yamara island chains, known colloquially as the 'far islands', you may hear mentions of great beings that, in a sense, cured the spiritual sicknesses of many generations. Now an uncommon legend or uncomfortable memory, the last remaining monks isolate themselves on the open sea, waiting for the disillusioned traveler to stumble on their path.

My first encounter with the tales was during my travel of the Yamara, specifically to a fishing village called Illuy (roughly 20 kilometers from the heart-chain) [1]. My guide at the time, a rather large fellow by the name of Gan, sat with a group of fishermen at the peer, laughing and telling bizarre stories with structures so unknown to me. Gan couldn't fish, as traditionally this is an honor bestowed on slimmer individuals, so he made up for this with his much appreciated cynical, but sing-songy nature. I sat, enjoying my tea, and listened to the hearty coughs and snares that spelled out wonderful seafaring tales; tales for another time, I suppose. In unison, the fisherman (plus Gan) reach out into the water, soaked the entirety of their hand, and licked the salt that remained there. I had learned at that point not to think anything too outlandish; this was an out land after all.

"That gesture. What are you doing," I said while the group quieted down. They looked at me with plain faces[2], so I attempted to act out their gesture. One of the smallest fisherman, who I would later know as Sava, slapped the tea from my hand and growled back at the ocean. Gan apologized profusely on my behalf, and for my ignorance of local customs. He later explained to me that it is considered offensive to do that gesture outside of the water[3].

Once the group had settled down, they were determined to reveal this aspect of their culture. Gan explained that as he was laughing and joking, they all saw some distortion on the horizon; some trick of the sun, he wasn't sure, but it invoked a uniform vision in their heads. They saw the long boats of the wizard, calling to spiritually-starved voyagers outside of space. The image was invoked for all of them at once, so it had to be true; as a result, each had to pay some respect by signifying their right to the waters around. I have to mention that the word "wizard" is my own choosing. They have the social function of a monk in our culture, but the way they are spoken about and the legends surrounding their existence give them a 'magical' quality. The true word that Gan used that day was Uga'illa'sunilaba (literally "the form caster that sails the far islands"); as you can see, the actual word is very context dependent.

The common word to describe these beings is "caster of forms." Man is traditionally very skeptical of forms, so the wizard's function is to parse through the helpful and unhelpful ones and skillfully guide a culture through the chaos of reality. How would they do this, you ask? Quite simply, through words! The wizards of the ancient past were skilled orators that could heal the spiritual sicknesses of the people by expanding or diluting forms. Most historians date the emergence of wizards to sometime in the late second era, but some, like Yara Calanin, date them even earlier[4]. By the time of Yara Urila Hi'alya's legendary work[5], the perception of the wizards was on the decline. The nail in the coffin for early-history wizards was an intellectual movement known as 'the moving away.'

This method of thought was particularly damaging to the wizards because it represented a total reinterpretation of convulsion[6] where each individual aspect of experience (as it can be dissected into smaller and smaller 'atom forms') were seen as explosive and temporary, the illusion of form progresses through the cosmic plain, away from the point of convulsion. The nature of time and space were explained as obvious results from this process. The 'moving away' epistemology peaked in the sixth era before giving way to a romanticized orthodoxy. At the time of this writing, it is entirely illegal to take the public position of 'atom forms' or 'moving away.' The methodology was problematic for the wizards because it fostered further skepticism on the function of form. Thinkers like Yara Ulliara (later killed for her conversion to a strict orthodoxy) and Yara Illukum said that any form, no matter how masterfully explained and presented, is illusion. Because the universe was in a constant 'progression'[7], there was no chance for spiritual salvation.

The expansion of civilization and growing distrust of the population drove the solitary monks from isolated islands to long boats. On the day of departure, the wizard would take his long boat (specifically because it can't be controlled by a single sailor) into the ocean and throw away his oar. This literally and symbolically represented the wizard turning away from civilization; falling to the will of the ocean. If any traveler is in need of spiritually guidance, they will find that their path crosses with the path of a wizard, or so the folk-story goes. The wizard was considered extremely rare, even in those times (about the midpoint of the seventh era), and by the eight era, they were virtually extinct due to one cataclysmic event: the Panosols.

From "The Gods Speak on Our Godlessness," '...and from the low hanging clouds, we could see smoke and stars flutter in the infinite. My lonesome creature, they were certainly at war; the stars would descend from the clouds and strike, sending a barrage of flame to all the shattered earth below. Entire islands swallowed up as sea beasts were scalded by the boiling water. The earth seized from exhaustion, then screamed at the timeless pain. Generations of Yara fall deaf to this horror. The oceans turned and turned, digesting the rock debris and flame.From the scorching storms there came great waves that glided across the heart. When they receded, there was muteness.' [8]

Along with consuming 1/3 of all cities in the heart-chain, the event seemed to destroy all wizards out at sea. This was a disappointing fact, as I wanted desperately to meet such an individual. I think about my time in the heart-chain and in the mainland where I listened to the grand stories told by oratorical masters; these men were surely some evolutionary branch of the great 'form caster' tradition. I tried to imagine what it would be like to seek wisdom from a out of touch, sea-faring man. The main selling point of the wizard is that he is outside of society, but understands it better than anyone who could be in it. From what I understand, no one has seen a 'form caster' in the eleven eras since the Panosols (if they even existed in the first place), but rumors spread all the time about fisherman who encounter them alone and return to port with new knowledge. It seems even in death, the wizards are serving a similar function as cultural discussion surrounding their existence serves to instigate discussion on the matter of form in general. The wizards have taken on both a formed and formless state in contemporary society; a perfect representation of their classical purpose.

After the story, we all looked out into the ocean, as fisherman often do after the exhaustion of a long tale sets. I looked over the horizon, hoping that some image would be produced in the expanse, but I saw nothing. Gan seemed quite overcome with emotion; responding to the beautiful complexity of his tradition. I was the first to speak up, "do you think there is any chance at all I could run into one of these individuals one day?" Gan picked my tea cup from the dock, filled it with sea water and passed it back to me. "Not in your life."

[1] The heart-chain is the name given to a group of large islands that host the majority of human beings in the world. Some of the most technologically advanced, but socially corrupted locations can be found here. The name comes from an old myth told by the hill men of Mumran. Before the creationist cultivation, the mainland was ruled by a vicious troll king. In short, his heart was torn and thrown to the sea, forging the first islands for man to settle.

[2] For many humans, particularly far islanders, it is common social courtesy to appear stoic when confronted with a question or statement that you don't understand. Doing this puts the burden on the speaker to explain, but if the listener were to show emotion, this would be considered rude.

[3] For orthodox races of men, all of the cosmos is exposed to some kind of ethereal liquid. Water and air are just two demonstrations of the same form, in a sense. By doing the gesture outside of the water, I was symbolically laying claim to the waters of the cosmos, instead of the localized sea where I would draw from the life.

[4] The full analysis can be found in "Cast Forth from this World," a historical exploration of the rise and fall of localized wizard troupes. Yara Calnin posits the theory that early bands of orators gradually morphed into stationary monastic cultures that eventually evolved into what we can identify as the contemporary understanding of 'Wizard.' She later explains the strange 'coming of age' ritual for blooming wizards that doomed them to a life at sea.

[5] Referring here, of course, to the Third era work "All Form the Deep, Our Bodies Lay." Because of a cultural distrust of the ''walkers,' as they are called, the unnamed wizard of the story is demonized as a symbol in contemporary literature.

[6] Convulsion refers to the origin point of conscious experience, where the first humans emerged from the womb of the cosmos. The universe is described as convulsing just moments before creation. Different cultures have different understandings on how and what convulsed.

[7] The atom form advocates' use of 'progression' here is a bit more nuanced. The universe appears to be in constant progression to us, as dissolving forms without constitution, but is more like a cyclical falling down. Imagine a waterfall that is always descending, but is, just the same, always reconstituting its own state. [ See Yara Caa’s Treatises on the Basic Material Forms and their Habits]

[8] The event created a cultural self-awareness, the cosmic terror manifesting as panic in this moment of what seems to be vindication on the parts of the gods. No one is quite sure what happened, but many are partial to the meteor theory. The excerpt here demonstrates that within the cultural understanding there is still an anxiety about the nature of the cosmos; an anxiety about the hierarchy implied by such destructive events.

#sci fi #scifi #science fiction #handdrawn #digital art #ink drawing #ink #space #fantasy #world building #lore #fiction #short story #Illustration #psychidelic #wizards

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) amber, by Rosie Roberts

In this essay, Rosie Roberts attunes to the vibrational synchronicities of everyday life: the interval moments that hold us thickly, the centrifugal tendencies of coming to reality. Speculation, matter and perception glitter in multifaceted form; a phenomenology of this flickering present, with all its distortions and possible clarities. Throughout ‘amber’, Roberts also parses the semiotics of Glasgow’s sigil and other vital objects of mythological anchoring, infinity, psychic preservation, sounding out.

> We step out.

> Glaswegian psychiatrist and scholar R.D. Laing opens the preface to The Divided Self by saying, one cannot say everything at once. I hold in my mind that each thought uttered takes a moment to say and a moment to witness. That these moments form conversation, argument, intimate whisper, lecture, reparation, awkward impasse, forgiveness, etc. They are interaction, which deserves care and time; and in a time where moments can seem both finite and unruly Laing’s statement rings in my ears – you cannot represent everything – a landscape of aural, visual, affective and contextual perception – at once.

> Even from within the site of one body, one moment or one’s reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, augmenting the feeling of that moment. What follows then, perhaps, is the futility and dogmatism of an attempt at the realistic representation of a moment. Instead could there be an anti-real moment and its documentation, or disintegration into the flow of constant thought.

> Wait…what? Press the button to stop the traffic, pause on a surface specifically made to help you survive.

> Realism and idealism deal with the relationship between our minds and the world, but perhaps this is too much of what Laing would refer to as a centrifugal tendency, focusing on the reality of the seed instead of the potential of a tree. So, I begin to think from in between, creating a sapling space, supple and sweet.

> Look up to the Tron tower, pause the clock, or at least dial it down, right down. Wait for a clicking sound.

> As the pendulum swings there are seconds not seen where the chime is suspended in air, untouching and unsounding. It is this slow moment that is the preoccupation of the writing that follows, before the chime of thought to voice in air, before the branching out and rooting down. Spiral into this in between and there perhaps you can hold time with me.

> I’ll try to offer a frame, a beat, and a swoop into inertia. A beginning which starts from my own bell chamber and chiming voice which honestly/obviously is not my own, of course actually it sounds out through many others. Reading and writing at a one to one scale, those words are slanted into this text, as they lean into the thinking, the inner brain voice where parsing happens during moments of strike and struck.

> From this place what may be glimpsed is an imaginative or speculative way of achieving either documentation or activism through art and literature. These notions that have played a key role in leftist and emancipatory traditions are active within the speculative science fiction of say Octavia Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin, where a capacious foil to the close doldrum of capitalist realism is opened. Truth through fiction is perhaps more pertinent now than ever. It is likely not news that ‘true’ documentation can be an unconvincing record, that leaves some nuance or feeling lacking, an undoctored recording, like the you of Laing’s statement cannot ‘represent’ everything all at once. Documents are never a self-standing entity but are connected, haunted and contaminated by their readers and their histories.[1]

> I opened my mouth as the signal changed and I forgot what I was saying in order to do what I was doing.

                                                             ∞

> I find another bell (and it’s time stopping chime) to work with in Glasgow’s sigil, I have found it before in service and school and I came across it by chance on an archival tour. I heard it this morning, in my home. The bell chimes on a Sunday to gather a gospel community in a Pentecostal church. From my bed, through open windows I was party to it from outside its walls and inside my own. The plague of seagulls from Hamden Stadium responded in wracking craws, the sounding of my locality.

> Following Doreen Massey’s analysis of her locality, held within the essay A Global Sense of Place, of her position within it and its position within the world, and applying her method to my own; I would like to begin a forever process of sketching a geographically near moment, held both within and outwith the self.

> An act which draws in time, like the chord of the chime, in order to understand a place as undefinable, in relation to passing moments, themselves undefinable things that are slippery and constant. To find in Massey’s words, a sense of place which is adequate to this era of time-space-compression. To recognise space, and time as processes, like capitalism in the Marxist sense that we exist with and through. Like the journey to work.

> Glasgow’s sigil contains many objects, varied forms to represent a varied community, and they have been depicted in everything from tile mosaic, to bus stop, to tea towel. They are held within a shield that seeks to say something about people and what they make of where they are and what they do, but sometimes a shield is used to obscure rather than protect. People make Glasgow many things, including some nice stuff and some horror shows, people are at once the beady eyes, bystander behaviour and broken hearts.

> The story of the sigil is known and liked. A dispute, a lovers’ tryst, an overbearing father’s authority, a natural place, and a magical fish. The sigil and its storied ephemera could perhaps represent one of ways through which a trial to extract sustenance from the objects of a culture - a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain[2] its inhabitants - could take place. Objects through which to think about what’s happening here and now in my locale.

                                                            ∞

> For Edinburgh-based experimental obituarist Melissa McCarthy, objects and processes that hold particular moments are often re-simulated in media to strange effect. In her book Sharks, Death and Surfers, McCarthy enacts an imaginative close reading[3] of the film Jaws as it unravels into a not so subtle metaphor of the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman found dead in Ted Kennedy’s semi-submerged car in 1969.

> While he escaped from the vehicle, she did not. Like the political corruption that existed behind the fragile film of glamour that the Kennedy’s sustained, the reality and protagonists of the two tales – a car, a shark and a dead woman – lurk beneath a surface. This is what McCarthy describes as a moving image of motionlessness, a space-time-compression; an obscurus. And this in turn has a relationship with archives, books and the internet, if she had known what she was going to find, the findings would not exist now in the form of her book.[4]

> When we walk past and look at the surface of the Clyde’s water, seemingly stilled, we cannot see the infinity of happening underneath, time stops and continues. In an insidious inversion of this process the Kopechne incident becomes a happening under a stilled surface, paratextual, an ugly footnote, to the smash-hit-cult-classic, Jaws; demonstrating a slippage where moments repeated in media become paratextual to events themselves. But the paratextuality of metaphor in media, writing and film does not always have to act within a framework of paranoid hermeneutics, it can be reparative too.[5]

                                                            ∞

> Since the mid 1990s, the relationship between event, the self and fiction has undergone significant change. A space has opened up where the intersection of imaginative speculation, reality and theory can take place in texts as documents of autotheory, autofiction and speculative memoir. Synchronised happenings have come to be held in texts that perhaps don’t represent a moment of so called ‘truth’ but do truthfully document a certain moment in some of its labyrinthine ways.

> A noted local text in this genre could be 2014’s You Are Of Vital Importance where Sarah Tripp’s Is, yous and theys speak through, during and around group activity, gendered expectation and a global turn towards conservatism, happenings which become textually condensed into Book. A similar method is enacted in Kate Briggs’ 2017 This Little Art, where the process of translating How To Live Together by Roland Barthes and its effect on her life and thinking are held in the same moment, together, through a book shaped essay. This is then encircled once again as she reteaches the matter documented in ‘a bit, a piece, a thing, a twin’ written for The Yellow Paper in 2019.

> As examples of synchronised relational epistemologies – of one thing’s meaning and presence to another’s in a slowed-motion-moment – an intertextual interaction – the texts create a space in between, a decompression of time, for thinking’s sake. Perhaps of all the names for writing that we talked about with Briggs it is ‘the twin’ now that strikes me to be most apt, the text and the happening step out together, the seed and the tree as circuitous tandems.

> From within the site of the body I use, physically and textually, reality can be experienced as a multi-faceted synchronisation of varying perceptions, here documented by elongating a moment, demonstrating the feeling of that moment of thinking and being here walking around in Glasgow. A twinning of feeling and documentation, a united division.

> For hope and thinking’s sake We stopped and looked and listened, the lights changed red to blue to green and then cyan, magenta, yellow, then bells, voices, engines, static. And then home and back to suspended silence.

                                                            ∞

~

[1] Daniela Cascella

[2] Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

[3] Sedgwick

[4] paraphrased quote from an interview with Melissa McCarthy in Edinburgh in December 2019

[5] Sedgwick

~

Text and Image: Rosie Roberts

Published: 9/2/20

#Rosie Roberts #essay #essays #portals #amber #nonfiction #Glasgow

[bellabooks]

How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Heteronormativity and Love the Screen

I grew up on movies. More specifically, I grew up on old movies. I was raised on Rosalind Russell, Doris Day, Jimmy Stewart, and plenty of others touting transatlantic accents and the ability to deliver a monologue faster than the speed of light. My younger years were full of strong women, both on and off screen. Mame Dennis, of my favorite movie Auntie Mame, taught me the value of big, eccentric hearts. Kim Novak’s witchy character in Bell, Book, and Candle fostered my love for lore and the occult. The Bad Seed taught me not to murder someone with a tap shoe over a penmanship medal. via blogs.indiewire.com For as long as I’ve loved movies, I’ve been fascinated by the filmmaking process. I was the kid that, when DVDs became a thing, went straight to the special features for behind-the-scenes footage and candid interviews. I wanted to know how films were made, and if there was space for me in the world of filmmaking. I never really felt there was though, and so I interacted with movies from the academic side. My love for Doris Day’s The Glass Bottom Boat and Cold War era propaganda led to my undergraduate thesis. From that came my Master’s thesis on science fiction films of the 1950s. It was full of Jesus and Communism and aliens (oh my!), but watching movies counted as research so I couldn’t complain. Throughout my many years of school, I ignored any desire to pursue filmmaking. I assumed that I didn’t have any stories worth telling, or the means to tell them. For as much as I had learned from movies, I still felt my life deviated from the stories I’d seen on screen. When people ask about my “coming out story” or if I always knew I was queer, I now talk about what I like to call Some Kind of Wonderful Syndrome. In Some Kind of Wonderful, Mary Stuart Masterson (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame) plays Watts, a high school girl strongly coded as queer who is in secret-love with her best guy friend. Watts epitomizes the kind of female characters I was always drawn to, but her stereotypical story arc is precisely why I pushed my own queerness down until my late teens. It’s a classic story of a tomboy, hopelessly in love with a male friend, who struggles with singledom until said male friend wakes up one day to realize the girl he wants has been in front of him this whole time. Given that I was once a tomboy with many male friends, that’s how I thought my life would go. I figured I’d eventually have my ugly-duckling-to-beautiful-swan moment, get the guy, and be done with the whole ordeal. That is not how my life turned out; I eventually caught wind of The L Word through the budding-queer grapevine and it was all downhill from there. What movies like Some Kind of Wonderful inadvertently taught me, though, was that women, even the seemingly-queer ones, needed a very specific form of validation. Looking back on the movies I love, I now realize that many of my favorite on-screen women were motivated by their desire to get the guy. via contac.tumblr.com I was always a big fan of shows like Charmed that featured kickass, complex women. I think it’s safe to say that Piper Halliwell was one of my first loves; to see a woman portrayed as strong and vulnerable, anxious and practical, prone to cynicism but still a bit of a romantic, was delightful. The demons and witchcraft were also a plus. What would pull me out of shows like that was the inevitable inclusion of a love interest (usually male) that drove my beloved female characters away from their core stories. It wasn’t that these relationships were always haphazardly thrown in, or that I couldn’t identify with them on some level; they just felt like unwelcome reminders of all the ways I differed from the characters I looked up to. Like most LGBTQ folk my age, I survived on subtext and The L Word. We’re often told that characters and stories on screen are supposed to be universal, but to deprive people of nuanced experiences on screen is to render entire groups invisible. I have no doubt that I would have been able to sort out my identity sooner had I seen more queer characters in movies and on TV. via rebloggy.com The way that Alex Danvers’ coming out was portrayed on Supergirl, for example, really hit home for me. She is but one part of the upsurge in queer and trans representation, which has rightfully spawned conversations on how these characters are treated. It is difficult to believe you exist when you don’t see yourself on screen. And if, when you do see yourself, you are entrenched in tragedy or killed, the implication is that to exist is to suffer. The increased number of LGBTQ characters on screen is an undeniable positive, but I think what many of us sense is lacking is an increased presence behind the scenes, in the writers’ room, on set. What has changed the game, in my mind, is the advent of the webseries. via www.fanforum.com It is unsurprising that, in an industry like film and television, we have to create and fund our own stories if we want to see them. This method of producing content for LGBTQ audiences has seen success in shows like Carmilla, Her Story, and Couple-ish. What makes these shows so engaging is not only the direct involvement of queer and trans creators, but also the accessibility and transparency of both the shows themselves and the people behind them. Whether it was my own ignorance or a consequence of growing up in southern California, I always felt that, to work in film and television, you had to go from zero to Hollywood overnight. I started questioning this notion when I came across the Carmilla series while in graduate school. I binged the first half of season 1 (all the episodes available to me) late one night instead of prepping for a thesis presentation. I had never really seen a webseries, let alone a successful, low-budget, freely-accessible, referential one featuring queer and non-binary people. What drew me in was not only the story and wit, but also the simple pleasure of seeing queer people my age creating a wonderful thing together. Her Story and Couple-ish gave me similar warm and fuzzy feelings, and the idea that I could help create things instead of dedicating my time to writing about others’ creations. These shows, among a few others, gave me the representation I had been looking for and tipped the scales in favor of going to film school. Now I’m at the starting line of what could very well be a career I never bothered to dream of. Regardless of whether or not I wind up working in the industry (please hire me), I now know I have stories worth telling, and I’m excited to see how those of others manifest themselves, on screen or otherwise. It’s encouraging to see so many young queer and trans folk creating things in spite of adversity. Our stories are topical, and to know that there are communities in the world trying to elevate them makes me hopeful that the next generation of queer kids will feel a little less lost. Keep making your art.   Feature image via haroldlloyds.tumblr.com   http://dlvr.it/NcYRSN

#Movies #Television #film

[withintherealm]

The Unusual Grey Space of 13 Reasons Why: Boundary-Pushing Storytelling vs. Irresponsible Media

Everyone and their mom (actually, especially their mom) currently has an opinion on 13 Reasons Why, the new Netflix original series about a teenage girl’s suicide. Before her death, Hannah leaves behind a series of audio tapes that detail why she killed herself and who was to blame. It’s an inherently dark premise, and it just gets darker as you learn more and dig further into Hannah’s mind and experiences.

I binge watched this show in two days. I hit it hard. I was immediately impressed with it (and its soundtrack, but I won’t go into that here). I couldn’t look away from the dark story, and by the end, my immediate impression was that this show was impactful, meaningful, shocking, and important. The takeaway message for me was “We can do better. We’re not doing enough.” It felt like such a strong statement, and I was on board. Then came the opinion pieces from all over the globe.

There are two arguments going on here:

a) 13 Reasons Why is an intensely realistic portrayal of what teenagers are currently facing in American high schools. It portrays how mental health resources can be scarce or ill-equipped. How social media has changed everything for teens in the face of public shaming. How politics and money can take precedent over justice. Even how young females in crisis are often dismissed as being “over-dramatic.” The show is brave in not shying away from the brutal reality of teen suicide. It teaches teens that their actions have consequences and affect others in ways they may not realize. Teenage viewers, especially, have claimed the depiction of high school culture is devastatingly accurate.

b) 13 Reasons Why romanticizes and glamorizes suicide. It has serious potential of triggering copycats or inspiring the use of suicide as revenge. It’s irresponsible to depict horrific scenes such as Hannah’s suicide and Jessica’s rape in such detail, given that the show is marketed to teens and young adults.

As a person, I generally have opinions that swing harshly one way, but on this, I can see both sides. 13 Reasons Why is a very rare piece of work that straddles the line between boundary-pushing storytelling and irresponsible media. And it just so happens that I care deeply about both of these issues. I am deeply against censorship - I think art and media should be able to say whatever they want through any visuals, language, or method they want. But, as we’ve come to uncover in the last several decades of storytelling, media has direct correlation to how our culture develops and sees itself, and more so every day. From violent video games to dark films to a toxic social media feed, they all have real-life consequences. The way we portray marginalized groups has real-life consequences. We have to be cognizant of that. We don't have a choice.

So where does brutally realistic art turn into irresponsible media that has real potential of damaging our culture? It isn’t black and white. There is no fine line. There are dozens of nuances and considerations to look at here. So we should. We need to.

Media, especially television, is just going to get more complicated around these issues from here on out. The medium is becoming increasingly uncensored, thanks initially to HBO, and now Netflix, which has taken unprecedented reigns on artistic freedom. It’s led to the creation of some magnificent art, available for viewing at any time from any place. But with 13 Reasons Why, we’re beginning to see the dangers and concerns that can arise from such blatant artistic freedom in television, especially television that is thematically on par with R-rated movies and that children and teens can now access completely on their own.

The complications around Hannah’s death scene could easily be its own essay. Before I finished the series, I came across a headline that read, “Is Hannah Baker’s death scene the most disturbing depiction of suicide?” I figured the writer was probably hyperbolizing, but then I watched the scene. It’s irrefutably disturbing. You cannot describe the scene without using that word, and it’s very possible it is the most disturbing depiction of suicide on film. I flinched, covered my eyes, and cried for Hannah and her family. But is “disturbing” automatically cause for outrage? Or is “disturbing” an effective motivator to frighten young people out of choosing suicide themselves, as executive producer, Selena Gomez, claims it does? I’m not sure it’s either.

This is where artistic storytelling vs. real-life consequences really comes to a head. Because if we’re looking at this as a 13-hour movie, a fictional story, a purely narrative experience, there is also the issue of viewer investment and payoff. I realize that sounds a bit fucked up because we’re talking about a young girl’s death, but she is fictional, and more importantly, this series wouldn’t be structurally sound without a death scene, at the very least. While wading through the episodes, I thought about how much of a disservice it would be to the show, the viewers, and the character of Hannah Baker if her suicide was glossed over. We spent 13 hours learning about Hannah and why she was going to kill herself. We knew she was going to kill herself. When you look at the story in a vacuum (which most of us do as we binge-watch it in our bedrooms, entrenched in the story itself, not yet the ramifications of the story), it requires that end payoff, climax, grounding moment, whatever you want to call it.

The converse opinion is that this scene is unnecessarily graphic, triggering, and drawn-out. This article by an LCSW claims that Hannah’s death scene is literally “a tutorial on how to complete the act of ending your life.”

When one side claims something can take lives, and the other side claims it can save lives, it’s a pretty good indicator that we have no idea where we stand as a people on freely-accessible graphic material. And I don’t think it has anything to do with seemingly irreconcilable differences of our country like political party. I think it’s just comes down to the fact that technology, art, media, and our children themselves, are all growing faster than they have in any other generation. And until we figure it out, children and young adults are going to continue to feel confused when they see these kinds of graphic material. And they will be seeing more.

Every day, television is turning more and more into an art form, rather than a frivolous, mind-numbing, time-waster like our parents drilled into us. And artistic television comes with much more responsibility than mindless television. The same way you theoretically can put whatever you want in an art gallery, doesn’t mean you should. TV is taking on new formats we aren’t used to, like 13-hour movies you can watch in one sitting, and it’s asking more out of us in the process. I strongly believe the answer to these quandaries of responsibility, triggering material, and cultural acceptability lies in media literacy. Alongside English, math, science, and art, children and teens need to start being taught how to interpret what they’re seeing on their screens every day. They need to understand what’s real, what’s fake, what’s fictional, how it affects them, how it doesn’t affect them, what they can learn from what they’re seeing, and how to better choose what they want to see, rather than the current mentality that they need to see everything.

I am innately compelled to fight for artistic integrity, but I also care deeply about mental health, and the fact that so many licensed therapists and mental health professionals have spoken out against the show does speak volumes. As licensed therapist and YouTuber, Kati Morton, points out in her generally negative review, I agree that Netflix should have taken its many liberties to slip mental health resources into the storyline of 13 Reasons Why. It may have forced the writers to stray from the original text, but it could have saved face for the show and helped to paint it as a show that does indeed advocate for awareness and education of mental health issues as we trust that they originally aimed to do.

The reality is perhaps Selena Gomez & Team got exactly what they wanted with 13 Reasons Why: enough shock value to spark endless conversation, free advertising, and revenue from Netflix. But in this climate of polarization, we need to start acknowledging when something is grey, when we’re not sure how to proceed, when something has us divided on a topic as serious as teen suicide. The fact that so many of us can’t handle even thinking about the suicide of Hannah Baker, a fictional girl, could indicate deeper cultural issues surrounding shame and fear. But in a world where mental health concerns are becoming increasingly more prevalent, especially in adolescents, precautions also need to be prioritized. We can work on both. I hope the outcry to 13 Reasons Why doesn’t lead to widespread censorship, but I also hope with each of these debates, we get closer to a culture that creates and values responsible media, art, and all of its intersections.

#13 reasons why #netflix #writing #censorship #essay #art #media #tv #mental health

[chrisjhallsc]

Moving Forward

Often I am asked, “How have you gotten so far in my career in so little time, or how did I get ahead?” After a thorough analysis of my life, it really comes down to the three primary principles that I live by.

Stay Focused

No Excuses

Be Better

These three principles have helped to shape my life to this point.

Stay Focused

The first principle, Stay Focused, means that we have to Stay Focused on achieving our dreams. Once you have committed yourself to pursue your dreams, thing (life) will happen to distract you. Sometimes life gets in the way. Those distractions can be events, personal issues, or even people. There are so many distractions these days that often we face more than one distraction at a time. Because there are so many distractions, we have to remind ourselves always to Stay Focused.

When you develop a plan to take you from where you are to where you want to be, staying focused becomes a little easier. There will still be distractions and obstacles that come between you and your goals, but having a defined plan helps to keep you on the right track and moving in the right direction.

Many years ago, I was a Correctional Officer in a Medium-Maximum security prison. Over time, I noticed that many of the inmates would decorate their cells/lockers as much as regulations allowed. This was a common practice, so there was nothing strange about it. One of the Correctional Officer’s daily duties is to inspect several inmate cells. This number varied depending on the unit you were assigned to, program, supervisors, or any other nuance within the system. The primary purpose of this duty was to disrupt the flow of contraband inside the prison. The inmates never knew which cells were going to be searched or when, so hiding contraband was risky. One day, I was inspecting/searching a few cells in the unit I was assigned to work. Inmates are usually present when this occurs, so from time to time, correctional officers engage the inmates in conversations or give directives. 

I entered the cell of an inmate that I could tell that he had many years under his belt. Inmates with a little time inside tend to act a bit differently from inmates who have been inside only a short time. Over time, an observant officer could spot the difference between the two. I immediately noticed that this inmate cell was immaculate. He was “squared-away.” His bed, locker, and space were all well organized and clean. I thought to myself that this man must be prior military because of how neat his area was, so I asked. He answered that he had never been in the military, but wanted to know why I asked. I explained that the appearance of his cell and how organized it was, was indicative of someone who had some military bearing or experience. He told me that he kept his cell in that condition so that it remained a cell in his mind. He said that when guys (inmates) decorated their cells, they do it to make it more like home, more comfortable. He added that he never wanted his cell to feel like home. That way, he could Stay Focused on doing the things he had to do to get out and go home. That chance conversation immediately resonated with me and has stuck with me.

It is like that inmate implied, often people get too comfortable in bad situations instead of staying focused on what they need to do to get better. We get too relaxed sometimes with our current situation. Complacency kills! When we become complacent, we lose focus and miss opportunities that can cost us dearly. 

No Excuses

The next of the three principles is No Excuses. The No Excuses principle means that we have to hold ourselves accountable for our actions or lack thereof. We alone are responsible for our outcomes. We dream our dreams, we develop our plans, and so it is only natural that we are held accountable for seeing our plans to fruition.

Master Yoda said, “Do or Do Not, there is no try!” I think that this was his way of telling young Skywalker to stop making excuses. Most of the time, we have to “do it” to get it done. We cannot control anyone else’s actions, only our own. When we realize that we alone are accountable, it is empowering. It is empowering because we hold ourselves to a higher standard. Each of us knows our true potential and, therefore, in the best position to measure our progress accurately. If we are sincere, we know when we are performing at our highest levels and when we are not. When we perform at our highest level, and the outcome is not what we wanted, there is no reason to make excuses because we have done our best. The negative result tells us some things. Maybe we need to reevaluate our plan, method, or both. Perhaps we need to find a way to get better. The most important thing is that we learn the lesson and use what we have learned to Be Better.

Be Better

The final of the three principles is to Be Better. Be Better means precisely what it says; each day, I wake up with the intent and desire to be better than I was the day before. With being better my focus, the principle reminds me that the swift does not win the journey, but to he that endures. Life and success are often not a sprint. They are more like a continuous, long-distance race. And, in the race, you have to be careful not to take off too fast because you will burn out just as quickly. You have to pace yourself so that you can last for the duration of the journey. You have to be careful not to move too slowly as well because moving too slow is just as damaging. When you move too slowly, you will not make enough forward progress, and that can have a very negative effect on your motivation. Be Better also reminds me that there is NO external competition. I learned a long time ago through life experience and sports that we have no control over the actions or performance of others. I only have control over what I can do and how I perform when doing it. I realized that if I continued to measure my progress against that of others, I would always be miserable. All of us have our separate races to run.

The Be Better principle also directs me to make continuous incremental positive improvements, and they will lead to great long-term success. This process is known as the Kaizen Philosophy or method (I will have to write a detailed post about that another time). However, what it means is that to get the elephant out of the room, we have to do it chunk by chunk.

Often we set giant goals because we have all be taught to “Dream Big,” Swing for the Fences,” and I am a big advocate of dreaming big. What they do not tell you is how to get from where you are to where you want to be. They also do not tell you how much time it is going to take. And, the truth is that I can’t tell you either…specifically, just being real. I do not know what your dreams are or what motivates you; only you have that information. What I can do is give you a scalable blueprint that will allow you to achieve your dream, no matter what it is.

First, you need a clear vision of what your dream or goal is (be as specific as possible). Next, you have to research to find out exactly what it is going to take for YOU to achieve your dream. Once you have taken care of the first two steps, it is necessary to plot your route from here to there. The focus at this point is to make those continuous incremental forward steps that I mentioned earlier. Instead of trying to conquer the entire mission in one session, break it down into achievable steps or phases. For example, if your dream is to write a book, most of us cannot write an entire book in one session. Try starting with a chapter. If that is too much, write a paragraph. Still too much, then start with just a sentence. Even if you start with just writing a sentence each time, you will have that paragraph, then a page, followed by a chapter. It does not matter how much you accomplish, just that you accomplish something positive that moves you toward your dream. The key is to remember to break those big projects down into smaller, manageable tasks. After you have spent some time doing this, you can look back to see just have far you have come and how much you have accomplished. That is the real motivation.

These three principles provided me with a blueprint for moving my life forward. I am sure that if you use and apply them to your journey, they will serve you just as well.

We have to Stay Focused on achieving our dreams, remember to make No Excuses for our performance, and to strive to Be Better than we were the day before. When we apply these three principles to our lives, we become UNSTOPPABLE!

#motivation #inspiration #stay focused #no excuses #Be Better #life #dreams

[galacticvampirisms]

Step 2: Write a Paragraph

All right, and now we’re back to the Snowflake Method in this, the most dry attempt to write a novel ever. Yesterday, I kept getting drawn to Ophelia and Darcy, so I had a friend be the tie-breaker. Ophelia won! I’ll probably use Darcy elsewhere. (You can tell I wrote this a couple days ago. Life) 

Now, I’m a strong believer in the three act story, and luckily, so is the Snowflake Method! Now, the idea is to write a high school style paragraph introducing the concept, outlining the first bump in the road, the turning point, the final climax, and the resolution. Dude calls the middle three “disasters” but I feel that’s a bit too general for my literal-minded brain. 

So let me pull up my one sentence summary to use as reference for the full thing:  A young woman escapes her home life to a fantasy world of her own creation.

Weirdly, this is the hardest part for me. I’m a rambler, so pulling my thoughts down into five sparse sentences can be super difficult. So, first I’ll break it down into what I want for each sentence before trying to write five simple to middling complex ones.

Introduction:  Ophelia Littel is a pre-med student, forced into it by her parents. The inciting incident is that she runs away during a holiday party because of the pressure her family puts on her to become a successful and rich doctor.

Stumbling Block:  Ophelia ends up in a different world and is immediately freaked out and tries to go home. Before she can try the maze behind her, she gets found by an oddly familiar looking group of people who proceed to kidnap her when she lets on that she is familiar with them. They think she’s some sort of oracle. Really, she’s just the author of their story.

Turning Point:  On the way to her first battle on the rebel side, she gets taken as a prisoner of war. Once again, she recognizes her characters and tries to weasel her way out of being a POW, but this just gets her sent to the head honcho himself instead, a necromancer she had created to represent everything she hated about her life. Instead of him being evil incarnate though, she discovers the necromancer is just a sad man who tried to be alone with his undead animals for company. He unwittingly was forced into the role of overthrower when enough people were disenfranchised with the system and sought him out. 

Final Climax:  With her new knowledge intact, Ophelia decides to write a new ending to the story. She turns a battlefield into a counsel and draws the opposing forces together. There is little bloodshed, but she knows it’ll be hard for the country to shake off their old brainwashing. This is my weakest point right now because I want to include a system of control where anyone who is too different is killed/ostracized, and my original ending is a bit too fluffy for such a thing. There is a strong chance of it being easier for her to look at her old manuscript and realize how simplistic it is and tear it up, deciding that she was done hiding in a black and white fantasy world.

Ending:  Ophelia finally returns home and stands up to her parents, demanding that she get a choice in her own future and admitting to really loving biology. It’s uncertain if she changes majors, but she does pull up her digital manuscript and begin to write again.

Okay, with all that out, now I have to simplify. Yay... I also can’t decide if it’s ultimately more satisfying for Ophelia to realize she can’t simply fix everything in one counsel session, but instead chooses to rewrite the story and research ways to make the world a better place in her own reality. I would find it satisfying, but I’m not my audience here.

Summary:  Ophelia Littel’s overbearing parents push her too hard during break about medical school and send her literally running away to hide in a nearby cornfield. Unfortunately, when she exits it, she finds herself both in a completely new world of her creation and kidnapped by her very creations! Ophelia is pressed into service by a rebelling force led by the former queen of the land, but she doesn’t make it very far before once again being kidnapped and brought before her worst creation: the necromancer dictator whom the rebellion is fighting against. But it turns out that he isn’t what he seems, and she stands up to both the rebellion and her past writing, recognizing that underneath the black-and-white lens of her self, she had created a world just as nuanced as what her parents are trying to squash in her. Ophelia ultimately makes it home, tearing up her physical manuscript and standing up to her parents before deciding to start again. 

That took way too long, and I’m not totally happy with it. This step of the process requires me to squash so much into five sentences, and it feels like I can’t lol.

Once again, if you’ve read all the way to the end, please like the post! I’d really appreciate it. c:

#unnamed littell project #writing #fantasy #ya fantasy

[pcinvasion-blog]

New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on https://www.pcinvasion.com/prey-review

Prey Review

Arkane’s love affair with the back catalogue of Looking Glass Studios is pretty overt, and that’s no bad thing. With 2006’s Dark Messiah, the Dishonored series, and now Prey in their library of releases, the studio are the contemporary champions of the ‘immersive sim’. That genre’s heyday includes lauded classics like Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex (designer Harvey Smith is now at Arkane), and, of most direct relevance to Prey, System Shock 2.

There is an actual System Shock 3 in development at Otherside Entertainment (a company with even more direct ties to those Looking Glass/Irrational/Ion Storm years), and if it manages to top Prey as a continuation and tribute to the System Shock ethos then it’ll be quite some game. Despite being stuck with a spare license that Zenimax had lying around (this title shares nothing in common with the Prey of 1998, nor is it anything to do with the cancelled Prey 2), and displaying a shared interest in Art Deco office decor with BioShock, it’s the earlier Shock sequel with which this title shares the bulk of its design philosophy.

There’s also a viewing system called a Looking Glass and a mission called Shipping and Receiving. Yeah.

You are Morgan Yu, sister (or brother, your choice) to Alex Yu, and part of the family-owned TranStar Corporation. The year is 2032, in an alternate timeline where President Kennedy was never assassinated. US-Russian co-operation resulted in rapid progress for the global space program and the creation of the Talos-1 facility upon which Prey is set. There, TranStar is developing ‘Neuromod’ technology, which allows talents like musical or athletic aptitude to immediately be injected into a person. It’s primed for the mass market … what could go wrong?

Pretty much everything, inevitably. Within minutes of Prey’s rather clever cyclical opening sequence, vicious Typhon aliens are running amok and most of the crew will be left with nothing but audio logs and embarrassing email chains as their obituaries. What follows is a tense, first-person crawl through Talos-1’s retrofuturist interiors, driven by astute use of scavenged resources, the recurring challenge of how best to use the space and tools at your disposal, and (if you’re inclined) the desire to piece together what exactly happened in the facility.

The primary narrative is an intriguing one, though the main questline tends to double as a method of pushing the player between the connected areas of Talos-1 (the Cargo Bay, Life Support, an Arboretum, and so on), and relies too often on suddenly blocking progression to send you on a tangential mission. Not a bad device, but repeated so frequently here that it becomes a bit predictable.

Not the ideal conclusion to a scientific test, really.

Like many of its sources of inspiration, Prey shines when the player is off any sort of leash and poking around its interconnected systems and side-stories at their own speed. Happily, this sort of activity constitutes the vast majority of the game.

Talos-1 is one of those wonderful game spaces that’s constructed like a real, functioning (within the boundaries of this sci-fi reality, anyway) space station. Though a little restricted in your movements at first, it’s not long before you can travel between zones broadly at will, either on foot or via a bit of a space walk on the vessel’s exterior. It’s quite possible to wind up somewhere you’re not ‘supposed’ to be, but Prey ultimately doesn’t mind and tends to adapt well to player ingenuity. Quests, and your own curiosity, will bring you back and forth between areas, and your skills and experience will help you uncover new rooms or floors.

For example, early on you may not be able to get beyond a locked door. The most obvious routes inside would be to find the corresponding keycard, or wait until you have sufficient hacking skills to force entry. But you may also be able to smash a tiny section of glass and use your nerf dart crossbow (yes, really) to pop the door release button. Or perhaps create an entirely new path to the rafters using Prey’s excellent GLOO Gun and get in from above. The game gives you tools and systems, then encourages you to learn through experimentation.

Going on little expeditionary detours almost always pays off, either with hidden caches of supplies in hard to reach areas, or weapons and snippets of story you’d usually not acquire until later. Throughout, Prey feels designed with curious, boundary-prodding players in mind.

I can almost certainly get over there another way, but this is so convenient.

The aforementioned GLOO Gun is a primary exhibit of this design philosophy. It’s one of the most versatile and liberating tools since Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun. Useful for traversal, combat, and situational obstacles, the GLOO Gun fires out quick-drying blobs of polymer onto pretty much any surface (but won’t stick to itself). You can widen a narrow beam for an easier crossing, create some rudimentary hand holds to get to higher ground, put out fires, temporarily block sparking electrical outlets, and gum up Typhon foes.

Early in the game the tactic of using GLOO to fix humanoid ‘Phantoms’ in place and battering them with a wrench is standard procedure.

The other early adversaries are the much discussed Mimics; scuttling, headcrab-like creatures apparently made out of the same pulsing black substance as the Pus of Man enemies in Dark Souls 3. They can turn into mundane objects like boxes, piles of towels, or even things like medkits (the bastards), and will happily launch themselves at your face with a screech if you get too close.

While that might sound like an awful series of cheap jump-scares waiting to happen, in-game it comes across slightly more nuanced. Mimic attacks are usual somewhat telegraphed, in the sense that you’ve seen them moving around earlier, or you’ve learned that there’s something distinctly off about two medkits sat next to one another in the middle of the floor.

Maybe that chair is a Mimic. Maybe there’s one behind me. Maybe I’M a Mimic. Oh god.

They also escalate and plateau quite neatly throughout the game. At the point where you might be getting sick of the things, you acquire technology allowing you to identify their hidden forms (points to Prey here for making the scanning tech a bit prohibitive to use, so you don’t just wear it all the time). Just when you’re at the point of casually scanning a room and getting the jump on Mimics with pre-emptive attacks, the game introduces the tougher Greater Mimics who can turn into larger objects and won’t show up on basic scans.

Then, when you’re powerful enough to casually blast Greater Mimics away with a half-aimed shotgun, you’ll have become complacent enough to forget all about the original Mimics. Which is exactly when they’ll start to surprise you all over again.

Prey’s enemy roster isn’t vast, and tends to be derived from the same ‘black goop’ template to some extent, but they all distinguish themselves by demanding a slightly different combat approach. The same device used for scanning Mimics can reveal weaknesses (and, at the same time, gradually unlocks Typhon Neuromod powers), so combat, much like exploration and traversal, involves putting your combined tools to smart use.

One particular late-game foe is supposed to specifically hunt you down. Sadly, this doesn’t quite work because he’s very easy to avoid by simply staying in place for a couple of minutes or leaving for another area. If he were able to cross loading zones, his presence might have matched his billing for intimidation.

Scanning kills your peripheral vision and muffles sound, so you won’t be using PREY VISION the whole time.

The usual pistol and shotgun options are present in Prey, but if you want to get more creative you might invest in the ability to be able to hurl gigantic bits of furniture at opponents. Or perhaps you’ll lure them next to a pipe that’s ready to belch out gusts of flame. Maybe you’ll just lob a dependable Recycling Grenade. That won’t just clear up your problem, it’ll also leave you with some handy materials to turn into fresh ammo or suit repair kits at a nearby Fabricator.

At every turn Prey wants you to engage with its systems in smart ways, without ever outright telling you what to do. It even has a broad capacity to react and adapt to some of your off-map meddling. There’s a point in the game where a useful object can no longer be fabricated with materials due to someone on the station implementing a DRM scheme. This launches a standard side quest to the chap’s office; but if you’ve already been there and used his computer, you would have seen the DRM-implementation in process and may have already stopped it happening.

Many of the game’s most memorable details are in little stories, not even specific side quests, relating to the Talos-1 crew. They are all named, and all have roles and recorded assignments. You will never stumble across an anonymous corpse, but will regularly be able to piece together a crew member’s final moments. Humanising details like emails describing a not-strictly-HR-approved Battlebot league taking place in the isolated bowels of the Power Plant, or even just incidental scenery like a photograph with a face scratched out, are all over the facility.

Captain Stabfellow: The hero Talos-1 needed, but sadly didn’t have.

The broader story plays out like a procedural mystery; what happened on Talos-1 and what’s going on with Morgan Yu him (or her) self?

Pacing, largely player-controlled during the opening couple of acts, gets a bit too hectic at the game’s climax. It begins to usher in floods of enemies, rather than the more thoughtful, creative encounters found during the rest of Prey’s 20-some hour story. A different type of challenge, sure, and one presumably intended to test the reserves of your hoarded resources; but one that’s also inherently less interesting. Prey is never a pure stealth game, but you can spec heavily in that direction and the final few hours rather undermine that option.

No matter how you resolve matters on the station, the ending cinematic is abrupt to the point of being jarring, but a much more revealing sequence follows after the credits. There’s a thematic constant running through the game about the role of memory on consciousness and how it affects the ‘nature of a man’ (Chris Avellone, on writing duties here, revisiting familiar pastures). The ‘true’ ending, while a bit of an exposition dump, does retroactively throw all that preceeded it into a new context, and had me thinking that certain discoveries would have increasing meaning on a second playthrough.

A second run is something Prey actively encourages, both through its tacit desire to see the player use their freedom to ‘break’ the story (this is a game where you can continue after killing your main quest-giving NPC), and the duality of its human and Typhon skill sets.

An image of some of the in-game art, with which I’m absolutely in love.

As noted in my article at launch, the PC version of Prey is sort of the opposite world Dishonored 2; well optimised, but lacking in the HUD customisation options that you’d expect from Arkane. A recent patch is said to have dealt with a nasty save corruption bug (which, luckily, I never ran into).

Some bugs do remain. Sometimes audio logs would autoplay upon being picked up, while other times they’d refuse to play at all (even via the shortcut key) until I collected some new ones. One side quest resolved successfully, then retroactively decided (in a totally different location) that actually it had failed. Prior to this latest patch, certain aspects of the audio were mixed far too high or low, but the update seems to have sorted out the most egregious issues there. That’s for the best, as having some of Mick Gordon’s splendid score all over the place in the mix and the ‘Objective Updated’ noise pitched loud enough for a regular jump scare was rather aggravating.

A special word, too, for Prey’s weird hacking minigame. This seems so cheerfully and self-consciously bad that I’m seriously entertaining the notion that it might be an attempted post-modern commentary on how all these games have lame portrayals of hacking. But more likely it was just jammed into the game at the last minute.

You can get up here, so it’s almost certainly useful in some way.

That’s certainly not the case for the rest of Prey’s mechanics, which fit together as interconnected systems with a great deal of thought behind them. Talos-1’s offices, testing labs, and cargo holds have all been designed with player-driven traversal and exploration in mind. Every space has something to reward curiosity, or deft use of environmental objects. What begins as a tense, vulnerable crawl, gradually turns into the confident, resource-rich stride of a protagonist newly at home with their capabilities. Though it’s a slight shame Prey cannot maintain its oppressive tension to the bitter end, twenty hours of that would be pretty grueling; confidence can still breed complacency, and Talos-1 is never truly subdued.

Arkane’s tale of wrench-wielding, audio log sleuthing, and human hubris wears its videogame heritage on its bright red space suit sleeve. Until such time that System Shock 3 may challenge it, Prey is the worthy follow up to System Shock 2 in everything but name.

#Prey